Having been numbed from the senseless assassination of President John F. Kennedy in November, the U.S. was poised for another momentous event: the Beatles' arrival in the U.S.
On February 7, 1964, John, Paul, George and Ringo landed at New York's JFK airport.
Thousands of swooning, screaming teenaged girls swarmed the airport, hoping to catch a glimpse and a touch of the Beatles.
The Beatles had swept the U.K.; Beatlemania was about to sweep the U.S., uniting youth in a way never seen before, ushering in The British Invasion.
The Beatles' music, combined with their bowl haircuts, Beatle boots, collarless shirts and jackets, stood pop culture all but on its head.
The Beatles' physical appearance, mild by today's standards, was regarded as 'shocking' for their 'long' hair and unconventional dress.
The Beatles would change music for the rest of the decade; their influence is still felt 40 years after their arrival in the U.S.
Beginning as "The Silver Beetles" in 1958, the Beatles had actually come about as a series of early groups. "The Quarrymen" and "Johnny and the Moondogs" variously included John, Paul and George.
The rhythm section included bassist Stu Sutcliffe and drummer Pete Best. The group then assumed the name "The Beatles".
In April of 1961, Sutcliffe left and McCartney switched from guitar to bass. They were then discovered by a local record entrepreneur, Brian Epstein, who became their manager in December 1961.
It was Epstein who dressed The Beatles in the clothes that would be copied by youth everywhere; it was Epstein who brought in Richard Starkey (Ringo) to replace Pete Best as drummer.
And so the legend was born.
The Beatles' first single "Love Love Me Do" made the top charts in the U.K. in October, 1962; the group's next single, "Please Please Me" ignited Beatlemania all over the U.K.
A critic from the Sunday Times (of London) stated that The Beatles were best greatest composers since Beethoven.
The U.S. would be next hit with Beatlemania.
In 1963 alone, the Beatles had earned $17 million.
Even though "Meet the Beatles" is the album most Americans equate with the Beatles' first album, this album was their third; "Please Please Me" and "With the Beatles" were their first two albums.
"Meat the Beatles" was the number one Billboard album for 11 weeks.
On February 9, 1964, the Beatles performed on "The Ed Sullivan Show", watched by a record-setting 73 million viewers.
Many waited, like this author, for the last 5 minutes of the hour, just to see the Beatles perform. The fab four performed five songs: "All My Loving", "Till There Was You", "She Loves You", "I Saw Her Standing There", and "I Want to Hold Your Hand".
The Beatles appeared on Ed Sullivan twice more during February, 1964 and once again in 1965.
On February 11, the Beatles performed live for the first time in the U.S. at the Washington Coliseum in Washington, D.C. More than 8,000 attended.
After the concert, John Lennon was asked his opinion of the American public. His reply:
"They are the wildest, you know. Tonight was marvelous! Ridiculous! Eight thousand people all shouting at once. We were trying to shout louder than them with the microphones and we still couldn't beat 'em. We thought it would be much quieter. We thought we'd, you know, have to grow on everybody...but everybody seems to know us already as if we'd been here for years. It's great!"
On February 12, the Beatles performed in New York's Carnegie Hall, before 6, 000 people.
In March, 1964, the Beatles filmed their first movie, "A Hard Day's Night", which was released later that summer. The fun and playfulness of the movie, coupled with technical innovations, made this move more than a silly fan romp. It remains popular, even today.
The first number one Beatle hit was "I Want to Hold Your Hand"; 45 Top Forty hits followed during the next 6 years.
In April, 1964, the Beatles set a pop music record likely never to be broken: they occupied the top five Billboard pop single slots, with "Can't Buy Me Love" as Number One.
It was the music of the Beatles that united American youth around a cause in a way never before seen. And never after.
Folk music and civil rights protests were one way in which youth rebelled against their parents' 50s Eisenhower existence, but it was music that was the glue and the raison d'etre for youth -- the demographic had changed, baby boomers were large in number and their voice -- their taste --was beginning to be heard with a resounding boom and echo that would last decades.
