Beatles Fiendish Thingy's and Other Great Stuff!

All You Need Is Beatles

All this with electric spotlights to accentuate the current song -- providing evidence aplenty for those Beatle-colour-conspiracy theorists -- with red, aptly enough, for "Strawberry Fields Forever," followed by a pink and violet "Penny Lane," a yellow song about a submarine in Pepperland, and a magnificent "A Day In The Life" with mind-bending psychedelic rainbow lightning, as the perfect accompaniment to Sir George's classic crescendo, after which one member of the audience suggested as our George left the stage for the intermission, "Do it again."

By the time the concert reached the "Abbey Road Medley," followed by "The End," both musically and literally, the audience was worked into such a frenzy! After Ringo's drum solo, we were all clapping in time to the music so eagerly that Paul, George and John's parts could not be heard above us -- but we could see the three substitutes performing very admirably indeed, and playing off each other in the highest spirits...we all knew how it would sound, anyway. And as Ringo astutely observed in Anthology, "I never felt the audience came to hear our shows. I felt they came to see us."

Then George announced "All You Need Is Love" as the closing number, my sister and I sang along with the band, and the banner appeared. Being one who does not often go in for voluntary public humiliation, I must confess, I knew no fear -- what I knew was that these hundreds of fans agreed with us wholeheartedly -- but standing at the back of the stalls, swaying in time to the music, I was the just about the happiest I had ever been, and I could tell that humiliation would come only if we missed the opportunity to sing along to the music of the greatest band in all history, and missed the chance to show Sir George Martin (without whom it would never have been possible) how much we appreciated and loved him.

Sir George then left the stage to a standing ovation, followed by a minute or two of rapturous applause, much stamping, whistling, and screaming -- in all of which I eagerly participated. (In fact, I became a fully-fledged, practising Beatlemaniac during these moments -- screaming louder than I had ever screamed before. I was a "crazy fan" right in the midst of "the hurricane," I was the British fan tearing up her clothes, we were the fans in Shea Stadium, screaming for all they were worth...)

The first encore was answered by "Hey Jude," with Sir George on piano. After receiving unwavering applause, he met the second by telling us with the utmost sincerity, "I will always remember this...Bless you all." (I'm in tears again.) Then for the third Sir George was clearly unprepared, eventually suggesting another round of "Hey Jude...but this time, you sing." And, boy, did we sing. We sang our hearts out. By this stage, Tommy, James and Human Nature (all good performers, by the way, though none could hit the high notes) had each observed the banner -- this mattered barely a jot to me. But when lead singer Glenn leant over to Sir George himself and pointed us out, whereupon Sir George smiled at us, I thought I'd never live to see another dawn.

What more can I say? One sweet dream came true today.

All You Need Is Beatles Concert
Melbourne Concert Hall, 31 January 1998
Review by Elizabeth Warren
I was in the fourth row from the front, so I could see everything very clearly. But, before the concert started, my friend and I were waiting at the stage door for him to arrive. Human Nature arrived in the mean time and they all just walked right past us. I'm not interested in them though. When George arrived, we went up to the car and waited for him to get out. It was amazing to see this guy in the flesh who you'd never seen before except on TV. So I was the first fan to get his autograph when he arrived. That's when I got my ticket autographed. I also got a collectors card of him and three of the Beatles recording in 1963 autographed. So then we went inside and bought our programmes. During intermission, we went up to the stage and looked at the set list sticky taped to the floor. While we were doing that this guy came out the stage door and was just standing there. We didn't know who he was at the time, but at the end of the concert George thanked various people, and that unknown guy was in fact his son! Towards the end of the show, the ushers gave us streamers to through which we all did, and my friend and I nearly hit him because we were so close. Tommy Emmanuel also fell over because he slipped on the streamers.