Washington Coliseum

In January, 2013, Bryan and I visited the old Washington Coliseum, formerly known as the Uline Arena. It is located in Washington, D.C. in an area known as "NoMa", formerly known as "Swampoodle". But. WHY???? What follows is the entire story, with LOTS of photos.

Let's go back to the beginning of the story...

My fascination with this famous old building began in the 1980s. Why? I am a Beatles fan and have been since they first came to the United States in February, 1964. The Beatles arrived on Friday, February 7 and were greeted at the airport by thousands of fans and hundreds of journalists. Upon getting into the limousine and turning on the radio, they heard a running commentary about their visit. "They're now heading toward New York from the airport!"

After spending the rest of that day and Saturday giving phone interviews to radio stations from their suite at The Plaza Hotel, they made their first live appearance on US television on The Ed Sullivan Show at 8:00 PM on February 9.

With Ed Sullivan on the February 9, 1964 show. Compliments of the Smithsonian website.

Even though I was only six at the time, I remember it like it happened a couple of months ago. After two months of cold winter weather and the depressing sadness that followed the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, I remember that suddenly, everyone—from the kids in my kindergarten class to the teachers to my parents and everyone else— were talking about The Beatles. Suddenly, out of nowhere, they were all over the place. People were talking about them on the news and their records were always on the radio. It was the biggest thing that ever happened in my life, and the lives of everyone else who was around back then, as well.

And then, The Ed Sullivan Show. I can still remember plopping down in front of the great big klunky GE floor-model television set—which was about as big as a washing machine—and watching. And they didn't disappoint! The show attracted 73-million viewers and was, at the time, the most watched program in the history of television. After this, nothing would ever be the same again and everybody knew it. The British Invasion had begun.

Two days later, The Beatles hopped on a train and traveled to Washington, D.C. for their very first U.S. concert.

The Washington Coliseum marquee, in color. This photo was taken between 1960 - 1962 when the Washington Tapers played in the American Basketball League. Compliments of the Vimeo website which has a great short documentary about the Coliseum.

Fast forward about twenty years. I was working in radio in Wilmington, NC. My roommate, Steve Stark, worked with me at WGNI-FM and was also an avid Beatles fan. I finally was earning some money and, prompted by many late night conversations about The Beatles, began buying and reading books about them. I later moved to Asheville, NC to work at WKSF "Kiss" FM and continued reading as many Beatles books as I could find. Also, thanks to the proliferation of VHS home video tape players, many Beatles-related tapes—their movies, concerts, and other footage—were becoming available and I began collecting and watching those as well.

In 1988, right about the time I got married, I walked into the Winn-Dixie grocery store in North Raleigh and saw a big rack of discounted VHS tapes and started looking through them and found three Beatles tapes that I previously didn't have. One was the Shea Stadium concert from August, 1965. One was the Tokyo concert from 1966. And the other was the 1964 concert in Washington, D.C. I bought them all.

The Washington concert was interesting. The Beatles were on a platform in the middle of a coliseum with people sitting all around them. Every song, they moved the mikes and turned Ringo's drum riser around to a new side so that all the fans could see them. Though everyone was going crazy, people were very well behaved. There were no incidents of fans trying to jump up on the stage, though they certainly could have. Easily.

The other noteworthy thing about this performance was, The Beatles had no throwback monitors. Only a few amplifiers on stage with them that hardly looked like enough for them to be adequately heard throughout the entire venue. Yet they put on ONE HELL of a show. They were having the time of their lives. All too soon, they would sour on live performances with fans screaming so loudly they couldn't even hear the music. But not this night. They were hot.

In retrospect, after having seen many of their later performances, I honestly think this is one of their very best. If you've never seen this concert, you owe it to yourself to watch. Hopefully the restored, expanded version will be in theaters and on DVDs soon. In the meantime, you can still find the original edit on VHS tapes. Excerpts appear in The Beatles Anthology. And there's a documentary about the train trip from New York to DC called The Beatles: The First U.S. Visit that also includes excerpts from this show.

Carroll James - WWDC, Dean Griffith - WPGC, Jack Fisher - WEAM, Jack Alix - WEEL

But that's not all of the story as it relates to me, personally. Rewind back to the early 1960s.

In Roanoke, VA the top-rated radio station in 1964 was WROV. During the fall of that year, WROV welcomed a new disc jockey named Jack Fisher. Jack developed an instant repoire with the morning man, Fred Frelantz, and soon they were the two biggest stars in Roanoke radio.

