In 1966 my neighbor, folksinger Joan Baez, was 25, and I was 10. She had a sleek silver jaguar XKE in which she sometimes picked me up from school in Carmel. She sang at my birthday parties.
She’d been on the cover of Time magazine. I’d been to fifth grade.
She gave me my first Beatles albums. (I still have them: “Meet the Beatles!” and “Beatles ‘65.”)
I knew all the words to all the songs, could recite whole scenes and dialogue from the film “A Hard Day’s Night.” But I did not slobber or moon over them. I loved them, but I was cool.
A few days before the Candlestick concert on Aug. 29, 1966, Joan told my parents she was sending a car for me and her sisters, Pauline and Mimi, to bring us to the concert. I would meet the Beatles.
“No way,” said my dad. “You are too young, those concerts are pandemonium and massive crowds and chaos.”
But I went. Thanks, mom.
We shopped: Gussied me up in a forest-green paisley suit and cherry-red pumps.
We were met at the Candlestick parking lot by a phalanx of gigantic security guards who surrounded us and passed us along. “The Baez Party,” we were called. I had never seen such huge men. (Years later, I found out they were Oakland Raider football players who’d been hired as extra security. As a child, I thought they were cartoonishly enormous.)
It was dusk, cool, windy, so loud the stadium was reverberating, already packed three hours before the 8 p.m. starting time. We were escorted up and down flights of steps, past stands of screaming fans, and down to the field past the makeshift stage, which was a rickety platform, surrounded by a fence, at second base.
Envious fans in the lower rows yelled as we were marched past, clearly headed for the inner sanctum:
“Bring me a lock of George’s hair!” “Oh, God! Oh, God! Take me with you!” I kept my eyes on the ground. I couldn’t breathe.
We crossed the field, turned into the dugout and went through a low door into an Alice-in-Wonderland-like maze of winding passageways. Then around a bend into a noisy, crowded room lined with cubicles (the players’ dressing room), and there stood John Lennon.
Pale, bored, he was impatiently answering a reporter’s questions, holding a sneaker in one hand and banging it rhythmically against his other palm. The room was crowded with reporters and roadies and VIPs — and everyone was smoking.
Joan swooped up her sisters and me, and circled the room, introducing us to each member of the band. I was the only kid in the place.
John waved “hullo.”
Ringo took my hand and said gravely, “How do you do?”
Paul tossed the Paul grin my way: “Are you Joan’s little sister, then?” My eyes were two pinwheels.
The remains of a catered meal were strewn across one very long table, atop a white tablecloth: A Mad Hatter’s tea party, so many cups and saucers and ashtrays. Everyone held a teacup and a cigarette.
The lads were drawing and doodling in colored inks on the tablecloth, and I watched as grown men, members of the fourth estate, surreptitiously tore off and pocketed pieces. It was just like out of “A Hard Day’s Night!”
As I watched the Fab Four drape themselves around every VIP who wanted a picture, I was stricken; I had nothing to prove my moment of glory!
“Joanie, “I lamented, “no one at school will ever believe me!” So she corralled the great rock and roll photographer Jim Marshall and a sweet, agreeable Ringo, and that’s how I ended up on Marshall’s proof sheets. And in the new coffee table book: “The Beatles by Jim Marshall: Live at Candlestick Park 1966” (June 2026, Chronicle Books).
Joanie had been traveling with the Beatles and had an easy rapport with them. She kept an arm around me as the road manager shooed out the hangers-on and press so the Beatles could change into their Beatles outfits.
“Shhhhh,” she said, and pulled me into a changing cubicle, “we’ll hide here, and I’ll grab you John Lennon’s shirt for a keepsake.”
And damn if she didn’t snag it from his dressing cubicle. I had it for years: Horizontal-colored stripes, very Carnaby Street.
Best part of the night: When the press left, and we stayed.
The Beatles emerged from their cubicles in their boots and suits, and, strapping on their guitars, began running through songs.
Ringo’s drums weren’t set up, so he came over to me and held up his hand. “Would you like one of my rings? Now, this is a nice one; it’s a whistle ring.” He slipped it off his finger, blew on it, and it hummed pleasantly. He dropped it into my palm.
While his three mates strummed and sang, he took my hand and danced with me.
Kind of frugging.
Meanwhile Joan was cracking them up by imitating each Beatle perfectly, mimicking their singing and their talking. She nailed all four of them!
The time came for the long walk from the dugout to second base, and I was struck by the drudgery of this gig. They looked bored and miserable as they trudged single-file out into the passageways, like men off to the coal mines.
No banter. No joking as they adjusted their guitar straps and collars, they seemed to be just going through the motions, and my child’s heart felt sad. And prophetic: After the Candlestick show, they never again performed together onstage.
We emerged onto the field into roars and wind and stadium lights. It was kind of scary, and really cold.
The Beatles ran across the field onto the stage. We positioned ourselves below them, huddled beneath the raised platform. Fans were leaping from their seats, jumping over barriers, rushing across the field to storm the stage, only to be tackled and carted off by the bulky football-player security guards.
The music began, drowning the Beatles and deafening me.
It was only a 35-minute set, I found out later, but to me it felt like forever. Joan and I sang all the songs along with them, though we couldn’t hear ourselves.
I don’t remember how we got to the car or left the stadium.
I remember falling asleep on Joan’s lap, inhaling her perfume, wrapped in John Lennon’s sweaty shirt, as we sailed down Highway 101, going home.
