Fab Four Exhibits, LLC

Grammy Museum Exhibit

'Ladies and Gentlemen...The Beatles!' to hit
Newark, NJ in November

 

Friday, October 21, 2022

By Karu F. Daniels

New York Daily News

 

New York - Beatlemania is back.
 

The Grammy Museum Experience Prudential Center in Newark, New Jersey, will present an exhibition on how the Fab Four invaded the U.S. and changed pop culture forever, the venue announced Monday.
 

“Ladies and Gentlemen … The Beatles!” will run from Nov. 18 to June 25 and focus on the period from early 1964 to mid-1966, when the Liverpool-formed band caused pop music pandemonium in America. The curated exhibition will feature interactive displays and pop culture artifacts that previously were shown throughout other U.S. cities and Japan.
 

Clothing worn by band members – such as Paul McCartney’s jacket from the 1965 Shea Stadium concert – and a drumming lesson by Ringo Starr will be shown, alongside handwritten set lists, gold records and concert contracts.
 

Adding an educational component, Beatles historian Ken Womack has been tapped to conduct interviews with May Pang, who will preview a documentary about her relationship with John Lennon titled “The Lost Weekend: A Love Story” on Nov. 18.
 

Other interview subjects will include Allan Kozinn and Adrian Sinclair, co-authors of “The McCartney Legacy (Volume 1: 1969-73)” on Dec. 14.
 

English historian biographer Mark Lewisohn, whose comprehensive Beatles books include “The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions” will be featured March 30.
 

“Our programs will provide audiences with active opportunities to engage with key figures associated with the band’s timeless story,” Womack said in Monday’s announcement.
 

Conceived by the Grammy Museum at L.A. Live and Fab Four Exhibits, “Ladies and Gentlemen … ” takes its name from when Ed Sullivan introduced the British trailblazers to American TV audiences on Feb. 9, 1964.

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Beatles' New York debut, Shea Stadium concert among

highlights at new Prudential Center Grammy Museum exhibit

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By Peter Sblendorio

New York Daily News

Nov 19, 2022 at 2:34 pm

 

A new Beatles exhibit shows much more than a day in the life of the Fab Four.
 

“Ladies and Gentlemen...The Beatles!” at the Prudential Center’s Grammy Museum Experience in Newark explores the English band’s unprecedented popularity in the United States, including many milestone moments in New York City.
 

The display highlights Paul McCartney, John Lennon, Ringo Starr and George Harrison’s arrival at John F. Kennedy Airport in 1964, their debut performance on “The Ed Sullivan Show” and their iconic 1965 concert at Shea Stadium through a collection of artifacts and interactive experiences.
 

“They landed at Kennedy Airport after JFK was assassinated,” said Mark Conklin, the museum’s director of artist relations and programming, who organized the exhibit that opened Friday. “The country was in mourning, and here was their triumphant [arrival] on our shores at Kennedy Airport, which I think was — not just for New York but for the country — a great lift.”
 

“Of all the places they could land and should land, of course it was New York City,” Conklin said. “It was where they made their mark, and it’s from there where everybody in the country and the rest of the world saw them.”
 

McCartney’s jacket from the Shea Stadium gig, original hand-written concert set lists and a recreation of the “Ed Sullivan Show” set are among the attractions at the exhibit, which focuses on the peak years of the Beatlemania craze in the U.S.
 

The collection won’t let diehards down, Conklin says.
 

“This exhibit is so chock full of details and the story behind their taking America between 1964 and 1966,” Conklin said. “There’s so many things to see. You could spend so much time here looking at all the artifacts. It’s a Beatles fan’s dream come true.”
 

Scheduled to run through June 25, the exhibit will play host to talks with Beatles experts and insiders. Friday’s opening night included a public conversation with May Pang, a former assistant of Lennon who dated the musician amid his separation from Yoko Ono during an 18-month stretch known as “The Long Weekend.”
 

The event included a screening of Pang’s upcoming documentary, “The Lost Weekend: A Love Story,” about her professional and personal relationship with Lennon.
 

“They’ll realize that maybe my time with John was just not a weekend,” Pang, 72, told the Daily News of what viewers will learn.

