With A Little Help From My Friends

WITH A

LITTLE HELP

FROM MY

FRIENDS

CONTENTS:

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01 JOHN 02 RINGO 03 PAUL 04 GEORGE 05 HOW THE BEATLES WENT VIRAL 06 WHAT THE BEATLES MEANT TO AMERICA 3

JOHN 1940-1980

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John Lennon was the most iconic Beatle. He was group’s most committed rock & roller, its social conscience, and its slyest verbal wit. With the Beatles, he wrote or co-wrote dozens of classics – from “She Loves You” to “Come Together” – and delivered many of them with a cutting, humane, and distinct voice that would make him one of the greatest singers rock has ever produced.

Lennon’s brutally confessional solo work and his political activism were a huge influence on subsequent generations of singers, songwriters and social reformers. After the Beatles’ breakup, he and wife Yoko Ono recorded together and separately, striving to break taboos and to be ruthlessly, publicly honest in their music and public performances. When Lennon was murdered on December 8, 1980, he seemed on the verge of a new, more optimistic phase. In the years since, his image has become a staple of T-shirts and posters, used by rock fans and activists alike as a symbol of peace.

He was born John Winston Lennon on October 9, 1940. Like the other three Beatles, Lennon grew up in a working-class family in Liverpool. His parents, Julia and Fred, separated before he was two (Lennon saw his father only twice in the next 20 years), and Lennon went to live with his mother’s sister Mimi Smith; when Lennon was 17 his mother was killed by a bus. He attended Liverpool’s Dovedale Primary School and later the Quarry Bank High School, which supplied the name for his first band, a skiffle group called the Quarrymen, which he started in 1955.

In the summer of 1956 he met Paul McCartney, and they began writing songs together and forming groups, the last of which was the Beatles. As half of the official songwriting team Lennon/ McCartney, Lennon himself penned some of the Beatles’ most well-known songs over the next decade including “A Hard Day’s Night,” “Help!” “Nowhere Man,” “Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown),” “Ticket To Ride,” “All You Need Is Love,” “Lucy 5

in the Sky with Diamonds,” “Strawberry Fields Forever,” “Across the Universe,” “Revolution,” and “Come Together.” Lennon, who had wanted to quit the Beatles just before the band’s official breakup in 1970, began his career apart from the band in 1968 when he and Ono recorded Two Virgins. It was an album of avant-garde music most notable for its controversial cover featuring the couple fully nude; the album was shipped in plain brown wrapper. He would go on to record more than half of his solo albums with Ono. Lennon and Ono had been corresponding since he met the artist at a 1966 showing of her work at the Indica art gallery in London. The following year Lennon sponsored Ono’s “Half Wind Show” at London’s Lisson Gallery. In May 1968 Ono visited Lennon at his home in Weybridge, and that night they recorded the tapes that would be released as Two Virgins. (The nude cover shots, taken by Lennon with an automatic camera, were photographed then as well.) Lennon soon separated from his wife, Cynthia (with whom he had one child, Julian, in 1964); they were divorced that November. Lennon and Ono became constant companions. Frustrated by his role with the Beatles, Lennon, with Ono, explored avant-garde performance art, music, and film. While he regarded his relationship with Ono as the most important thing in his life, the couple’s inseparability and Ono’s influence over Lennon would be a source of great tension among the Beatles, then in their last days.

On March 20, 1969, Lennon and Ono were married in Gibratar; for their honeymoon, they held their first “Bed-in for Peace,” in the presidential suite of the Amsterdam Hilton. The peace movement was the first of several political causes the couple would take up over the years, but it was the one that generated the most publicity. On April 22, Lennon changed his middle name from Winston to Ono. In May the couple attempted to continue their bed-in in the United States, but when U.S. authorities forbade 6

them to enter the country because of an October 1968 arrest on drug charges, the bed-in resumed in Montreal. In their suite at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel, they recorded “Give Peace a Chance,” with background chanters including Sixties luminaries such as Timothy Leary and comic folksinger Tommy Smothers, as well as numerous Hare Krishnas. Soon afterward, “The Ballad of John and Yoko” (Number Eight, 1969) came out under the Beatles’ name, though only Lennon and McCartney appear on the record.

“JOHN LENNON WAS THE MOST ICONIC BEATLE” In September 1969, Lennon, Ono, Eric Clapton, Alan White, and Klaus Voormann performed live as the Plastic Ono Band in Toronto at a Rock ‘n’ Roll Revival show. The appearance, released as Live Peace in Toronto, 1969, was Lennon’s first performance before a concert audience in the three years since the Beatles had stopped performing live. Less than a month later he announced to the Beatles that he was quitting the group, but it was agreed among them that no public statement would be made until after pending lawsuits involving the band’s Apple record label and manager Allen Klein were resolved. In October the Plastic Ono Band released the searing song about heroin withdrawal, “Cold Turkey” (Number 30, 1969), which the Beatles had declined to record. The next month Lennon returned his M.B.E. medal to the Queen. In a letter to the Queen, Lennon cited as reasons for the return Britain’s involvement in Biafra and 7

and support of the U.S. in Vietnam, and – jokingly – the poor chart showing of “Cold Turkey.”

The Lennons continued their peace campaign with speeches to the press; “War Is Over! If You Want It” billboards erected on December 15 in 12 cities around the world, including Hollywood, New York, London, and Toronto; and plans for a peace festival in Toronto. When the festival plans deteriorated, Lennon turned his attention to recording “Instant Karma!” which was produced by Phil Spector, and also editing hours of tapes into the album that would be the Beatles’ last official release, Let It Be. In late February 1970 Lennon disavowed any connection with the peace festival, and the event was abandoned. In April, McCartney – in a move that Lennon saw as an act of betrayal – announced his departure from the Beatles and released a solo album. From that point on (if not earlier), Ono replaced McCartney as Lennon’s main collaborator. The Beatles were no more.

At the time, much attention was focused on Ono’s alleged role in the band’s end. An Esquire magazine piece with the racist title “John Rennon’s Excrusive Gloupie” was an extreme example of the decidedly antiwoman, anti-Asian backlash against Ono that she and Lennon endured for years to come. As Ono told Lennon biographer Jon Wiener in a late 1983 interview for his book Come Together: John Lennon in His Time, “When John and I were first together he got lots of threatening letters: ‘That Oriental will slit your throat while you’re sleeping.’ The Western hero had been seized by an Eastern demon.”

In late 1970 Lennon and Ono released their twin Plastic Ono Band solo LPs. Generally, Ono’s ‘70s LPs were regarded as highly adventurous works and were thus never as popular as Lennon’s. Lennon’s contained some of his most personal and, some felt, disturbing work – the direct result of his and Ono’s primal scream therapy with Dr. Arthur Janov. In March 1971 the 8

non-album single “Power to the People” hit Number 11, and that September, Lennon’s solo album Imagine came out and went to Number One a month later. By late 1971 Lennon and Ono had resumed their political activities, drawn to leftist political figures including Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin. Their involvement was reflected on Some Time in New York City (recorded with New York band Elephant’s Memory), which included Lennon’s most overtly political writing (his and Ono’s “Woman Is the Nigger of the World” and his “John Sinclair,” an ode to the political activist and leader of the anti-racist White Panther Party). The album sold poorly, only reaching Number 48.

“THAT ORIENTAL

WILL SLIT YOUR THROAT WHILE YOU’RE SLEEPING

” 9

Over the next two years Lennon released Mind Games (Number Nine) and Walls and Bridges (Number One), which yielded his only solo Number One hit, “Whatever Gets You Thru the Night,” recorded with Elton John. On November 28, 1974, Lennon made his last public appearance, at Elton John’s Madison Square Garden concert. The two performed three songs, “Whatever Gets You Thru the Night,” “I Saw Her Standing There,” and “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” released on an EP after Lennon’s death. Next came Rock ‘n’ Roll, a collection of Lennon’s versions of Fifties and early-Sixties classics like “Be-Bopa-Lula.” The release was preceded by a bootleg copy, produced

by Morris Levy, over which Lennon successfully sued Levy. Rock ‘n’ Roll (Number Six, 1975) would be Lennon’s last solo release except for Shaved Fish, a greatest-hits compilation.

Meanwhile, Lennon’s energies were increasingly directed toward his legal battle with the U.S. Immigration Department, which sought his deportation on the grounds of his previous drug arrest and involvement with the American radical left. On October 7, 1975, the U.S. Court of Appeals overturned the deportation order; in 1976 Lennon received permanent resident status. On October 9, 1975, Lennon’s 35th birthday, Ono gave birth to Sean Ono Lennon. Beginning in 1975, Lennon devoted his full attention to his new son and his marriage, which had survived an 18-month separation from October 1973 to March 1975. For the next five years, he lived at home in nearly total seclusion, taking care of Sean while Ono ran the couple’s financial affairs. Not until the publication of a full-page newspaper ad in May 1979 explaining his and Ono’s activities did Lennon even hint at a possible return to recording.

In September 1980 Lennon and Ono signed a contract with the newly formed Geffen Records, and on November 15 they released Double Fantasy (Number One, 1980).

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A series of revealing interviews were published, “(Just Like) Starting Over” hit Number One, and there was talk of a possible world tour.But on December 8, 1980, Lennon, returning with Ono to their Dakota apartment on New York City’s Upper West Side, was shot seven times by Mark David Chapman, a 25-yearold drifter and Beatles fan to whom Lennon had given an autograph a few hours earlier. Lennon was pronounced dead on arrival at Roosevelt Hospital. On December 14, at Ono’s request, a 10-minute silent vigil was held at 2 p.m. EST in which millions around the world participated. Lennon’s remains were cremated in Hartsdale, New York. At the time of his death, he was holding in his hand a tape of Ono’s “Walking on Thin Ice.” Two other singles from Double Fantasy were hits: “Woman” (Number Two, 1981) and “Watching the Wheels” (Number 10, 1981). Double Fantasy won the 1981 Grammy for Album of the Year. Three months after Lennon’s murder, Ono released Season of Glass, an album that dealt with Lennon’s death (his cracked and bloodstained glasses are shown on the front jacket), although many of the songs were written before his shooting. Season of Glass is the best known of Ono’s solo albums; it was the first to receive attention outside avant-garde or critical circles.

In addition to pursuing her own projects, Ono has maintained careful watch over the Lennon legacy. In the mid-Eighties she opened the Lennon archives to Andrew Solt and David Wolper for their 1988 film biography Imagine (Ono and Solt’s documentary on the making of Imagine, Gimme Some Truth, was released in 2000). Coming as it did just a few months after the publication of Albert Goldman’s scurrilous The Lives of John Lennon, some observers saw Imagine as a piece of spin control.

In fact, it had been in the works for more than five years by then.

Ono’s decision not to sue Goldman (she stated that her lawyers warned that legal action would only bring more attention to the discredited tome) was itself controversial. Paul McCartney urged a public boycott of Goldman’s book, which was almost univer 11

sally reviled. On September 30, 1988, a week before Imagine’s release, Lennon received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

It is located near the Capitol Records building.

On March 21, 1994, Ono, Sean Lennon, and Julian Lennon were present as New York City Mayor Ed Koch officially opened Strawberry Fields, a triangular section of Central Park dedicated to Lennon’s memory and filled with plants, rocks, and other objects that Ono had solicited from heads of state around the world. That same year, an early tape of John and the Quarrymen performing two songs, made on July 6, 1957, the day he met McCartney, came to light. it was auctioned at Sotheby’s in September 1994, fetching $122,900 from EMI. On the tape, Lennon sings British skiffle king Lonnie Donegan’s “Puttin’ on the Style” and “Baby Let’s Play House,” the Arthur Gunter song made famous by Elvis Presley that included a line (“I’d rather see you dead, little girl, than to be with another man”) that Lennon later used in the Beatles’ “Run for Your Life.”

Lennon’s music has been anthologized heavily since his death, most notably on the four-CD Lennon, in 1990, and Anthology, a 1998 box set of his home recordings, demos and radio appearances. (In 2007 Lennon’s solo catalog was the first Beatles-related music to be sold digitally on iTunes.) In 2000 a number of events commemorated Lennon’s 60th birthday and the 20th anniversary of his death, including a major exhibition on Lennon and his work at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame & Museum. In 2002, Lennon’s hometown renamed its airport Liverpool John Lennon Airport. Throughout the first decade of the 2000s, several countries erected monuments honoring Lennon including a sculpture in the John Lennon Park in Havana, Cuba, and the Imagine Peace Tower in Reykjavík, Iceland.

