How America fell for the Fab Four
They arrived in the U.S. like a tidal wave (with half a ton of mop-top wigs). And as the final part of our poptastic series reveals, with 12 hits in the top 100, they really were here, there and everywhere
He Felt time stop, and his hair standing on end. They reached home, but he didn’t go in. Instead, he ran straight to the bowling alley on Main Street, rushed to the phone booth and called his girlfriend Jan.
‘Have you heard the Beatles?’ he asked. ‘Yeah, they’re cool,’ she replied. He instantly set his heart on a guitar displayed in the window of the West Auto store on Main Street. When the summer came, his Aunt Dora paid him to paint her house, and he bought the guitar with the money he earned.
He lived for every release by the Beatles: ‘I searched the newsstands for every magazine with a photo I hadn’t seen and I dreamed . . . dreamed . . . dreamed . . . that it was me. I didn’t want to meet the Beatles. I wanted to be the Beatles.’ Over half a century on, Bruce Springsteen still believes that hearing I Want To Hold Your Hand that day in his mother’s car changed the course of his life.
The Beatles arrived in America with the sudden impact of a tidal wave. By the time their plane touched down in new York, orders for merchandise were rolling in: half a ton of Beatles wigs were following them to America, plus 24,000 rolls of Beatles wallpaper.
As the plane door opened, screams from fans drowned out the sound of the jet engines. The 13year-old Tom Petty watched their appearance on The ed Sullivan show on the family television in Gainesville, Florida. ‘There is a way out,’ he thought. ‘You get your friends and you’re a self-contained unit. And you make the music.’
Within weeks, groups were playing in garages all over his neighbourhood.
Billy Joel, 14, was watching with his family on Long Island: ‘They looked like these working-class kids, like kids we all knew.’
He knew his destiny then and there: ‘I said at that moment: “I want to be like those guys. This is what I’m going to do — play in a rock band.” ’
not everyone was quite so enthralled. George Dixon in the Washington Post noted: ‘They have a commonplace, rather dull act that hardly seems to merit mentioning.’
In the national Review, the conservative iconoclast William F. Buckley penned a diatribe under the title: ‘Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, They Stink.’
The viewing figures offered no comfort to the critics. Seventythree million Americans had tuned in to The ed Sullivan Show, the second-largest viewing figure in the history of commercial television. The first came 11 weeks earlier, following the chilling words ‘news just in of shots fired in Dallas.’
PAM Miller, 16, of Reseda, California, was so besotted with the new arrivals that within the privacy of her schoolgirl diary she turned herself into a Liverpudlian. On February, 10, 1964, she wrote: ‘Paul you are gear. Really Fab. Say chum, why are you so marvellous, luv? The most bloomin’ idiot on earth is me, cause I’m wild over you chap.’
From then on she posted Paul a poem every day, sealed with a kiss. Virtually every day, her local radio station would deliver an update on the state of Paul’s relationship with his new girlfriend. Pam listened with growing resentment of the young lady she came to call ‘the creepy freckle-faced bow-wow, Jane Asher’, or simply ‘Pig-Face’.
Maxine M., in Cleveland, Ohio, wrote asking the Beatles to call her, adding: ‘If my mother answers, hang up. She is not much of a Beatle fan.’
Donna J., from Portland, Maine, admitted in her letter: ‘I have every one of your records and I don’t even have a record player.’
Touching down in Houston the following year, the Beatles’ plane was surrounded by fans while its engines were still running. Some managed to climb onto the wings, and crawled towards the portholes, waving at those inside.
In Dallas, young fans walked from the airport to the Beatles’ hotel, many of them in tears. One clutched a bunch of grass in her hands, screaming: ‘Ringo! Ringo walked on this grass!’
By April 4, 1964, The Billboard Hot 100 went like this: 1. Can’t Buy Me Love — The Beatles. 2. Twist and Shout — The Beatles. 3. She Loves You — The Beatles. 4. I Want to Hold Your Hand — The Beatles. 5. Please Please Me — The Beatles
Also: 31. I Saw Her Standing There — The Beatles. 41. From Me To You — The Beatles. 46. Do You Want to Know a Secret — The Beatles. 58. All My Loving — The Beatles. 65. You Can’t Do That — The Beatles. 68. Roll Over Beethoven — The Beatles.
79. Thank You Girl — The Beatles. In addition, two songs about the Beatles made the Hot 100 that week: We Love You Beatles by the Carefrees, and A Letter To The Beatles by the Four Preps.
On August 28, 1964, as the Beatles struggled to make their way through the crush in the lobby of the Delmonico Hotel on Park Avenue in
New York, Ringo found himself trapped in a crowd of girls. One of them tore his shirt open; another grabbed at the gold St Christopher medal he had been given by his Auntie Nancy.
Ringo only realised it had disappeared once he had extracted himself from the scrum, and by then it was too late. When the Beatles arrived at their hotel suite for a live interview, it was clear that Ringo was upset.
‘Somebody grabbed me St Christopher’s medal,’ he said mournfully. He had worn it, night and day, ever since his 21st birthday, a year before he joined the Beatles; small wonder he associated it with good luck.
The interview with a DJ was being broadcast live. Outside in the street, 6,000 fans were glued to their transistor radios to hear what was being said in the room above.
The DJ had a bright idea. ‘I said to the kids: “Look, somebody must have found Ringo Starr’s St Christopher medal. Look, if you return it you will not be in trouble and you’ll come up here . . . and you’ll meet Ringo and he’ll give you a kiss.” ’
The fans proved wily. Within an hour, the shops of Manhattan had sold out of St Christopher medals, and an equal number of calls had
been received from girls claiming to have found Ringo’s. One of them was answered by the DJ himself.
‘My name is Mrs McGowan, and my daughter Angela found Ringo’s St Christopher medal. Is she in any trouble?’ But was she telling the truth? Her fear that her daughter might be in trouble suggested she was. When Angela said it had come loose from Ringo’s neck when she tore his shirt in the Delmonico Hotel, the DJ knew he had the culprit.
‘ “Stay right where you are,” I said. “I’m going to send a car for you.” ’
The next day, with television cameras whirring, Angie McGowan was introduced to Ringo. Angie, a pretty brunette, stepped forward, gave a little curtsey, and returned the St Christopher to its owner.
‘It’s very small,’ said Ringo, ‘but it means a lot.’
‘Sorry about your shirt,’ said Angie.
‘I can buy another shirt, but I can’t buy another one of these.’
Ringo gave Angie the promised kiss, whereupon three of her friends stepped forward, and he kissed them, too. Angie kissed him again, with her hand to his head, and Ringo signed an autograph for her.
The DJ reported that the girls were kissing him again, off camera: ‘He’s still kissing Angie; what is going on over there!?’
Meanwhile, Ringo tucked his St Christopher into his jacket pocket, just to be on the safe side.
One, Two, Three, Four: The Beatles In Time by Craig Brown will be published by Harper Collins on April 2 at £20. © 2020 Craig Brown. To order a copy for £16 (p&p free, 20 per cent discount) go to mailshop.co.uk or call 01603 648155. Offer valid until April 5.