The Beatles live: Circus-Krone-Bau, Munich, Germany

The Beatles’ brief 1966 tour of West Germany, Japan and the Philippines began on this day, with two concerts at the Circus-Krone-Bau in Munich, Germany.

The shows took place at 5.15pm and 9pm. The second show was filmed by German television network Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen (ZDF), and followed a brief afternoon rehearsal set for the cameras. The footage was shown as Die Beatles on channel two on Tuesday 5 July, from 8-8.45pm.

Also appearing on the bill were Cliff Bennett and The Rebel Rousers, The Rattles, and Peter and Gordon. The German leg of the tour was known as the Bravo Blitztournee, and was sponsored by the entertainment magazine Bravo.

The Beatles’ set throughout the tour consisted of 11 songs: ‘Rock And Roll Music’, ‘She’s A Woman’, ‘If I Needed Someone’, ‘Day Tripper’, ‘Baby’s In Black’, ‘I Feel Fine’, ‘Yesterday’, ‘I Wanna Be Your Man’, ‘Nowhere Man’, ‘Paperback Writer’, and ‘I’m Down’.

For these first dates, the group’s recent absence from live performance was apparent. George Harrison introduced ‘Yesterday’ as being from Beatles For Sale, and ‘I’m Down’ was briefly delayed by an on-stage conference between John Lennon, Paul McCartney and Harrison about lyrics in the opening verse. In spite of this, McCartney managed to get each verse wrong.

This was reportedly the night that The Beatles settled on the title Revolver for their next album, which they had finished recording just three days before.

Revolver did not mean a gun, but something that revolves, like a record. Johnny Dean, editor of Beatles Monthly, was with them on the night of 24 June 1966 in a Munich hotel room when they named the latter. At first they had all four wanted to call it Abracadabra, but someone had already used it. Pendulums and Fat Man and Bobby were other ideas. Ringo suggested having a joke with the Rolling Stones by calling it After Geography since the Stones had just done Aftermath! John proposed Beatles on Safari and Paul came up with Magic Circle. John changed this to Four Sides Of The Circle and Four Sides Of The Eternal Triangle, which somehow led them to Revolver.

Paul McCartney returned to the Circus-Krone-Bau with Wings on 18 July 1972, and Ringo Starr played there on 13 July 2011.