Sixty years ago today, The Beatles played their final official concert together at Candlestick Park in San Francisco on August 29, 1966. The gig, far from a fitting farewell, was marked by chaos that pushed an already disillusioned band to abandon touring for good.
Late rock photographer Jim Marshall had exclusive backstage access to the concert. His images have been compiled by his former assistant, Amelia Davis, into the book The Beatles by Jim Marshall: Live at Candlestick Park 1966, released earlier this year.
Behind the scenes with The Beatles
Amelia Davis spoke to the ECHO from her home in San Francisco, saying she wanted to show the reality of the Fab Four's last concert. "When Jim was alive, they showed about five or six photos in the early 90s and that was it. Going through them there were so many images from the locker room that had never been seen," she said.
"I think the locker room photos really showed The Beatles as human beings. Everyone thought of them as these rock Gods, but you don't realise that they're just human beings like you and I. They get bored, they get tired. Especially waiting to go on to perform."
A tour plagued by difficulties
The 1966 tour was troubled, stoked by John Lennon's comments that the band were more popular than Jesus, which caused massive public outcry. The backlash was such that The Beatles were adamant they would not perform the planned show in San Francisco.
Davis revealed that promoters Tom and Raechel Donahue had to sue The Beatles to come and play. "They were in LA and they were so burnt out. They were like, 'we're done, we're not going to San Francisco' but the production company had already moved the concert to a bigger venue," she said.
"Raechel said when it came time to serve The Beatles, she got so starstruck that she forgot to serve them the paper so she ran after them. They did and they came up to San Francisco."
An unsuitable venue and a stubborn groundsman
The baseball stadium was unsuited to host a summer concert. "It is always foggy in San Francisco. It is always cold. Nobody could hear anything because they just used the stadium sound system. It was not a success at all," Davis said.
The band was driven to the stage in an armoured car, but on this occasion, a groundsman refused to let it cross the grass. "The groundsman of the field said you can not drive that armoured car across my grass because that's my grass and it's perfect. So they had to park it and had to walk the equipment on," Davis said.
The Beatles played an 11-song set ending with "Long Tall Sally." Nobody knew it at the time, but it wouldn't be until the impromptu rooftop gig in 1969 that the band would reunite in front of a live crowd.
A unique moment in music history
Davis said the mayhem surrounding the live gig could never happen again in the sanitised music environment of the modern day. "I think it's fun to reintroduce people to this event that happened. It will never happen again," she said.
"The reason Jim stopped photographing music was because it changed. Because you had these handlers and managers that wanted to control what you saw and what you could photograph. For Jim, he wanted all access or he wasn't going to do it as he couldn't give the authentic feeling that he was so known for doing. Unless you were there experiencing it, you could never really see it, but now you can see it."
The Beatles by Jim Marshall: Live at Candlestick Park 1966 by Amelia Davis, published by Chronicle Books 2026, is available now.