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“

ON DECEMBER 10, LENNON RETURNING WITH ONO TO THEIR DAKOTA APARTMENT IN NEW YORK CITY’S UPPER WEST SIDE, WAS SHOT SEVEN TIMES

BY MARK DAVID CHAPMAN, A 25-YEAR-OLD DRIFTER AND BEATLES FAN TO WHOM LENNON HAD GIVEN AN AUTOGRAPH A FEW HOURS EARLIER. LENNON WAS PRONOUNCED DEAD ON ARRIVAL AT ROOSEVELT HOSPITAL

”

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RINGO 1940

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While some accused Ringo Starr of being a clumsy drummer, many more agreed with George Harrison’s assessment: “Ringo’s the best backbeat in the business.” And while many in the wake of the Beatles’ breakup predicted that Starr would be the one without a solo career, he proved them wrong. Not only has he released several LPs (the first came out before the Beatles disbanded) and hit singles, but he’s also the only Beatle to establish a film-acting career for himself outside of the band’s mid-’60s movies.

Young Richard Starkey’s parents had divorced when he was three, and he was raised by his mother and stepfather, a Liverpool house painter his mother married eight years later. By the time he was 13, he’d been in and out of the hospital several times with pleurisy, and once, at age six, with appendicitis. After leaving the hospital in 1955, too old to return to school, he became a messenger boy for British Railways. In 1959, while working as an apprentice engineer, he got his first drum set as a Christmas present, and he joined the Ed Clayton Skiffle Group soon after. By 1961, he was playing drums in Rory Storme’s Hurricanes. It was while on tour with that band in Hamburg, Germany, in 1961 that he met John Lennon, Paul McCartney, and George Harrison. A year later, when drummer Pete Best was ousted from the Beatles, Starr agreed to join them. The Ringo stage name came from his penchant for wearing lots of rings.

Beginning with “Boys” on the Beatles’ first British album, Starr was given the occasional lead vocal, usually on covers of country tunes such as Carl Perkins’ “Honey Don’t” and “Matchbox” and Buck Owens’ “Act Naturally.” Later he sang the lead on “Yellow Submarine” and “With a Little Help From My Friends,” songs written for him by Lennon and McCartney. The Beatles (the so-called White Album) in 1968 featured Starr’s first songwriting credit, “Don’t Pass Me By.” After appearing in three films with the Beatles, in 1967 Starr made his solo film debut playing 15

a Mexican gardener in the film of Terry Southern’s Candy. He appeared in The Magic Christian (1969, also from a Southern book); in 1970 he costarred with David Essex in That’ll Be the Day; in 1973 he documented the success of glitter-rock star T. Rex by directing Born to Boogie; in 1975 he costarred again with Essex in Stardust; and in 1981 he starred in the moderately successful U.S. feature Caveman (in April of that year he married his Caveman costar Barbara Bach; it was his second marriage).

Starr’s solo recording career began in 1970, just prior to the Beatles’ breakup, with Sentimental Journey (#22, 1970) a collection of Tin Pan Alley standards (allegedly to please his mother) produced by George Martin, with a different arranger for each track. Beaucoups of Blues (#65, 1970), released later that year, was a country-music collaboration with guitarist Pete Drake and other Nashville sessionmen. It fared better than its predecessor, but failed to yield a hit. In 1971 Starr appeared on Lennon’s Plastic Ono Band and Harrison’s All Things Must Pass LPs, and recorded two hit singles, the hard-rocking “It Don’t Come Easy” (#4) and “Back Off Boogaloo” (#9). (Starr later acknowledged that Harrison had cowritten these two songs without being credited.)

Starr appeared at Harrison’s Concerts for Bangladesh and in 1972 sat in on Peter Frampton’s Wind of Change LP. In 1973 he recorded Ringo (#2, 1973), with Richard Perry producing.

The LP included three Top 10 singles —”Photograph” (#1), “You’re Sixteen” (#1), and “Oh My My” (#5) —and featured songs and playing by the other Beatles; Lennon contributed “I’m the Greatest,” McCartney “Six O’Clock,” and “Only You” (#6) Blast From Your Past, a greatest-hits package, went to #30 in 1975. While comanaging a furniture-designing business with his brother in London, Starr in 1975 started his own label, Ring O’ Records, and signed to Atlantic.

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Compared to his previous solo success, his albums for his new label made little impression; Ringo’s Rotogravure, despite guest appearances by Lennon, McCartney, Eric Clapton, and Peter Frampton, stopped at #28 with one Top 30 single, “Dose of Rock ‘n’ Roll,” and Ringo the 4th, at #162, was a flop. Bad Boy (#129, 1978) continued the downward spiral.

“RINGO’S THE BEST BACKSEAT IN THE BUSINESS” Starr remained a familiar presence, though. In 1976 he played at the Band’s San Francisco farewell concert and appeared in the film of the event, The Last Waltz. In 1977 he contributed to an LP by British skiffle pioneer Lonnie Donegan. In late 1981 Starr had a Top 40 hit with “Wrack My Brain,” from Stop and Smell the Roses (#98, 1981), a tune written and produced by George Harrison. None of his subsequent albums has come near the Top 100.

Old Wave was not released in the U.S. or the U.K., and during this time Starr suffered from myriad problems, foremost among them alcoholism and drug abuse, for which both he and his wife Barbara sought treatment at the Betty Ford Center in 1988. At one point earlier, Starr’s drinking had gotten so bad that he went to court to block the release of material he recorded in 1987. In the meantime, Starr became a star of the kiddie set in his portrayal of the miniature conductor and narrator of the acclaimed 17

PBS series Shining Time Station, between 1989 and 1991. (Starr had first narrated the British series Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends back in 1984.)

Starr has since formed several celebrity configurations of his AllStarr band. The first, in 1989, featured Levon Helm, Joe Walsh, Clarence Clemons, Rick Danko, Billy Preston, and Dr. John. A 1992 lineup included Ringo’s son Zak on drums, Walsh, Timothy B. Schmit, Dave Edmunds, Nils Lofgren, and Todd Rundgren.

Later editions have included the Who’s John Entwistle, Procol Harum’s Gary Brooker, Jack Bruce, Peter Frampton, and Bachman-Turner Overdrive’s Randy Bachman. The 1992 release of Time Takes Time, coinciding with the silver anniversary of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, brought a new flush of publicity for Starr, who often made it amply clear to interviewers that he did not wish to talk about the Beatles.

Though Starr has had little success as a recording artist in the ‘80s and ‘90s, he is never long out of view. He appeared in Paul McCartney’s Give My Regards to Broad Street (1984), a television production of Alice in Wonderland (1985), with Zak on the Artists Against Apartheid album and video (1985), with ex-band mate Harrison in the video for “When We Was Fab” (1988) and as himself on The Simpsons (1990). In 1994 Starr’s first wife, Maureen Cox Starkey Tigrett, died of cancer.

Starr returned to the studio in the late ‘90s. First he reunited with the other surviving Beatles to record two tracks for the Anthology 1 in 1995; he then released Vertical Man (#61, 1998), his most successful album in 20 years. Guests ranged from familiar faces like McCartney and Harrison to newcomers Alanis Morissette and Stone Temple Pilots’ Scott Weiland, and the songs included a cover of the Beatles’ “Love Me Do.” The following year Starr recorded his first seasonal album, I Wanna Be Santa Claus. In 2001 he hit the road with a new All Starr Band that included Ian 18

Hunter, Sheila E., Greg Lake, Howard Jones, and Roger Hodgson (Supertramp).

“THOUGH STARR HAS HAD LITTLE SUCCESS AS A RECORDING ARTIST IN THE ‘80’S AND ‘90’S, HE IS NEVER LONG OUT OF VIEW” 19

PAUL

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1942

Paul McCartney was a singer and multi-instrumentalist in The Beatles. Alongside John Lennon, he was half of one of the world’s most successful songwriting teams in history. James Paul McCartney was born in Liverpool’s Walton Hospital on 18 June 1942. His father Jim worked in the cotton trade and played trumpet and piano in jazz and ragtime bands, and his mother Mary worked as a midwife.

Paul attended the Stockton Wood Road primary school, then went on to the Joseph Williams junior school before passing his 11 Plus in 1953 and gaining a place at the Liverpool Institute.

The following year, while travelling on a bus to the Institute, he met George Harrison, who was also a student there.

In 1955 the McCartneys moved to 20 Forthlin Road, a council house in the Allerton district of Liverpool. It cost them one pound and six shillings a week to live there. The house was bought by the National Trust in 1995, and today is a popular tourist destination. Back then, though, it was an unassuming terraced house built by the local authority in the 1920s.

On 31 October 1956, Mary McCartney died of an embolism following a mastectomy. She was a heavy smoker who had been suffering from breast cancer. The death shook the McCartney family, and later led to a bond between Paul and John Lennon, who lost his mother in 1958. Jim McCartney was a keen musician who had been leader of Jim Mac’s Jazz Band in the 1920s.

There was an upright piano in the front room at 20 Forthlin Road, which Jim bought from Harry Epstein’s NEMS store, which Beatles manager Brian Epstein would later take over. Jim encouraged Paul and his brother Mike to be musical, and gave Paul a trumpet following the death of his mother. When skiffle became a national craze, however, Paul swapped the instrument for a £15 Framus Zenith acoustic guitar.

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Being left-handed, Paul initially had trouble playing the instrument. He later learned to restring it, and wrote his first song, I Lost My Little Girl. He took music lessons for a while, but preferred instead to learn by ear. Paul also began playing piano, and wrote When I’m Sixty-Four while still living at Forthlin Road.

Paul McCartney met John Lennon at the Woolton fete on 6 July 1957, between performances by The Quarrymen. They became friends and began writing and performing songs together. McCartney later persuaded Lennon to allow George Harrison into the band as lead guitarist in 1958.

The Beatles, as they became, gradually grew in popularity after performing many times in and around Liverpool and Hamburg, Germany. After Stuart Sutcliffe left the band, McCartney reluctantly took over his role as bass guitarist. He later bought a left-handed 1962 Hofner bass, which became part of The Beatles’ iconography during the 1960s. After The Beatles signed to Parlophone in 1962 and began releasing records, the songwriting partnership of Lennon-McCartney became celebrated. As well as penning the bulk of the band’s recorded output, they also wrote for artists including Cilla Black, Billy J Kramer and Peter and Gordon.

As they became a worldwide phenomenon The Beatles relocated from Liverpool to London, but Lennon, Harrison and Ringo Starr eventually moved away from the city. McCartney, how ever, remained in central London, enjoying the various artistic and cultural benefits of the capital. He lived for some years at 7 Cavendish Avenue in St John’s Wood, near to EMI’s Abbey Road Studios.

In the mid 1960s McCartney became interested in experimental music, and made tape loops and avant-garde recordings, both both with The Beatles and alone. The first to take on a non-Beatles musical commitment, in 1966 McCartney wrote the score for the film The Family Way. It later won an Ivor Novello award for 22

Best Instrumental Theme. By this time The Beatles had long since tired of touring, having become unable to hear their own voices and instruments above the screams of the audience. McCartney reluctantly agreed to the other members’ wishes to stop touring, which they did in August 1966.

When Brian Epstein died in 1967, McCartney made efforts to keep the group together. He effectively led the making of the Magical Mystery Tour film and album, and in 1969 tried to persuade the group to take to the stage once more. Lennon’s response was: “I think you’re mad.” However, they did play the celebrated rooftop gig on the top of Apple’s offices, filmed as part of the Let It Be project. McCartney led the group through their final recorded album, Abbey Road, released prior to Let It Be in 1969.

He was unhappy with Phil Spector’s production on the Let It Be album. He also favoured Lee Eastman, father of Paul’s wife Linda, when the group were looking for a new manager in 1969.

Instead they appointed Allen Klein, a move bitterly contested by McCartney. Although John Lennon left The Beatles in September 1969, McCartney persuaded him to keep it from the press.

Instead, McCartney himself announced the band’s break-up on 10 April 1970, during promotion for his first solo album McCartney. The Beatles’ legal partnership was dissolved following a lawsuit filed by McCartney in December 1970.

As with all the former members of The Beatles, McCartney’s solo output was varied, yet also variable in quality - for every Band On The Run it seemed like there was a Frog Chorus. In August 1971 he formed Wings, and in 1977 released Mull Of Kintyre, which remained the UK’s highest selling single until 1984. In the 1980s he collaborated with Elvis Costello, and in 1991 released his first classical work, the Liverpool Oratorio.

Since then he has released a wide range of albums in a variety of styles, and has undertaken a number of world tours.

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John Lennon’s death in December 1980 led to a media frenzy.

