Speaker 1: Now Here's a Highlight from Coast to Coast AM on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Chuck Gunderson was raised in San Diego, the site of
Speaker 2: the Beatles' eighth stop on the nineteen sixty five North
Speaker 2: American Tour. He was too young to attend the show,
Speaker 2: but fondly recalls his older siblings spinning the records of
Speaker 2: the Fab Four as he grew up, which perked a
Speaker 2: lifelong love for the band. He's also worked in the
Speaker 2: outdoor advertising industry most of his life, although his true
Speaker 2: passion is history, and he obtained his BA at San
Speaker 2: Diego State University and a Masters of the University of
Speaker 2: San Diego, both in the field of history. Having published
Speaker 2: a few articles over the years, Chuck turned his sites
Speaker 2: to researching and writing the critically acclaimed Some Fun Tonight,
Speaker 2: The Backstage Story of How the Beatles Rocked America the
Speaker 2: historic Tours of nineteen sixty four through nineteen sixty six.
Speaker 2: He's consulted on a number of various Beatles related projects,
Speaker 2: such as director Ron Howard's recent documentary Eight Days a Week.
Speaker 2: Chuck and his wife Christina live in Carlsbat, Californi, parents
Speaker 2: of four children, each a self described Beatles fan Chuck Gunderson.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to Coast.
Speaker 3: How are you hey, Richard? How are you? Thanks so
Speaker 3: much for having me back on coast. It's always great
Speaker 3: to be here, and I really appreciate the little reminder
Speaker 3: of Greek history. Thank you so much.
Speaker 2: My pleasure, My pleasure speaking. Which did the Beatles ever
Speaker 2: play in Greece?
Speaker 3: No, they didn't. They never played in Greece, but they
Speaker 3: loved Greece. They visited a few times.
Speaker 2: That's right. There was a legendary story. There's a sandal
Speaker 2: maker in Athens whose name escapes me, but he was
Speaker 2: back in the sixties. Everyone came, all the celebrities came
Speaker 2: to his little sandal shop to have him make their sandals,
Speaker 2: and he made sandals for John Lennon. They still talk
Speaker 2: about it. They're very proud of that. So how did
Speaker 2: you track down all of these amazing photos, most of
Speaker 2: which I've never even seen before. Plus there's you know,
Speaker 2: all the images of the rare, the rare memorabilia. How
Speaker 2: did you track all this down? I mean this could
Speaker 2: not have been an easy task.
Speaker 3: Well, the whole book was such a difficult task to
Speaker 3: put together, because you know, I had the Beatles toured.
Speaker 3: In the social media age, we could have had everything,
Speaker 3: you know, photos and documents and all of that. The story,
Speaker 3: you know, the Beatles would come to town. There might
Speaker 3: be a you know, a headline, that type of thing
Speaker 3: in a column written, but very very short. The photos
Speaker 3: were perhaps the hardest. I really had to do a
Speaker 3: lot of digging into archives, newspaper archives and photo you know,
Speaker 3: research libraries and you know, people that had photos in
Speaker 3: their collection that were these shadowy figures I kind of
Speaker 3: had to track down. And what's interesting is I would
Speaker 3: find a photo in Denver and they'd say, oh, yes,
Speaker 3: we have photos of them in Denver, and I'd get
Speaker 3: the photos sent to me and they, oh, that's not
Speaker 3: them in Denver, that's them in New York. So one
Speaker 3: of the things I learned in researching the book is
Speaker 3: that during that first tour, well all the tours subsequently,
Speaker 3: is to follow the clothing from the minute they get
Speaker 3: off the plane in say San Francisco in nineteen sixty four,
Speaker 3: all the way until they get back on the plane
Speaker 3: in New York. You know, at the end of September.
Speaker 3: Is follow that clothing. You'll kind of figure out which
Speaker 3: city they're in But when I published the book, yeah,
Speaker 3: I mean I really wanted a lot of photos, and
Speaker 3: especially the ones that fans hadn't seen, really rare stuff
Speaker 3: that you know, would have laid in a dusty archived
Speaker 3: somewhere until I unearthed it.
