The Beatles: Eight Days a Week–The Touring Years, a documentary directed by Ron Howard, opened this past Friday. The film covers the years 1962-1966 as the Beatles performed more than 800 live concerts around the world. What Jewish-related event took place during the Beatles 1964 tour of America?
beatles 4 by roger is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
A. The Beatles performed a concert at the Milwaukee Arena on September 17, 1964. The band had arrived only hours before the concert as an early season snow storm had closed the highway from Indianapolis, where they had performed the night before. During the storm, one of their equipment trucks had slid off the road and overturned. While no one was hurt, a Hammond organ was destroyed. On short notice, calls went out to locate a replacement organ, and one was procured from Temple Menorah, a reform synagogue located only a mile from the Milwaukee Arena. The Beatles all autographed the organ, which is still in use at the temple to this day.
B. Linda Eastman was majoring in Fine Arts at the University of Arizona, where she studied photography. On September 5, 1964, she received a phone call from one of her professors, telling her that a colleague who was a professional photographer needed a student who could assist with a bar mitzvah party shoot that night, as his assistant had taken ill. Eastman took the job and worked the bar mitzvah party. After the party, the photographer told Eastman that he had press access to the after-party following the Beatles concert that had taken place that night at the Rialto Theatre in Tucson. They attended the bash and Linda had the opportunity to meet and photograph Paul McCartney for the first time. This was the start of an on-going relationship between McCartney and Eastman, at first professional as her phototgraphy career grew, and eventually as a romantic relationship and marriage.
C. Brian Epstein, the Beatles manager, was with the band during their 1964 American tour. When the band performed in New Orleans on September 16, Epstein reached out to Ivor Davis, a Jewish reporter who was covering the tour for London’s Daily Express and asked if he could arrange for tickets to Yom Kippur services, which were to be held the next day. Davis called the local Conservative Synagogue and secured the tickets, but Epstein ended up leaving New Orleans early the next morning and did not show up at services.
D. The Beatles were scheduled to perform in New York City on September 8 at Forest Hills Stadium. That night was in fact the first night of Rosh Hashanah, and as the concert approached, city officials became concerned that there would be an insufficient number of police, transit, and other critical workers available to ensure safety at the concert. Mayor Robert Wagner called a meeting of the city council, who approved overtime funds to enable non-Jewish city workers to put in the extra hours necessary to cover for Jewish employees who would be taking off for the holiday, thus preventing the cancellation of the concert.
E. The Beatles’ final concert on their 1964 American tour took place at the Paramount Theater in New York City on September 20. When the Beatles arrived in New York on the day before the concert, John Lennon gave an interview to the Jewish Week newspaper, where he said, “Judaism will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn’t argue about that. I’m right and I’ll be proved right. We’re more popular than Moses now. I don’t know which will go first, rock ‘n’ roll or Judaism. Moses was all right but the prophets were thick and ordinary. It’s them twisting it that ruins it for me.” The remarks led to threats and protests outside the theater by Jewish groups, a major reason why the Beatles decided not to tour in America again (or ever in Israel).