LA Beatlefest (and Las Vegas)

As most people know the last Beatlefest ever in LA was around the year 2000.

It looks like they has two Beatlefests in Las Vegas to coincide with LOVE.

At this point it looks like there is only a Chicago and NY show for 2010.

At one point they had shows in multiple states in one year.

Why the unannounced name change?

Why no longer in the Southern and Western United States?

Beatlefest 2014

Pretty excited to see that Beatlefest will be coming back to CA for the first time since 2001. I know that they tried an experiment in Las Vegas around 2007 but this is different. It will be back in LA after many years away. Will be interesting to see what changes have been made. I heard there have been a lot.

Beatles Direct

With Beatles for Rockband and the recent addition of iTunes 2010 is truly the year of The Beatles... that's it!

You can't do that!

Oh yes, I went there :)

One of the trademarks that Beatlefest developed over the years was an end of the night sing along version of Hey Jude. If you have ever seen the promo film for Hey Jude all types of (sixties) people climb over the Beatles' stage as they sing the final 20 minutes (I mean five) of the song.

Because Beatlefest had a great sound alike band (and still do) this was something they tried to emulate. It was cute the first few times you saw and incredibly corny after that. Considering that Beatlefest had at least two performances a weekend (and three some years) we probably saw this 10 or 15 times over a 10 year period.

So being the highly charming (I mean obnoxious) High Schoolers that we were we decided to climb right on stage and wave our hands too. The idea was that the BFP's (Beatlefest Planners and Staff) would celebrate with the band as well as any celebrity guests (see below).

Since we knew most of the girls that worked there, they thought it was incredibly funny. But the gentleman that ran the place would go into a full on panic attack seeing three or four high school kids take the stage at once. The closest image that comes to mind is Ralph Machio in Karate Kid 1 or 2 (but not three)

The funny thing is that they had security to keep you from entering other ball rooms but never kept them near the stage.

The worlds largest Carl's Jr.

OK... I don't know if it was REALLY the world's biggest Carls Jr, but it was definitely quite large. The Bonaventure Hotel, where the LA Beatlefest was held for over 10 years, was practically a city unto itself. Once you checked in you really never had to leave.

I still remember seeing Ray Firestone (OK I didn't know his name - I had to Google it) eating pizza on the 5th floor (maybe the 4th) pizzeria. Later he would be in the closing moments of Jerry McGuire.

The Bonaventure has bridges that cross over to at least two other buildings. And four separate glass elevators that let you see all over downtown LA.

Maybe the coolest feature was an underground mall that linked to the outside. It had a small radio station that I am assuming is still there. There was and still is a really nice restaurant downstairs where you could have breakfast.

But the crowning achievement was a Carls Jr that would wrap around two thirds of the top floor. We used to think it was really funny (it's still is kind of funny) to place an order then walk to the very back of the restaurant. Late at night one of the poor workers would come wandering to the back of the restaurant wondering if we had already left.

I'm sure on more than one occasion somebody refused to bring us our food. As crazy as it seems that is probably one of the more normal stories of what took place there.

Who is Harry Nilsson?

You can pick up pretty much any book about The Beatles and read something about Harry Nilsson. But in the early 80's he had been out of the spotlight for several years. We had probably read about his adventures with John Lennon in Los Angeles. But the first time we met him in the lobby of the Bonaventure Hotel it went something like this:

Harry - Something extremely flattering (like you're an Angel) to the not quite eighteen year old girl next to me.

Harry - You look alright (to me - I guess it was a compliment - LOL)

Harry - You look like one of those kids I knew in High School to my friend (which was funny because he was ONE of those type of kids).

At the time I had no idea that he sang the theme to the Courtship of Eddie's Father. A song I had heard a million times already at that point. Later I heard him sing the opening song to You Got Mail and Without You (a song that Mariah Carey made famous much later). It was hard to put the party animal image that he projected at the time with the soaring voice I would later hear in many songs.

The next time we chatted he was much more sedate and manning a booth for gun control. But that is one of dozens of memories from Beatlefest I will never forget.

BEATLEFEST 2010

So what exactly is Beatlefest? As far as I can tell their goal was to bridge Beatle Fans with Beatle PLAYERS. No not people that actually played in the Beatles (although Pete Best actually did show up once). But people that had access to and worked with the Beatles. A goal they did accomplish fairly well. A partial list that I can remember without looking would include:

1) Cynthia Lennon
2) Astrid Kirschner
3) Harry Nilsson
4) Mike McCartney
5) Various members of the Rutles

The reaction of the surviving Beatles? It seems like they hated it (LOL). Paul McCartney kind of dissed the ABC on air talent when he mentioned he was that year's host (or maybe it was KLOS). And Ringo also made a negative comment on an on air interview that we all listened to live in the main ballroom of the event (a fact that was conveniently swept under the rug). Oh well! We had fun which is all that counts. But that's a story for another day.