The center that could not hold – the JFK assassination – was beginning to be put back together, slowly, over decades, by the activism of the 60s youth movement.
It was the 60s youth movement that began decades of change throughout all areas of life: music, civil rights, popular culture, politics, education, environment and nutrition; these changes are ongoing and lasting.
From the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame:
http://www.rockhall.com/hof/inductee.asp?id=228
"July 7, 1940
Ringo Starr was born.
October 9, 1940
John Lennon is born at Oxford Street Maternity Hospital in Liverpool, England, to Julia Stanley and Alfred Lennon.
June 18, 1942
James Paul McCartney is born in Liverpool, England.
February 25, 1943
George Harrison was born.
1956
Julia, John Lennon's mother, bought him his first guitar through a mail order ad. His incessant playing prompts John's Aunt Mimi to say, "The guitar's all very well as a hobby, John, but you'll never make a living out of it." John forms his first group, the Quarrymen.
July 6, 1957
John Lennon meets Paul McCartney at the Woolton Parish Church in Liverpool during a performance by John's group the Quarrymen. Impressed by Paul's ability to tune a guitar and by his knowledge of song lyrics, John asks him to join the group.
February 1, 1958
Paul McCartney introduces George Harrison to the Quarrymen at a basement teen club called the Morgue. George joins the group.
August 1, 1960
The Beatles make their debut in Hamburg, West Germany, with Stu Sutcliffe on bass and Pete Best on drums.
January 1, 1961
The Beatles make their debut at the Cavern Club in Liverpool.
November 1, 1961
Local record store manager Brian Epstein is introduced to the Beatles. He soon signs a contract to manage them.
March 7, 1962
The Beatles make their radio debut performing three songs, including Roy Orbison's "Dream Baby," on the BBC.
April 10, 1962
Stu Sutcliffe dies of a brain hemorrhage.
June 1, 1962
The Beatles audition for George Martin at Parlophone/EMI Records. He agrees to sign the group, but insists that Pete Best be replaced. Within months, Richard "Ringo" Starkey joins the group.
SEPTEMBER 4-11, 1962
The Beatles record their first sessions at EMI Studios in London, with George Martin as producer.
December 1, 1963
"I Want to Hold Your Hand," the Beatles' first American single, is released by Capitol Records.
January 26, 1964
I Want To Hold Your Hand (The Beatles) was a hit.
February 7, 1964
The Beatles arrive in America
February 9, 1964
The Beatles make their first appearance on 'The Ed Sullivan Show'.
February 11, 1964
The Beatles begin their first U.S. tour at the Coliseum in Washington, D.C.
March 15, 1964
She Loves You (The Beatles) was a hit.
March 29, 1964
Can't Buy Me Love (The Beatles) was a hit.
April 4, 1964
The top five slots on the 'Billboard' chart are held by the Beatles, a feat never before or since matched.
May 24, 1964
Love Me Do (The Beatles) was a hit.
July 6, 1964
The world premiere of The Beatles' 'A Hard Day's Night' takes place in London.
July 26, 1964
A Hard Day's Night (The Beatles) was a hit.
August 14, 1964
The Beatles cut Little Willie John's "Leave My Kitten Alone" at EMI Studios in London. Intended for album 'Beatles For Sale' ('Beatles '65' in the US), it was left off and remained unreleased until 'Anthology 1' in 1995.
1964
The Beatles release "This Boy" from their first American album 'Meet the Beatles'.
December 20, 1964
I Feel Fine (The Beatles) was a hit.
March 7, 1965
Eight Days a Week (The Beatles) was a hit.
1965
The Beatles release "Yes It Is".
April 1, 1965
John Lennon composes "Help!" the title song for the Beatles' second film. He later confides that the lyrics are a cry for help and a clue to the confusion and despondency he feels.
May 16, 1965
Ticket to Ride (The Beatles) was a hit.
July 29, 1965
The Beatles release their second film, 'Help!'.
August 15, 1965
The Beatles play in front of almost 60,000 fans at Shea Stadium in New York City.