Asked how he felt, McCartney was reported as describing it as “a drag”. He was pilloried for the comments, and later expressed regret, saying he had been at a loss for words. He later revealed that he had cried all evening in reaction to the news. McCartney retired from live performances for a time following the death of John Lennon in 1980, although in subsequent years he returned to the stage for a series of world tours. Wings disbanded in 1981, the same year that he, Ringo Starr and George Harrison sang together on the latter’s All Those Years Ago, a tribute to Lennon.

From 1976 McCartney began playing Beatles songs again, after years of refusing to. In the 1990s he reunited with Harrison and Starr to work on the Anthology project, and added instrumentation and vocals to two Lennon demos, Free As A Bird and Real Love.Today Paul McCartney holds the record of being the most successful musician and composer in pop music history.

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“PAUL MCCARTNEY HOLDS THE RECORD OF BEING THE MOST SUCCESFFUL MUSICIAN AND COMPOSER IN POP MUSIC HISTORY.” 25

GEORGE

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1940-2001

Known first as “The Quiet Beatle,” George Harrison was a great songwriter who had the misfortune to be surrounded by two stone cold geniuses whose work often obscured his talents.

Yet Harrison compositions such as “Something” and “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” are as good as anything the Beatles ever recorded. And with his solo debut All Things Must Pass, he stepped completely out of the shadows of his Beatle band mates to reveal himself a powerfully spiritual songwriter with an expansive sense of melody. Harrison was also a gifted, fluid guitarist and hugely influential in introducing the Beatles — and, by extension, the entire Sixties generation – to Eastern religion and musical influences. His devotion to Hinduism was expressed publicly through rock and roll’s first massive charity event, the 1971 Concert for Bangladesh.

Before all that, Harrison was a teen guitarist in thrall to Britain’s 1950s skiffle revival — a working class kid with a band called the Rebels. It was Paul McCartney, a schoolmate one year ahead of Harrison, who invited the 15-year-old to jam with the Quarrymen, a group led John Lennon. (Harrison had come three years behind Lennon at his previous school.) This band would become the Beatles — and Harrison would himself become, like Lennon and McCartney, one of his generation’s great seekers. His response to fame, however, was to direct that search inside of himself.

As a songwriter, Harrison was continually out-gunned by Lennon-McCartney. The intense trio of songs he contributed to Revolver, “Taxman,” “I Want to Tell You,” and “Love You To” would be his most significant contribution to a single Beatles album. He had other classics to his credit, including “Here Comes the Sun” and “Something,” his first Beatles A-side, a track which would top the charts in America. (Both came off 1969’s Abbey Road) But Harrison also funneled his creativity into the guitar, a suitably introspective pursuit. From his raw, early rock-and-roll 27

influences he extrapolated a wide-ranging and poetic style. In the late sixties, he helped introduce the slide guitar to prominence; he also popularized the 12-string Rickenbacker guitar and its ultra-distinctive sound on 1964’s A Hard Day’s Night.

Harrison introduced the Byrds to the Rickenbacker; they, in turn, led him to what would become a calling card: the sitar.

With the Indian composer Ravi Shankar as his teacher, the guitarist introduced the instrument (which dates to the middle ages) into the Beatles, and rock music, with “Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown,” off 1965’s Rubber Soul. Two years later, Harrison’s unique, and principal, contribution to Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band would be “Within You Without You,” a centerpiece for sitar. It was his experimental sliver of that experimental album, but it also a declaration of his independence.

In 1966, the band gave up performing live (which suited the shy, perfectionist Harrison). In 1969, during filming of recording sessions for The Beatles, Harrison quit the band. He returned 12 days later, after negotiations, but he was the first splinter in the band as it finally broke apart in 1970.

Meanwhile, Harrison lived his life increasingly under the guidance of Hinduism. Shankar, who he’d made world famous, had become a close friend, and would remain so for life. He married Pattie Boyd, who he’d met on the set for the Hard Days Night movie, in 1966; in 1969, he bought a private estate in Henley-onThames called Friar Park. Creatively, he’d clearly built a head of steam. His Wonderwall Music soundtrack (Wonderwall Music, 1968) was the first solo effort from a Beatle, and as a ramshackle mix of traditional Indian music and rock, hardly one for the screaming fans. For Electronic Music (1969), he partnered with composers like Bernie Krause for an exercise in Moog synthesizer noodling.

Throat cleared, he then released All Things Must Pass, a threerecord, Number One album of songs he’d originally written for 28

the Beatles. It would become his masterwork. Produced by Phil Spector and featuring guests Eric Clapton and Traffic’s Dave Mason, the record produced “My Sweet Lord,” his biggest solo hit. That this achingly tender evocation of his religious beliefs was eventually shown, in civil court, to have its melody taken from a sixties hit by Chiffons (“He’s So Fine”) did little to dull its resonance. (It was determined that Harrison “unknowingly” plagiarized the song. In 1976 he would have a hit with Thirty Three & 1/3’s “This Song,” a kidding take on the lawsuit featuring vocals by Eric Idle of Monty Python.)

Harrison followed this statement of faith with another, even larger-scale gesture, putting together with Ravi Shankhar a massive 1971 benefit for Bangladeshi refuges. Performers at the two Madison Square Garden concerts included Bob Dylan — who alone gave a historic show — Eric Clapton, and Ringo Starr.

The shows and resulting documentary and three-record album (both called Concert for Bangladesh) provided a minor hit for Harrison, “Bangla Desh,” and millions for the intended beneficiaries. (Another asterisk: the majority of this money was held up for 10 years while Apple records was audited by the IRS.)

“KNOWN FIRST AS “THE QUIET BEATLE”, GEORGE HARRISON WAS A GREAT SONGWRITER WHO HAD THE MISFORTUNE TO BE SURROUNDED

BY TWO STONE COLD GENUISES WHOSE WORK OFTEN OBSCURED HIS TALENTS.”

29

Picking up where “My Sweet Lord” left off — and capturing the easy-going uplift of the times, lacing it with his slide guitar — Harrison picked up another Number One single with 1973’s “Give Me Love (Give Me Peace on Earth),” off Living in the Material World. The next year he released Dark Horse on his own label of the same name, but despite the title track’s climb to Number 15, the mellow times seemed to evaporate. Harrison and Pattie Boyd would not officially divorce until 1977, but Boyd had already taken up with Eric Clapton, whom she would later marry. In a bizarre move, Harrison had the two cover “Bye Bye Love,” an Everly Brothers hit, with him. Worse yet, on his big U.S. tour with Pandit Ravi Shankar & Friends, Harrison’s voice, never strong, seem to fail him. A backlash reared up. And with that, he shrunk from one major spotlight: Those were his last shows in the United States.

Between 1975 and 1979, Harrison kept plugging away, to unspectacular commercial and critical results. Extra Texture (Read All About It) (1975) and 33 1?3 (1977) were more the work of a (still talented) journeyman than a seeker, although the latter album produced a stalwart fan favorite in “Crackerbox Palace.”

(Critic Robert Christgau, never a Harrison fan, wrote that the song was “the best thing he’s written since ‘Here Comes the Sun.’”) The slick George Harrison (1979) didn’t juice his mojo, either. But he had other things going for him: Besides his passion for Formula 1 racing (celebrated in Harrison’s “Faster”), there was his 1978 marriage to Olivia Arias, mother to his son Dhani, who he would spend the rest of his life with. In 1979, he self-published a loose memoir, I Me Mine, and began executive producing Monty Python films. Still, his next album, Somewhere in England, encountered trouble even before it was released.

Warner Bros. (parent to Harrison’s Dark Horse) demanded the replacement of four songs.

On December 8, 1980, John Lennon was assassinated by Mark Chapman. Harrison hadn’t reconciled with Lennon after the 30

breakup of the Beatles. I Me Mine didn’t even mention Lennon, and when Lennon reached out to Harrison after discovering this, Harrison did not respond. His public statement offered a reserved, if not especially profound or feeling, conclusion: “To rob life is the ultimate robbery in life.” Harrison reframed “All Those Years Ago,” a song originally about Ringo Starr, to honor Lennon, and added it to the reworked Somewhere in England. The song went to Number Two. Harrison hit musical bottom with the 1982 bomb Gone Troppo, and retreated from the studio and stage for years. He made an uncharacteristically brash return in 1987 with Cloud Nine, which featured George in mirrored shades on its cover. The record went platinum and delivered a sticky Number One hit “Got My Mind Set on You,” a song derived from an obscure sixties number

by Rudy Clark. Whatever the state of Harrison’s inner focus, it wasn’t probed here. But producer Jeff Lynne (of Electric Light Orchestra) helped Harrison lay on a fine sheen, and kept him to a tidy 11 tracks.

Late Eighties rock was, briefly, very good to George Harrison.

Before long he and Lynne hooked up with Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, and Roy Orbison to record a song for Harrison — which led to the Traveling Wilburys, the last word on the rock super group. Their two albums — the irrepressible Traveling Wilburys Vol. 1 (1988) and scattershot Traveling Wilburys Vol. 3 (1990) — goosed the careers of all involved, and led to Harrison’s 1991 tour of Japan with Eric Clapton, which in turn led to the solid Live in Japan.

After this, Harrison returned to quietude. In 1995, he, Paul McCartney, and Ringo Starr produced two “new” Beatles songs “Free as a Bird” and “Real Love” for The Beatles Anthology documentary and albums. In 1998, at Linda McCartney’s funeral, the three appeared in public together for the first time in 30 years. Also in 1998, Harrison revealed he had been treated for 31

throat cancer, and he was soon beset by more difficulty: On December 30, 1999, a mentally unstable man named Michael Abram broke into the Friar Park estate, lured Harrison out of his bedroom, and stabbed him repeatedly. The attack finally ended when Abram collapsed from injuries sustained when Olivia Harrison fought him off with a fireplace poker.

Harrison continued to suffer from cancer, an on November 29, 2001, at only 58 years old, Harrison died of the disease. He was memorialized around the world. On the first anniversary of his death, McCartney, Starr and many of Harrison’s other friends gathered for the Concert for George, which benefited the Material World Charitable Foundation. McCartney and Starr collaborated on “For You Blue,” Eric Clapton and Jeff Lynne performed “Here Comes the Sun,” and all artists at the concert gathered for several Harrison classics, including “Something” and “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.” Brainwashed, which Harrison had been working on with his son Dhani just before his death, was released in 2002 to warm critical reception. In 2004 Harrison was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame as a solo artist (the Beatles were inducted in 1988), and in 2009 EMI released Let it Roll: Songs by George Harrison, a career-spanning compilation.

Shortly after his death, Harrison’s family issued a statement that summed up his legacy: “He left this world as he lived in it, conscious of God, fearless of death and at peace, surrounded by family and friends. He often said, ‘Everything else can wait but the search for God cannot wait, and love one another.’”

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“HEAS LEFT THIS WORLD HE LIVED IN IT,

CONSCIOUS OF GOD, FEARLESS OF DEATH AND AT PEACE, SURROUNDED

BY FAMILY AND FRIENDS.

”

33

HOW THE BEATLES WENT VIRAL Blunders, Technology & Luck Broke the Fab Four in America By: Steve Greenberg

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C

onsider the following: At the end of 1963, virtually no one in America had heard of the Beatles. Yet on Feb. 9, 1964, they drew the largest TV audience in history-73 million viewers-when they appeared on “The Ed Sullivan Show.”

How could such a conquest have occurred so quickly? I once asked my friend Lenny Kaye that question, and he answered: “Everybody was ready for the ‘60s to begin.” There’s some truth to that, but of course there’s much more to the story. The explosion of the Beatles in America was the result of combined forces-artistic, social and technological-as well as persistence, showbiz rivalries and more than a bit of luck. So how did it happen that the Beatles came out of nowhere to become the biggest cultural sensation ever, in six weeks? Of course The Beatles didn’t really come out of nowhere. They came out of England.

And England was where the frenzy that was Beatlemania began.

Unlike its blitzkrieg-like arrival in America, Britain’s obsession with the Beatles emerged during the course of nearly a year. The band was huge locally in its native Liverpool, even before the group had begun to make records. After the Beatles signed to EMI’s Parlophone label, a series of singles appeared beginning in late 1962: ”Love Me Do,” “Please Please Me” and “From Me to You”-each a bigger hit than the previous one. The first whispers of mass hysteria wafted out of the north of England in late spring, just as Please Please Me moved into the No. 1 position on the U.K. chart, a spot that a succession of Beatles albums would hold for almost a year.

