Most don’t get to say they relived a teenage dream in their 60s, but that’s the case for a Hollister resident and her best friend who returned to Candlestick Park on Aug. 14 to see Paul McCartney perform a final farewell concert before the stadium closes its doors for good.
More than 48 years earlier, Linda Breslauer of Hollister and her best friend Kathy Riggs had stood in that same stadium to see the Beatles – including McCartney – perform their last official concert together on Aug. 29, 1966.
At the time, the girls were just 13. Since they were not yet old enough to drive, Breslauer’s father, grandfather and younger brother drove them to the concert in San Francisco. The enthusiastic girls held up “Beatles or bust” signs as they whizzed by cars on Highway 101.
“If we saw another car with signs we’d scream and get louder,” Breslauer said. “It was a crazy car ride.”
Since their concert-going days, the girls have remained friends through the death of parents, the birth of children and health problems. Their friendship started in Sunday School at the Hollister First Presbyterian Church and blossomed as they made 13 years of memories together attending kindergarten, grade school and high school at the same campuses.
“We’ll be friends forever,” Breslauer said. “That, in itself, is the best I’d say.”
Their shared love of the Beatles looks to be just as strong. Breslauer keeps magnets of the boys on her refrigerator and has Beatles T-shirts in her closet. Riggs, now living in Modesto, has what Breslauer calls a “Beatles room” where all kinds of pictures, books and coffee mugs celebrate the four famous bandmates. Both still have ticket stubs from their first Beatles concert that show the faces of all the members prominently on the ticket.
For Riggs, the show was especially poignant because McCartney was always her favorite one in the band, and the one she would jokingly call her boyfriend. To be a good friend, Breslauer devoted her attentions to another boy in the same band.
“I had to choose John Lennon, which was OK with me because I liked them all,” said Breslauer with a laugh.
When McCartney decided to give the farewell performance at Candlestick Park, Breslauer and her friend knew they had to return to the place where their love for the band was first cemented so many years ago.
“We just knew we had to go no matter what so we figured it out,” Breslauer said.
