Almanac Music: The Beatles in Adelaide – From Me To You
A Hard Day’s Night [Source: Author]
12 June 1964. Sixty years ago. The day we wagged school in the afternoon to see the Beatles arrive in Adelaide. Only to find that just about every other schoolkid in the city had done the same. As the crowd assembled in King William Street, five or six of us packed into Cleggy’s uncle’s old Vauxhall tourer (with the canvas hood) and travelled to Keswick Bridge on Anzac Highway. ‘Hey George’, yelled somebody as they drove past and George grinned and waved back.
I did not get to the concert at Centennial Hall but there were a number of parties in someone’s lounge where we sang along to Beatles records.
Every second song on radio was a Beatles song and there were plenty of requests and phone dedications. For me, vinyl extended play 45s (EPs) and singles were the go that year. The albums came later.
Later in the year we listened to Robyn Archer (then Robyn Smith), playing her guitar and singing PP&M and early Dylan.
Also that year, our school, Enfield High held a mainly sporting exchange (there was also a debate) with the Melbourne school Fawkner High. In the strange segregation of the times, the EHS boys sporting teams travelled to Fawkner while the FHS girls teams competed in Adelaide.
We played football at Coburg Oval and celebrated beating the Vics. The magazine supplement informs me the scores were 6.15 to 6.5 and that the umpire for the match was Max Papley, then an emerging VFL player. He had recently been awarded a £250 watch by GTV 9 as recruit of the year. Max is the grandfather of present-day Sydney Swan Tom Papley.
A somewhat raucous party (Beatles records being the least of it) in Adelaide a year later meant that the exchange only lasted two years.
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About Peter Crossing
Peter Crossing loves the pure 'n natch'l blues. He is a member of the silver fox faction of the Adelaide Uni Greys. He is something of a cricket tragic although admitting to little interest in the IPL or Big Bash forms of the game.
Apparently you didn’t miss much, Peter, by missing the concert except to say you were there.. My wife, Rae, who did attend has told of The Beatles playing for only 45 minutes and not being able to hear any music because the fans screamed throughout.
It certainly was the most incredible time when The Beatles toured here in 1964. I remember sitting at home watching the coverage of The Beatles arriving in Melbourne on TV. being completely overwhelmed and at the same time in complete awe with what was happening, amazing scenes! I was in Form 2 (Year 8) at the time and remember vividly the following day after their Melbourne concert a fellow student from my form who attended the concert inundated by dozens and dozens of students, mainly screaming girls who wanted know everything about the concert. He was the most popular member of our form for some time!
Thanks for these recollections, Peter.
You might be interested to know that Max Papley received an award in the King’s Birthday honours list.
Hi there
Not sure if you saw my post from a couple of weeks ago. But in case you didn’t, I wrote about a podcast I’ve put together to mark the anniversary of the tour. But it explores much more, particularly what Australia was like. Lots of nostalgic historical audio and so on. Links to various streaming services and YouTube are in my post. It’s called They Came to a Land downunder. Episode 4 is out now. Episode 3 was where we started to get more deeply into Australian context than just the Beatles tour. Hope it’s of some interest or entertainment. I think it’s the sort of podcast that would interest the deep thinkers and writers of this forum!!
Thanks Bernard, Col, Smokie and Gareth.
Memorable times.
Will give the podcast a listen Gareth. Thanks.
Some nice memories there. Well done Peter.
My older brother bought the All My Loving EP in December 1963 – he being 10 and me 6, and from December 1963 until now I have been a Beatlemaniac. Obsessed.
The Beatles tour of Australis in 1964 was a huge event and the media reacted in the same way as they did during the recent Taylor Swift tour, except multiplied by 100!
I was so lucky to be a kid and just old enough to appreciate the best decade of music the 1960s.