The Beatles! A One-Night Stand In The Heartland

The Beatles! A One-Night Stand in the Heartland is a collection of original, previously unpublished photographs from August 21, 1965. As such it adds a new chapter to the Beatles' story. In it, Bill Carlson brings to Beatles fans, photography aficionados and history buffs, more than 160 never-before-published photographs that document one day in the life of the Beatles on tour.

The Beatles! A One-Night Stand in the Heartland brings together strands from many remarkable stories. First, there is the story of the Beatles themselves as phenomenal artists who changed music and culture forever. Second, Bill Carlson tells his own impressive story of how he interacted with the Beatles on that one day. And third, the 25,000 or more screaming, shouting, cheering, swooning, clapping, crying, and singing Minnesotans who were transformed by what they experienced that day.

While a high school student, Carlson apprenticed with the prestigious photographer Merle Morris. When the press passes for the Beatles' day in Minnesota came through, he grabbed one, picked up his Hasselblad and Nikon cameras, and headed out to Met Stadium, where the Minnesota Twins and Vikings performed and where the Mall of America now stands. He went not so much as a Beatles fan but as a photography-hungry youth determined to seize every opportunity to learn and perfect his art.

His images show the public faces of the Beatles at their press conference at the stadium as they expertly pose and trade quips with reporters. They show the fans, who look so young, hardly even teenagers, putting Minnesota youth on the same footing as those in London and New York. They also show the more familiar scenes of Beatlemania, and his long shots of the concert stage recall that security was so strict that even photographers were banned from the field.

There are other books by Beatles photographers, including The Beatles: A Private View (2003) by Robert Freeman, who photographed many album covers for the group, and Once There Was a Way (2003) by Harry Benson, who photographed them on tour from Paris to Miami. But there is no other book like this that documents one day, one concert, one place. It was a day that brought high fun and high art to the Twin Cities and changed many Beatles fans forever.

Bill Carlson is an accomplished photographer, cinematographer, and scuba diver, combining his loves for photography and diving to explore and film the underwater cave systems of Mexico and Florida. He has been the director of photography on numerous commercials, films, and documentaries, his most recent film being the PBS documentary America's Lost Landscape: The Tall Grass Prairie, narrated by Annabeth Gish.

Colleen Sheehy has a Ph.D. in American Studies and is the director of education at the Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. Among the exhibits she has curated at the Weisman are Springsteen: Troubadour of the Highway (2002), which toured nationally, and Musicapolis: Minnesota Rock Photography, 1965-2005 (2005), which included some of the photographs in this book.

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© 2008 British Beatles Fan Club