Walter Cronkite convinced CBS that the
Beatles were the right diversion for the nation’s grief following the
Kennedy assassination and aired a four-minute segment on the Beatles
phenomenon
If February 1964 seems like forever
ago, especially to those of us who were around then, all one has to do
is hear the opening power chords of "I Want to Hold Your Hand," and a
bolt of magic instantly connects us to that time - the very same magic
that brightened the otherwise bleak winter in the shadow of the
assassination of President John F. Kennedy just five weeks before.
"I Want to Hold Your Hand" was the tailwind that propelled the
Beatles into America 50 years ago this month. It was their first U.S No.
1 hit (26 more would follow, still a record), reaching the top of the
charts on February 1 and staying there for nearly two months.
With $71 million in Beatles music and merchandise sales in 2012, it
is no exaggeration to say the shock wave from the song continues to push
outward, engulfing new generations.
But as John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr
boarded Pan Am Flight 101 from London's Heathrow Airport on February 7,
1964, none of us could imagine the reception they would receive, nor the
impact they would have in America. (I just missed joining the trip
myself, staying behind to "mind the store.")
Beatlemania was already in full throttle in the U.K., but America was
still the great unknown. Throughout 1963, the Beatles had received
little attention or airplay in the States - partly due to the reluctance
of their record label to promote them. The suits at Capitol had
reckoned that British acts simply did not have an audience in America
and completely ignored them. (The Beatles' U.S. releases were forced on
to other labels.)
That's why, as far as hits go, "I Want to Hold Your Hand" was so
unlikely. Thanks to one disc jockey in Washington, D.C., playing a
smuggled copy of the song, it was a viral sensation before the industry
caught on.
No one, including my friend, boss and fellow Liverpudlian Brian
Epstein, expected the single to reach No. 1 in the U.S., certainly not
without a tour and marketing campaign to back it. For Epstein, the whole
point of the American visit was to give the Beatles a toehold in
America, building an audience through television appearances and
concerts.
After all, success in the U.K. had followed a similar, grueling
trajectory. The Beatles had worked long stints in grimy clubs in
Hamburg, Germany - and in a particular grimy one in our hometown of
Liverpool, called the Cavern Club - to hone their sound and build a
following.
Epstein first saw the Beatles at the Cavern in November 1961, during a
lunchtime performance. These were the same boys who had been crowding
the aisles of the record store I ran for him in those days. He and I had
met while I was running a competing record department at Lewis's, a
store in Liverpool. I subsequently ran the bigger, more trendy NEMS shop
owned by Epstein's family and frequented by the Beatles.
I had met each of the Beatles individually in that shop. They were
about my age and were always hanging around to get a free listen to the
latest rock-and-roll records in stock, which I obliged because they were
earnest, polite and genuinely mad about the music (Wikipedia calls them
"regular customers" of my NEMS store, which wrongly implies they
actually bought records.)
The distillation of their personalities presented by the press later
on was quite true to form. John was a cutup, a rocker who was crazy
about Elvis. Paul was sweet and eager - and particularly fond of Little
Richard, whose trademark howl he would perfect. George was droll and
hilarious and loved Carl Perkins. Pete Best, the drummer before Ringo,
was handsome and forgettable.
I was pleasantly surprised to see that it was these same boys - they
were all 21 or younger; George was just 18 - on stage when Epstein
breathlessly took me to the Cavern shortly after his discovery.
Under Epstein, the band also
became better organized as a business interest. The gigs and the pay
improved. Most significantly, he brought the Beatles to the attention of
George Martin at Parlophone, a label under the EMI umbrella (the
Beatles were notoriously turned down by several record labels in the
U.K. prior to EMI, where several producers had also declined them before
Martin reluctantly took them on).
On October 5, 1962, EMI released "Love Me Do," a Lennon-McCartney
original song featuring percussion by Ringo Starr. The track was
produced by Martin, who would go on to be their career-long
collaborator. The song reached No. 17 on the charts - a remarkable
achievement given that most British acts used professional, outside
songwriters at the time - convincing EMI Records that the Beatles were a
worthy bet.
The frenzy known as Beatlemania built steadily from there. "Please
Please Me" went to No. 1 in the U.K. in February 1963, followed by "From
Me to You" and "She Loves You." These hit songs, supported by
relentless live performances, nonstop airplay and national television
appearances, cemented their British superstardom that was crowned by a
historic, November 4, 1963 televised appearance at London's Prince of
Wales Theatre.
With the Queen Mother and Princess Margaret in attendance, the Beatles headlined the Royal Variety Show,
on which John, ever the silver-tongued mischief-maker, famously said,
"Will the people in the cheaper seats clap your hands? And the rest of
you, if you'll just rattle your jewelry."
In short, it took a great deal of hard work from the time they
started playing together as the Beatles in 1960 until they became an
"overnight" sensation in the U.K. in 1963. This experience would be
Epstein's template for the American invasion.
In late 1963, he had struck a deal with the famed variety show host
Ed Sullivan to bring the group to America to perform live for the first
time on U.S. television. The Beatles would give three performances on
the show in 1964 and would receive top billing. To Epstein's - and
Sullivan's - credit, this was unheard of for an unknown act.
But Sullivan had an ear for talent and for the people's taste. Legend
has it that he had witnessed Beatlemania on a recent trip to the U.K.
while passing through Heathrow Airport en route to New York just as the
Beatles were returning from Sweden to a cacophonous reception from fans.
While the Beatles were being dismissed in the American media in late
1963 as a novelty act, Sullivan sensed they were something special. Both
he and Epstein thought the Beatles would break into America on the
strength of their appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show stage.
