Watch any old footage of crowds at the height of Beatlemania, and it’s nothing but mayhem: People are pushing and shoving, screaming, all vying for a word, a glance, and some? Some very clearly want more than that, and it’s kind of amazing that the Beatles were able to get anywhere without getting grabbed and carried off, mosh pit-style. All that chaos has taught Paul McCartney some very important lessons about crowd control, and according to what he told the BBC, it’s impacted the instructions he now gives his security detail.
“What happened occasionally was you had security guys who would growl, ‘Get out of the way! Move out of the way!’ and the crowd would get a bit aggressive,” he explained. That would sometimes have the opposite effect, “So we learned to keep moving forward and be very quiet and calm about it — out of necessity, to not make a crazy scene any crazier.”
And it makes sense: Getting hostile and denying fans (who may have been waiting for hours) a glimpse of their idol would just add fuel to the fire, and no one wants that. Now, McCartney says that he and his security team have a rhythm: Move through the crowd, slowly, purposefully, with no fuss, and absolutely no hostility. He says he’s more than happy to greet people, but adds that he’s going to keep moving — and that’s how you get through a crowd without making chaos even more chaotic or, even worse, dangerous.