August 27, 1965
The Beatles spend the evening talking and playing music with Elvis Presley at his Bel air home.
August 29, 1965
Help! (The Beatles) was a hit.
October 3, 1965
Yesterday (The Beatles) was a hit.
October 9, 1965
The Beatles reach #1 with "Yesterday".
October 26, 1965
The Beatles are awarded England's prestigious MBE (Members of the Order of the British Empire). John comments, "I thought you had to drive tanks and win wars to get the MBE."
January 2, 1966
We Can Work It Out (The Beatles) was a hit.
March 1, 1966
London's 'Evening Standard' publishes an interview with John Lennon in which he states that the Beatles are "more popular than Jesus now." The comment provokes several protests, including the burning of Beatles records.
June 19, 1966
Paperback Writer (The Beatles) was a hit.
July 31, 1966
John Lennon's comments on the state of Christianity – made in March, but only lately picked up in the U.S. - spark protests and record burnings on the eve of the Beatles' 1966 American tour.
August 29, 1966
After their concert at San Francisco's Candlestick Park, the Beatles declare this to be their final concert tour.
SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 1966
John Lennon makes his first appearance away from the Beatles in the role of Private Gripweed in Richard Lester's film 'How I Won the War'. He writes "Strawberry Fields Forever" during the filming.
March 12, 1967
Penny Lane (The Beatles) was a hit.
March 18, 1967
The Beatles reach #1 with "Penny Lane".
June 1, 1967
'Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band' is released in Britain.
August 1, 1967
Beatle George Harrison and his wife, Patti, stroll through the streets of Haight-Ashbury, bringing more international attention to the scene.
August 13, 1967
All You Need Is Love (The Beatles) was a hit.
August 19, 1967
The Beatles reach #1 with "All You Need Is Love".
September 1, 1967
John Lennon writes "I Am the Walrus" while under the influence of LSD. He also anonymously sponsors Yoko Ono's Half a Wind Show (subtitled Yoko Plus Me) at London's Lisson Gallery.
December 24, 1967
Hello Goodbye (The Beatles) was a hit.
December 30, 1967
The Beatles reach #1 with "Hello Goodbye".
February 15, 1968
The Beatles depart for Rishikesh, India, for an advanced course in transcendental meditation.
May 1, 1968
Apple Corps, Ltd. begins operating in London. It is the Beatles' attempt to take control of their own creative and economic destiny. Later that month, John invites Yoko to his house in Weybridge. They make experimental tapes all night.
September 22, 1968
Hey Jude (The Beatles) was a hit.
September 28, 1968
The Beatles reach #1 with "Hey Jude".
January 30, 1969
The Beatles make their last performance as a group on the roof of the Apple building during the filming of 'Let It Be'.
May 18, 1969
Get Back (The Beatles) was a hit.
May 24, 1969
The Beatles reach #1 with "Get Back".
November 23, 1969
Come Together (The Beatles) was a hit.
November 29, 1969
The Beatles reach #1 with "Come Together".
April 5, 1970
Let It Be (The Beatles) was a hit.
April 10, 1970
Paul McCartney announces that he is leaving the Beatles due to "personal, business and musical differences."
June 7, 1970
The Long and Winding Road (The Beatles) was a hit.
January 2, 1975
John and Yoko are reunited. The Beatles' final dissolution takes place in London.
December 8, 1980
John Lennon is shot by a deranged assailant as he and Yoko return to the Dakota after a recording session. He is pronounced dead at Roosevelt Hospital.
1988
The Beatles inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
November 19, 1995
"Free as a Bird," the first new Beatles single in 25 years, is premiered on the televised Beatles Anthology. The song, a 1977 demo by John Lennon completed in 1995 by the three surviving Beatles, reaches #6 on the singles chart in early 1996.
March 23, 1996
"Real Love," a 1979 John Lennon demo finished in 1995 by the other Beatles, becomes the second new Beatles single to chart in less than three months. Released as part of 'The Beatles Anthology' recordings and TV special, it reaches #11 – not bad for a band that broke up in 1970.