“I’ve held this story for so long,” she said. “It was just there, and it was a part of my life. People were just telling it, and finally I said, I have to tell my side of the story and take back my narrative.”
 

The Beatles released 13 studio albums from 1963 to 1970, spawning a record 20 chart-topping songs in the U.S. including “I Want To Hold Your Hand,” “Hey Jude,” “Come Together” and “Let It Be.”
 

“Almost every record they did was something different,” said the Manhattan-born Pang, who began working with Lennon in New York City in 1970. “All of a sudden there’s orchestral stuff that came in. Then there’s all the psychedelic. Each time you heard something, it was something new.”
 

Their songs changed American culture forever, says Conklin.
 

“In essence, they wrote our classical music,” Conklin said. “In the same way people are still listening to Mozart and are still listening to Bach, and they probably always will, I think it’s the same way with the Beatles.”

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Beatles' early years are focus of Grammy Museum
Experience Prudential Center exhibit

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By Jay Lustig
NJArts.com

November 23, 2022

 

Nov. 25, 2021 saw the release of the revelatory documentary “The Beatles: Get Back,” a nearly eight-hour look at recording sessions for the Let It Be album.

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Nearly a year later — or, to put it a different way, more than 50 years since the group broke up — Grammy Museum Experience Prudential Center is offering another way to immerse yourself in the band, with the opening of an exhibition titled “Ladies and Gentlemen … The Beatles!” It officially opened on Nov. 18 and will run through June 25.

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It focuses on a very different period of Beatles history than “Get Back” did, offering many artifacts of the culturally earthshaking “Beatlemania” era of early 1964 to mid-1966. These include guitars, concert contracts, newspaper clips, hand-written setlists and lyrics, clothing worn by Paul McCartney (at Shea Stadium) and Ringo Starr (in the movie “A Hard Day’s Night”), single and album covers (including the infamously gruesome “Butcher Cover,” rejected for Yesterday and Today) and merchandise such as Beatles lunchboxes and coloring books.

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In one section of the exhibition, you can sit at a drum kit, don headphones and take a drumming lesson from Ringo Starr; another is made to look like a typical Beatles fan’s bedroom. A different area takes a close look at The Beatles’ only New Jersey show (at Convention Hall in Atlantic City in August 1964) and their stay, while there, at the city’s Lafayette Motor Inn.

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A mini-documentary zeroes in on the band’s initial, life-altering (for many who watched) appearance on television’s “The Ed Sullivan Show” in February 1964, with interviews of some of the staff members who worked on the show, met The Beatles behind the scenes, and witnessed the giddy excitement of the Beatles fans who attended.

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I think it’s safe to say that even a major Beatles fan will encounter something he or she has never seen before at this exhibition. And a young Beatles novice may get an inkling of why they mattered — and why the world of Beatles collecting has really become a fascinating phenomenon of its own, existing alongside the music.

 

Various special events are planned in conjunction with the exhibition’s time in Newark. I attended a reception on Nov. 17, the night before the exhibition’s official opening, that also featured a screening of “The Lost Weekend: A Love Story,” a documentary about May Pang’s relationship with John Lennon in the ’70s, and a discussion between Pang and Beatles expert Ken Womack. This was repeated on Nov. 18.

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Allan Kozinn and Adrian Sinclair, who have co-written a book titled “The McCartney Legacy (Volume 1: 1969-73),” will talk about it at the exhibition, Dec. 14. And the exhibition will bring Mark Lewisohn, whose books about The Beatles include “The Beatles: All These Years: Volume One – Tune In,” to White Eagle Hall in Jersey City, March 30, in conjunction with the March 31-April 2 Fest for Beatles Fans taking place at the Hyatt Regency in Jersey City.

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More special events may be announced later.

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'Ladies and Gentlemen...The Beatles!' exhibit coming to
Grammy Museum in Newark

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By Jim Beckerman
NorthJersey.com

October 18, 2022

 

Madness descended on America on Feb. 7, 1964. Literally, out of a clear blue sky.

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On that date, the Beatles arrived at Kennedy Airport in Queens — newly rechristened after the assassination of JFK less than four months before. To a nation still in mourning, the lads from Liverpool were just the pep pill America needed.

