“I’m Down” – The Beatles at Shea Stadium

August 15, 1965: It was the first ever pop concert in a sports stadium and it turned out to be a cultural explosion. And packed with 56,000 screaming kids, nobody could hear a note of it - especially John, Paul, George and Ringo. 

In the middle of the pitch on a dodgy stage, they played through the baseball announcers’ speakers, with no foldback, let alone synths, backing tapes, loops, or any of that – just bass, drums, guitar, and Lennon switching to playing an organ with his elbows for their final song – a throway B-side screamer “I’m Down”.

Said McCartney recently: “We couldn’t believe where we were and what was going on, we couldn’t hear a bloody thing and we thought ‘This isn’t very good, but it’s going down great’!”  

It was this concert that convinced “the money”, for good or ill, that maybe this rock ’n roll thing had legs.