November 29, 2001
George Harrison dies at the age of 58 after a long battle with cancer."
This series, "The Sixties" examines events in the news from the 1960s. It looks at events, a day at a time, as they occured chronologically. We are now in the middle of the decade, with installment number 21.
This series is published Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays.
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Comments: 52
When I was 12, I fell in love with the Beatles' early music; a few years later, Sgt. Pepper, then Abbey Road, and finally, ending with The White Album, were amazing for their originaltiy.
The Stones morphed, too, from early sweet songs "Ruby Tuesday", "Mother's Little Helper" to their classic rock hits of later years. Of all the groups, The Stones remains probably the only group still performing. If you can call Mick Jagger's SuperBowl appearance a performance.
Loved the Animals...
You've done a great job with this. Thanks for the memories.
In my not too humble opinion the music and lyrics of let's say the Gershwins among many others is in a rarefied strata compared with any music and lyrics since their day.
I challenge anyone to match the following list of representative examples of music - that in my opinion - conveys the depth, passion, complexity, richness, lyricism, power to resonate, subtlety, truthfulness, integrity resounding, pure power of the sounds of the instruments and the quality of the words:
Man I Love, Body and Soul, Embraceable You, All The Thins You Are, It's The Talk of the Town, When I Fall In Love, For Me and My Gal, Summertime, Tenderly, It Had To Be You, Blue Moon, My Foolish Heart, Someone To Watch Over Me, You Go to My Head, The Nearness of You, Blue Shies, Can't Help Loving That Man of Mine, Star Dust, Deep Purple, Bewitched, As Time Goes By, You Go to My Head, That Old Black Magic, In The Still of the Night, September Song, It Might as Well Be Spring, Don't Blame Me, If I Loved You, Autumn Leaves, Moon Glow, Always, Come Rain or Come Shine, Stormy Weather, I've Got a Crush on You, East of the Sun, Deep Purple, It Had to Be You, You'll Never Know, A Secret Love, ...
The Beetles are good - no doubt about it - but for sheer glory and excellence I believe that little that they or anyone after them have produced, match the sheer brilliance of the pre-seventies. Or if you take exception - as I imagnine you may well do - please generate your own lists and prove me wrong. I am open to expanding my repertoire.
YOU ROCK! The Beatles were ground breakers of a whole new age. They raised the circus tent for a great show and your article puts all the tent pegs in their proper places.
Thanks for posting this to the Old Hippie's Corner. By the way, I'm thinking of throwing a big blowout party at the OHC for the Fourth of July. Stay tuned.
Cheers,
Colonel Possum
I remember distinctly the next day at school.....EVERYONE had pictures, everyone was talking non-stop about the Beatles the night before on Ed Sullivan and the boys were grumbling about the long hair-they were jealous I think.
It was a magical time if you were a 7th grader and I'll never forget it.
Paul is still magical in his own way.
LIFE magazine Vol. 56, No. 5 January 31, 1964 Cover story "Charlie Chaplin's Daughter A Hit In Her Stage Debut"
Third story on the cover: " Here Come The Beatles Screaming Craze from England "
Page 24: "Four Screaming Mopheads Break Up England"
" 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 and already teen-age Americans are as keyed up as the days, only a dim decade ago, when Elvis first came twisting on.
The Beatles ? They are the four shrewdly goofy-looking lads at left. Fifteen months ago they were singing their songs in a smoky Liverpool jazz cellar. A talent scout took them and their haircuts to London. Today their records have sold five million copies in England and they are a national institution, seemingly as solid as Big Ben and a lot louder. Their musical style embellished standard rock n' roll with a jackhammer beat and high screams that would do a steam calliope proud.
Princess Margret is a devoted Beatle fan, and the Queen Mother summoned them to her regal presence and enthusiastically asked, " When is your next performance ?" Field Marshal Montgomery said he would invite them down for a country weekend. Oh, a few old fogies have been grumbling in Parliament about thousands of pounds of overtime pay given Bobbies to protect the Beatles from their teen-age admirers and prevent full-scale riots. But Beatlemania has become a British way of life.
