Footnotes

On August 29, 1966, the Beatles flew to San Francisco from Los Angeles to perform their last ever live concert at Candlestick Park. On that day, after arriving at San Francisco International Airport at 5.30 pm, the bus took the band and their entourage to Candlestick Park, home of the San Francisco Giants baseball team. The locker rooms had been set up as a dressing room and dining area, with local caterers Simpson's providing the food. Local Radio DJ, Gene Nelson, recalled the scene 'The dressing room was chaos. There were loads of people there. The press tried to get passes for their kids and the singer Joan Baez was in there...they were having a party in there.' At some point in the time the band had before going on stage, the Beatles sat down to dinner with Joan Baez and others, to eat around this tablecloth, doodling and writing on the cloth in between eating their food. As the scene unfolded around the table, the band were experiencing mixed feelings of relief and celebration. The significance of that night was not lost on the band and Lennon and McCartney both carried cameras on to the stage with them to record the moment and McCartney asked NEMS Press Officer, Tony Barrow, to make a rudimentary tape recording of the concert. As Paul McCartney recalls 'By Candlestick Park it was like, 'Don't tell anyone, but this is probably our last gig.'

This tablecloth has been the subject of many stories and recollections about that night, both contemporaneous and recently. In a review of the concert by William Chapin published in the Chronicle the following day on August 30, 1966, there is a first hand account of the scene backstage: 'While they waited their turn on stage, they sat in the visitor's dressing room - unmindful of the roaring crowd outside - doodling artistically and talking quietly. They all had Pentels - those Japanese marking pens. John Lennon drew an elaborate yellow sun on the tablecloth. Paul McCartney and George Harrison drew what one observer called "psychedelic drawings" on foolscap - McCartney's flower-like, Harrison's a face - and Ringo Starr drew a small face inside a paper match folder.' And in an article in the San Francisco Chronicle published on August 31, 1966, Herb Caen's column alluded to that evening: 'Joe Vilardi of Simpson's Catering made off with THE souvenir of The Beatles' visit to Candlestick: the tablecloth upon which Paul, John, George, Ringo and Joan Baez doodled all sorts of wondrous designs, and autographed same. It was Joe's tablecloth in the first place, since he catered the backstage food...' And in the Chronicle on August 14, 2014, the night of Paul McCartney's concert at Candlestick Park almost 50 years later, journalist Lynn Ludlow, who was assigned to interview the Beatles for the Examiner that night, recalls 'All I can remember now from the Beatles' interview is the sight of these semi-arrogant young celebrities, taking colored markers and embellishing the caterer's linen tablecloth with acid-inspired doodles...' Jim Marshall was the sole photographer allowed in to the locker room and he documented the events that night in a series of photographs showing the band sitting at the table, doodling and chatting.

The owner of this tablecloth is the Grandson of Joe Vilardi, who owned Simpson's Catering. After the concert, Vilardi proudly displayed it in his storefront window in San Francisco until one day his window was smashed and the tablecloth stolen. Fast forward to 2022 when the owner was contacted by someone who was in possession of the tablecloth after her brother was given it in lieu of a debt in the 1970s and the tablecloth was happily given back to the rightful owner.

Photograph Courtesy of Jim Marshall Photography LLC.