Portland • Sunday, August 22, 1965 • 3.30pm show

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From OregonLive, August 17, 2015:

The Beatles weren’t even in Portland for 24 hours on that summer day in 1965, but the band’s trip to the city left memories that have lasted for 50 years.

At 1:22 p.m. on Aug. 22, the Fab Four landed in Portland. The group smiled for the small entourage that awaited them, possibly in relief: an engine had blown out on the flight, causing a panic aboard the plane. […]

The band had three opening acts in Portland: Brenda Holloway and the King Curtis Band, Cannibal and the Headhunters, and Sounds Incorporated, an instrumental act also managed by Brian Epstein. All played two concerts on Aug. 22, an afternoon gig and an evening show. The Beatles — facing their usual audience of teen screamers — played songs including “Ticket to Ride,” “Can’t Buy Me Love,” “A Hard Day’s Night” and “I Feel Fine,” according to Smith’s notes. By 5:24 p.m., after less than two hours, the first show was over. […]

It was a momentous tour for the Beatles. A week earlier, they’d broken music attendance records at New York’s Shea Stadium with a crowd of 55,000-plus, widely considered the show that made stadium rock possible. They were about to head to Los Angeles to meet Elvis. Backstage in Portland, they were introduced for the first time to the Beach Boys — all but Dennis Wilson, according to author Chuck Gunderson’s “Some Fun Tonight,” a history of the Beatles’ tours. Eyewitnesses definitely spotted Carl Wilson and Mike Love. And the writer Allen Ginsberg was in the audience, amidst the throaty hoards: he wrote about a poem about the performance called “Portland Coliseum”. “Bliss the moment arrived,” one line went.

[…] Thousands of screams later, the Beatles and their openers did their second set, held a press conference and headed off to their next flight, this time in a plane with functioning engines. At 11:51 p.m., the Oregonian reported, the Beatles left Portland. […]

A brown piano in diamond
white spotlight
Leviathan auditorium
iron run wired
hanging organs, vox
black battery
A single whistling sound of ten thousand children’s
larynxes asinging
pierce the ears
and following up the belly
bliss the moment arrived

Apparition, four brown English
jacket christhair boys
Goofed Ringo battling bright
white drums
Silent George hair patient
Soul horse
Short black-skulled Paul
with the guitar
Lennon the Captain, his mouth
a triangular smile,
all jump together to End
some tearful memory song
ancient-two years,
The million children
the thousand words
bounce in their seats, bash
each other’s sides, press
legs together nervous
Scream again & claphand
become one Animal
in the New World Auditorium
—hands waving myriad
snakes of thought
screetch beyond hearing

while a line of police with
folded arms stands
Sentry to contain the red
sweatered ecstasy
that rises upward to the
wired roof.

PORTLAND COLISEUM
by Allen Ginsberg

Last updated on April 17, 2019

Memorial Coliseum

This was the 1st concert played at Memorial Coliseum.

A total of 2 concerts have been played there • 1965 • Aug 22nd (3.30pm show) • Aug 22nd (8pm show)

Setlist for the concert