Beatles Australian Tour Footage Finally Released

It took 50 years, but footage from the Beatles' historic 1964 tour of Australia is finally seeing the light of day.

During the whirlwind months of 1964, the band was all over the place, breaking hearts, records and a whole bunch of things that can be broken. They were on top of the world after conquering the U.S. in February.

They were already stars in their homeland too. So they set their sites on another huge chunk of land: Australia. And on June 11, 1964, the Beatles landed in the land down under and spent nearly two weeks there, playing 20 shows in Adelaide, Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane.

It turned out to be their only Australian tour. Bootleg audio from the tour has made its way into collectors' hands over the years, but video has been scarce. But the group's record company has cobbled together an official video chronicling some of the highlights of the tour.

You can watch the five-minute clip above.

The footage shows a lot of screaming fans (duh), as well as the band charming the pants off folks, again, at a press conference. When asked what he expected to find in Australia, John Lennon replied, "Australians."

Hundreds of thousands fans showed up to see the Beatles make their way across the country. In Adelaide, 300,000 of them turned out for the group's biggest crowd.

Maybe some day we'll get the actual video and audio (the above clip includes studio versions of Beatles hits) paired together for a proper release. Then again, all those screaming fans do make it a mighty hard document to listen to at times.