Eyewitness recounts Beatles’ arrival at Sea-Tac Airport
Sep 5, 2024, 5:00 AM
Ringo Starr, seen playing at the Seattle Center Coliseum, made quite an impression on Ned Hamlin, when Hamlin waved to the famous drummer as the Beatles left Sea-Tac Airport through a side fence on Aug. 21, 1964. (Photo by Timothy Eagan, courtesy of MOHAI)
(Photo by Timothy Eagan, courtesy of MOHAI)
As reported last month, Aug. 21 was the 60th anniversary of the Beatles’ first visit to Seattle. For this year’s anniversary, KIRO Newsradio went “granular” and looked at the route and the methods used by the Fab Four to get from their plane at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport (Sea-Tac Airport) to their room at the Edgewater Inn.
How did they do it? By sneaking out the west side of the airport through a maintenance gate and into a residential neighborhood and street that are no longer there – and which we dubbed “Beatlesville” and “Beatles Avenue.”
More from Feliks Banel: Searching for Beatlesville and Beatles Avenue on 60th anniversary of band’s Seattle visit
A gentleman who was born and raised in Seattle but who now lives in Sun Valley, Idaho, read the story online and got in touch. He was there at Sea-Tac Airport on that summer day back in 1964.
Eyewitness, friend try to see The Beatles at the airport
Ned Hamlin is an architect and a Vietnam veteran in his late 70s. He shared with KIRO Newsradio some terrific personal details to help fill in what was reported – and speculated on a bit – last month.
Back in August 1964, Hamlin and his friend Jim Folsom both loved the Beatles, whose music they heard played all the time on KJR, and who Hamlin had been mesmerized by earlier that year on KIRO TV on Ed Sullivan’s show. The Beatles, he says, inspired him to become a rock musician.
The two friends had just graduated from Chief Sealth High School that June. They didn’t have tickets to the show at the Coliseum (what’s now Climate Pledge Arena); so they decided on the spur of the moment to try and see the band’s arrival at Sea-Tac Airport.
MyNorthwest History: Icon extinguished as big blue flame neon sign leaves Seattle
Hamlin says they drove there in Folsom’s Volkswagen Bug convertible. They parked in the lot out front – there was no garage in those days – and rushed into the terminal with hundreds of other kids. Up they went to the old observation deck and stood there packed in like sardines – along with a few security guards on hand — to wait for the cheeky lads from Liverpool to drop from the sky.
And that’s when Ned Hamlin noticed something.
“I looked across the airport there, and I saw a few cars just directly across from the terminal, and it looked like some people standing around there,” Hamlin told KIRO Newsradio. “And so I went back to the security guard, and I said,’Hey, what’s going on over there on the other side of the runway?’ And he leaned down and whispered to me, ‘That’s where the Beatles are coming in.'”
New information prompts a quick change of plans
Armed with this insider information, Hamlin and Folsom quickly ran down the stairs and rushed back to Folsom’s car. From there, they navigated the Bug convertible over to the west side of the airport, to a spot that doesn’t exist anymore because of construction of the third runway.
It took some doing to find which road got them close to the fence and near to where they had seen the people and cars, but they quickly figured it out. Jim parked the Bug, and the two went and stood along the chain-link fence and near the gate with the other kids who were already there – maybe 50 strong at that point, but whose numbers were growing by the minute.
Not too much later, Ned looked up and saw the band’s plane – an old four-engine propeller-driven Lockheed Constellation the band had boarded for the trip from Las Vegas – coming down out of the blue late August sky. The excitement built as Hamlin, Folsom and the others on hand saw the plane taxi to within view of their fence-side perch. They watched the famous band members emerge from the plane, walk down the air-stairs, and into a waiting Cadillac limousine.
Then, as seen in the old footage from The Associated Press on YouTube described in last month’s story, the limo and police escorts drove up a short hill and came right toward where Ned and Jim were standing at the gate – right there in the heart of downtown “Beatlesville.”
‘That was amazing’
“Then, as the car actually got through the gate, I ran over to be right next to the car, you know, just to look in,” Hamlin explained. “That was really the defining moment of this whole trip, you know, standing there and looking in at the Beatles” through the glass windows – closed, unfortunately – of the limo.
“Paul was in like a jump seat or something and in front of the rest of the group,” Hamlin continued. “And Ringo was right next to the window, and I looked in at him, and I waved to him, and he waved back. And that was amazing,” Hamlin said.
Vintage photos: Sea-Tac Airport celebrates 75 years
To hear Ned Hamlin tell it, it’s clear that one of the most indelible visuals of that long-ago brush with Beatlemania was the exchange of waves and close-up glimpse of the legendary band’s chief percussionist.
“To this day, I remember that his nose seemed like it was really big,” Hamlin said of Ringo’s proboscis, chuckling at the memory.
If Mr. Starkey reads this story or somehow managed to catch the broadcast, what would Ned Hamlin say to him?
“No offense,” Hamlin said, still chuckling. “He’s still a very great looking guy.”
You can hear Feliks Banel every Wednesday and Friday morning on Seattle’s Morning News with Dave Ross and Colleen O’Brien. Read more from Feliks here and subscribe to The Resident Historian Podcast here. If you have a story idea or a question about Northwest history, please email Feliks. You can also follow Feliks on X.
