Sept. 3, 1964 - Thousands of teenaged girls stormed the Indiana Fairgrounds Coliseum and grandstand tonight and screamed and screamed and screamed for their beloved Beatles.
They had looks of rapture or of anguish, they stared entranced, or they wept. And they screamed and screamed and screamed.
Attendance at the night show was reported as 16,900, and the two-show gross was listed as $127,000. Of this, the Beatles’ “take” was a little less than $100,000 after Indiana collected an estimated $2,000 in adjusted gross income tax, an official said.
Before the shows, several thousand youngsters crowded around the west entrance of the Coliseum and waited an hour or more for the Beatles to arrive.
They had been staying at the Speedway Motel, protected by several hundred police.
At the Fairgrounds, more than 100 police poured from the doors minutes before the British rock ’n’ rollers arrived, forced the crowd back, and locked arms to make a path for the State Police motorcade.
One by one, the Beatles ran from the cars to the safety of the Coliseum.
“I touched Ringo’s hair, I touched Ringo’s hair,” shrieked a girl who ran from the crowd holding her hand in the air, as if protecting a holy relic.
The cars in which the Beatles arrived at the fairgrounds were all but attacked by souvenir-hungry teenagers. They broke window glass, tore loose mirrors, and damaged upholstery of official cars, police reported.
Half a dozen girls fainted during the two-hour show, but their ailment was more hysterical than medical.
On the whole, the crowd was remarkably well-behaved.
A cordon of police surrounded the stage, ready for a stampede, when the Beatles finally came on stage. But the crowd only screamed. When the shrieks died, they rose again whenever one of the Beatles moved. The only sound that came through the steady, fantastic shriek was the beat of Ringo’s drums.
The mass shriek sent one little boy, who looked about four years old, running in panic from the Coliseum, his mother right behind him.
In the aisles around the arena, the adults who were in theoretical charge of it all held their hands to their ears.
A souvenir seller, Abner Davis, said “I Hate the Beatles” buttons were his best seller.
“I sell a lot of them to teenage boys,” he said. “Me, I like the Beatles. They’re making me rich.”
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