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[content too large, truncated for display] [table=550,#ffffff,#4b6075,2][tr][td] How the Beatles Went Viral: Blunders, Technology & Luck Broke the Fab Four in America
Six weeks is all it took for the Liverpool foursome to go from unknowns to the biggest pop stars in the USA. Here's an exhaustive look at how it happened
Consider the following: At the end of 1963, virtually no one in America had heard of the Beatles. Yet on Feb. 9, 1964, they drew the largest TV audience in history-73 million viewers-when they appeared on "The Ed Sullivan Show." How could such a conquest have occurred so quickly? I once asked my friend Lenny Kaye that question, and he answered: "Everybody was ready for the '60s to begin." There's some truth to that, but of course there's much more to the story. The explosion of the Beatles in America was the result of combined forces-artistic, social and technological-as well as persistence, showbiz rivalries and more than a bit of luck. So how did it happen that the Beatles came out of nowhere to become the biggest cultural sensation ever, in six weeks?
FAB AT 50: THE BEATLES ON THE COVER OF THE JAN. 11, 2014 BILLBOARD
• Subscribe • BUY THIS ISSUE • Billboard on iPad
Of course the Beatles didn't really come out of nowhere. They came out of England. And England was where the frenzy that was Beatlemania began. Unlike its blitzkrieg-like arrival in America, Britain's obsession with the Beatles emerged during the course of nearly a year. The band was huge locally in its native Liverpool, even before the group had begun to make records. After the Beatles signed to EMI's Parlophone label, a series of singles appeared beginning in late 1962: "Love Me Do," "Please Please Me" and "From Me to You"-each a bigger hit than the previous one. The first whispers of mass hysteria wafted out of the north of England in late spring, just as Please Please Me moved into the No. 1 position on the U.K. chart, a spot that a succession of Beatles albums would hold for almost a year.
With the Beatles touring relentlessly, the screaming girls, the frenzied chase scenes, the whole carnival spread steadily, town by town. In late August, the band released its biggest hit yet-"She Loves You," which became the all-time best-selling single by a U.K. act.
Pop hadn't been a subject to which the major newspapers paid much attention. In fact, it took John Lennon's involvement in a fistfight at a birthday party for Paul McCartney in June to garner the band its first national headline: "Beatle In Brawl-Sorry I Socked You" read the back page banner of the Daily Mirror.
But by late summer of 1963, the press couldn't have been more eager for the story of four young outsiders from the hinterlands who had the power to arouse young British womanhood to heights of hysteria. In the wake of the Profumo sex scandal (at that moment in the midst of bringing down the government) and concurrent revelations of outrageous sexual escapades involving Britain's upper crust, the U.K. press were newly fascinated by, and emboldened in covering, sexually charged topics. This new raciness, the precursor to Britain's subsequent sex-crazed tabloid press, found an eager audience with the British public. The Times of London opined: "On the island where the subject has long been taboo in polite society, sex has exploded into the national consciousness and national headlines." Stories about the Beatles craze, a phenomenon viewed as overtly sexual (and rightly so), became a daily presence in the tabloids.
The Beatles' 50 Biggest Billboard Hits
At first, the press took a bemused stance. In September, the Daily Mirror ran a story about the Beatles headlined "Four Frenzied Little Lord Fauntleroys." But then, on Oct. 13, the frenzy hit London itself: The Beatles appeared that evening on Val Parnell's "Sunday Night at the London Palladium," the biggest TV variety show in the country, and thousands of screaming fans descended on the venue, closing off streets and clashing with the police for hours. Coincidentally, on that same day the Daily Mirror coined the term "Beatlemania" to describe a similar scene at the band's concert the previous day in Cheltenham. (The term itself was a play on Lisztomania, the 1840s frenzy that had accompanied the concerts of Franz Liszt.) It wasn't long before the more serious broadsheets were weighing in with pseudo-psychological analyses. The Sunday Times of London got straight to the point, quoting a young girl who answered a BBC interviewer's question regarding why she screamed at the mere mention of the group by confessing, "It's not something I could say on the radio."
CAPITOL TO THE BEATLES: 'DEAD IN THE WATER'
Meanwhile, America was oblivious to what was transpiring across the ocean. Throughout 1963, Capitol Records, which as a sister EMI-owned label held the U.S. rights to Parlophone's product, showed no interest in the band. This was largely due to the tastes of the man in charge of the label's international A&R, Dave Dexter, whose responsibilities included sifting through EMI's international product searching for potential U.S. hits. Capitol's track record in international A&R was quite good: In June 1963, for example, it released a record from EMI Japan titled "Sukiyaki" by Kyu Sakamoto that went to No. 1. But rock'n'roll was American music-Capitol already had the Beach Boys-and no English act had ever sustained a career as a U.S. hitmaker.
