Impresario Career
Bernstein helped start the British Invasion by bringing The Beatles over to the United States from Britain. They played at Carnegie Hall after their appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. Bernstein also booked them at Shea Stadium, a concert that Bernstein described as "inaudible." During the Beatles Shea concert, Bernstein had the phrase "The Rascals are coming!" displayed on the Shea Stadium scoreboard. "I had met the Rascals in the summer of '65; I put their name up on the scoreboard (at Shea) - 'The Rascals are coming! The Rascals are coming!' A lot of people who hadn't seen pictures of them thought they were a black group. I sensed something big about them."
He worked with the Rascals for five years, helping along their rise from obscurity, changing their name from "Young Rascals" to "the Rascals" in an attempt to avoid controversy.
Bernstein also organized concerts for Lenny Kravitz, Frank Sinatra, Jimi Hendrix, Laura Branigan, and Sly & the Family Stone. In 1964, he brought many Israeli singers to the United States for their first major concerts, among them Shoshana Damari, Shaike Ophir and Yaffa Yarkoni, who appeared at Carnegie Hall a year after the Beatles.
Bernstein was the first to stage a rock show at Madison Square Garden.
Read more about this topic: Sid Bernstein
Famous quotes containing the word career:
“A black boxer’s career is the perfect metaphor for the career of a black male. Every day is like being in the gym, sparring with impersonal opponents as one faces the rudeness and hostility that a black male must confront in the United States, where he is the object of both fear and fascination.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)