Thursday, August 12th, marks the anniversary of several landmark events in Beatles history. . .
ON AUGUST 12th, 1966: It was 56 years ago tonight that the Beatles opened the first show of their final U.S. tour at the Chicago Amphitheatre. The group, who had previously performed dates in Germany, Japan and the Philippines, began the U.S. tour amid controversy. John Lennon was forced to apologize the day before (August 11th) for statements he had made earlier in the year about the state of Christianity. The quote, “The Beatles are more popular than Jesus,” was taken out of context and published in a teen magazine called Datebook, which lead to numerous “Beatle boycotts” and bonfires of the group's albums throughout many southern states.
Heart's Ann and Nancy Wilson caught the Beatles' third-to-last show on the tour on August 25th, 1966 at the Seattle Coliseum. Nancy Wilson set the scene for what went down at the concert: “Yeah, we got to (laughs) see them. We could actually hear them slightly above the screaming, and it was kinda cool — the parts we could hear. We were in a band at the time with uniforms that matched the Beatles' uniforms (laughs) that we wore to the Beatle show! We were slightly neurotic. And we weren't screaming; we were absorbing.”