Besides, Dexter just didn't like rock. A 20-year veteran of the label who had joined Capitol shortly after it was founded, he'd condemned rock'n'roll as "juvenile and maddeningly repetitive" in an internal memo several years earlier, decrying a music biz increasingly driven by the tastes of children. Dexter's preferences ran toward jazz, and he'd had a good run signing Peggy Lee, Nat "King" Cole and Stan Kenton.
The first two No. 1 Beatles singles that Parlophone offered to Capitol, "Please Please Me" and "From Me to You," were turned down by Dexter and licensed instead to Chicago independent label Vee-Jay Records, whose attorney Paul Marshall happened to be EMI's U.S. attorney as well. Vee-Jay might have been a good home for the Beatles, as it was having considerable success at the time with the Four Seasons, another Marshall client. But by early 1963, the label was short of funds due to its president, Ewart Abner, having dug into Vee-Jay's operating budget in order to cover personal Las Vegas gambling losses.
Upon Vee-Jay's February 1963 release of "Please Please Me," Dick Biondi-a DJ at top 40 WLS Chicago and a friend of Abner's-became the first DJ to play a Beatles record in the United States. Due primarily to airplay on Biondi's show, the song (mistakenly credited to "The Beattles" on the 45 label and in trade ads) made it to No. 35 at WLS in March, although it didn't chart nationally.
By late May, when Vee-Jay released the Beatles' next single, "From Me to You," Biondi had been fired by WLS. He was back on-air a month later at KRLA Los Angeles. Although no longer working in Vee-Jay's hometown, he continued to be supportive of the label's Beatles releases, and by the end of June convinced KRLA to add "From Me to You" to its playlist, even though the record hadn't gotten any national traction in the month since its release. The song charted for six weeks on KRLA's survey in July and August, peaking at No. 33, which was enough to crack Billboard's Bubbling Under Singles chart, where it reached No. 116. Still, it had sold fewer than 15,000 singles by the end of 1963.
50 Years Ago: The Beatles First Hot 100 Chart Appearance
Faring slightly better with "From Me to You" was American rocker Del Shannon, who had toured with the Beatles in England that spring. Shannon's version spent four weeks on the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at No. 77 in July and marking the first appearance of a Lennon-McCartney song on the Hot 100. Shannon's cover may have eliminated any chance of the Beatles' original spreading nationally off of Biondi's support. A letter from the PD of KXOK St. Louis to George Â-Harrison's sister Louise-who lived in Benton, Ill., and had been trying to drum up support for her brother's band-cited the station's earlier support for Shannon's single as reason for not playing the Beatles' version.
Meanwhile, Abner was dismissed from his post at Vee-Jay when his malfeasance was discovered. This aroused the suspicion of Marshall, who quit as Vee-Jay's attorney, opting to cast his lot with EMI. In August Marshall, acting on behalf of EMI's U.S. licensing agent Transglobal, accused Vee-Jay of non-payment of royalties, ordered Vee-Jay to cease and desist in distributing the Beatles' music and revoked the label's options for future singles. Total royalties owed on Beatles sales at that point were less than $1,000, but Vee-Jay wasn't particularly bothered about losing the unsuccessful band. The label was far more concerned with Marshall's efforts to get the Four Seasons out of their Vee-Jay contract, also for failure to pay royalties, which he successfully did.
At the same time, "She Loves You" was beginning its record-breaking asÂ-cent on the U.K. chart and, having canceled the Vee-Jay deal, Marshall approached Dave Dexter at Capitol with the hot new single. In spite of British buzz growing to deafening levels, Dexter turned down the Beatles yet again, reasoning that the Vee-Jay flops proved he was right to have passed on them in the first place. "Dead in the water" was how he described the band's U.S. prospects.
Transglobal licensed "She Loves You" to a tiny indie, Swan Records of Philadelphia, which released it stateside on Sept. 16. Swan had even less success with the Beatles than Vee-Jay: The song failed to chart at any station, and was roundly rejected by audiences when it was played at all. DJ Murray the K at WINS New York spun "She Loves You" on Sept. 28 in a five-way "battle of the hits," where it came in third. He continued to play it every night for a week solid, but got no reaction. Swan convinced "American Bandstand," which broadcast from the label's hometown, to play the song in its "Rate a Record" segment, where it received a score of 73 out of 100. Worse, the teens on "Bandstand" laughed when host Dick Clark held up a photo of the moptopped Beatles. After that incident, Clark recalled, "I figured these guys were going nowhere."
