50 years ago this Monday—Aug. 29—The Beatles gave their final live performance, at San Francisco’s cold, windblown Candlestick Park, in a show presented by popular Top 40 radio station KYA-AM.
Candlestick Park is no more–it was demolished just last Feb.; the SF Giants left the stadium in 2000 for a new home at AT&T Park, and then last year the 49ers moved into their new stadium in Santa Clara. Only half the Beatles are still alive, and KYA has changed ownership several times and currently airs religious programming.
All is not lost. We can still listen to KYA’s weeks-long lead up to the big concert because if you, like most Boomers, listened to Top 40 radio, when you hear this mash-up you’ll get a goofy grin on your face as your youth passes by in a 3-minute clip.
* The top ticket price was $7, inclusive. Take that, Ticketmaster!
* There’s a beer ad! It’s been decades since alcohol was allowed to advertise on broadcast.
* The live, local and leisurely announcers were all white men.
Even if you didn’t live in San Francisco, wherever you did live and whatever act was coming to perform, it’s likely that your Top 40 radio station was promoting the concert and that their promotion sounded similar to KYA’s high-energy combo of patter, ticket sales and snippets of Beatles hits.
When you hear the KYA promo reel, you could think that 50 years ago is ancient, but the Beatles were contemporaries of the Rolling Stones, and they are are still performing, so it wasn’t THAT log ago.
It just sounds that way.