Editor’s Note: This story was originally published in a 2001 issue of Hour Detroit and is running as it originally appeared, in honor of the 60th anniversary of the Beatles’ 1964 show in Detroit.
Carved into the wooden front door of Suite 1566 at the Whittier Retirement Residence is an elaborate Old English script that reads, “Ye Olde Crow’s Nest.” The “Out of Inventory” sign taped below it cautions that times have changed.
Inside the empty suite, white paint is peeling from the wall, a heating register cover lies on the floor. The fireplace in another room suggests that it was once posh, and more than adequate for a hard day’s night stay by John, Paul, George and Ringo at the former Whittier Hotel in September of 1964.
Thirty-seven years ago this month, the most significant cultural influence on the Baby Boomer generation began when the Beatles performed on the Ed Sullivan Show before a television audience of 70 million.
The Fab Four quickly changed our music, hairstyles, attitudes and fashions, and we still can’t seem to get enough. The release of their 6-pound Beatles Anthology, and the greatest hits compilation Beatles 1 became instant bestsellers late last year, gobbled up by loyal fans, many of whom were not even born when the band disbanded in 1970. Even the group’s first movie, A Hard Days Night, was restored and re-released in theaters recently.
Yet the relationship between Detroit and the Beatles began inauspiciously in February 1964. When the moptops stepped up to the microphones at New York’s Kennedy Airport two days before the Sullivan show, one of the first questions asked was, “What do you think of the campaign in Detroit to stamp out the Beatles?”
Paul McCartney’s clever retort became a front-page headline in the Free Press the following day: “We’ve got a campaign of our own to stamp out Detroit.”
In a publicity stunt engineered by the University of Detroit’s public relations director Bill Rabe, a handful of students armed with bumper stickers had started the Stamp Out the Beatles Society (SOBS), an organization dedicated to the abolition of the Beatles hairstyle. Co-founder Christopher Najarian, now an orthopedic surgeon in Madison Heights, sheepishly recalls the joke.
“Bill Rabe was always looking for ways to publicize the school. People kept calling me, saying, ‘What’s the matter with you?’ We were all surprised by the publicity. Actually, I liked the Beatles and thought they were terrific.”
Not everybody thought the Stamp Out the Beatles campaign was a prank.
Our gray-flannel, brush-cut world had been turned upside down. The Greater Detroit Chamber of Commerce carried the rallying cry in its magazine The Detroiter:”Stamp out beetles and Beatles.” U. of D.’s campus barber, Lee Rahal, told the Free Press, “If that style catches on, it’ll put all barbers out of business. The men will be able to cut their own hair.”
During the Ed Sullivan rehearsal session, Beatles manager Brian Epstein was asked if the group would be going to Detroit to carry out their threat. He replied, “I’m afraid there’ll be no stamping out of Detroit or the Beatles.’ But would they ever come here? Art Schurgin would make sure of that.
Now enjoying retirement in his Birmingham high-rise apartment, the 76-year-old Schurgin recalls receiving a call from a concert booking agency after the Sullivan show, asking if he would like to bid for a Beatles concert in Detroit. It was a no-brainer. “They wanted a guarantee of $50,000 in advance for two shows, which was a tremendous amount of money,” he says. “I needed help, so I approached the folks at Olympia and entered into a partnership. We didn’t have to spend a penny on advertising. To say the least, it was an easy sell.”
Sept. 6, 1964. Olympia Stadium. Two shows: 2 p.m. and 6 p.m. Tickets: $2, $3, $4 and $5. Tickets went on sale at Olympia Stadium and at the downtown Grinnell’s at the end of April because Olympia general manager Nick Londes felt that September was a long way away and “it is not necessarily true that we will love you in September as we do going into May.”
He need not have worried. Neither time nor the U. of D. campaign created any problem.
On April 28, 1964, the Free Press reported: “They lined up Sunday afternoon at the Olympia Stadium box office for tickets that went on sale Monday noon. About midnight the police came and carted away all the 13 to 18-year-old girls who had not already been carried away by their parents.”
Between the Sullivan show and September, Detroit radio played Beatles songs constantly while fans gobbled up records and thousands of souvenirs, from Beatles wigs and brushes to buttons and lunch boxes at Crowley’s, Kresge’s and other merchants. The week before the concert, the Fab Four’s black-and-white feature film, A Hard Day’s Night opened at 14 local theaters. “The Beatles are coming, the Beatles are coming,” was the common refrain spewed by hyper disc jockeys and kids at the dinner table.
At 1 a.m. Sunday, Sept. 6, an American Flyers Lockheed Electra turboprop arriving from Chicago landed at Detroit Metropolitan Airport. WKNR’s Bob Green, and fellow WKNR (“KEENER 13”) jocks “Swingin” Sweeney and “Rockin” Robin Seymour were there to greet the Beatles along with about 3,000 screaming fans held back by a makeshift snow fence, 60 sheriff’s deputies and 40 Michigan State Police officers. Green taped the arrival, drove 20 minutes back to tile station in Dearborn, and played it on the air for fans sitting by their radios.
“There’s the plane! There it is!” Green reported breathlessly on WKNR. “This is unbelievable!” (Screaming in background).
The Beatles’ entourage piled into limousines escorted by four carloads of police. At Michigan Avenue, the motorcade was met by a Detroit police motorcycle escort and whisked off to the exclusive Whittier Hotel on Jefferson across from Indian Village. Fans stormed downtown’s Sheraton-Cadillac Hotel, convinced the Beatles were staying there.
