Beatles 50th Sullivan Anniversary Count Down…7 Days

Beatles 50th Sullivan Anniversary Count Down…7 Days

The more I dig into the details, the more interesting this story becomes. Most of us never knew George Harrison was very sick with the flu and up till the last minute, it was 50/50 on whether he would be able to perform. As I had posted before, Beatles road manager Neil Aspinall (left photo) stood in for Harrison at the short Saturday camera rehearsal (Feb 8, 1:30) and again at the 9:30 AM rehearsal, BUT…there was a “stand in” for “the stand in”! During the Sunday morning rehearsal, manager Brian Epstein rushed Aspinall back to the hotel to deal with a crises. Harrison’s sister, Louise, who’d been taking care of him, couldn’t get past security back into the Plaza Hotel with medicine she had just picked up. It was a mob scene and, the band was in danger of being booted out of the Plaza due the arrival of thousands of teenagers outside. In the center and right photos, we see Sulliavn’s 29 year old Vince Calandra standing in for Aspinall and Harrison. Vince started in the mail room, moved to Q cards and at this point, was an associate producer. He later said in his 14 years with Sullivan, no one had ever asked to go into the control room to see a playback of their rehearsal, but The Beatles did. Years later, Ringo recalled how bad the sound was and how hard they had to work with the audio people to improve the sound they started with. That’s the reason the 2:30 dress rehearsal lasted almost 2 hours and nearly pushed back the 4:30 taping of the February 23 show.

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