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"I always thought that was so interesting that's where they landed," said Mark Conklin, director of artist relations and programming at the Grammy Museum Experience Prudential Center in Newark.

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"Ladies and Gentlemen…The Beatles!," the new exhibit opening Friday, Nov. 18, recalls that intoxicating moment in 1964 — and all that followed.

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"To have that youthful hope, which is what JFK had brought to this country — to have that taken away and suddenly brought back to us, I think was extremely important to the country as a whole," Conklin said.

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With that first press conference at the airport, and then the Ed Sullivan shows that followed, the Beatles turned America upside down.

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There were Beatles wigs, dolls, bubble-gum cards. There were Beatles charms, hats, magazines. There were Beatles posters, plates, lunchboxes. There were Beatles badges, books, puppets. And of course there were the records themselves: "Please Please Me," "I Want to Hold Your Hand" and "She Loves You" blared out of every transistor radio.

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Beatlemania had arrived. And, says Conklin, it never really left.

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"I'm always amazed how many times I interview young artists who still cite the Beatles as the reason they started writing songs," he said. "It's almost hard to believe they're still having that kind of impact on music being made today."

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"Ladies and Gentlemen…The Beatles!", co-curated by the Grammy Museum and Fab Four Exhibits and running through June 25, 2023, recalls that momentous two-year period in the mid-1960s when The Fab Four changed the landscape of pop culture forever.

 

Lots to see

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Setlists, contracts, lyric sheets, Paul McCartney's 1965 Shea Stadium jacket, a gold record from the Capitol label, lots of photos and other authentic souvenirs will be on display, along with such cutting-edge attractions as an interactive virtual drumming lesson from Ringo, one of rock's best known and most under-appreciated drummers.

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"Growing up, they were the reason I became a musician and a songwriter," Conklin said. "For me, personally and professionally, this is the most exciting exhibit we could ever have."

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A series of public programs featuring such Beatles experts as May Pang (Friday, Nov. 18), Allan Kozinn and Adrian Sinclair (Wednesday, Dec. 14), and Mark Lewisohn (Thursday, March 30, 2023), hosted by Beatles historian Ken Womack and produced in collaboration with Wonderwall Communications, will keep the show fresh over the coming months.

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"[It] affords visitors to the museum with a unique window into the rise of Beatlemania,” Womack said.

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Go: Grammy Museum Experience Prudential Center, 165 Mulberry St., Newark, open from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Thursdays through Sundays on non-event days, and 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. on event days, $7 to $10.; 973-757-6300 or grammymuseumexp.org.

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An inside look at the Beatles Exhibit at the
Grammy Museum Experience in Newark

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Written By Diana Cooper
The Hoboken Girl

January 8, 2023

 

The Grammy Museum Experience recently opened The Beatles exhibit and it has become one of the hottest attractions in Newark at the Prudential Center — apart from going to see the New Jersey Devils. Taking a stroll inside the exhibit, Beatles fans take a trip down memory lane, looking back at clothing worn by the band, photographs, and memorabilia from the 60s. Plus, there’s a lot to do at the exhibit with the interactive displays. Read on to learn more about The Beatles exhibit in Newark.
 

What’s Inside
 

The “Ladies and Gentlemen…The Beatles!” exhibit was curated by the Grammy Museum and Fab Four Exhibits. The Newark location drew inspiration from the Los Angeles Grammy Museum, which previously had the same exhibit. The exhibit opened on Friday, November 18th, following the opening night reception where May Pang, a former music executive who worked for John Lennon and Yoko Ono as a personal assistant, made a special appearance.
 

“We know how important The Beatles are to not only part of this country, but everywhere, and so it was a no-brainer for us. We are very excited to have the exhibit here,” Mark Conklin, Director of Artist Relations and Programming at GRAMMY Museum Experience, told Hoboken Girl.
 

Mark provided HG with an exclusive look inside the exhibit. He pointed out the organization of the exhibit: “It starts with the influences case, then it moves to the origins and some of the early newspaper clippings, and so forth. And then it gets into the crazy Beatlemania side of things like this Woolworth’s case is really interesting. There are all original collectibles that young people would’ve had in the 1960s, like, original licorice that hasn’t been eaten.”