On the same September day that Swan released "She Loves You," Harrison came to the States to visit his sister in Illinois, where he remained totally anonymous. Louise took her brother to a radio station in West Frankfurt, Ill., that had played "From Me to You" at her urging. The station spun a copy of "She Loves You" that Harrison had brought with him, and he was interviewed on-air by the 17-year-old daughter of the station owner, all to no discernible listener response. And when Harrison jammed with a local band called the Four Vests, playing '50s rock songs at a dance, no one even thought to ask for his autograph. (Perhaps the most productive thing he did while in Illinois was purchase an album by R&B artist James Ray, which included "Got My Mind Set on You." Harrison's cover of the song would become the last No. 1 Hot 100 hit to date by any Beatle when it topped the summit nearly 25 years later.) Harrison returned to England feeling despondent about the Beatles' chances in America.
WINNING OVER THE ROYALS, AND ED SULLIVAN
After the band's performance on "Sunday Night at the London Palladium" on Oct. 13, the tabloid press hysteria in the United Kingdom reached a fever pitch, and the American press began to take notice. On Oct. 29, the Washington Post published the first U.S. story on the phenomenon, written by London correspondent Flora Lewis. Titled "Thousands Of Britons 'Riot,'" the story reported on the need for riot squads to calm the crowds in four British cities where the band had recently played. Lewis' article was dismissive of the music (declaring that the beat was the same "over and over"), and she compared the Beatles' look to "limp, upside-down dust mops."
Britain got a respite from the madness for a few days in late October while the band toured Sweden. Upon their return on Oct. 31, the Beatles were met at a rainy London Airport by more than 1,000 screaming fans. The New York Times reported that even the sound of the taxiing jets was no match for the screams of the crowd. Ed Sullivan, also at London Airport that day, assumed the ruckus was for a member of the British Royal Family. When informed it was for the Beatles, he asked, "Who the hell are the Beatles?" Sullivan, a former gossip columnist, had a nose for a good story and something about the scene reminded him of the early days of Elvis Presley, whom he had famously presented on his variety show years earlier. He began to contemplate booking the Beatles, perhaps as a novelty act.
On Nov. 4, the Beatles performed as part of the Royal Variety Performance at the London Palladium. In the British press, it was the moment they morphed from the objects of a barbarous throng's coarse obsession into lovable moptops. As with all acts on the bill at the annual charity event, the Beatles performed at the invitation of Queen Elizabeth, although the Queen herself stayed home that evening, pregnant with Prince Edward. The Queen Mother, best-loved of the Royal Family, was in attendance, however, and was reported to have been clapping along on the off beat during the Beatles' set, while Princess Margaret snapped her fingers.
Famously, Lennon introduced the band's finale that evening, "Twist and Shout," with the quip, "Will the people in the cheaper seats clap your hands? And the rest of you, if you'll just rattle your jewelry." It was a display of cheekiness that heretofore one simply didn't exhibit before the Royal Family. And yet, by narrowing the distance between the monarchy and the working-class foursome onstage, Lennon brought down the house-and in the process managed to make the band all the more beloved in an England where notions of one's proper place were evolving rapidly. Even the Queen Mother came away a fan, calling the Beatles "so young, fresh and vital."
From then on, the Beatles were treated as something akin to national heroes. While the Nov. 2 Daily Telegraph had compared a Beatles concert to Hitler's Nuremberg rallies, the morning after the Royal Variety Performance the band achieved a new legitimacy from a love-struck press. As the Daily Mirror put it, "You have to be a real square not to love the nutty, noisy, happy, handsome Beatles." Victory was total: By December, London Sunday Times music critic Richard Buckle was comparing their music to Beethoven.
Despite the undeniable phenomenon of the Beatles in England-which was growing by the day-Capitol U.S. dealt yet another blow to the band in early November when Dexter again turned down its latest single. This one, "I Want to Hold Your Hand," had advance orders in the United Kingdom of more than 1 million singles. The day after the Royal Variety Performance, the band's manager Brian Epstein headed to New York. Ostensibly the trip was to promote one of his other acts, Liverpool singer Billy J. Kramer, who was signed to Liberty Records and who accompanied him on the journey. But more importantly, Epstein was determined to figure out how to get the Beatles' U.S. career on track.
