Tomorrow-Land (35 page)

At 9:17 p.m. after Sullivan introduced them, the band emerged from the dugout in matching black pants, boots, and tan jackets, holding onto their guitars and waving to the throngs of fans as they made their way to the makeshift stage near second base. Immediately the 55,600-strong crowd exploded. Once onstage the Beatles tore into “Twist and Shout,” the first of their twelve-song, thirty-minute set, which included their most recent hits like “I Feel Fine,” “Ticket to Ride,” “Help!” and “Can't Buy Me Love.” The
New York Times
declared that the noise generated by the screeching masses was true to “the classic Greek meaning of the word pandemonium—the region of all demons.”

Twin rows of fifty 100-watt amplifiers—specially made for the occasion by Vox—ran along the baselines, but barely a note was heard by anyone, not the band, the fans, or even Bernstein, who stood directly underneath the stage with Epstein. Scores of fans fainted, while dozens of others stormed the field and hopped over barricades while desperately trying to elude police. The fans were so excited to see their idols, to be
this close
to four live Beatles, they couldn't be bothered to actually listen to the music. “It was ridiculous!” Lennon later complained. “We couldn't hear ourselves sing. . . . You can see it in the film, George and I aren't even bothering playing half the chords, and we were just messing about.” Lennon even admitted to a British reporter a few days after the concert that he wasn't always sure what key the band was in. The music had become almost meaningless compared to the spectacle of the Beatles themselves.

When their thirty minutes were up—per their manager's instructions, they were not to play “a minute more or a minute less”—they
waved good-bye then hurried into a nearby car and sped off. Several young female fans had to be carried from their seats to a makeshift first-aid station. A group of girls in the first row begged the police along the baselines for a souvenir from the field. “Please, please,” they cried. “Give us some blades of the grass. They walked on the grass.”

While the Beatles were disenchanted with the musical quality of the concert, their promoter, at least, was ecstatic over the box office receipts. “Over 55,000 people saw the Beatles at Shea Stadium,” bragged Bernstein. “We took $304,000, the greatest gross ever [at that time] in the history of show business.” According to
Variety,
the sum “shattered all existing . . . box office records.” And, as promised, Bernstein handed over $160,000 to the Beatles, but not before he made Epstein another offer: He would guarantee the Beatles $250,000 if the band returned to Shea Stadium the following summer, this time for two shows.

The Beatles' Shea Stadium concert had shown—for anyone who still needed proof—that the Fab Four were no passing fad; the sight of 55,600 frenzied teenagers proved the Beatles were a commercial entity unlike anything the entertainment industry had ever seen. A year after resurrecting the rock 'n' roll industry, the Beatles' Shea Stadium concert redefined the economic reality of touring; by the end of the 1960s, such concerts would become a huge windfall for record companies and a massive source of revenue for rock bands.

Earlier that summer, in June, while the Beatles were maturing, thanks to his influence, Dylan entered Columbia Records' recording studio on Seventh Avenue in Manhattan to begin the sessions that became his next album,
Highway 61 Revisited
. On June 16, backed by an ad-hoc rock band that included guitarist Michael Bloomfield of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band and an improvised organ riff by Al Kooper, who was now working as a session musician, he recorded “Like a Rolling Stone.” This incendiary electric vamp was a musical revolution in six minutes and thirteen seconds. Before recording the song, Dylan had been pursuing literary ambitions, working on a novel and a number of plays. But after culling the lyrics from an angry letter he wrote—which he described as “a long piece of vomit”—while flying back from the UK,
he had found his true voice. “I'd never written anything like that before and it suddenly came to me that was what I should do,” he told a journalist. “After writing that, I wasn't interested in writing a novel or a play . . . I want to write songs.”

