Adelaide • Friday, June 12, 1964

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Picture the scene: It’s 11.57am on Friday 12th June 1964 in Adelaide, Australia, and a chartered Ansett ANA jet has just landed at Adelaide Airport a couple of hours after its departure from Sydney. The Beatles – well, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Jimmie Nicol, who was temporarily replacing a hospitalised Ringo Starr – disembark the plane, and climb into an open-top car that is waiting for them. They have a 10-mile journey to make from the airport to the city centre, and it proves anything but ordinary.

A reported 350,000 people – literally more than half the city’s population – line the streets for the entire length of their drive, greeting the most famous band in the world with waves and screams. “It was like a heroes’ welcome,” Paul would later say. As The Beatles reach their destination – the Town Hall, where they’re due to meet the mayor – 30,000 Adelaideans cram around to catch a glimpse of the visiting dignitaries.

The sheer scale of that frenzy made an impactful impression on The Beatles, who realised that the growing phenomenon that was Beatlemania was truly beginning to span the globe. “Wherever we go, anywhere in the world,” John Lennon said that day, “this reception which Adelaide has given us will stick in our memories.”

From Paul McCartney | News | For Whom The Bell Tells: ‘GOT BACK’ Australia Tour 2023, December 20, 2023

Last updated on December 21, 2023