Part of Epstein's efforts in New York would focus on securing the Beatles a spot on "The Ed Sullivan Show." Sullivan's European scout, Peter Pritchard, had taken the show's talent coordinator Bob Babb to see the band perform earlier in the year and was regularly updating Babb on the group's progress. Pritchard called Sullivan and encouraged him to meet with Epstein. The reception the band had received at London Airport was intriguing, but it was Pritchard's report of how the group wowed the Royal Family that made Sullivan agree to a sit-down with Epstein.
After two meetings, the deal was set: The Beatles would appear on two episodes of "The Ed Sullivan Show" on Feb. 9 and Feb. 16, and a third appearance would be taped for broadcast at a later date. (The three episodes would ultimately be broadcast on consecutive weeks.) Sullivan had done something similar with Presley in 1956, when he booked the singer for three appearances in a four-month period. But the Beatles were flying in from England, and the time frame for their appearances was condensed to avoid the expense of repeatedly flying them in and out.
Sullivan had quite a reputation for being budget-conscious, but in the case of the Beatles he was particularly parsimonious. While performers on his show regularly received $10,000 or more for a top-billed appearance-a red-hot Presley had received $50,000 in 1956 for his three appearances-Sullivan held the upper hand in his negotiations with Epstein, who represented a group unknown in America. Thus, Epstein settled for $10,000 total for the three appearances. But he'd gotten what he wanted: a top-billed performance on "The Ed Sullivan Show," plus two more. For an unproven act, such a commitment from Sullivan was unprecedented, but, as Sullivan later recalled in a New York Times interview, "I made up my mind that this was the same sort of mass hysteria that had characterized the Elvis Presley days."
Sixteen seasons into his unparalleled 23-year prime-time run on CBS, Sullivan was just now reaching the zenith of his own fame and his show's star-making power. A few months earlier, he'd been lionized in the film version of the stage musical "Bye Bye Birdie," in which he played himself and which featured an eponymous musical number-performed cathedral-choir style-devoted to just how monumental it was to appear on the show: "Ed Sullivan," the choir sang. "We're going to be on Ed Sullivan!" A single appearance on the show could be a ticket to the top for a lucky performer. Getting three made Epstein feel like it was a lock.
THE U.S. MEDIA MEETS THE BEATLES
In the case of the Beatles, mere word of Sullivan's agreement to feature them on three episodes was enough to change the band's fortunes in America. With Sullivan booked, Epstein set out to address Capitol's indifference. While there is considerable debate about what happened next, it appears Epstein paid a visit to Capitol East Coast chief Brown Meggs to plead the band's case-and came away with a release commitment. Unknown to Epstein, EMI managing director L.G. Wood had already greased the skids for the band's U.S. release on Capitol after Dexter had passed for the fourth time. Wood, furious that Capitol wouldn't license the Beatles, flew to New York and met with Capitol president Alan Livingston, who was summoned from Los Angeles. Armed with a mandate from EMI chairman Joseph Lockwood to break the logjam, Wood demanded that Livingston agree to a Beatles release on Capitol.
Livingston was offended by EMI's demand, as the understanding with EMI was that Capitol would merely have the first right of refusal on EMI product, with no obligation to license. A highly successful record man whose prior accomplishments ranged from signing Frank Sinatra to creating Bozo the Clown (and who later in life would own the production company that signed Don McLean's "American Pie"), Livingston was used to running Capitol as his own fiefdom. But the truth was, EMI owned 96% of Capitol and Livingston was an employee. Wood refused to let Livingston leave the meeting until he'd agreed to a Beatles release. Livingston grudgingly agreed to press 5,000 copies of the next single. Only later, after word came in that Epstein had secured three appearances for the Beatles with Sullivan, did Capitol get onboard in a big way, committing to a $40,000 marketing budget (about $300,000 in today's dollars), a then-unprecedented sum for a new act.
The Beatles' 50 Biggest Billboard Hits
Livingston's version of the story differs entirely: In his recollection, he received a call in November from Epstein, who wanted to know why Capitol hadn't released any Beatles records. Livingston responded that he'd never heard a Beatles record, which seems implausible given that the band was, by this time, a bona fide phenomenon, to which Capitol held U.S. rights, and Livingston was in regular contact with Wood, who presumably had been encouraging him to release the group's records. That this decision would remain entirely in the hands of Dexter, with no oversight, in spite of all the mounting pressure, doesn't make sense. Livingston further contends that upon speaking with Epstein, he asked Dexter to bring him some Beatles records, and after hearing them he immediately sensed the band's U.S. potential and agreed to put them out with the $40,000 marketing budget.