Although a number of tracks on Dylan's previous album,
Bringing It All Back Home,
had featured a rollicking backup band, he had never recorded anything like this. Dylan took an acetate recording of the finished track to the Woodstock, New York, home of his manager, Albert Grossman, who invited friends to an impromptu listening party. For Paul Rothschild, who would later gain fame as the producer of the Doors, the song was a revelation. “I had them play the fucking thing five times straight before I could say anything,” he said. “What I realized while I was sitting there was that one of US—one of the so-called Village hipsters—was making music that could compete with THEM—the Beatles and the Stones and the Dave Clark Five—without sacrificing any of the integrity of folk music or the power of rock 'n' roll. . . . I knew the song was a smash, and yet I was consumed with envy because it was the best thing I'd heard any of our crowd do and I knew it was going to turn the tables on our nice, comfortable lives.”

Four days after the song was released as a single, Dylan played the Newport Folk Festival. His first appearance that July 1965 weekend was at an afternoon songwriting workshop, where he played acoustic versions of “All I Really Want to Do” and “Mr. Tambourine Man.” He was set to play the following night, as the weekend's headliner. On Sunday, July 24, while the crowd applauded his arrival, Dylan, in a black leather jacket and with a Fender Stratocaster strapped around his shoulder, took to a darkened stage with a rock band that including Bloomfield and Kooper. When the lights went on, there was Dylan with an electric blues band ripping through a roaring version of “Maggie's Farm.”

When the song was over, there was confusion. Mixed in with the tepid applause was what sounded like boos and catcalls. Someone shouted “Bring back Cousin Emmy!” referring to the old-time Appalachian country singer who had performed earlier in the day. Undaunted, the band forged ahead, playing a limp version of “Like a Rolling Stone,”
then currently climbing up the charts. There were more angry shouts: “Play folk music! . . . Sellout! . . . Put away that electric guitar!” The band struggled through “It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry” before cutting the song short amid an unruly chorus of boos. Kooper, however, later said that's not what happened at all: “Those weren't boos, they were cries of ‘More! More!' ” Whatever the crowd was yelling, Dylan apparently had had enough. “That's it!” he shouted and walked off. As Kooper noted, that really wasn't strange either: The band, which had only begun rehearsals the day before, only knew three songs.

Ultimately, Dylan was coaxed back onstage to pacify the crowd. Whatever they thought of his music, they had reasonably expected a longer set. He ran through “Mr. Tambourine Man” and “It's All Over Now, Baby Blue,” a fitting end to his career as the spokesman of his generation. In film footage of the performance, what looks like a single tear can be seen streaking down Dylan's left cheek.

While others debated the meaning of Dylan's appearance at Newport, the man himself laid low. “Like a Rolling Stone” was moving up the charts; by late August it would land at the No. 2 spot on
Billboard
's Hot 100 (kept out of the top spot by the Beatles' “Help!”). Dylan was now a pop star with a Top 10 single.

When he reemerged, it was to play the first show of his upcoming American tour at Forest Hills Tennis Stadium on August 28. Just two weeks after the Beatles had proven their staying power at Shea Stadium in nearby Flushing, Dylan would defiantly confront his angry audience at Forest Hills, a fifteen-thousand-seat, open-air stadium where the US Open was traditionally held. It was the second history-making rock concert in Queens in as many weeks, while within the confines of the World's Fair, Guy Lombardo and his Royal Canadians were holding court six nights a week—just as Robert Moses insisted they should.

Unlike Newport, the sold-out crowd at Forest Hills knew exactly what to expect. Dylan gave them fair warning in the
New York Times
. “It's all music: no more, no less,” he said a few days before the concert. “I know in my own mind what I'm doing. If anyone has imagination he'll know what I'm doing. If they can't understand my songs they're missing
something.” He went on to distance himself from his early albums. “I get very bored with my old songs,” he complained. “I can't sing ‘With God on My Side' for fifteen years.” Dylan admitted he didn't have all the details worked out yet, but there was one thing fans should expect: The concert would be loud. “I'll have some electricity,” he warned.

To many of Dylan's fans, the sight of electric guitars and amplifiers was a sign that their hero had betrayed them and their cause. So was the black leather jacket (one journalist even referred to it as a “sell-out jacket”), the Cuban heels and black shades that he began to wear, were just more proof. But the final insult was the presence of New York's cheesy Top 40 deejay, Murray the K—aka “the Fifth Beatle”—who walked onto the Forest Hills stage and introduced Dylan in his patented, faux-hipster lingo. “It's something new,” he told the crowd. “It's not rock. It's not folk. It's this new thing called Dylan.”

