{"id":1487,"date":"2013-04-25T23:42:05","date_gmt":"2013-04-26T04:42:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thefest.com\/kdstaging2\/news\/?p=1487"},"modified":"2013-11-21T15:39:03","modified_gmt":"2013-11-21T20:39:03","slug":"fest-story-part-one-april-26-1974","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/staging.thefest.com\/fest-story-part-one-april-26-1974\/","title":{"rendered":"FEST Story, Part One &#8211;  April 26, 1974"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>THIS DAY IN FEST HISTORY, Friday, April 26, 1974 <\/strong>I (Mark) had already thought of the idea of a Beatles Fans&#8217; Convention 5 months earlier as a 10th Anniversary Celebration of The Beatles arrival in America, and had booked the old Commodore Hotel for September 7-8, 1974. The only thing missing was my insistance I get The Beatles approval for such a glorious event in their honor. It was on this evening I heard an announcement on WABC Radio (NY) that <strong>John Lennon<\/strong> and <strong>Harry Nilsson<\/strong> were going to be appearing at the First March of Dimes Walkathon\/Concert in Central Park on Sunday. They were going to be talking with <strong>Cousin Brucie<\/strong> (the most popular DJ in the U.S.) on the stage set up on the east side of the park. The 5th Dimension were the musical attraction. I started calling friends and family and telling them I was going to meet John on Sunday (April 28th). Of course, they all thought I was nuts. On Sunday, I will tell the rest of the story of what really happened that warm and sunny Sunday, April 28, 1974. I know many of you have heard this story before, but for those who haven&#8217;t, watch for Sunday&#8217;s eNewsletter for the most important day in <strong>FEST<\/strong> history and a day I will <strong>NEVER, EVER<\/strong> forget!!!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>THIS DAY IN FEST HISTORY, Friday, April 26, 1974 I (Mark) had already thought of the idea of a Beatles Fans&#8217; Convention 5 months earlier as a 10th Anniversary Celebration of The Beatles arrival in America, and had booked the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[29],"class_list":["post-1487","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fest-memories","tag-beatlefest"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.thefest.com\/?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1487","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.thefest.com\/?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.thefest.com\/?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.thefest.com\/?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.thefest.com\/?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1487"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/staging.thefest.com\/?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1487\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1489,"href":"https:\/\/staging.thefest.com\/?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1487\/revisions\/1489"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.thefest.com\/?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.thefest.com\/?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.thefest.com\/?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}