The cultural summer of 1964: the Beatles spent nine short hours in Montreal to give two short concerts

It is a passage which left its mark and which we still talk about today. Already immensely popular across the globe at the time, the Beatles came to give two short concerts at the Montreal Forum on September 8, 1964. An excited crowd, but far from hysteria, welcomed the four Englishmen to the Dorval airport in the afternoon. A look back at this day which went smoothly.

In 1964, the Beatles were already a sensation. The young British group had released three albums in just over a year: Please Please Me, With the Beatles And A Hard Day’s Night. By August of that year, the quartet embarked on a North American tour.

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A visit was planned to the Montreal Forum on September 8. And as tickets for the evening concert, which cost $4.50 to $5.50, sold out quickly, a second show was added in the afternoon.

After two performances at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto the day before, the Beatles arrived at the Dorval airport shortly after 2 p.m. Without missing a beat, the musicians headed towards the Forum. Around the Montreal Canadiens arena, there was less hysteria than expected. The authorities expected a riot, which was what had been seen in most of the North American cities that the Beatles had visited.

But in Montreal, the fans’ excitement was contained. It must be said that the rainy weather may have dampened the enthusiasm of some people. And September 8 also happened to be the first day back to school.

Death threats

The Beatles performed two concerts of less than 30 minutes each, to audiences of around 9,500 and 11,500, playing exactly the same 12 songs, including All My Loving, She Loves You And Can’t Buy Me Love.

Do the death threats made against Ringo Starr earlier in the afternoon explain these two hasty concerts? Still, the group was on its guard and at the end of the second concert, rather than going to sleep at the Queen Elizabeth as was planned, the musicians decided to take a plane to Florida. The Beatles never returned to Montreal again.

According to the Pointe-à-Callière museum, which in 2013 held an exhibition on the Beatles’ visit to Montreal, “this event is memorable and is part of the history of Quebec: the music of the Beatles will accompany the emancipation of an entire generation and the transformation of Quebec society in the 1960s, at the dawn of the Quiet Revolution.”