Editing Shea Stadium (section)

===Concerts===
[[File:Aerial view Shea Stadium with Manhattan in background 1981.jpg|thumb|Shea Stadium and vicinity, with the [[Manhattan]] skyline in the distance, 1981]]
On Sunday, August 15, 1965, [[The Beatles]] opened their [[The Beatles' 1965 US tour|1965 North American tour]] [[The Beatles at Shea Stadium|there]] to a record audience of 55,600.<ref>{{cite book|last=Badman|first=Keith|title=The Beatles Off The Record|year=2000|publisher=Omnibus|location=London|isbn=0-7119-7985-5|page=193}}</ref>  "[[Beatlemania]]" was at one of its peaks at their Shea concert. Film footage shows many teenagers and women crying, screaming, and even fainting. The crowd noise was such that security guards can be seen covering their ears as the Beatles entered the field. The sound of the crowd was so deafening that none of the Beatles (or anyone else) could hear what they were playing. Nevertheless, it was the first concert to be held at a major stadium and set records for attendance and revenue generation, demonstrating that outdoor concerts on a large scale could be successful and profitable, and led the Beatles to return to Shea for a successful encore on August 23, 1966.<ref>{{Cite magazine|last=Fleming|first=Colin|date=August 14, 2015|title=Why Beatles' Shea Show Was Even Greater Than You Knew|url=https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/why-the-beatles-shea-stadium-show-was-even-greater-than-you-knew-227621/|access-date=October 9, 2021|magazine=Rolling Stone|language=en-US}}</ref>

The next major music event to play Shea Stadium after the Beatles' successful appearances was the Summer [[Festival for Peace]] on August 6, 1970.<ref name="Great Moments"/> It was a day-long fundraiser, which featured many of the era's biggest-selling and seminal rock, folk, blues and jazz performers including: [[Janis Joplin]], [[Paul Simon]], [[Creedence Clearwater Revival]], [[Steppenwolf (band)|Steppenwolf]], The [[James Gang]], [[Miles Davis]], [[Tom Paxton]], [[John Sebastian]], and others.

The next music show at Shea Stadium was the historic concert by [[Grand Funk Railroad]] in 1971, which broke the Beatles' then-record for fastest ticket sales. [[Humble Pie (band)|Humble Pie]] was the opening band. The same filmmakers for the documentary of the Rolling Stones concert at Altamont were commissioned to film it, but to date, a final film has not been released.

The stadium subsequently hosted numerous concerts, including [[Jethro Tull (band)|Jethro Tull]] with opening act [[Robin Trower]] in July 1976 (billed as Tull v. Boeing because of the proximity to [[LaGuardia Airport]]), [[The Who]] with opening acts [[The Clash]] and [[David Johansen]] in October 1982 (two concerts), and [[Simon & Garfunkel]] in August 1983. On August 18, 1983, [[The Police]] played in front of 70,000 fans at Shea, a concert that the band's singer and bassist [[Sting (musician)|Sting]] described as "like playing the top of [[Mount Everest|Everest]]", and announced near the end of the concert: "We'd like to thank the Beatles for lending us their stadium."<ref>[https://www.bbc.co.uk/music/sevenages/events/stadium-rock/police-play-shea-stadium/ "Police play Shea Stadium"]. BBC. Retrieved January 26, 2014</ref> [[The Rolling Stones]] performed at Shea for a six-night run in October 1989, and [[Elton John]] and [[Eric Clapton]] played a concert in August 1992. [[Bruce Springsteen]] and the [[E Street Band]] ended [[The Rising Tour]] with three concerts at Shea in early October 2003, with [[Bob Dylan]] making a special guest appearance at the final show to perform "Highway 61 Revisited" with Springsteen.<ref name="Great Moments"/>

The last concert event was a two-night engagement by [[Billy Joel]] on July 16 and 18, 2008. The concert was dubbed ''[[The Last Play at Shea]]'', and featured many special guest appearances, including former Beatle [[Paul McCartney]] who closed the second show with an emotional rendition of [[the Beatles]] classic "[[Let It Be (song)|Let It Be]]". Other artists that joined Joel on stage for the shows were former Shea performer [[Roger Daltrey]] of [[The Who]], [[Tony Bennett]], [[Don Henley]], [[John Mayer]], [[John Mellencamp]], [[Garth Brooks]], and [[Steven Tyler]] of [[Aerosmith]]. The concert was the subject of a [[Last Play at Shea|documentary film of the same name]], which is used along with Shea's history to tell the story of changes in American suburban life.<ref>{{cite news|title='Last Play at Shea' Documentary Tells Stadium's Story|first=Glenn|last=Gamboa|url=http://www.newsday.com/sports/baseball/mets/last-play-at-shea-documentary-tells-stadium-s-story-1.1872400?p=|newspaper=[[Newsday]]|date=April 20, 2010|access-date=July 26, 2010|archive-date=August 4, 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190804170925/https://www.newsday.com/sports/baseball/mets/last-play-at-shea-documentary-tells-stadium-s-story-1.1872400?p=|url-status=dead}}</ref>

Pete Flynn was a Shea groundskeeper who did the improbable by driving the Beatles from the stage to a centerfield gate in 1965, then driving Paul McCartney from the stadium's rear entrance to the stage to perform at [[Billy Joel]]'s "Last Play at Shea" concert 43 years later in 2008.<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/22/sports/baseball/obituary-pete-flynn-dead-mets-groundskeeper.amp.html|title=Pete Flynn, Mets groundskeeper for almost 50 years, dies at 79|website=[[The New York Times]]|date=June 23, 2017|last1=Slotnik|first1=Daniel E.}}</ref>