The Beatles spent the first week of their June 1964 Australasian tour a man short. Jimmy Nicol filled in admirably on drums while Ringo recuperated from inflamed tonsils back in London.
By the 13th, he was declared fit enough to travel and, accompanied by Brian Epstein, made the arse-numbing journey from London to Adelaide, via San Francisco and Honolulu. He chatted with an ITV reporter before setting off.
Other than a brief stopover in Los Angeles by John and George the previous month, this was the first Beatle visit to US soil since their history-changing February tour. Naturally, the San Francisco press descended upon Ringo, although this reporter seemed to bear a grudge for having to cover the event.
Meanwhile back in Adelaide that day, John, Paul and George killed time waiting for their bandmate by bantering with Bob Rogers and, uh... looking at kangaroo pelts.
I love the humourous titles & interviews, RAM ON!
ReplyDeleteWhat a lot of people don't realise about Adelaide is that it was (and still is) one of our smallest cities here in Australia - it had only about 900,000 people in 1964 and (as we all know) about 300,000 of them turned out to see the boys come into town. I doubt Justin Beiber could compete, even though he has the same haircut...
ReplyDeleteCheers
Justin (not Beiber!)