Read more about WROV and Jack's arrival on The WROV History Website. Go to the above address, click "ENTER HERE" and then to "1964-1966 The Heyday - P2" on the menu on the left.

Jack and Fred, then later Bart Prater, Dan Alexander and Larry Bly, and the others became my idols and they are why I decided that one day, I was going to be ON THE RADIO and hopefully work for WROV. This dream became reality at the end of 1979. Finally, I was a WROV DJ.

But the biggest surprise came one night when I was at the station and walked around the corner and there he was. Live. JACK FISHER. He'd come by the station that night to use the production room. It could have been Frank Sinatra standing there and to me, it wouldn't have been a bigger deal. I think I just stood there and stared at him for about 30 seconds. I think Jack thought "Who is this lunatic and how did he get into the building?"

A few months after meeting Jack, he and Fred decided to reunite and do a monthly Saturday afternoon reprisal of their old 1966 two-man radio show on WROV. And I was the guy who worked with them at the station, finding the records they wanted, keeping the programming and transmitter logs, and such. It was during this time that I really started to get to know Jack. I've been friends with him since.

But we lost touch for a while when I left Roanoke for Wilmington in 1983.

This picture, screen-captured from the YouTube version of the performance (which has since been removed) shows all four Beatles and all four of the DJ MCs. I'll identify each, below.

Fast forward all the way up to 2004 (Jesus. We're doing so much rewinding and fast forwarding that we're going to wear out the tape.) The WROV guys began getting back together, having reunion parties, and creating the WROV History Website. After more than twenty years I was back in touch with Jack and in one of many conversations he mentioned that he'd introduced Paul at the very first U.S. Beatles concert in early 1964 while working at WEAM.

According to Jack, each of the four "Top 40" stations in town were asked to send one DJ to the show. Each was given a Beatle wig to wear and each was to introduce one Beatle. In the restored version of the film, we see Carroll James (WWDC) introduce Ringo. Then there appears to be an edit and we don't see the other three. But we know from Jack that he introduced Paul. And from their positions on the stage I'd guess that Dean Griffith (WPGC) introduced George and Jack Alix (WEEL) introduced John. Here's how Jack remembers that night:

In early 1964 while I was doing the 7PM to Midnight shift at WEAM in Washington, D.C. we began to hear rumblings of new music taking Europe by storm. You see, there was an English group out of Liverpool who had created what was called the "Mersey Beat" after the river of the same name that ran near the town.

By now most are familiar with the Beatles story. How they conquered America with their music and how they were at the forefront in what was known then as the British Invasion. Well, once again I was in the right place at the right time.

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In January, we started playing a little ditty called "I Want To Hold Your Hand." This Beatle classic went to number one in what seemed like an hour and a half. Soon the floodgates were open. Gerry and the Pacemakers had "Ferry Cross The Mersey", Peter and Gordon "A World Without Love", then came the Dave Clark Five, Chad and Jeremy, the Animals, Dusty Springfield and an endless list of British hits. It seemed that if you had a British accent and could play a guitar and drums you were an instant rock and roll icon. Liverpool became the land of legend.

As luck would have it the very first live Beatle concert in America was scheduled for the Washington Coliseum on a Tuesday following their first nationwide TV appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show. The Sullivan show reported an audience of over 75 million viewers that night.

Carroll James of WWDC. Carroll was the first DJ in the USA to play "I Want To Hold Your Hand" which, according to legend, was given to him by a listener who brought it home from a visit to England.

The Beatles could not fly into Washington for their show because of a blizzard that had hit the northeast. They arrived by train and were mobbed, I later found out, when they got to Union Station. They also had to stop by the British Embassy for a gig they were not too crazy about. Here is where the story gets interesting.

Harry Averill the station manager at WEAM had told me that I would be one of the MC’S of this show. There would be four DJ’S from various radio stations, each to introduce a Beatle. Now remember I had seen Rick Nelson in his prime and had worked with just about every major rock act except Elvis in my days at Steel Pier. Quite frankly, myself and the other DJ’S at WEAM were a bit skeptical about this new English thing. One guy even called them the equivalent of four Everly Brothers.

It was snowing real hard that night and—are you ready for this—I did not want to go to do the show and tried to beg off and trade with other DJ’S . They did not want to go into DC in a blizzard either. I got a cab in Arlington and started on my way. Washington was deserted and quite beautiful with the snow falling all around. There was no one on the streets and I was feeling sorry for myself for having to take this trip. And then we turned the corner to go to the Washington Coliseum. There were thousands of kids in the street, it was—to put it mildly—very surreal. Salvador Dali would have been proud.

