I'd imagine home video would have been a factor in its decline. The Complete Beatles was released on video in 1982, so it was the beginning of getting your could get your Bealte video fix at home.
Sorry. That was not suppose to print. I was just thinking out-loud. The author of the title meant to misspell. I'm almost positive they did the same thing with that other show "What Now America?" Maybe they used the letter k instead of the c in America and possible an up-side-down question mark. Titles are supposed to catch your eye, stir your interest and then take your money.
It seems everyone's seen this in a different time frame. I'm a New Yorker but saw it as a teenager visiting relatives in South Florida; '74/'75. There was much radio promotion; it seems the ad ran every 15 minutes the night I heard it. I recall it being a rather shoddy presentation but (as many have stated) it was cool to see any Beatles footage at the time. I also recall a big tractor-trailer truck outside the theater with "Away With Words" graphics on the side.
Maybe I'm not understanding your quote... or maybe there is a word missing or something..... but are you implying that you have cool inside information that you won't share??? What's the big deal? Spill those beans!
I posted about seeing this show early on and now I see this thread has arisen from the dead. I just want to say I am certain that I saw it in 1973. I’m surprised it was still kicking around as late as 1977-1980.
As Drifter posted back in 2010 from WDRC in Hartford, Connecticut: November 28-30, 1975 - Four thousand slides and thousands of feet of historic film were combined for The Beatles...A Way With Words, a three-night show at the Hartford Civic Center. I know I was there one of those nights accompanied by two friends from Smith College. I remember we arrived in my Mercury Capri with a Clarion cassette deck blasting Stevie Wonder. Abbey Road played loudly for the drive home. The Civic Center acoustics sucked. The reels were misordered and the crew stopped and restarted the show. And my friends groaned, and rightly so, when at least one Beatles track played while we watched topless women on horseback. It was just a stupidly gratuitous distraction.
I don’t think I was disappointed, but I certainly wasn’t wowed either. As I said earlier in the thread it completely left my memory until I saw this thread.
Now I’m curious about the “acoustically perfect” Syria Mosque in Pittsburgh. Anyone know the story behind that bit of hyperbole?
There is no BIG DEAL. What was explained to me when I was in the process of being hired by this company is that the reel to reel film was stolen. And that there was no copy. The "What Now America" show was smaller in size ( less equipment ) then the "Away With Words" show. Identical in the making, but less equipment. The 2 or 3 man crew that went out on the road with "What Now America" were too lazy or ? to load and unload the truck. So they hired some people off the street to do the work. Thats when the reel to reel film disappeared. End of show. I don't think the film was ever recovered. Like if someone wanted a reward or something. During one of our shows, someone disconnected a fairly large speaker of ours and snuck out a side door with it. This happened during a show! Actually, one of the guys in the crew was supposed to stay over-night/sleep with the equipment when it was all set up. Like in a theater or whatever. Like I mentioned before the job did'nt pay enough. Thats why I left. There are more beans to spill, but I would have to mention names. It is funny though.
On second thought, like it really matters, I think it was one of the strobe lights that walked out the side door not a floor speaker. Which was actually a good thing! The strobe lights were more ANNOYING then anything else!.....I got to thinking last night about all the cool rock concerts I passed on going to in the late 1960s and early 1970s. I was working some kind of job back then. ODD jobs like pumping gas, wrapping hambergers, bagging groceries, etc. It was important to me to own my own car, have some cash in my pocket, even a small bank account. I did'nt want to take off from work and piss-off my employer in order to go to a concert. The worst part was listening to my friends who invited me to go with them. Telling me how much fun they had! I had to sell my Rolling Stones concert ticket when I went out on the road with this Beatles show! I drove round trip from Phoenix to Tucson, AZ to buy those tickets. And, yes I did pump gas instead of going to that little get-together at Yasgur's farm!
I was talking to a neighbor yesterday and he was telling me that he saw this in Detroit in 1979. I had never heard anything about it before. Pretty interesting.
I saw it before 1973 at Constitution Hall, Washington, DC. Quite impressed with visuals and sound quality.
Thanks for sharing your insider information. It's also a good insight into the production and problems faced by the show.
I was daydreaming and googled this show. I was one of the tech guys (there were 3 of us) humping in the equipment, setting it up, running the projectors and slides and keeping stuff working for the show and then breaking down and loading up to move to the next venue. I had been traveling around the south for the winter of 72-73 after college grad and no job, picking up random manpower jobs or whatever to keep going. I was in Phoenix when I saw the ad looking for workers for this show - no mention of Beatles in the ad. Got the job and within a week we packed up a large old Hertz truck. Fun to drive except there was a governor on it. First show was in Jacksonville, FLA so we drove non-stop. For 3 months we hit all sorts of places in Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas before a break, when I split, and back to Phoenix. We usually were at a venue for 3 days - 2 shows Friday and Sat. and 1 on Sunday afternoon. The biggest site was The Music Hall in Houston. The slides were controlled by a punched tape reader using a Mylar tape. The projectors were frequently jamming but there were so many of them (24?) that it wasn't noticeable when they did, except to us of course. I think there were 2, maybe 3, video projectors and they usually didn't fail. Big deal the couple of times one of them did but, again, not really noticeable to the audience. We set up 4 large speakers (don't remember the brand) in each corner. They sounded great but I was disappointed to realize we were just playing in mono. Late in my 3 month stint, there was a rumor that The Beatles' lawyers were trying to catch up with us to shut the show down. I'm glad I did it. $100/week plus lodging. I got to see much of the south and listen to the Beatles constantly. At one place, Howard or Chris or someone had us set up a projector in one of our motel rooms and ran Magical Mystery Tour on a wall! Fun times! I visited the show when it came to Boston around 75 or 76 and there was still 1 guy I worked with who had stayed with the show.
I worked with this show in the summer of 1972. Is that what I was getting paid, $100 a week? The owner of this company promised me a cash bonus for all sell out shows. That didn't happen. I remember Chris, Howard, Tommy and Bob. Chris was a "pretty boy". I had other money coming in besides the $100 a week. It was a fun job....in a way.
I saw it in Tulsa, OK on May 14, 1971 during my senior year of high school. My buddies and I had dropped acid before the show, but I took too much. I enjoyed the show at first (lots of cool sensory enhancements) but the acid came on really big at one point and I told my buddy I was seeing God, freaking me out, and I had to leave the show for some fresh air and to get a grip on myself. The Tulsa World gave it (the show, not my trip) a positive review in the next day's paper. I tried to post a .jpg of the review but could not figure out how to do it.
Thanks for sharing these memories. Beatle-fans also appreciate all this information being recorded. A question about the logistics of the show itself: if projectors (I'm assuming film) were running and the same time as slide projectors, was a the set a multi-screen one? If so - how many images would be screen at once? Was it a "split screen" style effect with a film projection and slides running next to it?
Hi - check out "Paul is Live" ;-) We had one screen onto which everything was projected. Sometimes just slides but usually both. And the slides were usually projected on either side of the centered film. We (had to?) play "Them Changes" by Buddy Miles every show as the audience filed in. Great song but we should have mixed it up a bit for our sanity.
