Mid-South Coliseum, Memphis: The Beatles' 1966 Concerts

The Beatles played the Mid-South Coliseum, 996 Early Maxwell Boulevard in Memphis, twice on 19 August 1966, the only Southern stop of their last American tour. Protests over John Lennon's Jesus remark surrounded the day. The round 1964 arena still stands but has been closed since 2006, and no Beatles marker exists there.

Why Memphis was the flashpoint

Lennon had remarked that the Beatles were more popular than Jesus. When the US teen magazine Datebook printed the line in 1966, the reaction was strongest in the Bible Belt. Memphis was the only Southern city on the tour, so the anger gathered there.

The Memphis city commission passed a resolution condemning the remark and asked the band to withdraw from the contract for the shows. The Beatles refused, and Brian Epstein kept the date.

19 August 1966

The band played twice, at 4pm to about 10,000 people and at 8:30pm to about 12,500. Bobby Hebb, the Cyrkle, the Remains and the Ronettes opened. Outside, six Ku Klux Klan members picketed in robes. Local ministers held a youth rally against the concerts, and records were burned. An anonymous caller warned that one or more of the Beatles would be shot.

The afternoon show passed quietly. During the evening set someone threw a lit cherry bomb firecracker, and it went off near the stage. For a moment each Beatle thought one of the others had been shot. They kept playing, nobody was hurt, and police arrested the person responsible. Later accounts of the tour treat Memphis as one of the days that persuaded the band to give up touring.

The arena since

The Coliseum opened in 1964 on the Mid-South Fairgrounds. It is one of the few arenas where both Elvis Presley and the Beatles played, and it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2000. It closed in 2006.

Since then its future has swung back and forth. The Tennessee Preservation Trust named it endangered in 2016, and the city announced in 2017 that it would mothball the building. A 2022 plan would have knocked it down for a soccer stadium for Memphis 901 FC. That plan lapsed when the club folded in November 2024. On 18 August 2026 the Mid-South Coliseum Conservancy told the city council that investors had pledged 30 to 40 percent of the $200,000 needed to begin a development plan. No reopening date has been set.

Is there a Beatles marker?

No. Preservation, press and heritage records mention no Beatles plaque at the Coliseum. The building is locked apart from occasional tours and volunteer clean-ups, so most visitors see only the outside, which now has murals about Memphis music and culture.

The same tour ended in California, at the site of Candlestick Park. The Beatles had opened their first American tour at the Cow Palace two years before.