Speaker 2: My understanding is that there was a pre order on this,
Speaker 2: on this two volume set, four of them, which led
Speaker 2: us to presume that the pre orders were from either
Speaker 2: the surviving Beatles or the families of this the families
Speaker 2: of the two deceased Beadles. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Was actually after the book was published, I got a
Speaker 3: very friendly note from the secretary at Apple, which is
Speaker 3: the Beatles company, and it was before Apple Computer obviously,
Speaker 3: and the email said, hey, you know, thanks for the
Speaker 3: book that you've written about the tours, and the four
Speaker 3: shareholders would like to have a copy. So obviously the
Speaker 3: four shareholders at the time were Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr,
Speaker 3: the wife of George Harrison, which was Olivia Harrison, and
Speaker 3: the late wife or the wife of John Lennon, the
Speaker 3: late John Lennon, Yoko Ono. So it was my pleasure
Speaker 3: to send those quote shareholders book books and I was
Speaker 3: able to include a note in each one. I don't
Speaker 3: know if they ever read it or not, but at
Speaker 3: least I included it in there, and it was a
Speaker 3: real great honor for me to know that they have
Speaker 3: those books.
Speaker 2: So let's start with a sixty four tour or the
Speaker 2: as hard as it may be to believe now looking
Speaker 2: at backwards at the monumental success at the time, were
Speaker 2: the Beatles at all reticent about this tour? Did they
Speaker 2: have any I don't know, lingering doubts about how they'd
Speaker 2: be received by fans, whether they could pull this off.
Speaker 3: I think the Beatles were very familiar with the progression
Speaker 3: that they were making. They never one of the hallmarks
Speaker 3: of the Beatles that they never wanted to stay in
Speaker 3: one place. They always wanted to progress. And I think
Speaker 3: this was just this natural progression of playing you know,
Speaker 3: the cavern in Liverpool, which that you know, whatever one
Speaker 3: hundred people to, you know, moving out of the cavern
Speaker 3: and moving into dance falls in Liverpool, and you moved
Speaker 3: from dance falls to small theaters in and around the UK,
Speaker 3: and you know, Brian Epstein, their manager, just kind of
Speaker 3: nourished them and kept them going and it just kept
Speaker 3: getting bigger and bigger and bigger. But by the time
Speaker 3: they got to America in nineteen sixty four, especially during
Speaker 3: that tour in August, you know, when they faced that
Speaker 3: first crowd at San Francisco's cal Palace, that was the
Speaker 3: largest crowd they had ever played to. It was about
Speaker 3: eighteen thousand people, and the largest crowd they had played
Speaker 3: to in the UK was about eight thousand people. Then
Speaker 3: they had gone down to Australia in June and they
Speaker 3: played to a crowd of about ten thousand people. So
Speaker 3: they were just kind of going along and into getting
Speaker 3: bigger and bigger and bigger, and they're going along with
Speaker 3: it and just doing a great job, falling into place,
Speaker 3: doing what they needed to do. And the thing about
Speaker 3: the Beatles that I loved is they're just so they're
Speaker 3: just such consummate professionals. They were willing to take on
Speaker 3: the challenges. They were willing to just do these really
Speaker 3: hard things that I think a lot of people would
Speaker 3: think would be wow, I don't know if I can
Speaker 3: do this to We're just going to go out there
Speaker 3: and do it. And currently it went really well because
Speaker 3: the crowds responded well and the concerts were mostly sold out.
Speaker 3: On that first tour of nineteen sixty four.
Speaker 2: Thirty two shows, twenty six venues, twenty four cities in
Speaker 2: just thirty three days. And if you look at the itinerary,
Speaker 2: they're not sort of doing it by you know, by
Speaker 2: region by region. They're not, you know, going up and
Speaker 2: down the East coast and then traveling maybe across the
Speaker 2: South and then up central you know, the Midwest and
Speaker 2: so forth. They're crisscrossing. They're going from east to west.
Speaker 2: They're bouncing all over the place. Why was the tour
Speaker 2: put together this way?
Speaker 3: That's an interesting question. Richard Brian Epstein received about a
Speaker 3: six page document from a company in New York called
Speaker 3: General Artists Corporation and their vice president, Norman Wife he
Speaker 3: was kind of the American contact that knew all the venues,
Speaker 3: the hotels, you know, where they were going to play,
Speaker 3: put together the support that would tour with them, and
Speaker 3: he presented the sheet to Brian, and actually I have
Speaker 3: the original copy of that, and it has Brian's checkbarks
Speaker 3: is writing on it, his tea stains from his cup
Speaker 3: of tea as he was pondering over these different cities
Speaker 3: and venues that they would play at. And I actually
Speaker 3: present that in the book, every all of it, you know,
Speaker 3: in a very large format, so you can see every
Speaker 3: jot and tittle of Brian's thinking. And it is interesting
Speaker 3: that it was. It was somewhat very hapazard. When the
Speaker 3: tour ended in the end of you know, September, Brian
Speaker 3: or John Lennon spoke to a journalist. He said, we
Speaker 3: will never do a tour like that again. And they
Speaker 3: never did do another tour like that again. But the
Speaker 3: planning of it was was somewhat strange because you know,
Speaker 3: they started out in San Francisco, then they flew down
Speaker 3: south to Las Vegas, then they flew all the way
Speaker 3: north to Vancouver, then flew a little Southattle and then
Speaker 3: flew all the way south again to the Hollywood Bowl
Speaker 3: in La then across over to Denver and then over
Speaker 3: into the to the eastern seaboard. I don't sometimes I
Speaker 3: begin to think that Brian Epstein, you know, it was
Speaker 3: a wonderful manager. He broke new ground. But sometimes I
Speaker 3: think he didn't realize how vast the United States, well
Speaker 3: North America is the United States and Canada, just how
Speaker 3: large it is, how much ground it covers. The Beatles
Speaker 3: could could play a gig in you know, south of
Speaker 3: Liverpool and go back there to the south of England
Speaker 3: and head back up to liver just driving around. And
Speaker 3: when they got to America, I mean, by the time
Speaker 3: they finished up the tour from London back to London,
Speaker 3: it was around twenty two thousand miles that they had traveled.