(Amazingly, Dexter kept his post as head of international A&R in spite of having turned down not only the Beatles but also Gerry & the Pacemakers, the Hollies, the Animals, the Dave Clark Five, Herman's Hermits and the Yardbirds, not to mention Epstein's Billy J. Kramer. In fact, Dexter remained in charge of A&R'ing the Beatles' records for the American market and was responsible for the reconfiguration of the U.K. albums on Capitol. Years later, upon Lennon's death, he wrote a fairly mean editorial in Billboard about the late Beatle, for which the magazine later apologized.)
Epstein's New York visit was jam-packed, including an interview with the New Yorker that would be published the following month, visits to music publications, plus the Kramer promotion, which culminated in a TV performance of Kramer's cover of the Beatles' "Do You Want to Know a Secret" on "The Joe Franklin Show." But besides the Sullivan meetings, his most significant encounter was with General Artists Corp. agent Sid Bernstein, who was hell-bent on booking the still-unknown Beatles at New York's Carnegie Hall.
Bernstein had discovered the Beatles while taking an evening Western civilization course at the New School, in which one of the requirements was reading British newspapers to better understand the parliamentary system. As a booking agent by day, his eyes inevitably drifted to the entertainment pages, where the hysteria the Beatles were causing was mentioned with increasing frequency. He tracked down Epstein and in early autumn pitched his Carnegie Hall idea over the phone. Epstein was hesitant to commit to anything before the Beatles were famous in the States, out of fear of playing before an empty house. For its part, GAC was equally hesitant to book an unknown pop group.
Bernstein thus made the audacious offer to rent Carnegie Hall at his own expense, leaving out GAC, with a proposed concert date of Feb. 12. As fate would have it, that was when the Beatles were set to perform on "The Ed Sullivan Show." Bernstein was confident that with the Sullivan deal sealed, ticket sales would be assured. While Epstein didn't formally agree until after Jan. 1 to do the concert, Bernstein took their conversation as a yes and proceeded to rent Carnegie Hall. When the booker at Carnegie asked him what kind of an act the Beatles were, Bernstein, who knew that the venue didn't tend to book pop bands, replied, with more truth than he'd intended, "They're a phenomenon."
Simultaneously, the American media was becoming fascinated by Britain's fascination with the Beatles. Within the course of a week in mid-November, the band experienced intense U.S. press and TV attention: On Nov. 15, Time magazine published an account of "The New Madness," and Newsweek followed three days later with an article simply titled "Beatlemania." And all three U.S. TV networks sent camera crews to cover the Beatles' Nov. 16 concert in Bournemouth, which was marked by the usual clashes between fans and police.
Once again, timing worked to the Beatles' advantage: Just two months earlier, both CBS and NBC had expanded their evening news shows from 15 minutes to a half hour. This left them with airtime to fill, allowing for the kind of light features the evening news had never previously aired. NBC was first out of the gate, running a four-minute Beatlemania story on the top-rated "Huntley-Brinkley Report" on Nov. 18. Correspondent Edwin Â-Newman's piece was about fan hysteria, although he did include 30 seconds of the studio recording of "From Me to You," as well as a snippet of the live Bournemouth performance of the same song, which was nearly drowned out by audience screams. "One reason for the Beatles' popularity," Newman quipped, "is that it's almost impossible to hear them."
CBS' story followed on Nov. 22, the same day With the Beatles was released in England. (ABC, whose newscast still stood at 15 minutes, never aired its story.) As a teaser for the four-minute piece set to appear on Walter Cronkite's evening news show, an abbreviated version aired on "CBS Morning News" with Mike Wallace. But the full piece didn't run that evening. Instead, everything came to a standstill with the news that President John F. Kennedy had been assassinated.
A 15-YEAR-OLD GIRL SETS RADIO IN MOTION
The Kennedy assassination sent all of American society into a depressed stupor. And perhaps no societal group was more crushed than the nation's youth, for whom JFK embodied idealism and optimism. To be a young American right after the assassination was to be afflicted by shock, giving way to sadness and disillusionment.
The spell weighed heavily and cried out to be broken. But the top 40 airwaves were no place to find respite in the wake of the Â-assassination. By some strange coincidence, a folk ballad about the founder of a Roman Catholic religious order, sung in French, sat poised to ascend to No. 1 on the chart just as the nation's first Catholic president was killed. No song could have captured the nation's mood at that moment more precisely than "Dominique," written and recorded by the Belgian Sister Luc-Gabrielle, billed as the Singing Nun. The austere "Dominique" remained atop the chart for the rest of the year, reinforcing America's somber tone.
