5AD's Bob Francis the Top 40 music leader in getting the Beatles to Adelaide in 1964 for their biggest greeting
5AD's Bob Francis and the huge crowd in King William Street, Adelaide, to greet the Beatles in 1964. Inset: a 5AD Top 40 chart from that year, with the Beatles dominating, and featuring station announcers Eldon Crouch, Bob Francis and Graeme Edwin.
A key figure in getting the Beatles (not originally scheduled to visit Adelaide) to the city in 1964 was Bob Francis, DJ and later general manager, of radio station 5AD. A petition started by Francis, to get the Beatles to Adelaide, hoped for 3,000 signatures. It got 70,000.
Adelaide music promoters Kym Bonython and Ron Tremaine lent their support to the campaign. Tremaine took the petition to Beatles tour organiser Kenn Brodziak in Melbourne. Brodziak had four “spare” concerts for the tour, with 7000-seat venues in Melbourne, Brisbane and Sydney to use. Adelaide only had a 3000-seats venue.
After two days of failing to convince Brodziak, Tremaine resorted to family links: father-in-law Tom Morris who worked for John Martin’s department store in Adelaide. Morris approached John Martin’s owner Ian Hayward, who agreed to put up £28,000 to secure the Beatles’ Adelaide concerts. Under the deal, Brodziak took the gross of the four concerts and John Martin’s paid for accommodation, marketing, staffing Centennial Hall and the booking office.
The Beatles were met with their largest reception of 300,000 from Adelaide Airport and along Anzac Highway to the CBD that came to a standstill. The Beatles played four record breaking concerts in the Centennial Hall at Wayville. The Beatles’ publicist Derek Taylor described the group’s 1964 visit to Adelaide as “the most startling yet manageable welcome we experienced in that breath-taking, record-breaking year. There were so many people of all ages and types reeling and arocking with joy that it felt as good as good can be.”
5AD, with 5KA became a Top 40 pop music player in the 1960s, also giving valuable exposure to local artists who were shunned in Sydney and Melbourne.
The Beatles arrived in a year when the Adelaide University Jazz Club , headed by Bob Lott (later a pop promoter), still banned rock music from the campus. Otherwise Adelaide youth pop music was divided into 1950s rock’n’roll (led by Barry McAskill and the Drifters, who had taken over the old Palais big-band ballroom on North Terrace with the Teensville Casual Club) and instrumental surf bands such as Bruce Reddick and the Taymen.
