Beatles in the EP 45 Years Ago Today

Echo Park and Silver Lake have been quick to scrap together last minute events in the wake of Sunset Junction Street fair's cancellation--with great success.

So it's timely to meditate on the months of planning that went into the very first concert ever at Dodger Stadium featuring the Beatles.

It went down on August 28, 1966.

Here's a great little bit from the site walteromalley.com:

Dodger President Walter O’Malley approved staging the first concert ever held at Dodger Stadium, which has since developed an impressive lineup of bands and musicians who have performed in the 56,000-seat ballpark — among them Elton John, The Rolling Stones, Simon and Garfunkel, KISS, Michael Jackson, The Bee Gees, David Bowie, Eric Clapton, Genesis, Bruce Springsteen, U2 and The Three Tenors in their “Encore — The Three Tenors” show with conductor Zubin Mehta.

With the unprecedented worldwide popularity of The Beatles, logistics became a nightmare to move them in and out of Dodger Stadium. On the Wednesday before the concert, they arrived in Los Angeles and loaded into a white armored truck before traveling to Hollywood to stage an evening press conference for 30 minutes at Capitol Records sound studio. There and wherever they traveled, The Beatles were inundated with the incessant sound of girls screaming. When asked at the press conference, “Would you rather play the Hollywood Bowl again than Dodger Stadium?” Harrison responded, “We don’t really mind.”

Read more here.

And check out the LA Times take on the story here.