46 years ago today, August 29, 1966,  The Beatles played at San Francisco’s Candlestick Park. It turned out to be their last scheduled concert. The writing was on the wall. They had just released Revolver earlier in the month but chose not to perform any songs from it. They could still not hear themselves perform and it was cramping their creativity. They decided the studio was the place to enhance their musical ideas. It was actually George who told the others on that tour that he didn’t want to tour anymore. Fans had no idea at the time that those at the concert would be the last ones to see them in concert. If you were at that concert, we would love to hear your thoughts and memories of the evening.

Three days of Beatles music, love and entertainment filled the halls and ballrooms of the Hyatt Regency O’Hare for our 36th Annual Chicago FEST. With so many new first time Special Guests and new events, fans had to figure out where they wanted to be the most! Everybody loved FREDA KELLY (fan club secretary 1962-1972), as she told so many stories the fans were really interested in hearing. Beatles Recording Engineer KEN SCOTT has an amazing A/V show with some rare versions of some of the songs he had worked on. He signed extra copies of his new book Abbey Road to Ziggy Stardust (see below). TOM SCOTT added so much to the Concerts and Musician’s Forum with his powerful sax solos. SPENCER DAVIS called 4 days before the FEST to let us know he couldn’t join us due to illness. He was really looking forward to his first Chicago FEST and was very disappointed. He hopes to join us in 2013! We were fortunate enough to get Wings’ lead guitarist LAURENCE JUBER to pinch hit for Spencer and he treated us to his solo acoustic Concerts each afternoon, to rousing ovations. The nightly jams with LIVERPOOL, MARK HUDSON, Tom Scott and Laurence Juber were among some of the best we have ever seen or heard. Our MC for 35 years, TERRI HEMMERT, was called away on Saturday to be at the bedside of her mother, in Ohio. Sadly, Betty passed away on Sunday. We all send Terri our Beatles love in this difficult time. Martin Lewis, Wally Podrazik and Tom Frangione filled in the gap on the various stages in Terri’s absence.

The new events and exhibits proved to be quite popular as well. Our first ever Chicago Beatles Parade on Saturday afternoon, saw 200-300 paraders walking around all the hotel rooms where the events were taking place, carrying balloons, signs and of course singing!!. It was headed by our Puppeteer and Grand Master Bob Abdou. The final five minutes of the Parade was walking through the Grand Ballroom singing Give Peace a Chance, while we held up the Auction so everyone in the audience could sing along!

Another first time Special Guest, ROB SHANAHAN, Ringo’s personal photographer, had a photo exhibit including many brand new images from this summer’s tour. Rob also had an A/V presentation and joined on the Drums for the Musician’s Forum. Beatles Yoga with Annette was quite a popular place to be over the weekend, as fans of all ages participated in the sessions, relaxing and invigorating fans throughout the weekend! Portrait Artist Georgina Flood made her U.S. premiere of her stunning portraits of The Beatles over the weekend. She is from Dublin, Ireland and it was Georgina’s first trip to America, ever! She was amazed and overwhelmed by the response to her work.

Sunday’s Battle of the Beatles Bands saw all 18 registered groups perform and The Shades were the Winners! The Foresman Five (consisting of 3 members under seven) were a close second. Liv and Harry won Saturday’s Sound-Alike Contest. Deco hosted a fabulous Art Contest with a most creative group of entries. Pictured here is Alex Bolton, a first place winner whose work consisted of 100% duct tape. Stay tuned for a complete wrap up of the Art Contest! Congrats to all winners.

With Wizard World/ComicCon going on the same time next door at the convention center, the hotel was full of revelry as Batman (pictured here with Author Brue Spizer), Superman and Spiderman were all spotted walking around the FEST. The real Hulk was there as well (Lou Ferrigno). The co-star of the 1994 film Backbeat, SHERYL LEE joined us on Saturday evening for a surprise visit and hung around to sign some autographs. Sheryl played Astrid Kirchherr in the movie.

Click on the link below to see The Shades’ winning performance on Youtube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9-zdejbR3g&feature=youtu.be

Nice meeting so many Beatles fans this year in Chicago! A splendid time was had by all! All You Need Is Love,
Mark, Jessica, Michelle and Carol Lapidos

For further recaps, photos and videos from THE FEST go to our facebook and event pages. More youtube videos of THE FEST coming soon! Thank you all for coming and participating and making the Fest so special this year!!!

41 years ago today (8/1/71), I (Mark) attended the afternoon Concert For Bangla Desh Concert at Madison Square Garden in NYC. To this day it is still up there as one of the greatest concerts EVER! It became the blueprint for all future benefit concerts. And to think it was George Harrison who put it all together for his friend Ravi Shankar. The complete line up was not known, even to George, but both Bob Dylan and Eric Clapton did show up and the music blew us all away. Leaving the Garden at the end of the show, we were all mesmerized and amazed at what we had witnessed, to the point that the deluge awaiting us outside didn’t seem to bother anyone. I predicted it would win a Grammy for Album of the Year. Well, because of all the quarreling between Capitol and Columbia Records, it did not get released until December 20, 1971, making it eligible for 1972 not 1971. It did indeed win that Grammy, but had it been released more timely, it would not have won as Carole King’s Tapestry was clearly the album of the year. Timing is everything! So the brilliantly packaged three record set arrived at the Sam Goody Store I managed, in Paramus, NJ at 3PM that day to a store full of fans waiting for them. We couldn’t get them off the truck fast enough! We sold 256 copies that afternoon and evening and was the biggest one day total of an album sold in the 5 years I worked there!