Beatles Concert Plaque at Tad Gormley Stadium, New Orleans

The Beatles played New Orleans once, on 16 September 1964, at City Park Stadium, now Tad Gormley Stadium in City Park. Twenty years later, on 16 September 1984, the radio station WRNO presented a plaque to City Park marking the concert. It is fixed near the stadium's Marconi Court entrance.

The concert on 16 September 1964

City Park Stadium was a Works Progress Administration project completed in 1937. The Beatles played it during their first American tour. A crowd of 12,000 paid $5 a ticket. Clarence "Frogman" Henry, the New Orleans rhythm and blues singer who was touring with the band, played before them, as did Jackie DeShannon. The Beatles came on at 9:25 pm.

Security did not hold. Around 200 fans fainted or collapsed, and about 700 broke toward the stage. Henry later said police ended up tackling some of them.

Earlier that day the band met Fats Domino. Mayor Victor Schiro gave them keys to the city and declared Beatles Day, with a proclamation that tied their music to jazz and called the visit an English storm arriving in hurricane season.

The 1984 plaque

WRNO radio marked the 20th anniversary with a plaque presented to City Park and the people of New Orleans on 16 September 1984. The text states that this was the band's only concert in Louisiana. Part of it borrows a line from the Sgt. Pepper title song, and it closes with the thought that there will never be another Beatles.

It is mounted on a pillar or wall near the Marconi Court entrance, which you reach from Marconi Court east of Marconi Drive.

The stadium since

The stadium was later renamed for Frank "Tad" Gormley, a coach and athletic trainer who looked after it. Sources disagree on when: Wikipedia gives 1957, while WWOZ's A Closer Walk gives 1965. Jimi Hendrix, Sly and the Family Stone and Eric Clapton played here in later years, and the first Voodoo music festival was held here in 1999. Floodwater from Hurricane Katrina damaged it in 2005. Reggie Bush, drafted by the Saints the next year, gave more than $80,000 toward the field, which now carries his name. The stadium seats 26,500.

The band's first US concert, seven months earlier, is marked at the Washington Coliseum. Two days after New Orleans the tour played Dallas, and on the way out the band changed planes in Walnut Ridge, Arkansas.