Vancouver was known as a drop-in date but actually in the beginning the Beatles had actually scheduled to stay there. They were going to stay at the Hotel Georgia. Peter Hudson, general manager of the Hotel Georgia, had seen the chaos all over the world where The Beatles stayed and he literally spent weeks fortifying his hotel. He put plywood up at certain entrances, barbed wire on fire escape ladders. He wanted to be prepared when The Beatles came. They had to cancel their reservation and the reason for that was they had to play Seattle the night before and when they left SeaTac to come up to Vancouver half way into the flight the customs officials radioed the airplane and said, Listen you didnt get the customs forms filled out properly. Youre going into another country so you better turn around we need to get these custom forms done. They had to go back to Seattle and do the customs work and then fly to Vancouver so they are running late already. They land in Vancouver, they get in the cars to travel to Empire Stadium and they were hungry so they stopped at Kings Drive-In and they got hamburgers and milkshakes for the road. When they finally got to Empire Stadium the press had been waiting and they were kind of put off. The Beatles had been late so they got there, did the press conference and then they did the concert in front of 20,000 fans. They caught a plane that night and headed back to L.A. North Shore News: The other acts on the bill included Jackie DeShannon. Chuck Gunderson: They had the same support acts for each stop on the 64 tour. They would open up with the Bill Black Combo. Bill Black wasnt actually on the tour he was sick at the time and he had to be replaced. Bill Black used to be Elvis bass player. They stayed on stage and they were the instrumental part of the next support acts. The next ones to come out were The Exciters, they had a big hit called Tell Him back then, after that were The Righteous Brothers and then Jackie DeShannon came on. It was about a two hour show and when The Beatles came on they played 30 minutes and it was over. Another interesting thing about Vancouver is Empire Stadium was the first outdoor show The Beatles had ever played in North America and it was a stadium. It wasnt as big as Shea Stadium but it was still a stadium.
Posted on: Tue, 26 Aug 2014 06:10:01 +0000
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