With the Beatles touring relentlessly, the screaming girls, the frenzied chase scenes, the whole carnival spread steadily, town by town. In late August, the band released its biggest hit yet-”She Loves You,” which became the all-time best-selling single by a U.K. act. Pop hadn’t been a subject to which the major newspapers paid much attention. In fact, it took John Lennon’s involvement in a fistfight at a birthday party for Paul McCartney in June to garner the band its first national headline: “Beatle In BrawlSorry I Socked You” read the back page banner of the Daily Mirror.

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But by late summer of 1963, the press couldn’t have been more eager for the story of four young outsiders from the hinterlands who had the power to arouse young British womanhood to heights of hysteria. In the wake of the Profumo sex scandal (at that moment in the midst of bringing down the government) and concurrent revelations of outrageous sexual escapades involving Britain’s upper crust, the U.K. press were newly fascinated by, and emboldened in covering, sexually charged topics. This new raciness, the precursor to Britain’s subsequent sex-crazed tabloid press, found an eager audience with the British public.

The Times of London opined: “On the island where the subject has long been taboo in polite society, sex has exploded into the national consciousness and national headlines.” Stories about the Beatles craze, a phenomenon viewed as overtly sexual (and rightly so), became a daily presence in the tabloids.

“... SUMMER OF 1963, THE

PRESS COULDN’T HAVE BEEN MORE EAGER FOR THE STORY OF FOUR YOUNG OUTSIDERS FROM THE HINTERLANDS...”

. At first, the press took a bemused stance. In September, the Daily Mirror ran a story about the Beatles headlined “Four Frenzied Little Lord Fauntleroys.” But then, on Oct. 13, the frenzy hit London itself: The Beatles appeared that evening on Val Parnell’s “Sunday Night at the London Palladium,” the biggest TV

36

variety show in the country, and thousands of screaming fans descended on the venue, closing off streets and clashing with the police for hours. Coincidentally, on that same day the Daily Mirror coined the term “Beatlemania” to describe a similar scene at the band’s concert the previous day in Cheltenham. (The term itself was a play on Lisztomania, the 1840s frenzy that had accompanied the concerts of Franz Liszt.) It wasn’t long before the more serious broadsheets were weighing in with pseudo-psychological analyses. The Sunday Times of London got straight to the point, quoting a young girl who answered a BBC interviewer’s question regarding why she screamed at the mere mention of the group by confessing, “It’s not something I could say on the radio.”

Meanwhile, America was oblivious to what was transpiring across the ocean. Throughout 1963, Capitol Records, which as a sister EMI-owned label held the U.S. rights to Parlophone’s product, showed no interest in the band. This was largely due to the tastes of the man in charge of the label’s international A&R, Dave Dexter, whose responsibilities included sifting through EMI’s international product searching for potential U.S. hits. Capitol’s track record in international A&R was quite good: In June 1963, for example, it released a record from EMI Japan titled “Sukiyaki” by Kyu Sakamoto that went to No. 1. But rock’n’roll was American music-Capitol already had the Beach Boys-and no English act had ever sustained a career as a U.S. hitmaker.

“MEANWHILE, AMERICA WAS OBLIVIOUS TO WHAT WAS TRANSPIRING ACROSS THE OCEAN.”

37

Besides, Dexter just didn’t like rock. A 20-year veteran of the label who had joined Capitol shortly after it was founded, he’d condemned rock’n’roll as “juvenile and maddeningly repetitive” in an internal memo several years earlier, decrying a music biz increasingly driven by the tastes of children. Dexter’s preferences ran toward jazz, and he’d had a good run signing Peggy Lee, Nat “King” Cole and Stan Kenton. The first two No. 1 Beatles singles that Parlophone offered to Capitol, “Please Please Me” and “From Me to You,” were turned down by Dexter and licensed instead to Chicago independent label Vee-Jay Records, whose attorney Paul Marshall happened to be EMI’s U.S. attorney as well. Vee-Jay might have been a good home for the Beatles, as it was having considerable success at the time with the Four Seasons, another Marshall client. But by early 1963, the label was short of funds due to its president, Ewart Abner, having dug into Vee-Jay’s operating budget in order to cover personal Las Vegas gambling losses.

Upon Vee-Jay’s February 1963 release of “Please Please Me,” Dick Biondi-a DJ at top 40 WLS Chicago and a friend of Abner’s-became the first DJ to play a Beatles record in the United States. Due primarily to airplay on Biondi’s show, the song (mistakenly credited to “The Beattles” on the 45 label and in trade ads) made it to No. 35 at WLS in March, although it didn’t chart nationally.

By late May, when Vee-Jay released the Beatles’ next single, “From Me to You,” Biondi had been fired by WLS. He was back on-air a month later at KRLA Los Angeles. Although no longer working in Vee-Jay’s hometown, he continued to be supportive of the label’s Beatles releases, and by the end of June convinced KRLA to add “From Me to You” to its playlist, even though the record hadn’t gotten any national tract ion in the month since its release. The song charted for six weeks on KRLA’s survey in July and August, peaking at No. 33, which was enough to crack Bill38

board’s Bubbling Under Singles chart, where it reached No. 116.

Still, it had sold fewer than 15,000 singles by the end of 1963.

Faring slightly better with “From Me to You” was American rocker Del Shannon, who had toured with the Beatles in England that spring. Shannon’s version spent four weeks on the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at No. 77 in July and marking the first appearance of a Lennon-McCartney song on the Hot 100. Shannon’s cover may have eliminated any chance of the Beatles’ original spreading nationally off of Biondi’s support. A letter from the PD of KXOK St. Louis to George ­Harrison’s sister Louise-who lived in Benton, Ill., and had been trying to drum up support for her brother’s band-cited the station’s earlier support for Shannon’s single as reason for not playing the Beatles’ version.

Meanwhile, Abner was dismissed from his post at Vee-Jay when his malfeasance was discovered. This aroused the suspicion of Marshall, who quit as Vee-Jay’s attorney, opting to cast his lot with EMI. In August Marshall, acting on behalf of EMI’s U.S. licensing agent Transglobal, accused Vee-Jay of non-payment of royalties, ordered Vee-Jay to cease and desist in distributing the Beatles’ music and revoked the label’s options for future singles.

Total royalties owed on Beatles sales at that point were less than $1,000, but Vee-Jay wasn’t particularly bothered about losing the unsuccessful band. The label was far more concerned with Marshall’s efforts to get the Four Seasons out of their Vee-Jay contract, also for failure to pay royalties, which he successfully did.

At the same time, “She Loves You” was beginning its recordbreaking as­cent on the U.K. chart and, having canceled the Vee-Jay deal, Marshall approached Dave Dexter at Capitol with the hot new single. In spite of British buzz growing to deafening levels, Dexter turned down the Beatles yet again, reasoning that the Vee-Jay flops proved he was right to have passed on them in the first place. “Dead in the water” was how he described the band’s U.S. prospects.

39

Trans global licensed “She Loves You” to a tiny indie, Swan Records of Philadelphia, which released it stateside on Sept. 16.

Swan had even less success with the Beatles than Vee-Jay: The song failed to chart at any station, and was roundly rejected by audiences when it was played at all. DJ Murray the K at WINS New York spun “She Loves You” on Sept. 28 in a five-way “battle of the hits,” where it came in third. He continued to play it every night for a week solid, but got no reaction. Swan convinced “American Bandstand,” which broadcast from the label’s hometown, to play the song in its “Rate a Record” segment, where it received a score of 73 out of 100. Worse, the teens on “Bandstand” laughed when host Dick Clark held up a photo of the moptopped Beatles. After that incident, Clark recalled, “I figured these guys were going nowhere.”

On the same September day that Swan released “She Loves You,” Harrison came to the States to visit his sister in Illinois, where he remained totally anonymous. Louise took her brother to a radio station in West Frankfurt, Ill., that had played “From Me to You” at her urging. The station spun a copy of “She Loves You” that Harrison had brought with him, and he was interviewed on-air by the 17-year-old daughter of the station owner, all to no discernible listener response. And when Harrison jammed with a local band called the Four Vests, playing ‘50s rock songs at a dance, no one even thought to ask for his autograph.

(Perhaps the most productive thing he did while in Illinois was purchase an album by R&B artist James Ray, which included “Got My Mind Set on You.” Harrison’s cover of the song would become the last No. 1 Hot 100 hit to date by any Beatle when it topped the summit nearly 25 years later.) Harrison returned to England feeling despondent about the Beatles’ chances in America.

40

“HARRISON

RETURNED TO ENGLAND FEELING DESPODENT ABOUT THE BEATLES’ CHANCES IN AMERICA.” 41

WINNING OVER THE ROYALS AND ED SULLIVAN: After the band’s performance on “Sunday Night at the London Palladium” on Oct. 13, the tabloid press hysteria in the United Kingdom reached a fever pitch, and the American press began to take notice. On Oct. 29, the Washington Post published the first U.S. story on the phenomenon, written by London correspondent Flora Lewis. Titled “Thousands Of Britons ‘Riot,’” the story reported on the need for riot squads to calm the crowds in four British cities where the band had recently played. Lewis’ article was dismissive of the music (declaring that the beat was the same “over and over”), and she compared the Beatles’ look to “limp, upside-down dust mops.”

Britain got a respite from the madness for a few days than in late October while the band toured Sweden. Upon their return on Oct. 31, the Beatles were met at a rainy London Airport by more than 1,000 screaming fans. The New York Times reported that even the sound of the taxiing jets was no match for the screams of the crowd. Ed Sullivan, also at London Airport that day, assumed the ruckus was for a member of the British Royal Family.

When informed it was for the Beatles, he asked, “Who the hell are the Beatles?” Sullivan, a former gossip columnist, had a nose for a good story and something about the scene reminded him of the early days of Elvis Presley, whom he had famously presented on his variety show years earlier. He began to contemplate booking the Beatles, perhaps as a novelty act.

On Nov. 4, the Beatles performed as part of the Royal Variety Performance at the London Palladium. In the British press, it 42

was they moment they morphed from the objects of a barbarous throng’s coarse obsession into lovable moptops. As with all acts on the bill at the annual charity event, the Beatles performed at the invitation of Queen Elizabeth, although the Queen herself stayed home that evening, pregnant with Prince Edward. The Queen Mother, best-loved of the Royal Family, was in attendance, however, and was reported to have been clapping along on the off beat during the Beatles’ set, while Princess Margaret snapped her fingers.

Famously, Lennon introduced the band’s finale that evening, “Twist and Shout,” with the quip, Will the people in the cheaper seats clap your hands? And the rest of you, if you’ll just rattle your jewelry.” It was a display of cheekiness that heretofore one simply didn’t exhibit before the Royal Family. And yet, by narrowing the distance between the monarchy and the workingclass foursome onstage, Lennon brought down the house-and in the process managed to make the band all the more beloved in an England where notions of one’s proper place were evolving rapidly. Even the Queen Mother came away a fan, calling the Beatles “so young, fresh and vital.”

From then on, the Beatles were treated as something akin to national heroes. While the Nov. 2 Daily Telegraph had compared a Beatles concert to Hitler’s Nuremberg rallies, the morning after the Royal Variety Performance the band achieved a new legitimacy from a love-struck press. As the Daily Mirror put it, “You have to be a real square not to love the nutty,

“...ON OCT.31, THE BEATLES WERE

MET AT A RAINY LONDON AIRPORT BY MORE THAN 1,000 SCREAMING FANS.” 43

noisy, happy, handsome Beatles.” Victory was total: By December, London Sunday Times music critic Richard Buckle was comparing their music to Beethoven.

Despite the undeniable phenomenon of the Beatles in Englandwhich was growing by the day-Capitol U.S. dealt yet another blow to the band in early November when Dexter again turned down its latest single. This one, “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” had advance orders in the United Kingdom of more than 1 million singles. The day after the Royal Variety Performance, the band’s manager Brian Epstein headed to New York. Ostensibly the trip was to promote one of his other acts, Liverpool singer Billy J. Kramer, who was signed to Liberty Records and who accompanied him on the journey. But more importantly, Epstein was determined to figure out how to get the Beatles’ U.S. career on track.

Part of Epstein’s efforts in New York would focus on securing the Beatles a spot on “The Ed Sullivan Show.” Sullivan’s European scout, Peter Pritchard, had taken the show’s talent coordinator Bob Babb to see the band perform earlier in the year and was regularly updating Babb on the group’s progress. Pritchard called Sullivan and encouraged him to meet with Epstein. The reception the band had received at London Airport was intriguing, but it was Pritchard’s report of how the group wowed the Royal Family that made Sullivan agree to a sit-down with Epstein.

