Biggest Attraction In The Whole World! (Misterclaudel MCCD-88/89 MCDVD-12)
Festival Hall, West Melbourne, Victoria, Australia – June 17th, 1964 early & late
Disc 1, Abbey Road Studios, London – September 12th, 1963: Message to Australia. Festival Hall, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia – June 17th, 1964 (early show): Johnny Chester with the Phantoms: Fever. Sounds Incorporated: Instrumental, Fingertips, Brontosaurus Stomp, The Spartans, Tony Newman drum solo, Maria, William Tell Overture. The Beatles: Alan Field introduction, I Saw Her Standing There, You Can’t Do That, All My Loving, She Loves You, Till There Was You, Roll Over Beethoven, Can’t Buy Me Love, This Boy, Twist And Shout, Long Tall Sally. Festival Hall, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia – June 17th, 1964 (late show) from video mix, The Beatles: You Can’t Do That, All My Loving, She Loves You, Can’t Buy Me Love, Twist And Shout, Long Tall Sally
Disc 2, Festival Hall, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia – June 17th, 1964 (late show), Johnny Devlin with the Phantoms: C’mon Everybody, What’d I Say, Jailhouse Rock. Johnny Chester with the Phantoms: (You’re So Square) Baby I Don’t Care, Miss Ann, Fever, Let’s Have A Party. Sounds Incorporated: Instrumental, Fingertips, Brontosaurus Stomp, The Spartans, Tony Newman drum solo, Maria, William Tell Overture. The Beatles: Alan Field introduction, I Saw Her Standing There, You Can’t Do That, All My Loving, She Loves You, Till There Was You, Roll Over Beethoven, Can’t Buy Me Love, This Boy, Twist And Shout, Long Tall Sally, audience leaving
DVD: “The Beatles Sing For Shell” (broadcast version):
Sings For Shell opening, Sounds Incorporated: Instrumental, Fingertips, Brontosaurus Stomp, The Spartans, Tony Newman drum solo, Maria, William Tell Overture. Johnny Devlin with The Phantoms: C’mon Everybody, What’d I Say, Jailhouse Rock. Johnny Chester with The Phantoms: (You’re So Square) Baby I Don’t Care, Miss Ann, Fever, Let’s Have A Party. The Beatles: You Can’t Do That, All My Loving, She Loves You, Can’t Buy Me Love, Twist And Shout, Long Tall Sally
“The Beatles Sing For Shell” (original unedited video): Sounds Incorporated: Instrumental, Fingertips, Brontosaurus Stomp, The Spartans, Tony Newman drum solo, Maria, William Tell Overture. Johnny Devlin with The Phantoms: C’mon Everybody, What’d I Say, Jailhouse Rock. Johnny Chester with The Phantoms: (You’re So Square) Baby I Don’t Care, Miss Ann, Fever, Let’s Have A Party. The Beatles: I Saw Her Standing There, You Can’t Do That, All My Loving, She Loves You, Till There Was You, Roll Over Beethoven, Can’t Buy Me Love, Twist And Shout, Long Tall Sally, audience leaving
The virtue of the Misterclaudel Live Chronicle Series of late is the comprehensive, multi-media presentation of an event. On Biggest Attraction In The Whole World they focus upon the June 17th, 1964 Melbourne show during their only visit to Australia and New Zealand lasting two weeks. June 17th was the third and final night in Melbourne with two shows plus opening acts. The two audio discs in this collection have what is left of the soundboard recordings made of the early (on disc one) and late (on disc two) concerts with supporting acts. These recordings, thought to be made by a local radio station, are remarkable documents. They are very clear and well balanced offering a detailed record of the music on stage that night.
This Melbourne show can be found on the vinyl Euphoria In Australia. On disc it can be found on Live In Melbourne 1964 And Paris 1965 (Pyramid Records RFT CD 001) released in 1988 with the June 20th, 1965 Paris show and on Live In Australia (Bulldog Records BGCD 156). Australia 1964 (CD) uses three songs but attribute them to the June 18th Sydney show. Eight Arms To Hold You contains two songs from this show and Great To Have You With Us has three but list them as being Sydney. The complete concerts are also on All The Best From Australia – The Complete Festival Hall, Melbourne Sets I & II (BT 9607). Live In Melbourne 1964 (Parlophone [fake] B 17664) came out in 1997. Message To Australia (Yellow Dog YD2004) has some of this plus short fragments from the Sydney shows.
