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| The Beatles in Seattle Center Coliseum, 1964 |
Tape Op has a fun interview with Glenn White, who recounts his career in sound, including amplifying the Beatles during their Aug. 21, 1964, performance in the Seattle Center Coliseum.
A snippet:
How long did you work at the Seattle Center? What was your most significant experience there?
I was there for five years [1963-1968]. The most memorable experience was when I was doing the sound for The Beatles in 1964 in the Seattle Center Coliseum. The Beatles sent two guys from New York ahead of them. They asked me about the sound system, and they said, "Can you augment the system to make it just as loud as possible. Getting the music over the noise of the audience is going to be really difficult." And I said, "Well yeah, we have quite a bit of equipment around here, so we can add to the system." All of our amplifiers in those days were 80 watt tube amplifiers. So I added three Altec/Lansing 300 Hz two cell horns (model 203, on 288 C Altec drivers). I put two of those, one on top of the other, facing one of them back to cover the far end of the auditorium, the other one facing down a little bit to cover the far end of the main floor. Then we had some 800 Hz horns, also Altecs. They were 805s, two rows of four cells each, and I had one of them pointed right down on the stage so that The Beatles could hear themselves and also cover the audience close to the stage. I had to scrounge amplifiers from other locations around the Seattle Center and put them in there. Each of those horns was driven by its own 80 watt amplifier and the woofers were JBL 15" woofers.
How did you overcome all that screaming?
We didn't. During the screaming, the sound system was inaudible... It was a big wave of screaming and then that would die down until they could hear a few words and then there came another wave of screaming and so on for the entire twenty-two minutes The Beatles were on stage. I used EV655C microphones for the four performers. I used one mic for Ringo and his drums. Those are omni directional dynamic microphones. Very good quality dynamic microphones. The Beatles were really intrigued by that. They said, "These microphones are so small. How come they're so small?" I said, "They're small because they sound better when they're small." "Oh is that so, really? No kidding!" Ringo tapped the mic with his drum stick! He'd say, "Is this really working?"
How did you deal with the hysteria?
I just put in ear plugs and tolerated it.
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