Often marked by poor playing, the shows highlighted the division between what the group could achieve when performing live as a four-piece with inadequate amplification and the more complex music they were able to create in the recording studio.

[21] Their current single, "Paperback Writer", was included, but as with the few selections from Rubber Soul they performed live – "Nowhere Man" and "If I Needed Someone" – the Beatles were unable to capture the intricacies of the multi-track recording in concert.

[35] The Beatles' main instruments were Epiphone Casino guitars for John Lennon and George Harrison, McCartney's Höfner "violin" bass, and Starr's Ludwig drum kit.

[49] According to musicologist Walter Everett, the Munich concert film shows the Beatles generally playing poorly amid the noise created by their fans and humorously attempting to remember the lyrics to the final song, "I'm Down".

[26] Author Steve Turner writes that the tour was marked by average-quality performances masked by riotous screaming and that for the first time, the hysterical crowds were subjected to violent treatment and beatings by the host nation's police force.

[52] The Beatles travelled between destinations by train, accommodated in luxury coaches that were normally used for visits by international heads of state, including Queen Elizabeth II's the previous year.

[59][60] On 26 June, the band played two shows at the 5,600-seat Ernst-Merck-Halle[57] and reunited with old friends such as Astrid Kirchherr and with Bert Kaempfert, a German arranger and composer who had briefly worked as the Beatles' producer.

[71][nb 3] Epstein arranged for the Beatles to wait out the delay at Anchorage's Westward Hotel, where the band's presence instantly attracted a crowd of local fans, who serenaded them from the street below.

[75] The announcement that the concerts were to take place at the Budokan – a venue reserved for martial arts, as well as a shrine to Japan's war dead – outraged the country's hardline nationalists, who vowed to intercede and stop the proceedings.

Their attire was a publicity coup for the airline,[85] who, recognising the value of being associated with the Beatles' financial success, had instructed one of its First Class flight attendants to ensure that the band emerged wearing these traditional Japanese coats.

[88] This marked the first time that the band had spoken out against the war in one of their press conferences,[89] and followed Lennon and Harrison's warning to Epstein before the tour that they were no longer prepared to stay silent on this issue.

[98] In sober truth, no recent event connected with the UK – apart from the sole exception of the British Exhibition of 1965 – has made a comparable impact on Tokyo … Most commentators accepted them for what indeed they are – agreeable, talented and quick-witted young musicians.

[111] The Beatles' concerts in Manila had been anticipated by the local population on a level that Gould likens to the band's 1964 tour of Australia, when the whole country appeared to view the visit as a national event.

[121][122] Harrison later recalled their alarm at being separated from Epstein, Aspinall and Mal Evans for the first time on a tour;[123] his immediate concern was that, with their hand luggage left behind on the runway, the band would be arrested once their supplies of marijuana were discovered by the authorities.

[124][nb 10] They were then escorted by military personnel to a luxury yacht owned by Don Manolo Elizalde, a wealthy Filipino industrialist,[125] whose 24-year-old son[126] wanted to host a party to show off the Beatles to his friends.

[122][128] Alternatively, Turner writes that, unknown to Epstein, arrangements had been made between Ramon Ramos and Vic Lewis for the Beatles to spend the night on the yacht, since that presented a better security option than a city hotel.

[33][nb 11] Aspinall, who had arrived at the marina with the Beatles' hand luggage while they were out on the bay, said that their abduction was carried out by a militia gang who were rivals of the individuals presenting the upcoming concerts.

[129] Apart from McCartney, who went sightseeing with Aspinall,[130] the Beatles slept in late on 4 July until woken by security staff intent on taking them to a party hosted by Imelda Marcos in their honour at Malacañang Palace.

[135] Turner interprets the casual wording of this item as Ramos, faced with delivering on Imelda Marcos's wishes, "burying the invitation in the small print, hoping for a compromise on the day".

[134][nb 12] When confronted by Lewis, who was also woken by the presidential guards that morning,[138] Epstein dismissed his suggestion and that of Leslie Minford, a chargé d'affaires at the British Embassy, that the Beatles should make an exception for the First Lady of the Philippines.

[148][nb 13] In his review of the concerts, Filipino writer Nick Joaquin detected a halfheartedness in the Beatles' performance and said that even the fans' screams "seemed mechanical, not rapture but exhibitionism".

[142][152] Barrow recalls that a backlash against the Beatles was evident straight after the evening show at Rizal,[146] when their convoy of cars was briefly trapped behind a closed gate and surrounded by a large crowd of "organised troublemakers".

[153][nb 14] As the NEMS representative who had dealt directly with the Filipino promoter, Lewis was taken away by police officers during the night and subjected to a three-hour interrogation for his role in "snubbing" the Philippines.

[155] Lewis contacted the British Embassy, where Minford, in a telegram to the Foreign Office, reported that "a technical hitch over payment of Philippine income tax" was likely to delay the Beatles' departure.

[159] All assistance from the hotel staff was withdrawn, as was any police escort through the city traffic, leaving Epstein to call ahead and plead with the pilot of their KLM flight to delay his takeoff.

[177][178] In his concluding report to the Foreign Office, Minford mentioned that some individuals at the airport had used "unnecessary zeal" towards the Beatles and he credited Benjamin Romualdez, the brother of Imelda Marcos, with sorting out the episode.

[191] Since their presence had soon attracted a crowd of fans, the Beatles arranged for the Rikhi Ram staff to visit them later at the Oberoi Hotel with a sitar for Harrison, as well as a sarod, tambura and tabla.

[186][193] Starr described India as the first genuinely "foreign" country he had visited;[194] Harrison found it sobering to realise that their Nikon cameras, which were a gift to the group from their Japanese promoter, "were worth more money than the whole village would earn in a lifetime".

[75] Steve Turner comments on the significance of the first leg of the Beatles' 1966 world tour in terms of the development of the Beatlemania phenomenon, in that the band's influence now incited "potential acts of terrorism", just as their music had started to "fuel the fight between conservatives and liberals" in the countries they visited.

[125] The Marcoses were enjoying a honeymoon period in the mid-1960s as the Philippines' American-style First Family, but the president later came to be seen as a dictator[214] and, having amassed a personal wealth of up to $10 billion, fled to the United States after being deposed in 1986.