Mar 1, 2024
It was December 1963, and the most listened to song on AM radio was I Want to Hold Your Hand by the Beatles, a not-yet-famous British rock group. That recording had a lasting effect on American music history. Everyone has their favorite Beatles song, but I Want to Hold Your Hand got everyone’s attention.
The four Beatles first appeared to us in print back in a fall issue of Life Magazine in a black and white photo being introduced to Queen Elizabeth in London. We still didn’t know much about them, only that they were polite and very attentive on that occasion, and all seemed to have very similar haircuts, a style that came to be called “the mop top”.
Their early songs were just starting to be played on WBZ radio for the most part, with I Want to Hold Your Hand becoming number one in Boston area and the rest of the nation. Other hits quickly started to attract attention as well, with She Loves You, That Boy, and All My Lovin’, Twist and Shout, and Money (That’s What I Want), just to name a few. Soon afterward their first album introducing them went on sale in the USA.
The very first time the Beatles were mentioned on American tv was November 18, 1963 on the Huntley-Brinkley Report, then the most-watched news program in the United States. Near the end of the program ran this feature.
On The Ed Sullivan Show
Their first tv appearance was on February 9, 1964 on the popular Sunday night program, The Ed Sullivan Show. Many teens in Medfield eagerly tuned in, asking themselves just who these guys were from across the Atlantic. How had they gained such tremendous popularity overnight? Eventually it was summed up as the “British Invasion.”
Host Ed Sullivan came out onto the stage and exclaimed, “Ladies and Gentlemen, the Beatles!” The young women and teens in audience went wild! It appeared the cameras were everywhere, showing TV viewers the pandemonium. Even the older people in the audience were spellbound by all the screaming and excitement.
Not since Elvis Presley’s 1956 debut (with hip gyrations by Elvis the Pelvis not shown on tv), with Hound Dog had there been such a reaction on The Ed Sullivan Show.
But times had changed in seven years on what could and could not be allowed for what today would be called a PG rating. It was the Beatles’ night, and they captivated their audience and owned the stage. They were on top of the world, and we were about to join them on what was to become one of the planet’s most exciting and tumultuous rides. On that historical night 73 million people tuned in to watch the first Beatles televised show in America.
On stage John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr were all dressed in dark suits with white shirts and thin black neckties, with shoes that became known as black Beatle boots. They all had smiles on their faces with Paul and George on the left with their guitars and John with guitar on the far right with Ringo on drums placed behind them on a two-foot-high platform. They played their first set to a raucous crowd, broke backstage, and came back on the second half of the show. Their first American appearance was tremendously successful. We were witnessing four young, scruffy-looking British musicians from the bottom rung of Liverpool society speeding from rags to riches…and never looking back!
The next day at Medfield High, it seemed as though everyone was talking about the Beatles appearing on the Ed Sullivan Show. Some of the guys were mentioning how on the way to school that morning, they were so lucky to hear the song, I Want to Hold Your Hand twice while driving on the way to Medfield High on Pound Street. It quickly became apparent that the Beatles had exceeded all expectations with young teens in America.
The Beatles would go on the Ed Sullivan show again the following Sunday.
The genie was now out of the bottle, but not everyone was pleased with the results. A big problem the absolutely deafening screaming by fans in America. It got so bad that the Beatles couldn’t hear each other playing, and consequently they decided quit touring in the states.
However, they kept on producing great music with catchy titles like Hard Days’ Night and Eight Arms to Hold You. The album Rubber Soul came out in 1964 right before Christmas, featuring the personal favorite of this writer of the song, Norwegian Wood. The rest of the album was just as timely and beautiful, marking their first departure from the casual to a more cerebral, sophisticated, and original blend of songs.
George Martin
A key player in the Beatles’ success was a sometimes-overlooked, classically trained musician and record producer, George Martin, sometimes referred to as the fifth Beatle.
According to Wikipedia, “Martin’s formal musical expertise and interest in novel recording practices facilitated the group’s rudimentary musical education and desire for new musical sounds to record. Most of their orchestral and string arrangements were written by Martin, and he played piano or keyboards on a number of their records. Their collaborations resulted in popular, highly acclaimed records with innovative sounds, such as the 1967 album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band—the first rock album to win a Grammy Award for Album of the Year.”
Full article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Martin
During the 1950s and 60s, jazz was fashionable and popular with a more slightly older, more musically sophisticated American public. But it seemed that the music of the Beatles and the many other new bands from England and America were bumping into the American music of jazz. Nothing at the time could diminish the overpowering speed and popularity of the newer rock and roll music while the British Invasion raged on.
Abbey Lincoln, a popular and respected jazz singer, was especially annoyed and indifferent to the music that was crossing the Atlantic, and she voiced her opinion publicly. In what sounded like perhaps an overreaction, Abbey Lincoln stated that even the new British music had conspired to undermine American jazz. Nevertheless, for the best of both worlds, jazz was winning over new audiences with an innovative sound, with young and older musicians playing with ingenious, newer sounds and variations.
