“ ‘Ten more seconds!’ A ghastly howl wells up from the hall, no one is sitting any longer. Here they are, the longhaired lads from Liverpool. Girls burst into tears; they shake their heads and yell obsessively. Boys climb on top of each other’s shoulders, rip their shirts and crawl across the floor. Blokker is under the spell of The Beatles.”

Journalist Paul van Beckum vividly and strikingly described this unique event of madness and hysteria. The Beatles perform a show in the afternoon and another in the evening, in the Op Hoop van Zegen auction hall in Blokker.  The venue collects nearly 40,000 guilders in sales.  However, the afternoon concert is not sold out, due to distribution problems. By contrast in the evening the hall is filled up in every nook and cranny with 7,000 visitors, the audience surprisingly made up of more boys than anywhere else in the world.

The energetic opening song I Saw Her Standing There set the crowd in motion with its up-tempo rhythm. All My Loving, I Want To Hold Your Hand, She Loves You, Twist And Shout all followed. Then Long Tall Sally and Roll Over Beethoven worked the audience up even more. The final song is their new hit Can’t Buy Me Love. John Lennon, Paul McCartney and George Harrison literally turn the place upside down. Jimmie Nicol is the enthusiastic and energetic stand-in for Ringo Starr, who had fallen ill.

Young stars in their early twenties amongst West Frisian chrysanthemums, on a stage made of auction crates, swinging like mad. The audience went crazy. The yelling girls, some fainting, drowning out the music. Blokker is bubbling with energy.