After two meetings, the deal was set: The Beatles would appear on two episodes of “The Ed Sullivan Show” on Feb. 9 and Feb. 16, and a third appearance would be taped for broadcast at a later date. (The three episodes would ultimately be broadcast on consecutive weeks.) Sullivan had done something similar with Presley in 1956, when he booked the singer for three appearances in a four-month period. But the Beatles were flying in from England, and the time frame for their appearances was condensed to avoid the expense of repeatedly flying them in and out. Presley in 44

1956, when he booked the singer for three appearances in a fourmonth period. But the Beatles were flying in from England, and the time frame for their appearances was condensed to avoid the expense of repeatedly flying them in and out.

Sullivan had quite a reputation for being budget-conscious, but in the case of the Beatles he was particularly parsimonious.

While performers on his show regularly received $10,000 or more for a top-billed appearance-a red-hot Presley had received $50,000 in 1956 for his three appearances-Sullivan held the upper hand in his negotiations with Epstein, who represented a group unknown in America. Thus, Epstein settled for $10,000 total for the three appearances. But he’d gotten what he wanted: a top-billed performance on “The Ed Sullivan Show,” plus two more. For an unproven act, such a commitment from Sullivan was unprecedented,

“FROM THEN ON,

THE BEATLES WERE TREATED AS SOMETHING AKIN TO NATIONAL HEROES.” 45

but, as Sullivan later recalled in a New York Times interview, “I made up my mind that this was the same sort of mass hysteria that had characterized the Elvis Presley days.”

Sixteen seasons into his unparalleled 23-year prime-time run on CBS, Sullivan was just now reaching the zenith of his own fame and his show’s star-making power. A few months earlier, he’d been lionized in the film version of the stage musical “Bye Bye Birdie,” in which he played himself and which featured an eponymous musical number-performed cathedral-choir style-devoted to just how monumental it was to appear on the show: “Ed Sullivan,” the choir sang. “We’re going to be on Ed Sullivan!”

A single appearance on the show could be a ticket to the top for a lucky performer. Getting three made Epstein feel like it was a lock.

THE U.S MEDIA MEETS THE BEATLES. In the case of the Beatles, mere word of Sullivan’s agreement to feature them on three episodes was enough to change the band’s fortunes in America. With Sullivan booked, Epstein set out to address Capitol’s indifference. While there is considerable debate about what happened next, it appears Epstein paid a visit to Capitol East Coast chief Brown Meggs to plead the band’s case-and came away with a release commitment. Unknown to Epstein, EMI managing director L.G. Wood had already greased the skids for the band’s U.S. release on Capitol after Dexter had passed for the fourth time. Wood, furious that Capitol wouldn’t license the Beatles, flew to New York and met with Capitol president Alan Livingston, who was summoned from Los Angeles.

Armed with a mandate from EMI chairman Joseph Lockwood to break the logjam, Wood demanded that Livingston agree to a Beatles release on Capitol. Livingston was offended by EMI’S

46

demand, as the understanding with EMI was that Capitol would merely have the first right of refusal on EMI product, with no obligation to license. A highly successful record man whose prior accomplishments ranged from signing Frank Sinatra to creating Bozo the Clown (and who later in life would own the production company that signed Don McLean’s “American Pie”), Livingston was used to running Capitol as his own fiefdom. But the truth was, EMI owned 96% of Capitol and Livingston was an employee. Wood refused to let Livingston leave the meeting until he’d agreed to a Beatles release. Livingston grudgingly agreed to press 5,000 copies of the next single. Only later, after word came in that Epstein had secured three appearances for the Beatles with Sullivan, did Capitol get onboard in a big way, committing to a $40,000 marketing budget (about $300,000 in today’s dollars), a then-unprecedented sum for a new act.

Livingston’s version of the story differs entirely: In his recollection, he received a call in November from Epstein, who wanted to know why Capitol hadn’t released any Beatles records. Livingston responded that he’d never heard a Beatles record, which seems implausible given that the band was, by this time, a bona fide phenomenon, to which Capitol held U.S. rights, and Livingston was in regular contact with Wood, who presumably had been encouraging him to release the group’s records. That this decision would remain entirely in the hands of Dexter, with no oversight, in spite of all the mounting pressure, doesn’t make sense.

Livingston further contends that upon speaking with Epstein, he asked Dexter to bring him some Beatles records, and after hearing them he immediately sensed the band’s U.S. potential and agreed to put them out with the $40,000 marketing budget.

(Amazingly, Dexter kept his post as head of international A&R in spite of having turned down not only the Beatles but also Gerry & the Pacemakers, the Hollies, the Animals, the Dave Clark Five, Herman’s Hermits and the Yardbirds, not to mention Epstein’s Billy J. Kramer. In fact, Dexter remained in charge of A&R’ing 47

the Beatles’ records for the American market and was responsible for the reconfiguration of the U.K. albums on Capitol. Years later, upon Lennon’s death, he wrote a fairly mean editorial in Billboard about the late Beatle, for which the magazine later apologized.)

Epstein’s New York visit was jam-packed, including an interview with the New Yorker that would be published the following month, visits to music publications, plus the Kramer promotion, which culminated in a TV performance of Kramer’s cover of the Beatles’ “Do You Want to Know a Secret” on “The Joe Franklin Show.” But besides the Sullivan meetings, his most significant encounter was with General Artists Corp. agent Sid Bernstein, who was hell-bent on booking the still-unknown Beatles at New York’s Carnegie Hall.

Bernstein had discovered the Beatles while taking an evening Western civilization course at the New School, in which one of the requirements was reading British newspapers to better understand the parliamentary system. As a booking agent by day, his eyes inevitably drifted to the entertainment pages, where the hysteria the Beatles were causing was mentioned with increasing frequency. He tracked down Epstein and in early autumn pitched his Carnegie Hall idea over the phone.

Epstein was hesitant to commit to anything before the Beatles were famous in the States, out of fear of playing before an empty house. For its part, GAC was equally hesitant to book an unknown pop group.

Bernstein thus made the audacious offer to rent Carnegie Hall at his own expense, leaving out GAC, with a proposed concert date of Feb. 12. As fate would have it, that was when the Beatles were set to perform on “The Ed Sullivan Show.” Bernstein was confident that with the Sullivan deal sealed, ticket sales would be assured. While Epstein didn’t formally agree until after Jan. 1 48

to do the concert, Bernstein took their conversation as a yes and proceeded to rent Carnegie Hall. When the booker at Carnegie asked him what kind of an act the Beatles were, Bernstein, who knew that the venue didn’t tend to book pop bands, replied, with more truth than he’d intended, “They’re a phenomenon.”

Simultaneously, the American media was becoming fascinated by Britain’s fascination with the Beatles. Within the course of a week in mid-November, the band experienced intense U.S. press and TV attention: On Nov. 15, Time magazine published an account of “The New Madness,” and Newsweek followed three days later with an article simply titled “Beatlemania.” And all three U.S. TV networks sent camera crews to cover the Beatles’ Nov. 16 concert in Bournemouth, which was marked by the usual clashes between fans and police Once again, timing worked to the Beatles’ advantage: Just two months earlier, both CBS and NBC had expanded their evening news shows from 15 minutes to a half hour. This left them with airtime to fill, allowing for the kind of light features the evening news had never previously aired. NBC was first out of the gate, running a four-minute Beatlemania story on the top-rated “Huntley-Brinkley Report” on Nov. 18. Correspondent Edwin ­Newman’s piece was about fan hysteria, although he did include 30 seconds of the studio recording of “From Me to You,” as well as a snippet of the live Bournemouth performance of the same song, which was nearly drowned out by audience screams. “One reason for the Beatles’ popularity,” Newman quipped, “is that it’s almost impossible to hear them.”

“THEY’RE A PHENOMENON” 49

CBS’ story followed on Nov. 22, the same day With the Beatles was released in England. (ABC, whose newscast still stood at 15 minutes, never aired its story.) As a teaser for the four-minute piece set to appear on Walter Cronkite’s evening news show, an abbreviated version aired on “CBS Morning News” with Mike Wallace. But the full piece didn’t run that evening. Instead, everything came to a standstill with the news that President John F. Kennedy had been assassinated.

A 15-YEAR-OLD GETS RADIO IN MOTION: The Kennedy assassination sent all of American society into a depressed stupor. And perhaps no societal group was more crushed than the nation’s youth, for whom JFK embodied idealism and optimism. To be a young American right after the assassination was to be afflicted by shock, giving way to sadness and disillusionment.

In the weeks after Kennedy’s death, Cronkite began to feel the weight of the nation’s collective lack of joy, with one heavy item following another on “CBS Evening News.”Finally, he decided it was time to air something fun to break things up, but when surveying the cultural landscape, there was nothing cheery to be found. Then, someone remembered the story that was supposed to air the day of the assassination, the one about kids in England going bonkers over a group of long-haired rock’n’rollers.

On Dec. 10, “CBS Evening News” ran a four-minute piece on the Beatles. Due to the assassination, CBS was late to the story.

In addition to Time, Newsweek and NBC, Life magazine had already published a feature with a picture of Princess Margaret meeting the “Red Hot Beatles,” which ran next to a story on the Singing Nun-pop music’s present and future abutting each other in America’s most popular magazine. Even the staid New York Times Magazine had already run a lengthy article, “Britons Succumb To Beatlemania,” which, like the CBS piece, 50

had been filed before the assassination but shelved until the beginning of December.

The CBS piece, reported by London bureau chief Alan Kendrick, offered more of the same: screaming teens, the Royal Variety Performance and eye-rolling on the part of a bewildered correspondent. But it also contained two elements not found in NBC’s report: an interview with the band by correspondent Josh Darsa and a live performance of “She Loves You” from the Bournemouth show. Although Kendrick’s reporting was patronizing, concluding that the Beatles “make non-music and wear non-haircuts,” the live footage of “She Loves You” was raw and compelling. And Kendrick’s tone let teen viewers in on the fact that the Beatles were as annoying to adults as they were appealing to British teens-yet another selling point, bound to whip up curiosity.

While Cronkite’s show was second in the ratings behind NBC’s “Huntley-Brinkley Report,” it still pulled in 10 million viewers a night. One of those viewers that evening was fellow CBS star Ed Sullivan, who phoned Cronkite after the broadcast and asked the news anchor what else he could tell him about “those bugs, or whatever they call themselves,” as Cronkite later recalled. Although Sullivan had already committed to featuring the Beatles, he still viewed them as a bit of a joke. Seeing them on Cronkite’s news program conferred more status upon the group in his eyes.

Three days later-a month after the meetings with Epstein-CBS announced in a press release that the Beatles, a “wildly popular quartet of English recording stars, will make their first trip to the United States Feb. 7 for their American television debut on ‘The Ed Sullivan Show’ [on] Sunday, Feb. 9 and 16.” The release went on to recount the considerable press the band had already received stateside, and included the by-now obligatory mention of how the group won over the Royal Family. It also noted that “their first record release is scheduled for January,” an acknowledgement of Capitol’s trade announcement of the previ51

ous week, which had in fact already spilled the beans about the upcoming Sullivan appearances.

Also watching the Cronkite telecast that evening was a 15-yearold girl named Marsha Albert of Silver Spring, Md., who wrote a letter to local DJ Carroll James of WWDC Washington, D.C., asking, “Why can’t we have music like that here in America?”

James, who had also seen the Cronkite broadcast and been intrigued, called a friend at BOAC (now British Air), who arranged for a stewardess to bring a copy of “I Want to Hold Your Hand” to the station two days later. As an extra treat, James invited Albert to the studio.

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AND SO, ON DEC. 17, ALBERT ANNOUNCED ON WWDC,

“LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, FOR THE FIRST TIME ON THE AIR IN THE UNITED STATES, HERE ARE THE BEATLES SINGING ‘I WANT TO HOLD YOUR HAND.’” 53

By the time the song finished, the station’s switchboard was lit up with calls from listeners who wanted to hear it again. WWDC put it into heavy rotation, with a voice-over in the middle of the song announcing it as a “WWDC exclusive” to keep the other D.C. station from recording it off the air and broadcasting it. By the next day, area record stores were deluged with requests for this record they’d never heard of-and which wasn’t in fact available. James then sent a tape of the record to friend who DJ’d at a station in Chicago, who got the same reaction and then sent it on to a friend in St. Louis, where “I Want to Hold Your Hand” received a similarly ecstatic response.

Why was it that the Beatles connected so powerfully when James gave them one spin on Dec. 17, while their previous releases received no such response? For one thing, the Beatles appeared to have been a remedy for those dark days after Kennedy’s death.

