The Beatles: what was the last song they performed at a big concert?

If anything was clear the Beatles when they came on stage candlestick park from San Francisco, was it they would never step on a platform again. They had had enough. The Californian sun was warming what was to be its last night, that of August 29, 1966. It was the last days of the northern summer. The quartet formed by John Lennon , Paul McCartney , george harrison And Ringo Starr He was finishing his last tour, during which they could barely play a song from his latest album, Stirdue to the complexity of the arrangements available to him.

“We were tired of playing. I don’t see any reason why we should do any touring. We are really tired. We don’t get anything out of it, which is really unfair for the fans, we know that, but we have to think about ourselves.” John Lennon in the statements collected in the book The Beatles Anthology.

Candlestick Park was marked in red on the calendar as the final performance. “We were just saying it had to stop. The concert in San Francisco seemed to be my last, but I didn’t feel 100% safe until we got back to London. John wanted to stop more than the others. He said he had had enough,” he said. Ringo Starr in the same volume.

Aware that the moment had to be immortalized, the Fab Four took an unprecedented step. “When we got to Candlestick Park, we place our cameras above the amps and set the self-timer -remembered george harrison in the same volume. Then we would stop between song and song. Ringo would leave the drums and we would stand in front of the amplifiers with our backs to the audience and take pictures. We knew we wouldn’t see that again, that it was the last concert. It was a unanimous decision.”

That day, according to Setlist.fm, THE fabulous four they opened with rock and roll music the powerful and frenetic cover of Chuck Berry that they had recorded on their album beatles for sale (1964) and sung by John Lennon with his characteristic nasal timbre. I dragged something croon. Then come others from previous years: It’s a woman, if I needed someone, excursionist, I feel good, man nowhere.

Until it’s the turn of Paperback Writer, recorded that year in the middle of the sessions of Stir, had been released as a single shortly before in the United States, the May 30, 1966 and a few weeks later in the UK, June 10, 1966. It was the closest thing they could touch to their brand new job.

In fact, it was the last Lennon/McCartney song to be performed live. Specifically, it was composed by Paul, who used his classic Leitmotif fictional in which he composed songs from stories of characters: Michellefor example, but that’s something I would always do with Eleanor Rigby, She Leaves Home, Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, The Fool on the Hill, Mrs. Vandeblit, either Jenny Wren.

However, the Beatles’ last live song was a cover: Sally long and tall . Popularized by Little Richard, it was composed by Enotris Johnson, Richard Penniman (Little Richard’s real name) and Robert Blackwell, it dates from 1956 and was pure rock n’ roll fiber that the Fab Four enjoyed so much. From rock n’ roll to silence. No stories.

The Beatles version was recorded between March 1 and June 4, 1964, during the recording days. A hard day’s Night. Along with the song, they recorded three other tracks which were released as an EP titled Just Long and tall Sally, of four songs (with I’m calling your name, slow down And Matchbox).

It was Paul, perhaps the closest to black music in the group, who sang the song. In fact, they had been playing there since their days in Hamburg, when they were leather-clad rockers and struggled to play in front of drunken sailors, hookers, and the occasional rowdy. At that time, they were also polishing the richest American rock n’ roll repertoire that drove them crazy. In fact, as Bob Spitz’s biography says (The Beatles: the biography2005), the southpaw also performed a fiery version of what i would sayby Ray Charles. So it’s only natural that they also played songs by Little Richard.

“Paul not only imitated him (Little Richard), he surpassed him with the help of his peers who made this rock and roll, two minutes and three seconds of pure vertigo and intensity. Paul sings with a ferocity matched only by John in Squirm and shout”point out Sergio Marchi and Fernando Blanco in The Beatles: From the Beginning (Planet, 2017).

And that was the end. After Paul’s furious screams, the chords died down, the Beatles left the stage and would only “return” to play live at the memorable concert on the roof of the Apple building, in January 1969, which would be their last show in front of a public. . “Long like Sally in the hands of the Beatles, it’s a steamroller. This is why it was chosen to close most of the shows, as a signal for Mal Evans and Neil Aspinall to prepare for the group’s always tumultuous exit from the stage”, conclude Marchi and Blanco.