There Stood The Beatles as the Battle Smoke Lifted

This article appeared in LIFE magazine in the August 28, 1964 issue.

These tears and fainting fits that the police had to cope with at San Francisco's airport were not products of a disaster, unless you looked through the sober parental eye. The cause of it all was the return of the Beatles - and how anyone can describe what it means to a girl of 14 to see them, to hear them (as if anyone could above the screams), to breath the very air they breath, and maybe even to scoop up a blade of grass their boots trod upon? Everybody - that is, everybody but millions of teenagers - thought that Britain's mop-headed musical quartet had mined the U.S. lode to the limit last February when they stood New York, Washington and Miami on end. But their manager, Brian Epstein book them back on a 33-day tour of 23 American cities. Though every single concert is already sold-out and the predicted tour gross is an astounding $2 million, the joy is not universal. Local promoters are under contract to hire a special force of at least 100 cops to guard the Loved Ones in every city, and police officials worry that 100 might not be enough. Hotels in San Francisco and Los Angeles' Lockheed Airport was so concerned lest teenagers run out onto the runway that it forbade the any plane bearing Beatles to land there. So desperate is the crisis that latest plans call for a charted plane to fly the Beatles in the dead of night, like a troop movement in wartime or a shipment of gold to Fort Knox.

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