The Beatles played their final live show on August 29, 1966, at Candlestick Park in San Francisco with 7,000 tickets left unsold.
The Beatles were simply ready for a change, and they felt that ending their live career was the best way to move forward.
The Beatles’ 1966 US tour was already controversial: In May, a magazine article had quoted John Lennon as saying that the Beatles were “more popular than Jesus.”
The Beatles were becoming exhausted from touring. The concerts were long and tiring, and the fans’ deafening screams made it difficult for them to play their best. Additionally, they were beginning to experiment with new sounds in the studio, and they felt that they could not replicate these sounds in a live setting.
The Candlestick Park concert was a short and uneventful affair. The Beatles took to the stage at 9.27pm. They played an eleven-song set, which included some of their biggest hits.
Setlist:
1) Rock and Roll Music (Chuck Berry cover)
2) She’s a Woman
3) If I Needed Someone
4) Day Tripper
5) Baby’s in Black
6) I Feel Fine
7) Yesterday
8) I Wanna Be Your Man
9) Nowhere Man
10) Paperback Writer
11) Long Tall Sally
Candlestick Park had a capacity of 42,500, but only 25,000 tickets were sold for the Beatles’ concert. Fans paid between $4.50.- and $6.50.- per ticket. The Beatles’ fee was around $90,000.-
The concert ended at 10:30 pm, and the Beatles never performed live again.
Knowing that it was their last concert, John Lennon and Paul McCartney took a camera onto the stage to document the event.
John and Paul took pictures of the audience, their bandmates, and themselves.
George Harrison said: “Before one of the last numbers, we actually set up this camera, I think it had a fisheye, a wide-angle lens. We set it up on the amplifier and Ringo came off the drums, and we stood with our backs to the audience and posed for a photograph, because we knew that was the last show”
Paul asked Tony Barrow (their press officer) to record the concert on an audio cassette with a handheld recorder. The cassette only lasted 30 minutes per side, so the recording cut off during the final song, “Long Tall Sally”.