On August 19, 1964, more than six months after taking the East Coast by storm, the Fab Four travel to California to take the stage at the Cow Palace in San Francisco for opening night of their first-ever concert tour of North America.
The Beatles took America by storm during their famous first visit, wowing the millions who watched them during their historic television appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show in February 1964. But after the first great rush of stateside Beatlemania, the Beatles promptly returned to Europe, leaving their American fans to make do with mere records. By late summer of that same year, however, having put on an unprecedented and still unmatched display of pop-chart dominance during their absence, the Beatles finally returned.
Although in retrospect it would seem a laughable underestimation of their drawing power in America, Beatles’ manager Brian Epstein chose venues like the 17,000-seat Cow Palace for the 1964 tour expressly because he feared that the Beatles might not sell out large sports stadiums like San Francisco’s Candlestick Park, where they would play their final official concert in 1966. Suffice it to say that the Beatles had no difficultly filling the Cow Palace, which was packed with 17,130 screaming fans when the group bounded to the stage shortly after 9:00 p.m. on this day in 1964 and launched into “Twist And Shout.”
The Beatles’ set that night and throughout the tour that followed featured only 12 songs, most often in this order:
”Twist and Shout”
“You Can’t Do That”
“All My Loving”
”She Loves You”
“Things We Said Today”
“Roll Over Beethoven”
“Can’t Buy Me Love”
“If I Fell”
“I Want to Hold Your Hand”
“Boys”
“A Hard Day’s Night”
“Long Tall Sally”
At other stops on the tour, the Beatles’ performances would last approximately 33 minutes, but the show that night in San Francisco lasted some five minutes longer—not because of any difference in the Beatles’ performance, but because of police intervention to stem the growing pandemonium. Within the first few seconds of the first song that night, at least one radio journalist traveling with the Beatles had been trampled to the ground along with a young female fan who broke a leg in the melee. And thanks to an offhand comment by George Harrison about the group’s favorite candy in the days leading up to the show, the Beatles themselves were pelted with flying jelly beans throughout that night’s set. Though John, Paul, George and Ringo were uninjured, they left the Cow Palace that night by ambulance after their limousine was swarmed by berserk fans. It was a scene that would become familiar to them as they continued on their first historic tour of America in the months ahead.
