THE BEATLES 50 years on

FIFTY years after the break-up of the Beatles, the Mail’s Craig Brown has written a brilliant new take on the band who changed popular culture for ever. On Saturday, he told how their different personalities sparked off each other to create a unique new m

One day in mid-October 1963, John Lennon had dropped by at the house in Wimpole Street, London, where Paul was living with the family of his girlfriend, Jane Asher. The two of them went down to a little room in the basement and sat together on Mrs Asher’s piano stool.

Their manager Brian epstein had told them that their next, most important task was to compose a song to crack the elusive American market. Up to now, their hit singles in Britain — From Me To You, She Loves You, Please Please Me — had all flopped over there.

After an hour or so of doodling about, Paul went upstairs to the bedroom of Jane’s brother, and put his head around the door. ‘Do you want to come and hear something we’ve just written?’ he asked.

Peter Asher accompanied him back downstairs, and together Paul and John played him their new song, I Want To Hold Your Hand. ‘What do you think?’ asked Paul. ‘Oh, my God! Can you play that again?’ said Peter. As he listened to it for a second time, he thought: ‘Am I losing my mind, or is this the greatest song I ever heard in my life?’

It was released in America as a single on Boxing Day 1963. At three in the morning on January 17, 1964, the Beatles were relaxing in a hotel suite in their pyjamas and dressing gowns when their manager Brian epstein came in, clutching a telegram.

‘Boys,’ he said, ‘you’re no 1 in America!’ For once, even John was thrilled. Ringo was cock-a-hoop: ‘We couldn’t believe it. We all started acting like people from Texas, hollering and shouting ya-hoo.’ The others picked Ringo up and — ‘One, two, three, four!’ — threw him into the air.

In the first three days of its U.S. release: I Want To Hold Your Hand sold a quarter of a million copies. It went on to sell five million.

When Brian Wilson, of the Beach Boys, heard it: ‘I flipped. It was like a shock went through my system.’ In that instant, Wilson realised that the Beatles had rendered him antique.

He was two days younger than Paul, but now felt like an old-timer: ‘I immediately knew that everything had changed.’

For the past six months the Beach Boys had been the most popular group in America.

But from now on they would be obliged to live in the shadow of the Beatles.

In Freehold, new Jersey, a 14-year-old boy was sitting in the front seat of his mother’s car when the song came on the radio.