Posted on 10-2-2004
The
Beatles: First US Visit
By GRAHAM REID
In the beginning there were just the four of them. Then we learned
of the fifth Beatle. Depending on who you talked to it was producer
George Martin, New York DJ Murray the K, or the dumped drummer
Pete Best. Then we heard about their Hamburg days and the dead
Beatle Stu Sutcliffe, their manager Brian Epstein and the rest
of the supporting cast.
As their legend grew the list of the Beatle-infected lengthened
accordingly. There was Cynthia, Jane, Patti and Maureen. Later
Yoko, Linda and ...
Members of their inner circle were interviewed or wrote books
about whatever minor role they might have played. John Lennon's
half sister weighed in with her story of someone she barely
knew, and Lennon's absent father reappeared and cut a single.
The Beatles became a concept, something larger than their lives.
But in the beginning there were just the four of them - and
that life-affirming music.
Forty years ago this weekend the Beatles arrived on the world
stage. Yes, they had been big in Britain during late 1963 but
when they arrived in America their lives became legends. Despite
their cocky self-confidence their American success surprised
them.
"We didn't think there was a chance," said Lennon
later. "We just didn't imagine it at all, we didn't even
bother. Even when we came over to America the first time we
were only coming over to buy LPs."
That first time, they played the Ed Sullivan Show. That historic
Sunday night the primetime variety programme also featured a
magician doing a card and salt shaker trick, Frank Gorshin the
impressionist (and later the Riddler in Batman), Terry McDermott
an Olympic athlete, the cast of Oliver, and Tessi O'Shea singing
a medley of favourite show tunes.
But on February 9, 1964 73 million people - the biggest television
audience ever - tuned in to see the Beatles. They had the number
one single with I Want to Hold Your Hand and interest had been
fanned by the media in the previous two days since their arrival
in New York to 4000 screaming fans.
Few Americans had seen - or heard - anything like them. The
press, prepared to give them a hard time, wilted in the face
of their humour although many were sceptical about whether their
homeland success would travel.
Jack Gould in the New York Times doubted Beatlemania could
be exported: "Hysterical squeals emanating from developing
femininity really went out coincidental with the payola scandal
and Presley's military service." Evangelist Billy Graham
said, "they're just a passing phase". They couldn't
have been more wrong.
As with the Kennedy assassination, a lot of people know exactly
where they were that day: in this case they were in front of
their television sets. Even the petty criminals. In Beatle-lore
it is said there were no reported incidents of crime in New
York when the Beatles played that night.
The astute Sullivan opened his show with them - All My Loving,
Till There Was You - then promised they'd be back later. Before
the acrobatic team of Wells and the Four Days closed the programme
they played I Saw Her Standing There and I Want to Hold Your
Hand.
And everything changed. Teenagers formed bands, folk singers
added amplification, boys grew their hair and tossed out the
Brylcream - and were sometimes suspended from school. Identikit
Beatle-bands were everywhere, from Liverpool came the Merseybeats.
In this country we had the Merseymen playing at Phil Warren's
Beatle Inn in Auckland (with a young Dylan Taite on drums as
Jet Rink), and the Librettos on C'mon wore the same Beatles-style,
felt-collar jackets.
Birmingham-born Tommy Adderley who had jumped ship here in
the late 50s put on his thickest Liverpool voice and had a minor
hit with I Just Don't Understand (or "oonder-stund"
as he said it). Ray Columbus sang She's a Mod with the Beatlish
"yeah, yeah, yeah" refrain and got a career.
Suddenly there were long-haired pop bands everywhere.
If the end of civilisation had arrived, as some seemed to think,
then it had a joyous soundtrack.
The cover image of With the Beatles - their faces half-lit
- inspired innumerable copies (the Stones, the Merseybeats)
and today a photo, album cover or song on the radio is a cultural
shorthand evoking innumerable references.