As Lester Bangs has written of that winter, “We needed a fling after the wake.” Something different, exotic, joyful,, euphoric even, was just the remedy. And in retrospect, it’s clear that it needed to come from outside America, beyond the borders of a country still very much in mourning.

Additionally, the U.S. media attention already given to Britain’s Beatlemania made it easy for American teens to know exactly how to respond to the band. The first few Beatles singles had appeared in a vacuum and flopped. But to call the level of U.S. media attention the Beatles had achieved by the time of the first spin on WWDC out of the ordinary would be a vast understatement. By way of the Cronkite and “Huntley-Brinkley” appearances alone, more than 20 million Americans watched news features about Beatlemania.

It’s hard for today’s pop culture consumer to imagine a world prior to the saturation coverage of all things pop on the Internet, let alone prior to MTV, E!, “Entertainment Tonight,” People and Rolling Stone. But in 1963, radio airplay, coverage in the teen 54

magazines and the occasional wire service feature were the most that pop acts could hope to receive. TV was limited to “American Bandstand” or local imitators of it, and, if an act’s single was big enough, a performance on one of the networks’ prime-time variety shows.

Yet the Beatles were suddenly everywhere. Tales of British Beatlemania were becoming common knowledge stateside, priming the U.S. public for its own hysteria. A cartoon that accompanied the New York Times Magazine piece on Beatlemania summed it up: A girl is shown playing a Beatles record on her phonograph, while explaining to her bewildered father:

“BUT NATURALLY THEY MAKE YOU WANT TO SCREAM,DADDY-O; THAT’S THE WHOLE IDEA OF THE BEATLES’ SOUND.” 55

When you hear the Beatles, you scream. Fans were learning how to react to the band before they’d ever heard the music. And when it turned out that the music was actually terrific, the choice between American depression and British Beatlemania became a no-brainer.

TECHNOLOGY LIGHTS THE FUSE: Everyone, that is, except Capitol. The label had scheduled “I Want to Hold Your Hand” for release on Jan. 13, 1964, and James’ early airplay on WWDC, with no records in stores, was seen as potentially harmful to the project. The music business was still many years away from releasing singles to radio in advance of the retail date in order to build demand. Airplay without records in stores was seen as the equivalent of an uncapped gusher spewing wasted oil. And so, Capitol called in its lawyers, who sent a cease-and-desist letter to WWDC, demanding it pull the record off the air. The station responded with an emphatic refusal-this was the hottest record in ages, and WWDC had an exclusive. James, meanwhile, kept circulating tapes of the song to more and more DJs in other cities, with every station getting the same unprecedented reaction. Finally, Capitol relented and decided to move the release up to the earliest date possible, Dec. 26.

By this point Capitol understood it was sitting on a monster and that it would need to manufacture far more than the 200,000 singles the label had originally planned. Factories work­ed overtime as Christmas approached. Capitol even did third-party deals with manufacturing plants owned by rival labels.

Moving up the release date would prove to be the key decision made by Capitol in the entire campaign, making possible everything that followed. Had Albert not written to James, setting this acceleration into motion, the conditions wouldn’t have existed for the fan hysteria that accompanied the band’s trip to the States and the ­record-shattering ratings for the Beatles’ appearance on 56

“The Ed Sullivan Show” on Feb. 9. But now it all unfurled very quickly.

On Dec. 23, Capitol national album merchandising manager Paul Russell sent a staff memo outlining the Beatles marketing plan. As was standard in those days, almost all marketing efforts targeted the industry, not consumers: A two-page ad set to run in the Dec. 30 Billboard titled “Meet the Beatles!” would be reprinted and distributed to radio stations and retailers. It would be reproduced as an easel-backed cardboard point-of-purchase item, intended for placement on record store checkout counters. Also for distribution at retail and radio, Capitol created a motion display diorama, with they call on radio or retail accounts ... Make arrangements with some local high school students to spread the stickers around town. Involve your friends and relatives.”

By the time the marketing plan was set in motion, however, it was hardly needed. Livingston later reported that Capitol never even made it through the entire $40,000 budget. From the moment “I Want to Hold Your Hand” was released on Dec. 26, it simply sold itself.

Suspending all sales and promotion staff vacation during Christmas week, Capitol sprung into action on Dec. 26, its promotion men hand-delivering the Beatles’ 45 single to key stations by 9 a.m. Before the morning was over, top 40 stations around the country were hammering the record. Record stores were immediately besieged, as teens rushed to spend their Christmas money.

As one New Jersey retailer told Billboard, “Sales started out like an explosion.”

Moving the release date up had an unexpected benefit. In 1964, the average American teen listened to the radio for more than three hours per day. With kids out of school for Christmas week, that number was undoubtedly even higher. And, equally important, the most common stocking-stuffers received by teens that 57

Christmas were transistor radios, which had become cheaper than ever.

Although popular since the mid-’50s, the Japanese-made transistor radio experienced exponential sales growth in the mid-’60s, as inexpensive off-brands proliferated. While 5.5 million radios had been sold in the United States in 1962, by 1963 that number nearly doubled to 10 million. So ubiquitous was the transistor radio as a holiday gift in 1963 that the popular comedy songwriter Allan Sherman recorded a “12 Days of Christmas”parody keyed around having received a Japanese transistor radio “on the first day of Christmas,” with more details about the radio piling up with each successive verse: “It’s a Nakashuma/It’s the Mark 4 model-that’s the one that’s discontinued/And it comes with a leatherette case with holes in it so you can listen right through the case/And it has a wire with a thing on one end that you can stick in your ear.”

The transistor radio was the technological spark that lit the fuse of teen culture in the ‘60s. Like the Internet in the last decade, it was a vehicle of public music discovery and sharing. Like the Walkman in the ‘80s, it made music portable and private in new ways that energized listeners. One could take it anywhere-the schoolyard, the beach, wherever-and share music with friends.

But one could also listen through an earplug while walking down the street, sitting in the back of the class or lying in bed at night, under the covers, so parents wouldn’t know.

Prior radios had neither portability nor the earplug. Subsequent technologies-the boom box, Walkman, iPod-enhanced the public or private listening experience, but not both. The Maysles’ documentary shows the Beatles taking their Pepsi-branded transistor radio everywhere, listening both collectively and through earplugs to top 40 stations. In a meta moment, they do a face-toface interview with a DJ in their hotel suite while simultaneously listening to the interview being broadcast live on their radio.

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!

THE BEATLES ARE COMING

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So imagine, if you will, teenagers across America turning on their new transistor radios during Christmas vacation in 1963, listening for hours, everywhere, alone and with their friends, and hearing -over and over again-a new sound that excited them even more than their new piece of hardware. Within its first three days of release, “I Want to Hold Your Hand” sold 250,000 copies and the Beatles were immediately the most talked-about group in the country. DJs were quick to inform their listeners that the band would be coming to America in February, heightening the sense of excitement.

THE BACKLASH JUST FEEDS THE FRENZY: A backlash from adults was just as immediate. On Dec. 29, the Baltimore Sun, dreading a replication of Beatlemania on U.S. shores, summed up the grown-up position by editorializing: “America had better take thought as to how it will deal with the invasion. Indeed a restrained ‘Beatles go home’ might be just the thing.”

“They look like four of the Three Stooges with a hairy measure of Ish Kabibble,” Donald Freeman quipped in the Chicago Tribune, referencing some of the most unkempt performers of the 1940s. “And if they ever submitted to a barber who loves musicsnip, snip!-that would be the end of the act.”The condescension was just one more reason for teens to love the Beatles: “This annoys the grownups! It’s something that’s ours, that’s not part of the whole messed-up adult world.” Capitol understood the value of adult condemnation in whipping up teen frenzy, and noted the Sun’s comments in its own press release.

Of course, in those days, rock’n’roll was still, to quote Sullivan’s typical on-air introductions of rock acts, “for the kiddies.” And so, the sudden rise of the Beatles naturally caused nearly all the adult pundits to cover their ears and complain. The king of the 60

complainers turned out to be NBC TV host Jack Paar. And by his attempt to mock the group on his Friday night variety show on Jan. 3, 1964, he managed to send Beatlemania into an even higher orbit.

Paar had been in attendance at the Royal Variety Performance in November and thought the hullabaloo over the Beatles was ridiculous. Like so many adults, he found rock’n’roll to be juvenile and had never booked a rock act on his show. Still, once his rival Sullivan announced the band’s February appearances, Paar decided to scoop him. He licensed Beatles footage from the BBC and issued a press release announcing that he’d be the first to present the band. (This actually caused Sullivan to consider canceling the Beatles’ appearances, although he quickly thought better of dumping the by-now hot act.) Top 40 DJs throughout the country breathlessly conveyed the news to their listeners that the Beatles-who had never been seen by most of their U.S. fans, except in the photo on their single sleeve-would be making their TV debut on “The Jack Paar Show.”

The Paar appearance, when it is remembered at all, is generally considered a footnote. NBC doesn’t brag about the appearance, being that Paar turned out to be on the wrong side of history, with Paar himself admitting he showed the Beatles “as a joke.”

But outside of radio airplay, the taped performance on Paar’s show on Jan. 3 was the single most important event leading to the frenzy surrounding the band’s “Ed Sullivan Show” appearance the following month. As Beatles producer George Martin commented to Variety in May 1964, it was Paar who deserves credit as the one who “aroused the kids’ curiosity.”

Paar’s weekly program, which aired at 10 p.m., drew an average of 17 million viewers, most of whom were an older crowd. But with the Beatles set to appear, viewership swelled that week to 30 million. To put these numbers in perspective, Paar’s show typically wasn’t among the top 30 shows in the country, but his Jan. 61

3 episode had a viewership almost as large as the week’s No. 1 show, which drew 34 million viewers.

The show’s Beatles segment started with footage of fan hysteria at a U.K. Beatles concert, with Paar’s mocking interjections-”I understand science is working on a cure for this”-eliciting laughter from his studio audience. Then, as promised, he presented the first full-song performance by the Beatles Capitol wasn’t amused, as the Paar broadcast brought attention to a song on a rival label.

In a Jan. 20 press release, Capitol condescendingly referred to the Paar performance as “an obvious attempt to scoop arch-foe Ed Sullivan.” The rollout of Beatlemania had never really been under Capitol’s control, but this development ensured it never would be.

FOUR SONGS TO HOLD YOU: As it turned out, Capitol’s having passed on the Beatles’ early singles served to make the initial wave of Beatlemania more intense than had the band been rolled out in an orderly fashion by the label, one single at a time. On the same day as the Paar broadcast, Vee-Jay released “Please Please Me” and “From Me to You” as a double-sided single, with both songs making their presence felt on the air. Having four Beatles singles in heavy rotation on the radio all at once in January 1964 made the band’s impact on audiences exponentially more powerful. It was the Beatles with whom teens fell in love, not just a Beatles single.

A week after Paar, Vee-Jay also released the first U.S. Beatles album, Introducing The Beatles, which was originally intended for the summer of 1963, but shelved in the wake of the label’s financial crisis. Capitol responded by obtaining an injunction against the indie, claiming that Vee-Jay had lost rights to the Beatles’ masters when its license was revoked. The injunction kept the 45 and LP out of stores, but couldn’t keep DJs from spinning the 62

songs. A court ruled in Vee-Jay’s favor on Feb. 5, at which point the label was able to get its releases back into the market. As a result of the delay, “Please Please Me” and “From Me to You” were already huge radio hits by the time they debuted on the Hot 100 in early February. “Please Please Me” would peak at No. 3, trailing only “I Want to Hold Your Hand” and “She Loves You” on the chart.

By the time Vee-Jay was able to get Introducing. The Beatles back on store shelves, Capitol was already there with Meet the Beatles!, which it released on Jan. 20. Thus, within a three-and-ahalf-week period, the market had been deluged with three singles and two LPs. Introducing ... The Beatles quickly rose to No. 2 on the albums chart, behind only Meet the Beatles!, which had already sold more than 500,000 copies by the time the Vee-Jay album returned to the market.

It’s clear that virtually upon its release on Dec. 26, “I Want to Hold Your Hand” was the biggest-selling single in the country, but chart lag time kept this fact from being reflected in Billboard and Cashbox for several weeks. Cashbox listed it at No. 1 on its Jan. 24 chart, reflecting actual sales for the week of Jan. 5-11.

This was the first week since the release of the single that was not interrupted by a holiday, and for which full data was reported and processed. (Billboard listed it atop the Hot 100 the following week.)

