On August 23, 1964, The Beatles performed for the first time at the Hollywood Bowl. With that legendary performance, they unwittingly advanced the now-familiar outdoor concert. A gig John Lennon called “marvelous.”
Martin Lewis, a renowned Beatles historian, told Variety the 1964 Hollywood Bowl show was the first of three concerts The Beatles performed at the venue. The following year, they played two more. “Obviously it not only was a big deal for The Beatles, but I think it really kicked off the outdoor rock concert. By the next year, it was stadiums and beyond,” he said.
Going Viral in 1964
Meanwhile, Lewis examined the period leading up to their debut at the Hollywood Bowl. He views The Beatles’ rising popularity in the United States as a pre-internet version of going viral. Said Lewis, “On Christmas Day ’63, no one had heard of them. But from then till February 9th (of 1964), in those 45 days, they’d become the biggest thing ever.” A reported 73 million people watched The Beatles perform on The Ed Sullivan Show.
Tickets for the first show went on sale in April 1964 and sold out in less than four hours. Because fans had to purchase tickets in person, hundreds camped on Highland Avenue in Los Angeles. The line of fans stretched nearly a mile, close to Hollywood Boulevard.
Like most concerts during Beatlemania, chaos ensued during the gig. The frenzied crowd of 18,700 screamed louder than the band’s amplifiers, making it hard to hear John, Paul, George, and Ringo perform.
The Beatles’ opening acts at the first show were The Righteous Brothers and Jackie DeShannon. But American fans wanted The Beatles.
Live Album
The Beatles recorded all three Hollywood Bowl concerts. Capitol Records had planned an earlier live album, recorded at Carnegie Hall in New York, but the project was scrapped after failing to secure permission from the American Federation of Musicians.
So the Hollywood Bowl performances would result in The Beatles’ first concert album. George Martin mixed and prepared the Hollywood Bowl recordings for release. But the live album, The Beatles at the Hollywood Bowl, wouldn’t see a release until 1977 due to poor sound quality.
In Mark Lewisohn’s The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions, Martin explained the complexities of recording the band live at the amphitheater: “We recorded it on three-track tape, which was standard U.S. format then. You would record the band in stereo on two tracks and keep the voice separated on the third so that you could bring it up or down in the mix. But at the Hollywood Bowl, they didn’t use three-track in quite the right way.”
Finally, Martin and engineer Geoff Emerick salvaged the tapes and created something Capitol Records could release. The record-buying public wasn’t bothered by the audio. The Beatles at the Hollywood Bowl topped the UK charts and reached No. 2 on the U.S. Billboard 200.
In 2016, a remixed and expanded version called Live at the Hollywood Bowl arrived alongside the Ron Howard-directed documentary The Beatles: Eight Days a Week.
There’s a moment following “Dizzy, Miss Lizzy” where Paul McCartney shouts, “Can you hear me?” The crowd response is deafening. When George Harrison begins playing “Ticket to Ride,” the audience nearly drowns out the opening guitar chords. But the energy and rapture is tangible, and it’s obvious why throngs of crowds, generations later, still travel to live outdoor events. Anything to feel that feeling.
Ticket Masters
Despite the challenges of putting on shows of this scale, the future of the outdoor concert was established. And summer festivals from Lollapalooza, Coachella, and Glastonbury have transformed outdoor concerts into culture-shifting events—much like The Beatles did in 1964.
According to Billboard, Live Nation—the concert promoter and ticketing behemoth—had a revenue of $22.7 billion in 2023. Taylor Swift’s record-breaking Eras Tour became the largest-grossing tour in history. And speaking of British rock bands, with the recent announcement that Oasis has reformed, the Gallagher brothers continue to add stadium shows to their Oasis Live ’25 concert dates as millions of fans jam online queues trying to purchase tickets.
But the outdoor concert mania first went full throttle after The Beatles booked a gig inside a Hollywood shell.
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.
Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
Local News
