Adelaide Beatle-mania unlike anything veteran journo ever saw
A former Advertiser journalist says he’s never seen anything like the scenes the Adelaide-bound pop legend created on his first visit.
Entertainment
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He covered Royal tours and met US Presidents, but former Advertiser journalist Jonathon Stone says he never saw anything that compared to The Beatles’ only visit to Adelaide.
Mr Stone, now 96, was assigned to report on the Fab Four’s arrival here on July 12, 1964, and follow the band’s movements as it performed two shows at Centennial Hall that evening and again the next day.
“The Beatles’ arrival was absolute mayhem,” he recalled at his North Adelaide home, after former Beatles member Paul McCartney announced that he would perform his first Adelaide concert in 30 years in October.
Security at the airport kept reporters back from the Beatles as they disembarked the plane and crossed the tarmac at Adelaide Airport, although Mr Stone was photographed standing right next to guitarist George Harrison as they passed by.
“I said the usual thing, ‘Welcome to Adelaide,’ and they just walked past me, saying ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah’ – no conversation,” he recalled.
Mr Stone followed The Beatles from the airport to their appearance on the Adelaide Town Hall balcony, and on to their hotel.
“My memory of The Beatles is like one of those awful nightmares where you’re running on a treadmill, trying to reach someone, and I couldn’t get to them,” he said.
He had covered Queen Elizabeth II’s first visit to South Australia in 1954, and even recalled celebrations when World War II ended in 1945, but said nothing came close to the record 300,000 strong crowd which lined Anzac Highway and packed King William St to welcome the Beatles.
“I cannot remember seeing a density of crowd like that in front of the Town Hall, which I could see from The Advertiser stretched south to Victoria Square and north down King William St toward Government House, absolutely jam packed with people. It was unbelievable.”
Mr Stone said that former Adelaide department store John Martin’s, whose director Ian Hayward was also on the board of The Advertiser, was involved in bringing The Beatles to Adelaide.
“They gave the late (radio DJ) Bob Francis extraordinary rein to say all sorts of things on air – he pretty much gave the impression that he was bringing the Beatles here himself,” Mr Stone laughed.
“My job was reporting the whole exercise from start to finish, and well do I remember my level of angst with Ian Hayward standing at my elbow as I wrote what was subsequently referred to as ‘the big arrival and Town Hall balcony story’.”
Not every detail of The Beatles’ visit made it into the papers.
“It was reported to me that women were climbing the balcony of the South Australian Hotel … getting somehow into their rooms, running along the corridors,” Mr Stone said.
After joining The Advertiser as a copy boy in the mid-1950s, Mr Stone was given a journalism cadetship, then in 1961 was awarded a year-long Commonwealth Press Union Fellowship in the UK, which included a stint working as acting news editor at the Liverpool Post and Echo.
He recalls The Beatles playing at the Cavern Club during that time, and says that may have been why The Advertiser assigned him to cover their visit here.
After 20 years at the Advertiser, Mr Stone left in 1966 to become the first press secretary for a South Australian federal Cabinet minister, Dr Jim Forbes, and later went on to work for the Department of Foreign Affairs.
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