America didn’t know what hit it
The 'Fab Four' were greeted by 3 000 screaming fans who caused a near riot when the boys stepped off their plane and onto American soil.
ON February 7, 1964, Pan Am Yankee Clipper flight 101 from London Heathrow landed at New York’s Kennedy Airport and ‘Beatlemania’ arrived in the United States. It was the first visit by the Beatles and ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’ had just hit the number one spot on the charts.
Two days later, Paul McCartney (21), Ringo Starr (23), John Lennon (23) and George Harrison (20) made their first appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show. Although it was difficult to hear the performance over the screams of teenage girls in the studio audience, an estimated 73 million US television viewers, or about 40 percent of the US population, tuned in to watch. Sullivan immediately booked the Beatles for two more appearances that month.
The group made its first public concert appearance in the United States on February 11 at the Coliseum in Washington, DC and 20 000 fans attended. The next day, they gave two back-to-back performances at New York’s Carnegie Hall and police were forced to close off the streets around the venerable music hall because of fan hysteria. On February 22, the Beatles returned to England.
The Beatles’ first American tour left a major imprint in the nation’s cultural memory. With American youth poised to break away from the culturally rigid landscape of the 1950s, the Beatles, with their exuberant music and good-natured rebellion, were the perfect catalyst for the shift. Their singles and albums sold millions of records and, at one point in April 1964, all five best-selling US singles were Beatles songs.
By the time the Beatles first feature-film, A Hard Day’s Night, was released in August, Beatlemania was epidemic the world over. Later that month, the four boys from Liverpool returned to the United States for their second tour and played to sold-out arenas across the country.
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