John the maintenance man (he declined to give his last name) has worked at the Whittier since 1958. He remembers that room ‘566, the “Crew’s Nest Suite” located at the top southeast comer of the former hotel, once was the party pad for Horace Dodge Jr., the swinger from Grosse Pointe who would rent the suite out and on some occasions trash it, his mother paying the freight the next day.
It was a room with a view, and except for the airport and Olympia, it was all the Beatles would see of Detroit. From their windows they saw Belle Isle, the mouth of Lake St. Clair, Canada — their next destination after tile Motor City — and hundreds of fans congregating outside.
Larry Kane, the only American reporter to travel with the Beatles during the entire 1964 American tour, also stayed on the 15th floor. The dean of Philadelphia television anchors says the cities and hotels all run together in his mind now.
“During the day,” Kane says, “the Beatles had nowhere to go, with very little exposure to the outside world. Basically, they would stay in their suite and play Monopoly for money, cards, listen to local radio stations, and drink rum and Cokes.” (And yes, there were girls sometimes.)
John the maintenance man remembers the day the Beatles stayed at the Whittier. It could have been a scene from A Hard Day’s Night.
“It was crazy. There seemed to be thousands of kids outside the hotel. At one point they broke the revolving front door and some ran up the stairs to the 15th floor. I helped the Beatles escape. They were running and laughing, and I took them down the freight elevator to a back door where they jumped into a black unmarked utility van.” The van went out the back alley onto Jefferson and was met by 25 motorcycles that escorted them to Olympia at McGraw and Grand River. Two of the cycles crashed without injury
Larry Kane says this was a typical scene in every city. “I even remember them going from Atlantic City to Philly in a flower truck. It was subterfuge,’ he says.
The memories have jaded a bit, but those who were there will never forget two things at Olympia that day: the screaming and the lighting streaks of flashbulbs.
After a combined hour and a half of introductory performances by the Bill Black Combo, the Exciters, Clarence “Frogman” Henry and Jackie DeShannon, the emcee — WKNR’s Bob Green — took the stage. “For a moment, the crowd had settled down as I told them about speaking with John and Paul backstage and some of the gifts Keener listeners had given them,” he recalls from his audio production house in Houston. “Then all hell broke loose. Five seconds before I was to introduce them, they walked out on stage.”
The Beatles began their 30-minute, 12-song set with “Twist and Shout.” While being showered with everything from jellybeans, an inscribed gold watch, and a bouquet thrown at Lennon’s feet, the Beatles could not hear themselves play, nor could the crowd. Their three Vox amplifiers, sufficient for a high school sock hop, were useless. A police officer near the stage took bullets out of his cartridge belt and stuck them in his ears.
“It was unbelievable. Everybody was screaming at the top of their lungs during the whole concert,” says Bill Schurgin, the promoter’s son who was then 8 years old. “Even though I was in the fourth row, I couldn’t hear over the crowd.”
Mark Jones, of Birmingham, was 10, sitting in a balcony box light off the stage. “I will never forget 15,000 camera light bulbs going off randomly, non-stop. It had a hypnotic effect when you combine that with the screaming. It was very, very exciting. The energy practically lifted you off your seat.”
But not everybody was thrilled. Bob Benyas, of West Bloomfield, was photographing the show for WKNR. “I had to put cigarettes in my ears. I was constantly jostled. All the kids had little cameras snapshooting. It was really like combat, with the noise and flashes.”
Before the second show, the Beatles held a 20-minute press conference after being photographed with four beauty pageant winners. When asked if they were disappointed in not seeing Detroit, Lennon remarked, “We came here to work, not to play.” When Bob Green asked about their musical influences, George Harrison said, “In fact, the Detroit Sound: Tamla-Motown, Marvin Gaye, Mary Wells, the Miracles.” (Three songs on the Beatles second American album were Motown covers’)
Meanwhile, Beatlemania merchandising lore was being created back at the Whittier.
Before the Beatles left for Olympia, Chicago TV producers Larry Einhorn and Richy Victor had arranged to buy, for $400, eight bedsheets and four pillow cases used by the Beatles at the Whittier. Thousands of 1-square-inch swatches for each Beatle were later glued to a letter of authenticity signed by hotel manager on Whittier stationary, selling for $1 each. Einhorn, who later appeared on the television show To Tell the Truth, says: “The story was great, but the selling wasn’t. We didn’t have the Internet, and stores weren’t into used celebrity bedsheets.” Einhorn and Victor now are selling the swatches, valued up to $100 each by memorabilia guides, on Ebay. The Whittier would later sell the carpeting to Lori Carpet in Lincoln Park for $1,500, creating more Beatles swatches.
The Fab Four returned to Detroit for two more shows at Olympia on Aug. 13, 1966, 17 days before playing their final concert ever at San Francisco’s Candlestick Park. Burned out by the grind, John Lennon said, “I reckon we could send out wax dummies of ourselves and that would satisfy the crowds. The music wasn’t being heard. It was a freak show”
But for those like Mark Jones, time will never erase the memory of seeing the Beatles. “When I tell somebody that I saw them at Olympia, the reaction is usually, ‘Wow! Really?’ It’s a thrill to be able to say I was there.”
|
|
|
