Shea Stadium Site, Where the Beatles Played in 1965

The Beatles played Shea Stadium in Flushing, Queens, on 15 August 1965, to 55,600 people, the first rock concert at a major stadium. Shea was demolished in 2008 and 2009, and its footprint is now the Citi Field parking lot. Markers there show home plate and the bases, but none refers to the Beatles.

15 August 1965

The Shea Stadium show opened the Beatles' 1965 North American tour. The crowd of 55,600 was the largest the band had played to, and the night set records for both attendance and takings. No major stadium had hosted a rock concert on that scale before.

Ed Sullivan, who had presented their American television debut 18 months earlier, walked out to introduce them. The band played twelve songs. By Ringo Starr's account the screaming was so loud that the music itself was hard to hear, and security staff spent much of the set dealing with fans who fainted or tried to reach the stage.

The concert was filmed with 14 cameras under director Bob Precht. The resulting 50-minute documentary, The Beatles at Shea Stadium, was first shown on BBC1 on 1 March 1966 and reached American viewers on ABC on 10 January 1967. What audiences heard was not entirely what the stadium heard: parts of the soundtrack were re-recorded at CTS Studios in London in January 1966, and one song's audio came from a Hollywood Bowl recording.

The return in 1966

The Beatles came back on 23 August 1966. About 45,000 people attended, a large crowd but short of the year before. Six days later they played Candlestick Park in San Francisco, their final paid concert.

What is on the site now

Citi Field replaced Shea as the Mets' ballpark, and the old stadium was demolished between 14 October 2008 and 18 February 2009. Its footprint became part of the new ballpark's parking lot.

The Mets set markers into the asphalt where home plate, the pitcher's mound and the four bases used to be. The home plate marker, in Lot D, reads "Site of Shea Stadium Home Plate 1964-2008". The base markers carry figures modeled on the neon ballplayers that once decorated the stadium's outside walls. These are baseball memorials. None mentions the Beatles, and no separate Beatles marker has been reported at Citi Field.

The concert has been remembered in other ways. On its 60th anniversary, 15 August 2025, the Mets staged a Beatles Night at Citi Field, with a tribute band playing near Shea Bridge and replica Shea memorabilia handed to the first 15,000 fans.

Other Beatles places in New York City

In Manhattan, the Ed Sullivan Theater on Broadway is where the band first appeared on US television. Strawberry Fields in Central Park and the Dakota mark John Lennon's years in the city.