 

Some of the most interesting objects in the exhibit include the suit that Ringo Starr wore in A Hard Day’s Night, George Harrison’s handwritten set list on his guitar head for the band’s last performance in San Francisco, B.B. King’s Lucille guitar, Paul McCartney’s jacket worn at Shea Stadium, and Buddy Holly’s death certificate from 1959.

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To highlight The Beatles’ influence on New Jersey, there is a special Atlantic City section that provides a recap of their show at the Convention Hall on August 30, 1964. In addition, there is an entire tour map with ticket stubs depicting the price of tickets at that given time — some were only $2!

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Instagrammable Moments

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Mark told Hoboken Girl, “There are a lot of little details and lots of little things. If you’re a Beatles fan, you can spend two hours just looking at every little thing. There’s a little bit of something for everybody.”

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Throughout the exhibit, there are various Instagrammable moments where visitors can snap photos or videos for social media. For one, there is a replica of the Ed Sullivan stage with instruments the band would’ve used to play.

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There is also a replica of what a teenage fan’s bedroom might’ve looked like in the 1960s to show how times have changed. Next to that, visitors can take a drum lesson with Ringo Starr or sing along to the band’s hits in a recording booth.

One of the biggest photo-opps takes place in front of an enlarged background of Abbey Road where visitors can reproduce the infamous album cover of the band walking across the street.

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Check It Out

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The Grammy Museum Experience is part of the Prudential Center and is located at 165 Mulberry Street in Newark, NJ. The hours of operation are Thursday through Sunday from 11AM to 6PM and on event days, the hours are 11 AM to 8PM. Tickets for adults cost $10 and children 2 and under are free.

“If you like music, the museum’s a great place to visit. It’s inexpensive, it’s accessible,” Mark added. “If you want to come to a concert or game here, what’s great is you can come to the museum, take the tour for 30 or 60 minutes and you can skip the line and go inside.”

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He added, “There are lots of university and school groups that come to visit. On the weekends, it’s people who want to come and enjoy a museum experience that looks and sounds great.”

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Visitors can stop at the gift shop on the way out and pick up Beatles items such as hoodies, T-shirts, DVDs, and other little odds and ends.

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The exhibit goes until June 2023. Previous exhibits included Bruce Springsteen, Whitney Houston, and Taylor Swift. For more information, visit grammymuseumexp.org.

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Grammy Museum Experience
Prudential Center presents

"Ladies and Gentlemen...The Beatles!"

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New Jersey Stage
October 18, 2022
Newark, New Jersey

 

GRAMMY Museum Experience Prudential Center announced their newest traveling exhibit, Ladies and Gentlemen…The Beatles! The exhibit runs from Friday, November 18, 2022, through June 25, 2023.
 

Curated by the GRAMMY Museum® and Fab Four Exhibits, Ladies and Gentlemen…The Beatles! brings visitors back to the early ‘60s when rock & roll was re-energized—some say saved—by four lads from Liverpool. The exhibit covers the period from early 1964 through mid-1966—the years Beatlemania ran rampant in America. During this time, the band affected nearly every aspect of pop culture, including fashion, art, advertising, media, and, of course, music. 
 

On display are many Beatles-related pop culture artifacts from the period, as well as original lyric sheets, clothing worn by the band, posters, photographs, interviews, interactive displays, and more. Ladies and Gentlemen…The Beatles! provides insight into how and why The Beatles impacted America in the 1960s—and beyond.
 

Tickets for the Ladies and Gentlemen…The Beatles! exhibit are available for purchase online, ranging from $7.00 to $10.00. GRAMMY Museum Experience Prudential Center is open Thursday through Sunday 11:00am to 6:00pm on non-event days and 11:00am to 8:00pm on event days.
 

“The Beatles remain an enduring musical force in our culture, nearly six decades after their first appearance on our shores,” said Mark Conklin, Director of Artist Relations and Programming at GRAMMY Museum Experience Prudential Center.  “As we celebrate our fifth anniversary at GRAMMY Museum Experience Prudential Center, we do so by honoring the legacy of four lads from Liverpool who changed the way we look at our world and ourselves.”