The crowd unleashed a howl of boos. Dylan, who had once stood on the same stage as Martin Luther King Jr. is now cavorting with Murray the K? That was more than his New Left–leaning college fans could take. Soon Dylan appeared onstage armed with an acoustic guitar and harmonica. If the crowd was angry, they didn't show it. As he played recent material like “She Belongs to Me,” “Gates of Eden,” and “Love Minus Zero/No Limit,” they listened intently and applauded in all the right spots. It seemed like the battle was over.

But after intermission Dylan returned with his Fender Stratocaster and a band that included guitarist Robbie Robertson and drummer Levon Helm (both of whom would later form The Band), and once again Kooper on organ, and the latter's childhood friend from Queens and musical partner, Harvey Brooks, on bass. Dylan issued a warning to the band before taking the stage. “I don't know what it will be like out there,” he told them. “It's going to be some kind of a carnival, and I want you all to know that up front. So just go out there and keep playing no matter how weird it gets.”

Once onstage they kicked off with “Tombstone Blues” from
Highway 61 Revisited,
which would be released the following week. If the Beatles' Shea Stadium concert was an example of hysterical idol worship, then
Dylan's Forest Hills concert was a revolt against their hero. The Queens crowd began to boo violently. At the end of each song, they shouted catcalls that made Newport seem like an old-time religious revival. “Traitor!” someone shouted. “Where's Ringo?” mocked another. Undeterred, the band kept playing, including a totally revamped “I Don't Believe You” from the acoustic
Another Side
LP and newer songs like “From a Buick 6” and “Maggie's Farm.” Dylan was confronting his unruly audience head-on, offering no quarter.

The atmosphere was violent, chaotic. Fruit flew through the air, pelting the musicians. Shouts of “We want the old Dylan!” ceded to organized chants of “SCUMBAG!” More than a dozen kids blew past police, rushed onto the stage, and ran around between the baffled musicians. One fan knocked Kooper off his seat. “I think the audience at Forest Hills reacted like they did because they read about Newport,” Kooper recalled, “and in their minds, they thought booing was the right thing to do.” Dylan instructed his band to draw out the haunting intro to “Ballad of a Thin Man” for five minutes to cool the crowd down. The ploy worked. As Dylan sang the song's soon-to-be famous line—“Something's going on here, but you don't know what it is, do ya, Mr. Jones?”—he had come face-to-face with fifteen thousand angry Mr. Joneses.

Then, during the finale, the tide changed again. As the band roared their way through Dylan's hit single “Like a Rolling Stone,” the audience shifted gears. Now they were singing along—they even knew the words!—and their chorus filled the breezy, late summer air. This was only the second time Dylan had played it live, but the fans were ecstatic throughout the six-minute-plus song.

Dylan had won, and on his terms.
Dylan Conquers Unruly Crowd
reported the
New York
Times
. Later at the after-party, the musicians were still spooked, but Dylan was ecstatic. He went around hugging his band. “That was fabulous! It was great!” he exclaimed. “It was like a carnival.” Several days later, while flying to Los Angeles to play the Hollywood Bowl, Dylan was asked for his reaction to the Queens crowd. “I thought it was great,” he said. “I really did. If I said anything else I'd be a liar.”

After the respective concerts at Shea Stadium and the Forest Hills Tennis Stadium—neither rock 'n' roll nor the Beatles or Dylan would ever be the same. For the Beatles, the powerful screams of their fans threatened to drown out everything the band had achieved: their innovative music, their joy of live performance, and nearly their sanity. “They gave their screams and their money,” Harrison said in the mid-1990s of the band's Beatlemania years, “but the Beatles gave their nervous systems.” The band, disillusioned with being worshipped, ended their touring career a year later. On August 29, 1966, just one year after their triumph in Flushing, they played their last official concert at San Francisco's Candlestick Park. Although they would reinvent themselves again and again over the next three years, each time expanding the scope of pop music, by the end of 1969 the band would exist in name only.