Dean Griffith of WPGC. According to The WPGC Tribute Site "Dean Griffith" was a "house name" of the station and there were four "Dean Griffiths" over the years. This one was Dean #1, whose real name was Dean Anthony.

The Washington show was a tough one for The Beatles. It was set up in kind of like a boxing ring and they were playing in the round. This meant that they had to go a different side of the stage everytime they sang a new song.They had to keep moving the mikes, it was very chaotic, and the noise was so loud you could hardly hear them play. Now, if you have ever seen any footage of live performances of The Beatles, you probably have seen some of this one. It was being filmed for later playback in theatres across the USA. George Harrison had mentioned in a teenage magazine that The Beatles were crazy for jellybeans. The kids who came to the show were throwing them all over the stage. To get around on stage, chains and snow tires were recommended.

It is interesting to note some of the conversations we had with The Beatles back stage. As I recall they were very nice and respectful to all the media despite the clamor for their attention, They expressed their gratitude and thanked the jocks for playing their records. I think it was John Lennon who said, they hoped this thing would last for a year to two.

When it was over instead of heading back to my furnished room alone, I went back to the station. As I walked in with about six inches of snow on my head some of the other skeptical DJ’S were there. They cracked up when I told them I thought The Beatles were going to be bigger than Elvis. In about two months 80% of the top tunes were British. The Beatles of course went on to create some of the most memorable and different popular music ever done. That was just my first encounter with English music royalty, there were many more in the years to come as the 60’s rocked on with me in the air chair.

Jack Fisher of WEAM. Thinking that The Beatles were just a temporary "fad," none of the WEAM DJ's wanted to MC the show. Jack was stuck with it because he was the "low man on the totem pole." Little did he know!

After hearing all of this from Jack, I remembered that I had this very same Washington, DC concert on that VHS tape and immediately pulled it out and watched it. I was very disappointed to find that the segment where the DJs introduced The Beatles was NOT on the tape, which showed The Beatles entering the coliseum, walking up the stairs to the stage, and starting to play "Roll Over, Beethoven."

WTF? I knew Jack didn't dream up all of this, yet I didn't see any of it on the tape. I then rewound it and replayed it several times and realized that there had been an edit. This explained everything. It also made me very sad. One of my friends was on stage at the first U.S. Beatles concert and the footage of this had apparently been left on the editing room floor. Alas.

And that's where it stood for the next eight years. Then, during the Summer of 2012, word spread of a movie being released to select theaters across the country, one night only, called "The Beatles - The Lost Concert." Tickets were sold online and my wife bought three—for me, for her, and for my son who was 16 and a guitar player with a love of classic rock and roll music.

Jack Alix of WEEL. "JA the DJ" grew up in DC and became the nighttime DJ on WEEL in 1960. He became a fixture on DC radio in the 1960s. He later hosted the Beatles concert at DC Stadium in August, 1966.

I did some research on this film and learned that it was, in fact, the 2/11/1964 concert at Washington Coliseum. And it was advertised as being "Fully Restored with Additional Footage." FINALLY, I thought. Maybe this version will contain the entire introduction featuring the four DJs. Then they CANCELLED the showing of the film!!!!!!

But for a short while, the original film appeared on YouTube. I saw it and IT DID contain the footage of Jack and the others introducing The Beatles. I watched it and did the screen captures you see on this page. Yes! They are there, and when this film is finally released, you will see them..! That's when I became fascinated with the old Washington Coliseum.

Four months later, Pres. Barack Obama won reelection. The day after, I was sitting in front of the TV watching his jet, Air Force 1, land in Washington after returning him and his family from the election night festivities in Chicago. I was drinking my second large Rogue Dead Guy Ale, and the live video stream was being described by Rev. Al Sharpton, who said "...and he will be inaugurated for the second time on January 21, 2013."

That's when I had the idea to go with my wife and kid to attend the festivities. I ran downstairs and told my wife "Book us a hotel—anywhere near a Metro Station—starting a few days before, and lasting until a few days after the inauguration. She did, and we started planning our trip. We knew there would be about a million other people in town and most popular tourist sites would be packed. So I started thinking about "what other tourist attractions—off the beaten path that most tourists wouldn't know about—can we go see on this trip?

And that's when I thought about the old Washington Coliseum.