20 yeah, yeah, yeahs ago

"There really was no comparison between the Michael Jackson concert and The Beatles at Atlanta Stadium, " maintains Taylor, who as a disc jockey for WQXI-AM ("Quixie in Dixie") helped emcee The Beatles' show.

"The Beatles concert at Atlanta Stadium sticks in my mind as perhaps the greatest event I ever witnessed, " he says. "The entire stadium bordered on hysteria. I can still see the faces of the girls, tears in their eyes, as they hung over the wall and the policemen tried to restrain them. I'll never forget it."

Unforgettable. Unbelievable. Words such as those are used by members of the crowd of 34,000 who attended The Beatles' only Atlanta performance.

Even those who weren't screaming teenagers at the time recall The Beatles' visit here - which preceded the arrival of the Braves - as an epochal event in Atlanta's emergence as a major city.

"The excitement was shared by the whole community, " says Taylor, now in advertising but at the time the 28-year-old midday man on Quixie, Atlanta's dominant Top 40 station. "The city took on a different character. The reserved Southerner became a hysterical fan."

As they'd done around the world, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr sparked unprecedented media coverage, beginning weeks before the show date. As early as July, The Atlanta Constitution reported that Mayor Ivan Allen Jr. had said The Beatles' visit to Atlanta was causing a stir comparable to the 1939 premiere of "Gone With the Wind." And in Atlanta, that's quite a stir.

"It was the only time we ever had as much publicity for a show as we thought we should have, " jokes 65-year-old Ralph Bridges, whose Famous Artists firm promoted The Beatles' Atlanta concert. "It was fantastic."

Bridges, who prior to that time had promoted only a handful of rock 'n' roll shows, had passed on bringing The Beatles to Atlanta during their 1964 U.S. tour because he wasn't sure he could meet the $12,500 guarantee. A year later, the guarantee for the group was about $50,000. But by then it was obvious The Beatles' popularity wasn't going to fade any time soon, so Bridges took the plunge.

Tickets for the concert, the first major event at the then virtually new stadium, went on sale in May. Lower-level seats were priced by Famous Artists at $5.50. Upper-level seats (where binoculars were essential) cost $4.50. Response was good, with ticket requests coming from as far away as Guatemala and California.

"I was impressed, " Bridges says, "because among the first orders were one from Mayor Allen and one from Bobby Jones the golfing legend and civic leader, who was buying them for his grandchildren."

A week before the concert, Famous Artists ran a newspaper ad saying: "Beware of Rumors! We are not sold out. Good tickets still available." Actually, that meant 8,000 of the $4.50 upper-deck seats were available. All of the $5.50 tickets were long gone. Because of the size of the stadium, however, it was not a sellout, with about 2,000 of the 36,000 tickets printed going unsold.

Security - keeping the overenthusiastic fans from harming The Beatles or themselves - was Bridges' greatest concern. "Superintendant James Mosely of the police department was a big help, " the promoter recalls. "He went with us to the Shea Stadium show in New York. That really scared us to death, because it was within an inch of a full-scale riot. The fans kept coming over the centerfield fence and I thought 'Oh, no! How are we going to stop them if that happens in Atlanta?' "

Bridges hired 150 off-duty policemen for the Atlanta show and, he says, "we prepared a series of lines of defense. It was just like a full- scale battle plan." Between the crowd and The Beatles would be a waist- high fence, a rolled-wire barricade, a ring of wooden sawhorses and a line of 50 police officers. Insurance for the event cost the promoter $1,900.

Meanwhile, the media coverage had shifted into high gear. WQXI, the "official" Beatles station in town, was featuring regular reports on the progress of the group's American tour. And the Saturday before the show, The Journal had an interview with Quixie DJ Paul Drew, who had traveled with the Fab Four. In a nice little bit of overstatement, a photo of Drew in a Beatles wig was captioned: "Paul Drew, The Fifth Beatle."

Sunday's Journal-Constitution was full of The Beatles, including tips for parents asking that they not drive directly to the stadium, but let their kids use the special "Beatle Bus" shuttles. There also was a short item noting that the subject of the Rev. Howard Pyle's sermon that day at the Faith Baptist Church was "The Beatles in Atlanta: Blight or Blessing?"

Wednesday morning, The Constitution's front page declared that "B Day" had arrived. About 2 o'clock that afternoon, the Beatles and their entourage of 40 landed in a private Lockheed Electra at a remote corner of the Atlanta airport - out of view of fans waiting at the terminal. Three limousines transported the British rockers to the stadium, where they would spend their entire stay in Atlanta.

Janet Caldwell, now a political researcher but then a 31-year-old assistant to Bridges, remembers with amusement that despite all of Famous Artists' fevered preparations, The Beatles still caught them napping on one item. "Ringo decided to wash his hair, " she says, "and we had to send out - rush rush - for a hair dryer."

"My wife, Cindy, had her stand-up hair dryer brought over from the house, " Bridges says. "That was real unusual in those days. Boys generally didn't use hair dryers."

