“ON TOP OF FIDEL WE GET THE BEATLES!”
Cold War and civil rights − The Fab Four in Florida
As National Airlines Flight
11 from New York approached Miami
International Airport on 13
February 1964, Paul
Mccartney asked flight attendant Carol Gallagher:
“Do you think anyone will be in Miami to meet us?”
He need not have worried.
“We thought we had
America with us after the welcome at Kennedy
Airport, but that was nothing to what was waiting for us at
Miami,” remembered
George. “New York was what we expected, but we didn’t feel too much emotion about it,”
Harrison told reporters.
“But this is a rave!”
The crowd at MIA as
The Beatles flew in for a second appearance on
The Ed Sullivan Show was bigger and more boisterous than at Kennedy. Roughly 3,000 fans turned out in New York; in Miami, there may have been as many as 10,000. The Miami Herald reported a “riot” of “squirming, screeching, blubbering teenagers.” The paper was fascinated yet shocked by this unruly “child mob... Joyfully they smashed glass… Joyfully they smashed fiberglass chairs in a concourse waiting room.” Airport damage was estimated at $2,000. The vandalism, the paper ominously warned, were “symptoms of Beatlemania, a fashion of the times”.
With Cuba only 100 miles away from the Florida coast and memories of the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis still raw, the Sunshine State was on the domestic frontlines of the Cold War. “On Top of Fidel We Get Beatles!” moaned the Herald, its hostility towards The Beatles stoked by a recent decision by the British government to open financial and trade links to Cuba in defiance of US wishes. “Britain is an American ally but is engaged in active trade with Fidel Castro’s Communist Cuba, America’s enemy,” raged a front-page story, knowingly placed alongside condemnations of another worrisome British export: The Beatles.
Florida teens could care less. On Sunday 16 February, 2,600 people (four times as many as attended the first Sullivan Show) crammed into the Napoleon Room of the Deauville Hotel in Miami Beach for the broadcast. Seventy million viewers watched The Beatles play six songs across two spellbinding sets. In Gainesville, 13-year-old Floridian Tom Petty was awestruck and inspired. He was not alone.
“It wasn’t long before there were groups springing up in garages all over the place,” Petty recalled. Among the first imitators to hit the record racks were The American Beetles from West Palm Beach, whose Don’t Be Unkind single on Roulette was slathered with Beatles-esque “oohs” and “yeah, yeah,
yeahs”. Elsewhere in
Florida, rock’n’roll
Anglophilia flourished with The London Chimes,
Echoes Of Carnaby Street,
Limeys With London
Sounds, and The
Buckingham Palace
Guards. On WFUNMIAMI, deejay Morton
“Doc” Downey started a
Liverpool Hour show and became known as “the
Liverpool Loudmouth”.
After the Sullivan
Show, faced with the unappetising prospect of returning to a bleak British winter, The Beatles extended their stay in
Florida. They swam in the ocean, lounged on the beach, and tried their hand at water-skiing, snorkeling, and fishing. They took trips on high-end speedboats, visited luxurious homes, and swam in private pools made available by wealthy record company executives and local businessmen.
Thanks to Sgt Buddy Dresner, the
Miami cop in charge of security, they also enjoyed a slice of southern hospitality. On
Valentine’s Day, they visited Dresner’s suburban home for a roast beef supper prepared by Buddy’s wife, Dorothy. Paul read stories with the three young Dresner children; George wore a scary rubber mask to play monsters; at mealtime Ringo thoughtfully cut up baked potatoes for the youngest kids. It was a welcome dash of normality amid the breathless frenzy of their visit.
The Beatles were not the only icons-to-be in Miami in early 1964. The charismatic young heavyweight contender
Cassius Clay, soon to become Muhammad Ali, was in town, training for his world title fight with Sonny Liston. On 18 February, the Beatles visited his 5th Street gym. “It’s a bit of a giggle, isn’t it?” Paul said at the time. “It was a big publicity thing,” George explained later. “It was all part of being a Beatle, really, just getting lugged around and thrust into rooms full of press men taking pictures and asking questions.” Still, the photo-opportunistic encounter with Ali was rich with symbolism and portents for the future. The sight of four white men horsing around with – and being dominated by – a southern black man who would soon destroy odds-on favourite Liston, abandon his “slave name”, and commit himself to the Nation Of Islam, challenged traditions of racial deference and white supremacy in the South that were under attack from the civil rights movement.
When The Beatles arrived back in England, they agreed that Florida was the most exciting place they had visited. “I enjoyed the sun in Miami most of all,” gushed George. Yet their Florida experiences had also increased their sensitivity to some of the darker, uglier realities that sometimes lay beneath the surface of southern sun, charm, and hospitality. In July, amid planning for return to the US, The Beatles publicly announced they would never play segregated shows. “We have told Brian [Epstein] to find out if there are any bookings where there is segregation and to cancel them,” said Paul. The contract for their Autumn North American tour duly stipulated that “artists will not be required to perform before a segregated audience”. As it happened, that commitment would be most seriously tested when The Beatles revisited Florida, for a gig at the Gator Bowl in Jacksonville…
Brian’s book, She Loves Y’all: The Beatles, The US South, and the Making of Modern America will be published at the end of the year.
“WE HAVE TOLD BRIAN TO FIND ANY BOOKINGS WHERE THERE IS SEGREGATION AND TO CANCEL THEM”