Forest Hills Stadium at 100: Most Famous Moments, From Beatles to Hendrix

Forest Hills Stadium could have been a condominium.

The legendary Queens, New York, tennis-stadium-turned-amphitheater — longtime home of the U.S. Open, which would later host outdoor concerts by the likes of the Beatles, Frank Sinatra, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Ray Charles and the Rolling Stones — had gone decades without live music and was casually courting offers from developers to knock down the stadium and build housing units.

Meanwhile, in 2012, music entrepreneur Mike Luba had just finished a tour with Mumford & Sons and was looking for a “wacko” venue for the folk rockers to play in New York. Luba grew up on Long Island and remembered hearing stories about Forest Hills from his parents, whose second date was a Simon & Garfunkel concert at the venue. And given that half of the members of Mumford & Sons grew up in Wimbledon, he thought the tennis stadium was a perfect match.

So Luba cold-called Forest Hills. “They said, ‘I don’t know who you are or what the hell you’re talking about, but your timing is pretty good,’” he recalls. “The night before, the members finally said to the developers, ‘Over our dead body are you going to knock down this space.’”

Several months later, he took Mumford pianist Ben Lovett on a walk-through. The musician told Luba that, far from the rarified air of the British tennis mecca, the amphitheater was actually the sort of down-and-dirty venue the band prefers. “’You pitched this to us completely wrong’,” Luba recalls him saying. “‘This is nothing like Wimbledon — this is a shithole! We can actually play a proper rock concert here.’”

So Luba and Forest Hills got to work, stripping the stadium of its original petrified wood and bringing in a pop-up stage. The goal was to recreate a “Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii” vibe. Without seats or aisles, the venue could cram 13,000 people in the bowl and 4,000 on the floor. But during the Mumford & Sons grand reopening show, in August 2013, fans flooded the pit. It was so packed that Luba, fearing a crowd crush, approached the chief of police, who he says was a music fanatic and had the word “Prince” tattooed on his knuckles.

“I said, ‘Hey Chief, I’m not super comfortable with how things are going. Should we stop the show? Turn on the house lights?’” Luba remembers. “He was sitting backstage reading the Post. He stood up and put his Prince hand on my shoulder, looked me in the face and said, ‘Go with God.’ Go with God?! I don’t want to go with fucking God, I want to go with the New York City police!”

Luckily no one got hurt, but to remedy the chaos, the venue sent an email to all 17,000 ticketholders that said, “If for any reason this wasn’t the best Mumford & Sons show you’ve ever seen, send us an email and we’ll refund your money, no questions asked.”

Quickly, the emails poured in, ranging from “Marcus Mumford wasn’t as cute as last time, send me my money back” to “That was fucking miserable. The bathrooms were disgusting. I got separated from my family. Fuck you,” Luba recalls.

Forest Hills received 3,000 emails and, as promised, issued $400,000 in refunds. And the battered, newly reborn venue worked to earn New York’s trust and learned from its mistakes. It reduced its capacity to 13,000, built a proper stage and installed real seating and aisles. It also traded porta potties for nice bathrooms, amped up the food selection and introduced secret VIP seating in the form of speakeasy lounges hidden across the stadium.

Since Mumford & Sons brought live music back to Forest Hills, the venue has hosted a blossoming summer lineup and boasted acts like Dolly Parton, Drake, the Who, Ed Sheeran, Brandi Carlile and the Strokes — and the return of legends like Bob Dylan and Paul Simon after half a century.

As Forest Hills Stadium celebrates its 100th year, Variety looks back on the venue’s most celebrated and controversial moments.

Dylan Goes Electric (for the Second Time)

Bob Dylan shocked fans and transformed folk music when he strapped on an electric guitar at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival. And while accounts differ about the live reaction, Dylan was convinced the folk-purist crowd booed him for betraying his acoustic roots. A month later, Dylan performed his next show at Forest Hills, where Variety reported at the time, “Bob Dylan split 15,000 of his fans down the middle.” “The most influential writer-performer on the pop music scene during the past decade, Dylan has apparently evolved too fast for some of his young followers, who are ready for radical changes in practically everything else,” reads our 1965 review of the event. “Repeating the same scene that occurred during his performance at the Newport Folk Festival, Dylan delivered a round of folk-rock songs but had to pound his material against a hostile wall of anti-claquers, some of whom berated him for betraying the cause of folk music.” In 2016, more than 50 years later, Dylan would return to Forest Hills — this time to an all-adoring audience.

Beatlemania Takes Queens

The Fab Four flew into Queens via marine helicopter for a two-night stint at Forest Hills in August 1964. The Beatles sold out both nights and played a 12-song setlist full of classic covers (“Twist and Shout,” “Boys”) and beloved originals (“I Want to Hold Your Hand,” “She Loves You”) to a Beatlemaniacal audience separated by an eight-foot barbed-wire fence. Still, screaming fans managed to make it onstage to hug John Lennon. Plus, legend has it that Bob Dylan visited the Liverpool lads’ hotel after the first show and introduced them to marijuana. We all know where the story goes from there.

Jimi Hendrix Monkees Around

When Jimi Hendrix opened for the Monkees on a 1967 tour, the “I’m a Believer” band’s straight-laced fans couldn’t seem to wrap their heads around Hendrix’s uninhibited stage antics. Members of the Monkees have since looked back on the tour, with drummer Micky Dolenz saying, “Jimi would amble out onto the stage, fire up the amps and break into ‘Purple Haze,’ and the kids in the audience would instantly drown him out with, ‘We Want Davy!’ God, it was embarrassing.” Due to the audience’s failure to grasp his act, Hendrix left the tour early, and rumor has it he flipped off the crowd at Forest Hills during his final show with the Monkees.

Mick and Macca Rock Out to Talking Heads

When Talking Heads played Forest Hills in August of 1983 on the legendary tour later immortalized in the “Stop Making Sense” film, the band was surprised to see two special guests dancing on the side of the stage — Mick Jagger and Paul McCartney. As Luba tells it, “David Byrne had this ashen look on his face like he’d just seen a ghost. It totally freaked the Talking Heads out.” When, years later, Luba personally asked McCartney what he remembers about Forest Hills, the ex-Beatle apparently said, “I saw the single best rock-and-roll show I’ve ever seen in my life there.”

Don Draper Can’t Get No Satisfaction

While the Rolling Stones’ 1966 concert at Forest Hills was probably memorable in its own right, the event has since been immortalized by an episode of “Mad Men” in which Don Draper (Jon Hamm) and Harry Crane (Rich Sommer) take a trip to Queens to meet with the band’s manager and convince Mick Jagger and Co. to record a jingle for Heinz Beans. As Don is predictably unimpressed, the Season 5 episode further illustrates the ad man’s distance from youth culture in the ‘60s.

Dolly Parton Puts the ‘Queens’ in Drag Queens

Luba’s personal favorite show at Forest Hills is Dolly Parton’s 2016 visit, at which she showcased “Jolene,” “I Will Always Love You” and a handful of new American standards. “Aside from Dolly being the legend that she is, it really summed up the magic of Queens, which is the most diverse spot on the planet, really,” Luba says. “You had drag queens dancing with full-blown hillbillies and cowboys and folks from all over the world.”

More Awesome Photos!

Best of Variety

• Oscars Predictions: Animated Feature - Will Disney's Awards 'Wish' for Two Feature Film Nominees Come True?

• New Movies Out Now in Theaters: What to See This Week 

• Oscars Predictions: Original Score – Will Thomas Newman Garner His 16th Career Nom for 'Elemental?'