Atlanta caterer Frank Cloudt, who'd been hired to provide The Beatles' dinner, found them lounging on Army cots in one of the stadium dressing rooms that afternoon. Cloudt wanted to know if it was true they wanted hamburgers for their meal. "They said, 'Oh, no, not again, ' " he recalls.

So that evening The Beatles dined on pork loin, a leg of spring lamb and top sirloin along with corn on the cob (they had asked Cloudt if he could provide "corn on a stick"), fresh pole beans, fresh fruit, a relish platter and apple pie. A full bar also was provided, though only one Beatle (Cloudt can't remember which one) had just one drink.

A year later, Cloudt says, when Bridges staged another Beatles show in Memphis, "they told Ralph that the supper they'd had in Atlanta was the best meal they'd ever had anywhere on tour. They enjoyed it." So much so that they used Cloudt's Magic Marker to autograph their four china plates - which Cloudt now keeps in a bank vault.

Cloudt, 42 at the time, was not a fan of The Beatles' music and had approached the assignment with mixed feelings. But after talking to the group, he says, "I was very impressed. They were well-mannered and easy to talk to. They just seemed like lonely young guys away from home. But they were very accommodating, posing for pictures with the groups of VIPs who kept coming in to meet them."

The Beatles' press conference at the stadium, about 15 minutes of mostly nonsensical questions, began shortly after 5 p.m. About 150 reporters were present, many of them from high school newspapers. There also were some members of the local chapter of the Beatles Fan Club, headed by 15-year-old Brenda Jean Bene (now known as "B.J." and married to WQXI disc jockey J.J. Jackson), who'd come to present their idols with stuffed animals, rings, jellybeans and other presents.

"I remember they were very nice, " Mrs. Jackson says. "They didn't act like big hot-dogs. John was zany, George was sort of quiet and Ringo was, too. Paul was very gentlemanly and would really take time to answer your questions."

What followed that evening was splashed all over Thursday morning's front page. Taylor introduced Mayor Allen, who took the stage to declare The Beatles "honorary Atlantans." Then came the opening acts - King Curtis, the Discotheque Dancers, Cannibal and the Headhunters, Brenda Holloway and Sounds Inc.

At 9:37 p.m., the crowd erupted in an earsplitting shriek as The Beatles, clad in dark-blue suits, ran from the third-base dugout to the stage, situated on second base.

"There seemed to be one continuous scream, " Ms. Caldwell says. "It was super high-pitched and unrelenting."

"It was loud, " agrees Mrs. Jackson. "It was really hard to hear them over the screaming."

Beatles manager Brian Epstein told The Journal, however, that The Beatles had praised the sound system at the Atlanta concert as the best they'd encountered in America. (In those days, touring acts didn't carry their own sound equipment.)

"I think what really impressed them was that they had enough monitors on stage so they could hear what they were playing, " says Duke Mewborn, president of Baker Audio, which provided the sound system for the show.

"We gathered every piece of equipment we could beg or borrow, " Mewborn recalls. "We had two large clusters of loud speakers at first base and third base and about 5,000 watts of amplification. But we couldn't anticipate how loud the crowd really was. It was awesome."

Ms. Caldwell remembers that "little girls would throw themselves bodily over the railings onto the rolls of wire and into the arms of the policemen, who would roll them back over."

The six first-aid stations were kept busy, Bridges says, "mostly with cases of hysteria. I walked around the stadium to see what was going on, and the kids were just continually yelling. I asked a couple of them why they didn't stop screaming so they could hear the music, and they said they just couldn't help it."

Bridges also remembers that from the stage, the crowd "looked like thousands of fireflies because of all the cameras that were flashing all the time. I thought it was really beautiful."

The show, covered with four pages of pictures and stories in The Constitution and six pages in The Journal, began with "Twist and Shout." Then came "She's a Woman" (during which McCartney's mike fell over), "I Feel Fine, " "Dizzy Miss Lizzy, " "Ticket to Ride, " "Everybody's Trying to Be My Baby" (Harrison's only lead vocal), "Can't Buy Me Love, " "Baby's in Black, " "I Wanna Be Your Man" (Starr's vocal), "A Hard Day's Night, " "Help!" and "I'm Down."

After the show, the limos took The Beatles directly back to the Atlanta airport, where they eluded a crowd of 200 and took off just before midnight for Houston, where their next show was scheduled for 3:30 the next afternoon.

Press coverage of the concert generally was favorable, if a bit condescending. The Journal said that "hearing one of their concerts is the most amazing and entertaining headache a person can get."

In articles that ran in the papers the next few days, it was revealed that Mc Cartney souvenirs had been the heaviest seller at stadium concession stands and that the show had grossed about $240,000.

"It was the biggest gross we ever had, " says Bridges, whose firm now is mostly a booking agency for acts such as Ferrante & Teicher. "But when we got through figuring it up and paying everybody, I think we lost money. Still, we were glad we did it because we got so much notoriety. It was the biggest thing that ever happened to us."

And, it might be argued, the biggest thing ever to happen at Atlanta- Fulton County Stadium.