Additionally, the new American folk revival scene took notice of the Beatles success, and within a year or two of the Beatles’ arrival in the states, artists like Bob Dylan and the Byrds abandoned their acoustic instruments and went electric, inspired by the Beatles.
Impact on American Popular Music
In America the British invasion brought a pause to instrumental surf music of the Beach Boys, pre-Motown vocal girl groups like the Ronettes and Martha and the Vandellas, the folk revival of Peter, Paul and Mary, teenage tragedy songs like that of Lesley Gore, and Nashville country music of Johnny Cash. Fortunately, these American genres would have great comebacks in the next three decades of the 20th century.
Highly imaginative and experimental, the Beatles inspired the international mass consciousness in 1964 and never relented for the next six years, always ahead of the pack in terms of creativity, keeping their ability to communicate their increasingly sophisticated ideas to a mass audience.
In 1964, the relatively new musical genre of rock and roll was under siege. But with the Beatles and other British bands, rock and roll saw a resurgence that helped to bind what many people called “race music” as the essence of American identity. Black musicians like Little Richard, Chuck Berry, B.B. King, and the Isely Brothers were all playing to sell-out crowds. One size seemed to fit all. The Beatles and the Rolling Stones called upon the soulful style of Black rhythm and blues. Ironically, what went around eventually came around once again with the ever-enduring persona of Black American entertainers. Via the emergence of the British invasion, their musical zeal had taken hold going back to the earlier days of Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, with Miles Davis and additionally the updated and present times and sounds of Motown.
Meanwhile Beatlemania also opened the door to a multitude of other British groups. The Beatles welcomed the Rolling Stones with Mick Jagger and Keith Richards and company, who played rhythm and blues. Under the mantle of British music the Kinks, the Dave Clark Five, Jerry and the Pacemakers, the Animals, Herman and the Hermits, and many others all joined in the success of the British sound.
The Beatles were ahead of mainstream music with musical and sound inventions like Sgt Pepper’s Lonely-Hearts Band. Not only did they write that music but also the unusual song called I Am the Walrus. To see that composition set to modern dance is a revelation of beauty.
All good things must end, and the Beatles were no exception, with their last album written together, Abbey Road. It was mentioned that by that point they all had enough of writing together and at times were arguing and fighting with one another.
After the Breakup
However, each of them would go on to write more music and enjoy blazing a trail to more individual fame. During the disastrous floods and famine in Bangladesh, George Harrison wrote inspirational music and donated much of the money to the impoverished people of that country.
John Lennon would continue to write outstanding music with his wife, Yoko Ono, most notably with the song, Imagine. Tragically John Lennon’s life was cut short in 1980 as he and Yoko were returning to their home in Manhattan; a deranged fan, Mark Chapman, shot and killed him. John Lennon’s fans were shocked and dismayed and gathered in Central Park soon afterward in memoriam. This writer went to work at a second job in Walpole and found out from the boss that John Lennon had been shot and killed that very day.
George Harrison, a heavy smoker, died of cancer at 58 in 2001; in 1999 he narrowly survived a severe stabbing by a home invader. George’s brilliance would carry on with his son playing guitar at a concert with Eric Clapton and Billy Preston on piano, singing a jubilant rendition of, Isn’t It a Pity.
Beatlemania has honored the music and lives of the four musicians who started the phenomenon back in the early 1960s. The world needed a philosophical transfusion. America and Europe were looking for a renaissance of music that was uplifting and very different. It was less than two decades after World War II and less than one after Korea. The Vietnam conflict had started to stir. Kennedy was shot on November 22, 1963. The 96-mile Berlin Wall was begun in August 1961, the same time that Cuba went Communist.
Beatlemania, like an imaginary rail track, allowed most everyone to stop, look and listen to a state of mind, proceeding with a new style of music, and of cultural changes that had not been contemplated before the Fab Four had arrived. This evolution added to the changes we already had on the music scene after the transformation of Elvis, of the music of Leonard Bernstein, the Newport Jazz Festival, the Everley Brothers, Brenda Lee, the Sensations, Tina Turner, Pete Seeger and the music of Dave Brubeck and Herbie Hancock.
Beatlemania brought optimism in America and many parts of the world where freedom and democracy were celebrated. That dream of timely progress has taken the talent and the musical genius of artists like Laura Nyro, Bruce Springsteen, Whitney Houston, Donna Somers, Flash Cadillac and the Continentals, Earth, Wind and Fire, the rap of The Last Poets and musical ventures like the events of Woodstock and all those who contributed to the collaboration of We Are the World. Passing and handing all of this on to our children ensures the music of tomorrow.