Lot 474
The Beatles 1964 Australian Concert Poster
A unique opportunity is at hand as we offer this enormous, 52" x 61" hand-painted poster advertising The Beatles debut appearance in Australia on June 12, 1964. Thought to be the only known concert poster from any of the four cities in which The Beatles performed during their one and only visit to Australia, our own exhaustive research indicates no other posters, printed or hand-painted, were produced for the Australian concerts. Had it not been for the inclusion of Adelaide to the tour, many months after the original agreement between Melbourne promoter Kenn Brodziak and Beatles manager Brian Epstein was being negotiated to bring The Beatles to Australia, this lone surviving artifact would never have been produced.
It was Adelaide disc jockey Bob Francis who, in early 1964, sent a petition containing the names of eighty-thousand Beatle fans to Brodziak; an effort which finally secured the addition of Adelaide to the tour. We suspect this poster was most likely produced immediately afterwards for display at Adelaide's Centennial Hall after the initial concert date of June 12th was added to the Beatles itinerary.
While negotiations between Epstein and Brodziak initially took place in July 1963 when Brodziak was on a talent hunt in the U.K., it wasn't until December 2, 1963, that a formal contract was signed. Though The Beatles had scored their first #1 hit with "From Me to You" in July, by the time of the signing, the phenomenon known as "Beatlemania" had swept Great Britain as "She Loves You" and "I Want To Hold Your Hand" set radio play and sales records. Though worldwide fame for The Beatles was on the immediate horizon at the close of 1963, Brian Epstein honored the original agreed upon fee of 2500 pounds for the four-city tour in June 1964. It was George Harrison who asked Brodziak, upon arrival in Sydney, "You got us at the old price, didn't you?" When Brodziak replied "yes," he said George" didn't seem to mind."
Beatle fans turned out in masse upon the group's airport arrival from Hong Kong at noon on June 12, 1964, with a conservative estimate of 200,000 lining the route from Adelaide to a public reception at Town Hall nine miles away, in what would prove to be the biggest reception of The Beatles entire career. Newsreel and interview footage from that day confirms the fact that The Beatles were overwhelmed by the enormity of the reception. Fifty thousand ticket requests were received for the twelve thousand available seats for the four concerts on June 12th and 13th. The Adelaide dates marked substitute drummer Jimmy Nicol's final appearances as a Beatle before Ringo, who had been sidelined with tonsillitis, returned to the group on June 15th in Melbourne. The first concert on June 12th was recorded by Sydney radio station 2SM and initially broadcast on Adelaide's 5Dn the next evening, and syndicated nationally on June 15th. (A CD copy of the concert is included.) After several support acts including Sounds Incorporated, Johnny Chester, The Phantoms and Johnny Devlin, The Beatles were introduced by Bob Francis, the same disc jockey who was instrumental in securing the Adelaide concert dates, The Beatles took to the stage for their thirty-minute set which consisted of: I Saw Her Standing There, I Want To Hold Your Hand, All My Loving, She Loves You, Till There Was You, Roll Over Beethoven, Can't Buy Me Love, This Boy, Twist and Shout, and Long Tall Sally. The extraordinary Adelaide visit came to an end when the group and their entourage flew to Melbourne on the afternoon of June 14th. By the time of the tour's conclusion on June 30th, The Beatles had played twenty concerts in Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane, interspersed with a visit to New Zealand for twelve shows in four cities.
The unique, one-of-a-kind, poster is hand-painted on two expansive sheets of white paper to an overall size of 52" x 61". The unknown artist employed two faithful renderings of iconic Beatles images; the famous "dropped T" Beatles logo and equally famous summer 1963 portrait by Dezo Hoffman. It is mounted to heavy wood backing comprising a series of 1" x 4" slats with three cross braces. The overall weight is nearly fifty pounds. It may have been a portion of the original wall from which it hung in 1964. The poster does show considerable wear, with some brittle cracks in the paint, a few tears, a bit of discoloration to a few spots and chipping to the upper left portion.
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