They come here Feb. 7 for three Ed Sullivan TV appearances, two Carnegie Hall dates, and they should find Americans easy pickings. In the past week their record " I Want To Hold Your Hand " has jumped to No.1 in the U.S. -as two millon ear-sore parents will testify.
Obviously the Gershwins are brilliant, as is someone like Cole Porter. No one can deny that. However, so are The Beatles. The Beatles were the first group to bring the musical and songwriting complexity of someone like the Gershwins to rock music. They took what was generally a simple blues based form of music and gave it the "glory and excellence" that you speak of.
The brilliance of the Beatles though is that they made muscial complexity SOUND simple. Lennon and McCartney are such fantastic lyrical and instrumental hook writers that you can get caught up the hook and have to look very close to understand why it's so catchy.
A perfect example is a song like "This Boy" written in 1963 by Lennon and McCartney. It's not one of their more popular songs but, to create the angst in the lead vocal of Lennon they use a harmonic dissonance that is common in the classical music of Wagner. It's a 2 minute pop song, with a very difficult vocal and 3 part harmony, that incorporates musical techniques on par with some of the greatest classical composers ever. And they wrote it at age 21.
As a musician, you should check out this site (hopefully the link works):
http://guitar.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http://www.icce.rug.nl/%257Esoundscapes/DATABASES/AWP/er.html
Allan Pollack did an entire study of every recorded Beatles song. It gives incredible insight into their songs and their talents.
For me, I love all music but there isn't a combination of songwriting, musicianship and vocal talent in one band like the Beatles. The Stones and Zeppelin are great. But the Stones are a blues band and anything they did differently was just copying what the Beatles were doing. (the Beatles use a sitar in 1965, the Stones release "Paint it Black" in 1966 and so on) Zeppelin, while phenominal musicians could never write a song as simple and beautiful as "Here, there, and everywhere" with it's lyrics and harmonies. So, in my lone opinion, it's the Beatles and then everyone else.
And, I believe it was Leonard Bernstein back in 1964 that said along the lines that the Fab Four were musically "perfect". I don't believe a rock band can't get any higher praise than that.
IN MY LIFE
Lennon & McCartney
G D7
G D7 (best intro in beatledom)
Am G Bm G7 (unbelievable!)
C Cm (too cool) G
Am G Bm G7
C Cm G
I'm enjoying this conversation becasue I too always saw it as you're either into the Beatles or the Stones, but not both. Paul and John were my favorites and I remember sitting up night marking up my Abbey Road album because it just proved how Paul was really dead! Remember that fury LOL?
>"Do you want to see this series continue, Digital Dogs? It is about a lot of civil rights as well as all important issues that hit the news - a fresh look at what happened then, to remind us...I've been behind and want to make sure people want this to happen..."
digidog says:
Yes! It's a great idea and a fascinating way to look back at our shared history. And soooo many things happened then that should be remembered.
I had the luck of being in NYC through the 60s. I arrived there in '59 so I got there before the shit hit the fan. I remember walking through Central Park on my way to work and it was all manicured, green and clean. Then some may remember a beautiful Be-in, the first one in Central Park, with a whole bunch of people grooving on the cold spring day, people decked out in costumes, hanging from trees, handing out flowers and oranges, and that ushered the 60s in to NYC. To get the latest new Beatles records, meeting at somebody's pad, turning on and excitedly listening to the songs for the very first time! I esp. love "Abbey Road", used to put on "Here Comes the Sun", a really neat way to start the day, as soon as the first notes from the guitar gives me a vision of a sunrise, no matter I lived in those concrete canyons. Then there's that track where they sing "Boy, you're going to carry that weight, carry that weight a long time" followed by the sweet "Golden Slumbers". At the very end of the original release, there's a big, gradual, extended cacophony that builds and builds and builds and then BOOM! that fades out for a long diminishing into infinity. Brilliiant, I love it. I also remember the day John was assasinated, how it put a big pall over the city. But aren't we lucky to have them forever to warm our hearts? Beatles and the 60s forever! Aloha,