MANILA, Philippines — The Beatles’ experience in Manila in July 1966 was nightmarish so that it’s unlikely the Fab Four survivors Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr would ever consider coming back to perform here again. If The Beatles sang “Get back to where you once belonged,” there was surely no reference to Manila.
McCartney, 82, continues to tour and is booked to perform in Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Peru, Mexico, France, Spain and the UK from Oct. 1 to Dec. 19. Starr, 84, is also actively doing concerts with his All-Starr Band and starts a US tour on Sept. 12. While they remain in demand all over the world, McCartney and Starr are declining attempts to bring them back to Manila.
It was on July 3, 1966, when The Beatles left Haneda Airport to go to Manila via Hong Kong where they had a 70-minute layover. The Cathay Pacific flight was on a Convair 800 and passengers were given a souvenir folder with a four-by-five inch glossy black-and-white photo of The Beatles. The plane landed in Manila at 4:30 p.m. and The Beatles were driven to the Philippine Navy HQ on Roxas Boulevard for a press conference with about 40 journalists.
This portrait of The Beatles was made from over 15,000 jelly beans and is on display in a Liverpool walkway leading towards the Mersey River.
The questions were as inane as the answers, wrote Steve Hunter in the book “Beatles ’66: The Revolutionary Year.” Examples were “When did you last cut your hair?”(1933), “What is your favorite song?” (God Save The Queen), “What is your second favorite song?” (God Save The King), “What will you tell The Rolling Stones about the Philippines?” (“We’ll warn them”). The Stones were scheduled to perform in Manila that year but never came.
Cover of the souvenir program of The Beatles’ two shows in Manila on July 4, 1966.
From the Navy HQ, The Beatles were brought to a yacht, the Marima, which was owned by Don Manolo Elizalde. For dinner that night, they were served consommé, fried chicken, filet mignon, mashed potatoes, carrots and sweet peas. When a group of 18 arrived to join the party, The Beatles’ manager Brian Epstein decided to bring the band to the Manila Hotel for privacy. They checked in at four in the morning as the hotel was fully booked and rooms were swapped to create space for The Beatles.
Ticket to The Beatles’ 4 p.m. matinee show at the Rizal Memorial Football Stadium.
The next day, July 4, The Beatles were invited to Malacañang at 11 a.m. but the invitation never got to them. Unaware of the invitation, McCartney went to Makati then to “an adjacent shanty town settled by squatters where he bought a couple of paintings as souvenirs,” wrote Hunter.
In the afternoon at 4 p.m., The Beatles came on stage before 30,000 fans to do a half-hour show at the Rizal Memorial Football Stadium. Then at 8:30 p.m., they did another show, this time before 50,000 fans in the same venue. The front acts were the Reycard Duet, Wing Duo, Lemons Three, Eddie Reyes and the Downbeats, Dale Adriatico and Pilita Corrales with music by Carding Cruz and his orchestra.
The Beatles’ set list had 11 songs for the night show: Rock and Roll Music, She’s A Woman, If I Needed Someone, Baby’s In Black, Day Tripper, I Feel Fine, Yesterday, I Wanna Be Your Man, Nowhere Man, Paperback Writer and I’m Down. The matinee excluded Nowhere Man.
On July 5, The Beatles were ready to leave for Delhi, India on the KLM flight 862 for an overnight stay before proceeding to London. Then, the roof caved in. Epstein was ordered to pay a tax bill of $17,000 and immigration authorities questioned the travel documents of Mal Evans and Tony Barrow who were part of The Beatles’ traveling entourage. The band and their companions were “roughed up” at the airport where porters refused to carry their luggage and escalators were shut down. The furor was caused by The Beatles’ apparent snub on Malacañang’s invitation.
Then-President Marcos issued a press statement referring to the case as a misunderstanding. “The incidents at the airport shouldn’t have happened since they were a breach of Filipino hospitality and totally disproportionate to the triviality of the whole matter,” the statement said.
In 2003 or 37 years after The Beatles’ visit, the man who organized the event spoke about it. Ramon Ramos of Cavalcade International Productions said he paid $50,000 for The Beatles to perform in Manila and took the financial brunt of the backlash. Police withdrew from securing the turnstiles of the two Beatles shows and the fan overflow was uncontrollable. With the gates unmanned, Ramos lost his shirt and pants.
“The Beatles were supposed to stay in a yacht but had to leave because the yacht got crowded with fans,” said Ramos. “We asked if Manila Hotel could take them in. At first, management refused but after we assured The Beatles would quietly come in from the back of the hotel by boat, we booked them for a night.”
The combined audience of 80,000 in two Manila shows set a Beatles record for highest attendance in a day, eclipsing the 55,000 set in a concert at Shea Stadium, New York, on Aug. 15, 1965. The band was credited for over 1,400 shows in 16 countries over 10 years.
After Manila, The Beatles embarked on their fourth and last US tour, winding up at Candlestick Park in San Francisco where tickets weren’t sold out and protesters picketed denouncing John Lennon for his remarks about being more popular than Jesus Christ. It marked the end of The Beatles’ performing on stage and the opening of a new chapter where John, Paul, George Harrison and Ringo began their solo careers. Now, nearly 60 years after the Manila disaster, will McCartney and Starr forgive and forget to “get back to where they once belonged?”
McCartney, 82, continues to tour and is booked to perform in Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Peru, Mexico, France, Spain and the UK from Oct. 1 to Dec. 19. Starr, 84, is also actively doing concerts with his All-Starr Band and starts a US tour on Sept. 12. While they remain in demand all over the world, McCartney and Starr are declining attempts to bring them back to Manila.
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