Indeed, in Epstein's mind, the whole U.S. trip was a daring,
calculated gambit. With the exception of George Harrison's brief visit
to Illinois and New York in fall 1963 (after which he lamented that "no
one knew us") none of the other Beatles had ever been to America.
Beatles' fans waving a Kennedy Airport as Beatles leave for England. (Photo by NY Daily News Archive via Getty Images);
Epstein used the leverage of the Sullivan agreement to go to the top
of Capitol Records to get the Beatles signed to the U.S. label and
secure a commitment to a promotional budget to "launch" the group during
the tour.
When attorneys for Capitol Records were unable to stop American DJs
from playing the leaked copy of "I Want to Hold Your Hand," they
relented in the name of good commerce and released the single ahead of
schedule, on December 26, 1963. The record sold 250,000 copies in the
first three days.
By January 10, 1964 it had sold more than 1 million copies; and it was the No. 1 song on the Billboard charts
less than three weeks after it was released - a truly extraordinary
speed - and weeks before the Beatles first set foot in America.
In fact, the long hard slog Epstein had planned for the American
invasion was not to be. The years of hard work in the U.K. and the
strength of the music had already softened the American beachhead.
No one was more surprised than the Beatles themselves. Four days
after their arrival, amid the hysteria, John told an American reporter,
"We thought we'd have to grow [on] everybody, and everybody seems to
know us all as if we've been here for years. It's great!"
Their February 9, 1964 appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show -
designed by Epstein to give his unknown act a platform for their new
single - was instead an unprecedented media event. About two fifths of
the total American population - 73 million viewers - watched the boys
perform that night, the largest number of viewers that had ever been
recorded for a U.S. television program.
The Beatles played two sets that night, opening with "All My Loving"
and closing with the burst of stuttering guitars and giddy enthusiasm
that got it all started for them in America, "I Want to Hold Your Hand."
I watched the whole spectacle from Liverpool with equal parts pride
and disbelief. For the last time in my career with them, I had a sense
of detachment from the Beatles, that of an outsider's perspective,
however surreal. That week, with the exception of taking an occasional
phone call from Epstein, I followed the Beatles the way millions of
others did: as a fan, as a witness.
Nonetheless, it was clear that everything had changed in a flash -
for all of us. From then on, I would be at the center of the storm with
John, Paul, George and Ringo and the tiny "family" of management and
road crew that would surround the band until they broke up in 1970.
I would soon move to London as Epstein's advisor and confidant until
his death in 1967, at which time I became more immersed in the
day-to-day business affairs of Beatles.
Fifty years on, February 1964 seems like a dream. Like every Beatles
song that followed "I Want to Hold Your Hand," that moment was both a
beginning and an end. An end to the way things were done up until then
and the beginning of something entirely new.
I have said before that the Beatles were a once-in-a-lifetime,
freakish combination of talent and timing. The talent is of course
self-evident and well-documented. The Lennon-McCartney combo was almost
oversuited to the task of pop songwriting, so brimming were they with
creative genius.
The timing, however, was no less critical to the phenomenon. America
was in a state of despair following the assassination of Kennedy. The
Beatles arrived on the scene of a nation deep in mourning for the death
not only of a man but of the youthfulness he embodied. They - being
entirely new with their long hair, cheek and sound - finished once and
for all the generational break with the style and mores of the 1950s
that Kennedy started, unleashing the creative and countercultural forces
of the 1960s.
The moment was also propitious musically. Elvis was in his
post-military lull. Chuck Berry and Jerry Lee Lewis were embers in the
pan in which they once flashed. Buddy Holly was dead.
The teen idols who dominated the charts in the late 1950s and early
1960s, such as Fabian, Frankie Avalon and Bobby Rydell, were passé. The
pop world was ready for something new.
The changing nature of
American mass media accelerated their success. The men in the gray
flannel suits who ran the news and the advertising companies in the
early 1960s mostly reflected the prevailing cultural mores of the day -
conformity. However, the media sought a diversion for the nation's grief
following the Kennedy assassination and none other than Walter Cronkite
convinced CBS that the group was the tonic, airing a four-minute
segment on the Beatles phenomenon in the U.K. to American audiences in
mid-December, 1963.
The U.S. media would ultimately bend and change by the force of the
Beatles impact. Every 'adult' radio, TV and newspaper report on group's
arrival was condescending in the extreme.
The journalists were way out of touch and the Beatles showed it,
particularly in their hilarious, anarchic and charming performance at
the press conference in the Pan Am terminal at John F. Kennedy airport
(Reporter: "A psychiatrist recently said you're nothing but a bunch of
British Elvis Presleys." Ringo (shaking like Elvis): "It's not true!
It's not true!")
Now, I think warmly of the Beatles' arrival in America. It was a time
of exuberance and wonder for them. They were so young. There were
creative and commercial lands yet to conquer - and conquer them they
would. Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band was still three years away. The world was wide open.
Their world would, of course, become smaller as their success grew.
They would come to fear the crowds and lament the blind followers. They
would turn inward, to meditation and spirituality, and eventually stop
touring altogether. None of this trepidation or weariness is evident on
the happy faces of the four lovable mop tops who came to America in
February 1964.
If the soundtrack of America's love affair with the Beatles began
with "I Want to Hold Your Hand," its first, indelible visual backdrop
was New York City. From the 4,000 fans who greeted them on February 7 at
JFK airport - newly named in memory of the dead president - to the
photos Harry Benson and others shot of them at the Plaza Hotel and in
Central Park, New York City is seared into our collective memory of the
Beatles.
My office is blocks from the Plaza Hotel. I walk each day through
Central Park to my home on Central Park West, next door to the Dakota.
There's a whole arc of the Beatles' story along that short journey. Of
joy. Of sorrow.
But to paraphrase John Lennon's "In My Life," I've loved them all.
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