Back then, publications like Billboard and Cashbox were strictly for the trade, and consumers weren’t generally exposed to their chart rankings. Teens were more familiar with the countdown on “American Bandstand.” However, just five days before the Capitol single arrived, “Bandstand” stopped broadcasting from Philadelphia and the show went on hiatus until February 1964, when it began originating from Los Angeles. By the time the show resumed, “I Want to Hold Your Hand” was already in the midst of its stay at No. 1.

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Therefore, the only way teens were able to follow the rise of the record was on their local radio station charts. By the first week of January, WABC New York listed the song at No. 1, the first station to do so. (WABC had a nighttime reach that covered much of the county, helping the record spread like wildfire.) The following week, it debuted at No. 1 on KRLA and the week after that it did the same at KFWB Los Angeles.

The pace of the chart rise at any given station had more to do with chart methodology than the song’s actual popularity in the marketplace. Basically, stations placed the song at No. 1 as soon as they figured out that it had defied all precedent and was already the most popular song in the market.

The instant ubiquity of an unknown band, which had yet to set foot in America, defies all accepted precedent. In the United Kingdom, the band had toured incessantly, playing live in 34 cities in the fall of 1963 alone; released numerous singles; hosted its own weekly radio show; and appeared numerous times on TV, all before Beatlemania erupted. In America, the group reached the same heights upon the release of the first Capitol single.

Pop histories often suggest that the Beatles were welcomed by U.S. consumers because they brought rock’n’roll back to the radio after it had been rendered toothless by a combination of a payola scandal and the loss of many of its major stars to tragedy (Buddy Holly), the draft (Presley) and incarceration (Chuck Berry). But this isn’t quite true. Of course, the Beatles’ sound was fresh, but it’s not as though there weren’t other rock’n’roll artists on the radio. Motown was becoming ubiquitous, the Beach Boys had already begun to rack up hits, and, at that very moment, “Louie Louie” by the Kingsmen-a record that would have sounded at home on the first Rolling Stones album a few months later-was in the midst of a six-week run at No. 2 on the Billboard chart.

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As the Beatles’ U.S. arrival on Feb. 7 approached, TV and print coverage intensified. Sullivan had started hyping on-air the Beatles’ upcoming appearance in mid-January, right after their Paar performance. Late-night talk show hosts were peppering their monologues with Beatles jokes. And Life magazine, which reached up to 40 million readers per week, ran a seven-page photo-filled essay in the Jan. 31 issue titled “Here Come Those Beatles,” which reported, “First England fell, victim of a million girlish screams. Then, last week, Paris surrendered. Now the U.S. must brace itself. The Beatles are coming.”

At radio, everyone wanted to be the station listeners most associated with the group. In late January, Capitol distributed a prerecorded interview with the Beatles to stations. The discs contained no questions, only the Beatles’ answers, allowing local DJs to pretend they were conducting their own interviews. Searching for more Beatles records to play, stations turned to the flip side of “I Want to Hold Your Hand”-”I Saw Her Standing There”-and also the flip sides of the Vee-Jay and Swan singles. So across the board was the demand for the band’s music that WYNR Chicago, which had recently abandoned pop for an R&B format, decided to make an exception and add Beatles records to its playlist. Other R&B stations and some middle-of-the-road (MOR) stations began doing the same.

“NO DOUBT ABOUT IT, THE BEATLES STOOD AT THE WHITE-HOT CENTER OF THE CULTURE.

BY THE END OF JANUARY, THEY HAD ALREADY SOLD 2.6 MILLION RECORDS. AND THEN THINGS REALLY TOOK OFF.” 65

D- DAY ARRIVES In the days leading up to the Beatles’ visit, New York stations battled to be the home for teens who wanted up-to-the-minute information on the band’s arrival at the newly renamed John F. Kennedy Airport. Regular updates on the Beatles’ flight from London were broadcast on each of the city’s three top 40 stations, with promises that correspondents would be on the tarmac to greet the Fab Four and provide live coverage. Capitol made sure to provide specific information to the DJs in advance, with scheduled arrival time and gate number. In those pre-airport security days, it was no wonder that fans began to flock to the airport as the Pan Am jet drew closer to the Eastern Seaboard.

At 1:20 p.m. on Feb. 7, the Beatles arrived stateside on Pan Am flight 101, greeted by the high-pitched squeals of approximately 4,000 teenagers, plus more than 200 reporters and photographers and 100 police officers. The crowd was larger and louder than that which Sullivan had chanced upon three months earlier at London Airport. At the famous press conference conducted inside the airport, defying the low expectations journalists had of rock’n’rollers in that era, the Beatles’ charisma and wit wowed the skeptical crowd. If anything, it was the reporters who appeared to be the dullards, asking banal questions-”What do you think of Beethoven?”-which the Beatles fielded with their patented cheekiness-”Great,” Ringo Starr replied. “Especially his poems.”

The press conference done, the band headed to Manhattan, chased by rabid fans shouting at the foursome from the windows of moving cars on the expressway. Upon arriving at the Plaza Hotel, they found thousands more fans waiting for them, once more tipped off to the band’s whereabouts by DJs who’d gotten their information straight from Capitol.

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The arrival of the Beatles received major coverage on that evening’s news. Cronkite’s report on CBS showed much more respect than the first time around. “The British invasion this time goes by the code name Beatlemania,” Cronkite said. “D-Day has been common knowledge for months, and this was the day.”

Whether because he felt invested in the band due to his role in bringing them to America’s attention, or because the band was about to appear on Sullivan’s CBS show, Cronkite was now a believer. In stark contrast, NBC had de facto positioned itself as the anti-Beatles network, and in the spirit of the Edwin Newman piece in November and the Paar broadcast in January, Chet Huntley went out of his way to be demeaning to the group. He explained to his viewers that NBC had “sent three camera crews to stand among the shrieking youngsters and record the sights and sounds for posterity... the pictures are very good, but someone asked what the fuss was about and we found we couldn’t answer. So, good night from NBC News.” The broadcast ended without Huntley bothering to show any of the footage.

The next day, every newspaper covered the Beatles’ arrival. During the course of the band’s visit, the New York Times printed at least one article about the Beatles every day. New York’s Daily News, which then had the largest daily circulation in America, ran enough photos of the group throughout its visit to cover the bedroom walls of countless girls, top to bottom. A visit by President Lyndon Johnson to the city, which was just wrapping up, was relegated to the newspaper’s inside pages.

Throughout their historic Kennedy Airport press conference, the Beatles had been peppered with private questions by a strange man in a straw hat who had squirreled his way to the front of the crowd, sticking his own microphone up to the band at the podium. The man in question wasn’t a journalist at all, but rather DJ Murray the K (nee Kaufman) of WINS New York. Murray 67

managed to hijack the band’s attention, getting exclusive sound bites for his radio show. Finally, someone shouted, “Would somebody tell Murray the K to cut the crap out?,” at which point the Beatles all looked down at him and yelled, “Cut that crap out,” with McCartney adding, “Hey, Murray!” in a fake New York accent, granting him the greatest sound bite of all. Thus was born Murray the K’s brief career as the Fifth Beatle.

It was something of a fluke that Murray the K was broadcasting on WINS at all in 1964. Having taken over as the station’s evening DJ four years earlier, replacing Allen Freed, who was fired in the wake of a payola scandal, Murray had known great successTom Wolfe called him “the original hysterical disc jockey” in a famous profile published after the Beatles’ visit-until the station was sold to Westinghouse in 1962. The new owner inched its format away from top 40, but was required to keep some of the old broadcasters due to an existing labor contract. Murray’s popularity had fallen ever since, and by the time of the Beatles’ arrival his ratings lagged behind those of his rivals Jack Spector on WMCA and “Cousin Brucie” Morrow on WABC. Luckily for Murray, he was close with Veronica Bennet of the Ronettes, whose group had just returned from a U.K. tour where they’d made the Beatles’ acquaintance. As soon as the press conference ended, Murray called Bennet (the future Ronnie Spector) and asked if she and the Ronettes would take him to the Plaza to meet the band. Bennet obliged Murray, who managed to exploit the situation to the fullest, becoming the Beatles’ unofficial guide to America, getting exclusive interviews and causing a general escalation of Beatles hype among the three stations during the next few days. WMCA managed to spirit Harrison’s sister Louise off to its station, where she was persuaded to call him in his sick bed at the Plaza (he had tonsillitis and didn’t go to rehearsals for the Sullivan performance) for an exclusive on-air chat. WABC went so far as to rebrand itself “WABeatleC.” All three stations had DJs encamped by the Plaza, reporting on any 68

Beatles sighting, and all three battled to see which could raise its audience’s excitement the most. But it was Murray whose show became required listening for Beatles fans during the band’s New York visit, as a Beatle-or all of them-could appear on the air with Murray at any time. (Murray’s newfound popularity was shortlived. After the Beatles returned home, he lasted less than a year at WINS, before it switched formats to become the nation’s first all-news station.)

40% OF AMERICA TUNES IN Every media outlet in the country gave major coverage to the hysteria that was occurring in New York that weekend. And they all made clear that the reason for the band’s visit was its scheduled appearance on “The Ed Sullivan Show” on Sunday night.

By Sunday, there was no one in America in close proximity to a TV, radio or newspaper who could have not known that the Beatles were going to be on Sullivan that night.

On the day of the show, further pandemonium reigned in front of the Sullivan Theatre, egged on by the local top 40 DJs. The show had received 50,000 ticket applications for 728 tickets.

Thousands mobbed the streets, shutting off Broadway for eight blocks, everyone carrying their transistor radios and reacting in unison to the prompts of the DJs. The Beatles were slated to perform five songs on the first Sullivan broadcast: “All My Loving,” “Till There Was You,” “She Loves You,” “I Saw Her Standing There” and “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” Among the other announced guests on the program was the cast of the stage production of “Oliver!,” including future Monkee Davy Jones as the Artful Dodger. Jones later recalled that it was the reaction of the girls in the Sullivan audience to the Beatles that made him decide to leave musical theater and pursue a career in rock’n’roll.

Epstein had envisioned the Beatles’ first U.S. visit as a means by which the band could conquer America. But by the time of 69

its arrival, America already lay at the group’s feet. It’s doubtful whether the intensity surrounding the visit could have materialized had the chain of events begun by Cronkite, Albert and James not occurred. Without it, the release date of “I Want to Hold your Hand” would have remained Jan. 13, radio listeners wouldn’t have heard the record incessantly during Christmas break, teens wouldn’t have tuned in to “The Jack Paar Show” to watch the band perform, Swan wouldn’t have rush-released “She Loves You,” the airwaves wouldn’t have been jammed with multiple Beatles records in January, “I Want to Hold Your Hand” wouldn’t have been No. 1 by the time of the band’s arrival, the media frenzy wouldn’t have reached a fevered pitch before Feb. 7, and the Beatles would have arrived in New York to do the Sullivan show without the airport scene, the press conference or the screaming fans at the Plaza.

But it all had unfolded as if in a fairy tale, and when the evening of Feb. 9 arrived, the Beatles had the attention of the entire country. (The next week, when the Beatles played the Washington Coliseum, Albert got her own fairy tale ending to the story when she got to meet the Beatles, who showed their appreciation by saying, “Thank you, Marsha,” on the air on WWDC.) During the first half of the 1963-64 season, Sullivan’s show drew a weekly audience of 21.2 million. And while those numbers didn’t make him the overall ratings champ-sister show “The Beverly Hillbillies” was pulling in a whopping 35 million viewers a week-his was, by far, the biggest variety show on the air.

On the night of Feb. 9, 1964, his audience jumped to 73 million, the largest TV audience for an entertainment program in history to that point. In a country with a population of 180 million, that represented 40% of all Americans. Significantly, in 1964, 40% of all Americans were age 18 or younger, with that year acknowledged as the final one of the baby boom. Of those, 35 million were between the ages of 8 and 18. And it would appear that 70

virtually all of them were watching.

The Washington Post went so far as to quip that on the night of the Beatles’ Sullivan appearance “there wasn’t a single hubcap stolen in America,” which was meant as a dig on the character of the Beatles’ core audience, but which went on to be accepted as fact when it was reprinted in Newsweek. This urban legend was even repeated as truth in Hunter Davies’ 1968 authorized Beatles biography and by Harrison in the Beatles’ “Anthology” documentary. However, soon after the Sullivan broadcast, the Washington Post’s Bill Gold followed up to make clear it had been meant as a joke: “It is with heavy heart that I must inform Newsweek that this report was not true. Lawrence R. Fellenz of 307 E. Groveton St., Alexandria, had his car parked on church property during that hour-and all four of his hubcaps were stolen. The Washington Post regrets the error, and District Liner Fellenz regrets that somewhere in Alexandria there lives a hipster who is too poor to own a TV set.”