Arthur Fiedler recorded Beatles songs with the Boston Pops
Orchestra, William Mann wrote of the Beatles' use of Aeolian
cadences and pandiatonic clusters in The Times, and a young
Cher (as Bonni Jo Mason) recorded Ringo I Love You .
Lennon wrote a knock-off book of amusing nonsense which was
compared with Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear. It won the Foyle's
Literary Prize. He wrote another. They met the Queen, got MBEs,
and made two films. London became hip, people spoke of Carnaby
St. Shops had names like Granny Takes a Trip, Brolly Male and
My Father's Moustache.
But as the western world enjoyed itself, the Beatles just kept
working. Between April 1963 and December 1966 they released
seven albums - the first took 16 hours - then retired from touring
to go into the studio and get serious about making music. Sgt
Pepper released in June 1967 took nine months.
What was it about the Beatles, other than that magical music?
They looked vaguely alike in their suits and "mop tops"
and psychologists read something into that. But they had genuine
and distinct personalities so there was a Beatle for every taste.
They were quick-witted ("How did you find America?"
"Turn left at Greenland.") and unlike previous pop
stars they openly smoked and drank. They were refreshingly working
class and had fun with their fame because they figured it couldn't
last.
But it did and they were cultural leaders and tastemakers.
The Rolling Stones' first top-20 single was of a song Lennon
and McCartney knocked off, McCartney penned Cilla Black's Step
Inside Love and the only hits Peter and Gordon had. Lennon wrote
Bad to Me and gave it to Billy J. Kramer to kick off his short
career on the charts.
When the Beatles grew moustaches so did half the men in the
western world.
It all happened quickly: The Ed Sullivan Show, the British
invasion, Help and Yellow Submarine, the "Paul is dead"
rumour, and All You Need is Love beamed live across the planet
(except here) in June 1967 to an audience of 150 million.
There was marijuana, incense and LSD, sitars and meditation.
Without the Beatles there might have been no hippie trail across
to Kathmandu.
We cannot conceive what the late 20th century would have been
without the Beatles.
And it all began 40 years ago, captured in the DVD released
on Monday The Beatles: The First US Tour, which puts them in
the context of their times. The Beatles or a guy doing card
tricks on Ed Sullivan's show? No contest.
Filmed by the Maysles Brothers (who later did the similar fly-on-the-wall
doco of Bob Dylan, Don't Look Back) it captures the Beatles
off guard or out of the spotlight. The 45-minute doco about
the making of the main feature is as interesting.
The Maysles pushed their camera and microphone everywhere,
from the Beatles' hotel suite to a family watching the Ed Sullivan
Show at home. It was cinema verite that became fiction because
the sequences on the train between New York and Washington DC
and dancing at the Peppermint Lounge were replicated for their
first feature film, A Hard Day's Night.
In the light of that - and that some of the movie script came
from what they said - we witness fact and fiction blurring.
It was a strange time: we hear a radio DJ saying they will
be on later reading their own poetry; another interrupts McCartney
to read an ad for mattresses; Sullivan calls them "four
of the nicest young kids we've ever had on our show". Lennon
was 23 and married.
But they do look impossibly young. George Harrison - who became
jaded quickly with being a Beatle but was obviously loving every
minute of it in these early days - celebrated his 21st birthday
a fortnight later.
It was all a lot more innocent and naive. And a lot less manufactured
and manicured than it, and rock in general, would become.
In Washington they played in the round with Ringo's drum kit
on a rotating central platform. After every couple of songs
they had to turn the stage themselves.
They picked up their own tiny amplifiers and moved them also.
This was a time before roadies, foldback monitors so they could
hear themselves on stage, and decent sound systems.
Despite that they were good, a better-than-average pop group
attracting quite a bit of attention.
But after they played the Ed Sullivan Show nothing - not them,
us, or our world - was ever the same again.
Their lives became legends, the myths grew to accommodate it.
Back then however, at the beginning in this remarkable grainy
monochrome footage of winter 1964 in America, there were just
the four of them. And now there's just the two.
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