In the weeks after Kennedy's death, Cronkite began to feel the weight of the nation's collective lack of joy, with one heavy item following another on "CBS Evening News." Finally, he decided it was time to air something fun to break things up, but when surveying the cultural landscape, there was nothing cheery to be found. Then, someone remembered the story that was supposed to air the day of the assassination, the one about kids in England going bonkers over a group of long-haired rock'n'rollers.
On Dec. 10, "CBS Evening News" ran a four-minute piece on the Beatles. Due to the assassination, CBS was late to the story. In addition to Time, Newsweek and NBC, Life magazine had already published a feature with a picture of Princess Margaret meeting the "Red Hot Beatles," which ran next to a story on the Singing Nun-pop Â-music's present and future abutting each other in America's most popular magazine. Even the staid New York Times Magazine had already run a lengthy article, "Britons Succumb To Beatlemania," which, like the CBS piece, had been filed before the assassination but shelved until the beginning of December.
The CBS piece, reported by London bureau chief Alan Kendrick, offered more of the same: screaming teens, the Royal Variety Performance and eye-rolling on the part of a bewildered correspondent. But it also contained two elements not found in NBC's report: an interview with the band by correspondent Josh Darsa and a live performance of "She Loves You" from the Bournemouth show. Although Kendrick's reporting was patronizing, concluding that the Beatles "make non-music and wear non-haircuts," the live footage of "She Loves You" was raw and compelling. And Kendrick's tone let teen viewers in on the fact that the Beatles were as annoying to adults as they were appealing to British teens-yet another selling point, bound to whip up curiosity.
While Cronkite's show was second in the ratings behind NBC's "Huntley-Brinkley Report," it still pulled in 10 million viewers a night. One of those viewers that evening was fellow CBS star Ed Sullivan, who phoned Cronkite after the broadcast and asked the news anchor what else he could tell him about "those bugs, or whatever they call themselves," as Cronkite later recalled. Although Sullivan had already committed to featuring the Beatles, he still viewed them as a bit of a joke. Seeing them on Cronkite's news program conferred more status upon the group in his eyes.
Three days later-a month after the meetings with Epstein-CBS announced in a press release that the Beatles, a "wildly popular quartet of English recording stars, will make their first trip to the United States Feb. 7 for their American television debut on 'The Ed Sullivan Show' [on] Sunday, Feb. 9 and 16." The release went on to recount the considerable press the band had already received stateside, and included the by-now obligatory mention of how the group won over the Royal Family. It also noted that "their first record release is scheduled for January," an acknowledgement of Capitol's trade announcement of the previous week, which had in fact already spilled the beans about the upcoming Sullivan appearances.
Also watching the Cronkite telecast that evening was a 15-year-old girl named Marsha Albert of Silver Spring, Md., who wrote a letter to local DJ Carroll James of WWDC Washington, D.C., asking, "Why can't we have music like that here in America?" James, who had also seen the Cronkite broadcast and been intrigued, called a friend at BOAC (now British Air), who arranged for a stewardess to bring a copy of "I Want to Hold Your Hand" to the station two days later. As an extra treat, James invited Albert to the studio. And so, on Dec. 17, Albert announced on WWDC, "Ladies and gentlemen, for the first time on the air in the United States, here are the Beatles singing 'I Want to Hold Your Hand.'"
By the time the song finished, the station's switchboard was lit up with calls from listeners who wanted to hear it again. WWDC put it into heavy rotation, with a voice-over in the middle of the song announcing it as a "WWDC exclusive" to keep the other D.C. station from recording it off the air and broadcasting it. By the next day, area record stores were deluged with requests for this record they'd never heard of-and which wasn't in fact available. James then sent a tape of the record to friend who DJ'd at a station in Chicago, who got the same reaction and then sent it on to a friend in St. Louis, where "I Want to Hold Your Hand" received a similarly ecstatic response.
Why was it that the Beatles connected so powerfully when James gave them one spin on Dec. 17, while their previous releases received no such response? For one thing, the Beatles appeared to have been a remedy for those dark days after Kennedy's death. As Lester Bangs has written of that winter, "We needed a fling after the wake." Something different, exotic, joyful,, euphoric even, was just the remedy. And in retrospect, it's clear that it needed to come from outside America, beyond the borders of a country still v
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