SID SNUBBED! Last Shea gig spits on Fabs legend

[christine~]

Shea it ain't so! Promoter of Beatles concerts dissed
Tuesday, July 22nd 2008, 4:00 AM

The man who brought the Beatles to America for the first concert at Shea Stadium wasn't invited to Shea's last.



Sid Bernstein, who spawned the British Invasion when he brought over the Rolling Stones, the Kinks, the Moody Blues and Dave Clark Five, told us: "Can I tell you how upset I am that I wasn't invited? I couldn't afford a ticket. I'm not angry, but life is what it is. It is full of disappointments, but also joys."

Bernstein first brought the Fab Four to Carnegie Hall - the first pop concert there - before Ed Sullivan had ever heard of them. He'd learned about the group from British newspapers, which he had starting reading as a World War II soldier stationed in the U.K. before D-Day.
"The box office [supervisor at Carnegie Hall] told me we could have sold 50 days' worth of shows at two shows a day. He'd never seen anything like it. He told me, 'Kids were sleeping in the street last night in the wintertime! Their mothers were bringing them blankets!'"

Bernstein did the calculations, and realized Madison Square Garden would be too small. He thought of the baseball stadium, which had never been a concert venue before. But he had to talk the Beatles' manager into it first.

"Brian [Epstein] at first said no," Bernstein recalls. "He told me, 'I don't want my boys playing to empty seats.'"

Brian watching his boys at Shea
CLICK FOR LARGE IMAGES[/size]

Bernstein finally convinced him to take a chance, then talked the mayor into letting him hold the concert at the home of the Mets - with its 55,000 seats. The mayor made him pay for a host of extra cops, wouldn't let Beatlemaniacs sit on the field, and had his intern, a teenage Jeffrey Katzenberg - yes, that Jeffrey Katzenberg - trail him and make sure things went according to plan. As we all know, they did.




Years later, Bernstein says, it was John Lennon who couldn't get tickets to a concert - Jimmy Cliff's - so he called Bernstein, who brought him. "During intermission, John turned to me and said, 'Sid, at Shea Stadium, I saw the top of the mountain.' There was a mistiness in his eyes."



Paul McCartney called him just a few months ago, but didn't know he wasn't invited Friday, and Billy Joel asked only his fellow performers. A spokeswoman for Live Nation, which produced the show, didn't return calls.

Bernstein, 90 next month, was philosophical: "I don't want to make a fuss about it. I have six kids and two beautiful grandchildren. And I have future dreams."

The promoter hasn't stopped promoting. "I'm working with the group Rain, the Beatles tribute band, and I'm talking with the guys who brought the Pope to Yankee Stadium about a show. Maybe we'll have it at Shea."

Read the article at its original site ~
NY Daily News ~ "Shea it ain't so!"[/size]

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EPPYLOVER SAYS ~
What a frickin' OUTRAGE. I assumed that Sid would be the FIRST one called to participate fully, and not just to watch!

I mean, He's the one who THOUGHT of it in the first place, and finagled the whole project for Eppy and the boys! Brian may have been leery of "something much bigger than Madison Square Garden," but Sid talked him into it, and it was all SID BERNSTEIN's doing that changed the face of rock concerts forever!

Where the frick was Paul when this Billy Joel/last Shea concert project was all being planned? Damn!
Even though it's not the fault of the Twotles, and they may not have been aware of who was being invited, I hope Paul (& Ringo) find a way to make this all up to him. They should. It's so unfair.

Photolink: this is "the reunion letter" Sid sent to them on September 19, 1976.
(I'm sure he didn't realize he dated it on what would have been Brian's 42nd birthday.)

[yerblues1968]

Flying over the eventually-to-be-demolished Shea Stadium and the soon-to-be-completed
Citi Field. One is named after the man who brought National League baseball back to
New York, the other is named after a financial services corporation paying $20 million a year
for the naming rights. The National Tennis Center can be seen in the upper left corner as well.
Photo by Joe Roy.





SHEA STADIUM, FORMER HOME OF METS, MEETS ITS END



The Associated Press


2:48 p.m. February 18, 2009









Shea Stadium final Mets game on September 28, 2008.


NEW YORK — Shea Stadium, the circular modern stadium that hosted two World Series title winners but was criticized for its lack of charm and amenities, met its end Wednesday. It was 44. The last remaining part of the ballpark, the section 5 ramp, was knocked down at 11:25 a.m., New York Mets spokesman Ethan Wilson said.



Photo taken of Shea Stadium on February 7, 2009.


What is left of Shea Stadium on February 14, 2009.


Not much left of Shea Stadium. Should be all down tomorrow. Photo taken on
February 17, 2009 by TAPorto.


The Mets final game was held September 28, 2008. Rusty Staub, Edgardo Alfonzo,
Gary Carter, Yogi Berra, Bud Harrelson are pictured during the remembrance of
Shea Stadium.



The Beatles at Shea Stadium in August 1965.


A remembrance for the ballpark, where the Beatles played their first U.S. stadium concert in 1965, was held Sept. 28, following the Mets' final game there. Demolition began immediately after the Mets were eliminated from postseason contention on the final day of the regular season.







Memories of Shea Stadium.


After pilings that supported the stadium are removed, the area will be converted to parking for Citi Field, the $800 million ballpark that opens in April on what had been parking space for Shea.



This is the cover of the brochure printed for the dedication of Shea Stadium in April 1964.
Those blue and orange squares hadn't yet been placed all around the stadium (they were
later removed). Shea will come tumbling down after the Mets complete their 2008 season.
Look at those cars!


Shea Stadium on April 25, 2008.


Opened on April 17, 1964, with a 4-3 Mets loss to Pittsburgh, Shea Stadium was among the first of what became known as cookie-cutter ballparks that could be shared by teams from different sport.



To celebrate the 2008 Major League Baseball All Star Game, which took place in Yankee Stadium, in its final season, on July 15, 2008, Major League Baseball launched Statues on Parade. Forty-two replicas of the Statue of Liberty were stationed around the city leading up to the game--each uniquely designed with bold graphics and colors featuring each of the 30 Major League Baseball clubs, the Brooklyn Dodgers, the New York Giants, the American League, the National League, four All-Star statues and statues commemorating the final season of Yankee Stadium and Shea Stadium. The 8½ feet tall, 250-pound statues are made of resin and rest on a 530-pound cement base.


New York won the 1969 World Series there, beating Baltimore in Game 5 and setting off a wild scene. The Mets won their only other Series title there in 1986, when they rallied in the 10th inning to defeat Boston in Game 6, then bounced back from a 3-0 deficit to beat the Red Sox in Game 7.





The ballpark was named after William Shea, a lawyer who helped return National League baseball to New York after the Giants and Dodgers migrated to California for the 1958 season. It is survived by the Mets, who are moving to Citi Field, and the Jets, who moved to Giants Stadium after the 1983 NFL season.






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