Speaker 3: So it was just this incredible journey. And sometimes they
Speaker 3: would do a concert, finish up a concert. Instead of
Speaker 3: staying the night in the whole hotel, they would get
Speaker 3: on the plane at two in the you know, one
Speaker 3: in the morning and fly for a couple hours to
Speaker 3: the next city, landing in a city at three or
Speaker 3: four in the morning, and then be driven to the
Speaker 3: hotel and sleeping for a few hours and then back
Speaker 3: to the venue. It was really quite a just just
Speaker 3: an amazing kind of thing that they had done.
Speaker 2: It paint us kind of a mental picture of the
Speaker 2: reception they received from fans either at the airport or
Speaker 2: outside their hotel, at the concert venue itself. I mean,
Speaker 2: we have this this image because these legends about you know,
Speaker 2: this is chaos and these the mob of fans that
Speaker 2: were out of control wasn't really like that.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, it was a complete besiegement everywhere they went. I
Speaker 3: think they might have had the mistaken idea they could
Speaker 3: have gotten out and explored a city, like a city
Speaker 3: like New Orleans. They picked a city like Las Vegas
Speaker 3: to go and perform in, which was quite an interesting
Speaker 3: selection to even go to Las Vegas in nineteen sixty four.
Speaker 3: It's not the Las Vegas we know of today, only
Speaker 3: a one hundred thousand people living there. But everywhere they went.
Speaker 3: When they first got to San Francisco, there were five
Speaker 3: thousand fans at the airport, and the promoters or the
Speaker 3: organizers of the concert had built a little kind of
Speaker 3: welcome stage at the airport out in the field. They're
Speaker 3: kind of off to the side of the runway. You know,
Speaker 3: it's like maybe like a ten by ten. They put
Speaker 3: some cyclone fencing around it, and they were going to
Speaker 3: have the Beatles disembarked from the airplane and come to
Speaker 3: this little podium and greet their fans. Well, they are
Speaker 3: only on there for about thirty seconds before they realized
Speaker 3: that we're going to have a real problem here and
Speaker 3: these you know, the Beatles could be crushed to death.
Speaker 3: But anywhere they went, they could not get out of
Speaker 3: their hotel room all they really saw of America was airports, hotels, venues.
Speaker 3: That was it. They just could not get around. There
Speaker 3: was a few places where they did get out, just
Speaker 3: for a little bit of time, but there just wasn't much.
Speaker 3: Fans were besieging the hotels. They were trying to figure
Speaker 3: out ways to get in. They were climbing up drain pipes,
Speaker 3: they were coming in dressed as hotel maids, were hidden
Speaker 3: in room service carts, just any way they could get
Speaker 3: in to try to to try to get a visit.
Speaker 1: With the Beetles.
Speaker 3: It was just crazy pandemonium. I had the opportunity to
Speaker 3: stay at the Brown Palace hotel in Denver about a
Speaker 3: month ago where the Beatles were at, and it was
Speaker 3: actually in their room sixty years to the day that
Speaker 3: they were there, and it was fun for me just
Speaker 3: to look out the window and kind of imagine the
Speaker 3: crowds that were down below on the street at the
Speaker 3: Brown Palace and how they just kind of surrounded the hotel.
Speaker 3: Actually had the hotel historian take me on the original
Speaker 3: route from when the Beatles got out of the limousine
Speaker 3: and went up the freight elevator to their rooms. It
Speaker 3: was just quite fascinating to kind of think that, but
Speaker 3: you're correct. It was absolutely everything that everyone would think
Speaker 3: about in terms of the fans and how much pandemonium
Speaker 3: and chaos there was.
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