Crime statistics aside, what isn’t in dispute is the fact that virtually every young person in America-and plenty of their parentssat glued to their TV set just after 8 p.m. EST when Sullivan took the stage to introduce the band: “Yesterday and today our theater’s been jammed with newspapermen and hundreds of photographers from all over the nation, and these veterans agreed with me that the city never has witnessed the excitement stirred by these youngsters from Liverpool, who call themselves the Beatles.” Amid the escalating screams from the crowd, Sullivan continued: “Tonight, you’re going to twice be entertained by them. Right now, and again in the second half of our show.

Ladies and gentlemen, the Beatles. Let’s bring them on.”

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THE 60’S BEGAN 73

WHAT THE BEATLES MEANT TO AMERICA By: Jim Sullivan

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Irene Katz stood on the sidewalk of Fifth Avenue with her friend Laura Jacknick. It was Saturday, Feb. 8, 1964, and they were outside the Plaza Hotel in New York. The 13-year-old Katz had told her parents she was going somewhere to study, but instead the girls hit the pavement at 7 a.m. and remained there, bubbling with anticipation, for nine hours. John, Paul, George and Ringo were in town and staying at the Plaza. Katz held up a sign she’d made: “Elvis is Dead, Long Live the Beatles.”

“It wasn’t to be mean,” Katz says now, of the sign and the Elvis pronouncement. “Elvis was the past generation and it was over.

This was new music and everything was different for a new generation of people.” Katz had high hopes, too: “We were looking up, convinced they would see us with their sign. We believed they would fall in love when they saw us.” That didn’t work out, but Katz and her sign became semi-famous, as camera crews shot footage broadcast all over national TV news.

Four days later, Katz saw the Beatles at Carnegie Hall. “I think I was amazed,” she says, “that these people I’d seen on a screen at home were singing to me. And I really believed they were.”

The wave of Beatles popularity had been surging and cresting in America through the latter part of 1963. The Beatles had created quite a stir in England – masses of screaming girls at concerts, three No. 1 singles, and four No. 1 albums. They even played a Royal Command Performance in London on Nov. 4, in front of the Queen, where John Lennon asked for people in the cheap seats to clap their hands but cheekily told those in the expensive tier to “rattle their jewelry.” The media called it Beatlemania.

In America, the Beatles’ crackling, joyous singles were blasting all over AM radio: “She Loves You,” “Roll Over Beethoven,” “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” the latter backed with “I Saw Her Standing There.”

But the nation really shook from 8 to 9 p.m. on Feb. 9, 1964. The 75

Beatles were booked into CBS Studio 50 to play “The Ed Sullivan Show.” That night they introduced the U.S. to “All My Loving,” played “Till There Was You,” (a sweet ballad from “The Music Man”) and “She Loves You.” There was a 35-minute break for other performers – including comic acrobats and the cast of “Oliver” (featuring Monkee-to-be Davy Jones) – and then they came back with “I Saw Her Standing There” and “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” Young girls yelled, swooned and fainted throughout -- girls who are now the grandmothers of teenagers making loud noise for One Direction. That episode of “The Ed Sullivan Show” was watched by 73 million people in the U.S. The Beatles were back on the show the following Sunday, playing “She Loves You,” “This Boy,” “All My Loving,” “I Saw Her Standing There,” “From Me to You” and “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” About 70 million people watched at home in the U.S. For their third “Ed Sullivan” appearance on Feb. 23, the Beatles played three songs that were pre-taped on Feb. 9: “Twist and Shout,” “Please Please Me” and “I Want to Hold Your Hand.”

FAME AND FANDOM “What we got in America was pure fandom,” says Ira Robbins, veteran music writer and former editor of “Trouser Press” rock magazine. “It may have been more intense in England, but obviously it was bigger in America and they could sell a gazillion more records.” True: To date, the Beatles have sold 209.1 million albums in the U.S.; in the U.K. they’ve sold 7.5 million, according to data from RIAA, Apple Records and EMI. “There’s so much there in that ‘Ed Sullivan’ appearance it’s almost overwhelming to me,” says Lennon and Beatles biographer and NPR critic Tim Riley. “But there is this thought that they articulated later: ‘We are a rock ‘n’ roll band, we know where we’re situated in rock ‘n’ roll history and we do not want to make 76

the mistake that Elvis made.’ It’s almost articulated in that Sullivan appearance. They’re very defiant. They have a very strong, secure, cocky sense of who they are and where they might be going, of their own potential.”

“At the same time, it’s like, ‘We’re not going to bend to please the forces that be,’” Riley says. “They watched Elvis go off to the Army and go into Hollywood and it was a tremendous, tragic story. They always felt they were determined to do it differently and that’s almost conscious in the Sullivan thing.”

We focus on the stars, but the impact of Beatles manager Brian Epstein cannot be understated. Vivek Tiwary, a Broadway producer (“American Idiot,” “A Raisin in the Sun”) and author of the graphic novel-style biography “The Fifth Beatle,” says, “When they came to the United States, it was at a period where JFK had just been assassinated and the world was in turmoil. He [Epstein] saw in the band a global message of love, that if packaged properly would be embraced everywhere. Certainly it was, but when it came to the U.S., it was particularly needed. The U.S. needed some comfort and love and that’s what the Beatles represented.”

CHANGING POP MUSIC FOREVER Will Lee, bassist for the CBS Orchestra on “Late Night With David Letterman,” also leads the Beatles tribute band the Fab Faux.

They know 211 Beatles songs out of a possible 219, and pride themselves on album-quality versions of tunes the Beatles never got to play live. Lee was bitten by the Beatles bug when he was a kid; he was 11 when the Beatles played “Ed Sullivan.”

“It was such a life-altering thing for this country which was so depressed after Kennedy’s assassination,” Lee says. “It hit us so hard, such a shock, such a downer, we kept looking for answers.

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Even if we didn’t get the answer [from the Beatles], there was a lot of fear and uncertainty in the air and the Beatles were this total distraction from that. They had all this positivity and it was something completely out of the realm of what we’d seen before.”

“Their appearance on ‘The Ed Sullivan Show’ changed everything – fashion, attitudes, music writing and lyric writing,” he continues. “We didn’t know it was happening at the time, but they were about to go in and alter the course of the river of pop music and change it forever.” Greg Hawkes was also 11 when he saw the Beatles on Sept. 13, 1964, at the Baltimore Civic Center.

His parents said they’d take him only if he kept taking the piano lessons he was getting bored with. He took the bribe. (Sorta worked out for everyone – he went on to become the keyboardist for the rock band The Cars.) It was his first concert.

“What a way to start,” Hawkes says. “Everybody stood on their seats and screamed throughout the whole show, which was over in 25 minutes. It was revelatory and exhilarating, a moment of awakening.”. This kind of Atlantic crossing had never been done before. “The thing about America was that this was unexpected because they were foreign and they’re British and they were playing an American style of music,” says NPR’s Riley. “That wasn’t supposed to happen. Rock ‘n’ roll was all American. It had sprung directly from American styles and culture. And the idea that it had taken root in another country was just the weirdest possible thing.”

Riley says America didn’t take its own indigenous music seriously.

But, he says, when the Beatles took American forms and sent them back Beatle-fied, people thought this was “a new way of hearing the whole rock ‘n’ roll catalog.”. “All of that was packed into that ‘Ed Sullivan’ appearance and it was all coded with this incredible ear candy,” he says. “They were handsome, they were witty, they were charismatic and they just had the goods out 78

the wazoo.”

“When they started, pop bands didn’t even write their own songs,” Tiwary points out. “The mere fact that they were writing songs was radical. Everything about the Beatles was striking and new. There were no road maps that were being drawn.”

We look at the arc of other British bands of the day, such as the Rolling Stones, The Who and the Kinks, and see these long lifespans. The Beatles’ career, in retrospect, was but a short burst.

They formed, out of the Quarrymen and the Silver Beatles, in 1960, began recording in 1962 and were done with it all by the end of 1969. They were all young when it began, and really, though the times had changed radically they were still young when it ended. There was acrimony, discord and lawsuits. When it was over, George Harrison sang, “All things must pass.” John Lennon sang, “I don’t believe in Beatles.”

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‘THE BEST POP SONG I’VE EVER HEARD IN MY LIFE’ The Beatles were, of course, no overnight sensation. They worked tirelessly in Liverpool and Hamburg, Germany, clubs and honed their chops covering songs by Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, Little Richard, the Isley Brothers, Barrett Strong and others. And then, as the world quickly learned, the Beatles were not just masters of the American cover song. Lennon and McCartney had a magic touch, complementary as composers, as harmony and lead singers, as front men. They weren’t just interpreting; they were creating.

Peter Asher, formerly of the folk duo Peter & Gordon, later the head of Artists & Repertoire at the Beatles’ Apple label and subsequently a famous producer, was there when “I Want to Hold Your Hand” was written. McCartney, who’d been dating his sister Jane Asher, was staying in the Asher family’s London house part-time when the Beatles weren’t on tour. “Our parents took pity on him and offered him the guest room,” Asher says, with a laugh. “We both sang and played guitar, him much better than me. It was fascinating to get to hear the songs they wrote as they wrote them. In the basement of our house was a little music room that just had a small upright piano, a sofa and a music stand and Paul would go down there to write. I remember one particular day when John came over and they were down there together for a couple of hours and Paul said, did I ‘want to come down and hear the song we just did?’ That was the early days when they were actively, physically writing together.

“I came down sat on the sofa and they sat side-by-side at the piano, no guitars, and played ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’ for the first time to anyone and asked me what I thought,” Asher remembers. “I said I thought it was very good. It was hard to know what to say. One doesn’t want to be pretentious -- it’s only a pop 80

song -- but there was something of an epiphany, hearing something that good for the first time. And you ask to hear it again, which is what makes for a hit record – ‘God, that’s good! Could I hear it again?’ I thought either I’m going completely mad or that’s the best pop song I’ve heard in my life.”

Robbins remembers how the Beatles made him feel as a kid in the mid-‘60s. “We saw every moment they entered our lives as crucial,” he says. “When they released a single it was ‘Oh my God, we’ve got to go the store! We’ve got to buy the record!’ I remember when ‘Paperback Writer’ came out. We took it home.

My friend Greg and I listened to it 100 times ‘til we figured out the words and of course we got ‘em all wrong. It was the eventness of everything they did. If they made an album, you bought it and played it ‘til your eyes rolled back in your head .”

AN EVOLUTION OF SOUND The Beatles evolved – quickly. The ‘60s was the most volatile of decades and the Beatles creative juices were moving at the speed of sound. You might say they were in the forefront of what might be considered progressive rock, if you consider the real meaning of the word “progressive” and not the over-use of keyboards that it became in the ‘70s. To wit: The Beatles compositions grew ever outward. With ample aid and encouragement from producer George Martin, they used droning guitar sounds and dissonance, employed “nonsensical” (but clever) lyrical juxtapositions, constructed complex arrangements that were nevertheless melodious.

There were changes within songs, changes from song-to-song over the course of an album, changes from album to album.

“They never copied their own records,” says Asher. “It was never ‘Oh, this is obviously the follow-up to that.’ We had no idea what to expect.”

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Adds Riley: “In some ways, the Beatles led the technical advances of their era. They were always one step ahead of where the studios were and were pushing those engineers to do things they didn’t think possible. So they always sounded fresh and new and that idea of constantly paying attention to inventiveness and newness kept them contemporary. And you can get into musicology, about how well this material is built.”

Were the Beatles surfing the zeitgeist of the times or ahead of it? Probably both. Psychedelia had opened up the parameters of rock music, both in America and England. “The Beatles used orchestras and sitars and backwards tapes,” says Robbins, “as opposed to somebody like Jefferson Airplane or early California psychedelic groups that were more jam, free-form oriented. They used the studio so well. ‘Sgt. Pepper’ is still the ultimate concept album.”

“I think part of the reason they lasted so long was just good luck with the whole timing,” says Hawkes, “the ‘60s crazy-wacky energy. But I think mainly because musically they just advanced so much. With each new album they put out they upped the bar and advanced pop music with each release. Other bands had to catch up with them. Plus the fact that really the songs – and the studio performances – were so good, they’ve been the standard to hold up everything else to.”

Tiwary says manager Epstein thought the Beatles “were the Beethoven of the ‘60s and believed people would talk about them hundreds of years later. We’re only at 50 now, but I suspect it’ll be the same.”

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DESIGNED BY: MARIA TORRES USING: FUTURA CONDENSED MEDIUM & BODY COPY BASKERVILLE 11 PT / 13 PT

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