In 1998 new tapes surfaced and were issued on Australian Tour 1964 (Yellow Dog Records YD 070). Misterclaudel is an improvement since it sounds better and is more complete. Yellow Dog claimed “These live recordings presented in this 2 CD set have been recently re-discovered in Delaware, USA, in May 1998. The tapes were sourced from a retired American photographer, who had covered the Australian – Far East leg of the Beatles 1964 world tour for a New York newspaper. He had apparently been in possession of a copy of these tapes since the heady days of June 1964.” Beatle collectors have since refuted that claim saying they surfaced several months before Yellow Cat released them in Australia. There was a further issue regarding the correct date with some saying these show belong to June 16th. Both Sounds Incorporated, during their set, and Paul McCartney during the Beatles’ mention this as the final night in Melbourne securing this to be June 17th.
The Beatles’ appearance in Australia was booked by promoter Kenn Brodziak almost a year in advance during a talent buying expedition in London. This was before Beatlemania hit and in the ensuing year the act hit international superstardom including Australia. They arrived in Darwin on June 11th and were greeted by 400 fans. But when they flew into Adelaide the following day there were an estimated 350,000 people to greet the band, queuing for the 15 kilometers from the airport to the hotel. For the opening dates they were accompanied by Jimmy Nicol on drums for the hospitalized Ringo. However Ringo rejoined the group in time for the Melbourne dates and Paul even welcomes him back on stage.
The early show started at six pm and the late show at eight and each had the same bill. New Zealand’s first rock star Johnny Devlin and Melbourne’s Johnny Chester began the show both backed by The Phantoms. Sounds Incorporated, also from England and managed by Brian Epstein, played their set before the headliners. The first disc is very good quality but a bit thin with noticeable hiss present. The set isn’t complete since it misses Johnny Devlin’s entire set and “(You’re So Square) Baby I Don’t Care,” “Miss Ann,” and “Let’s Have A Party” from Johnny Chester’s set. Chester singing “Fever” is present and he sings this in a darkened concert hall and the performance is mesmerizing.
Sounds Incorporated play a dynamic set full of movement and energy. “Good evening brethren. And welcome this evening to our short service here. We would like to continue with a little hymn that I’m sure you all know. So please raise your voices on high to a hymn from the hymnbooks. It’s called simply ‘The Brontosaurus Stomp.'” This is followed by their latest record, the melodic “The Spartans.” They close their set with a rendition of Gioachino Rossini’s William Tell Overture which hit number one on the Australian charts.
Alan Field introduces The Beatles as “the biggest attraction in the whole world.” What follows is their normal set except, since he was recovering from tonsillitis, no songs sung by Ringo (which in 1964 were either “I Want To Be Your Man” or “Boys.”) After the opening two “I Saw Her Standing There” and “You Can’t Do That” a nervous sounding Paul says, “Thank you very much everybody. Thank you and good evening. We’d like to carry on now with a song…’All My Loving.'” Lennon speaks about one of their signature tunes at this early state of Beatlemania saying, “Thank you folks. The next song we’d like to do is another one is another one of our records, probably the one you know best. And it’s called ‘She Loves You.'” Paul keeps getting interrupted while trying to introduce “Till There Was You” which, he explains, “we first heard in a show called The Music Man.” “Can’t Buy Me Love” is their latest single (“A Hard Day’s Night” would be released about a month after this tour).
The second disc contains the late show from the same evening and unlike the early show is complete. Johnny Devlin says how nice the Beatles are and plays two Elvis covers (“C’mon Everybody” and “Jailhouse Rock”) and a Ray Charles cover “What’d I Say.” Johnny Chester also sings two Elvis covers (“(You’re So Square) I Don’t Care” and “Let’s Have A Party”) and of course the dynamic version of “Fever.” Both Devlin and Chester sport Elvis hairdoos and swivel their hips like The King. Chester would go on to have a big career in Country music and only recently has acknowledged his rock roots by authorizing the re-release of his early albums.
The DVD contains two versions of “The Beatles Sing For Shell.” The first is the actual broadcast in good quality complete with commercials for Shell Oil. The sequence is altered a bit to appease Australian television by placing Sounds Incorporated before the Australian acts. The second version is a different edit which is from a very good video tape with time code on the screen. The Beatles set was edited to six songs: “You Can’t Do That,” “All My Loving,” “She Loves You,” “Can’t Buy Me Love,” “Twist And Shout” and “Long Tall Sally.” The unedited video has the complete Beatles set except for “This Boy.” The program aired 7.30-8.30pm on Wednesday July 1st 1964. Misterclaudel package this is a fatboy jewel case with an insert with photographs and a miniature reproduction of the tour program and is another very well packaged, comprehensive release by the label.
