Flashback: The Beatles rock Shea Stadium

It was 40 years ago today (August 15th, 1965) that the Beatles played their legendary concert at Shea Stadium in New York City. The show was the first on their 1965 summer tour, and it was also the first-ever stadium rock concert. The group flew into New York on August 13th and a day later taped a five-song performance for The Ed Sullivan Show to be broadcast the following month. Sullivan returned the favor by introducing the group the next night at Shea, in front of a sell-out crowd of 55,600 fans. The Beatles, who performed on a makeshift stage near where second base would be, earned a whopping $160,000 for their 30-minute set -- which was a record payout at that time.

The N.Y.P.D. was worried that fans attending the shows would jam the tunnels in and out of Manhattan, so the Beatles were escorted from the Warwick Hotel to the Manhattan East River Heliport and flown by helicopter to the roof of the World's Fair building in Flushing Meadows Park, not far from Shea Stadium. Next, the group jumped in a Wells Fargo armored van and were driven to the stadium. The van driver gave each of the Beatles a Wells Fargo "agent badge," which they all wore at the evening's concert.

Unlike today's stadium events, no seats were set up on the field for safety reasons. Throughout the concert -- which also featured legendary New York DJ Murray The K and opening acts the King Curtis Band, Cannibal & the Headhunters, Brenda Holloway, and Sounds Incorporated -- fans were constantly stopped from making mad dashes towards the stage. Ringo Starr recalled the concert in The Beatles Anthology, saying, "What I remember most about the concert was that we were so far away from the audience...And screaming had become the thing to do...Everybody screamed. If you look at the footage, you can see how we reacted to the place. It was very big and very strange." As John Lennon recalled in 1970: "At Shea Stadium, I saw the top of the mountain."

The Beatles' setlist for their Shea Stadium concert was: "Twist And Shout," "She's A Woman," "I Feel Fine," "Dizzy Miss Lizzy," "Ticket To Ride," "Everybody's Trying To Be My Baby," "Can't Buy Me Love," "Baby's In Black," "Act Naturally," "A Hard Day's Night," "Help!" and "I'm Down."

The show was filmed and eventually aired on U.S. TV in December 1966 as The Beatles At Shea Stadium. Although most of the footage from the show is featured in the group's Anthology series, most of the behind-the-scenes footage from that day remains unreleased. The Beatles returned to Shea the next year, on August 23rd, 1966, to a less-than-capacity crowd, with as many as 15,000 unsold seats.

The Beatles were the first band to perform at Shea Stadium, but they didn't sell the place out as fast as Grand Funk Railroad, who played there in 1971.