BRIAN EPSTEIN, THE GROUP'S FIRST MANAGER, demonstrated virtual genius in creating what has come to be called "Beatlemania." Few other musicians have had the opportunity of such tremendous publicity. It is remarkable that in the midst of all this the Beatles were sophisticated enough to attract an underground following in addition to their vast popular success, and some of their more esoteric work was, and still is, remarkably innovative and of high musical quality.

-- Ran Blake, Third Stream Musician and Educator

Source: Boston Globe, February 13, 1984

ACTUALLY WORC-1310 IN WORCESTER, MASSACHUSETTS, had some special "in" with the UK music scene: in spring/summer 1963, they were playing "From Me to You" (Beatles and Del Shannon versions), "Do You Want To Know a Secret" (Beatles and Billy J. Kramer versions) and "Lucky Lips" by Cliff Richard. Clearly Bob Garcia and the other WORC jocks were anticipating the British Invasion several months later.

"I WANT TO HOLD YOUR HAND" broke out in the US in early December 1963, about two weeks after the Kennedy assassination. DJ's in Washington, DC and New York City were among the first to rotate it heavily in their airplay, according to what I read in Newsweek in January 1964. Murray-the-K of New York's WINS billed himself as "the fifth Beatle": he had "I Want To Hold Your Hand" on his show two weeks before Christmas. Rival WABC in NYC, and WBZ in Boston, jumped on the song and, as the last week of Christmas shopping season started, the single was available and started to chart in New York. Request-based surveys (which react faster than sales-based ones) had Beatles songs hitting the Top 20 before the end of 1963.

-- Mark Connelly

Source: E-mail message, October 5, 2002

I REMEMBER BRUCE BRADLEY SAYING that this group's music had never been played in the States before but they were huge in England. He played "Please Please Me" and "From Me to You." I remember thinking that I liked Del Shannon better (I had already heard his version ["From Me to You" (45, Big Top 3152, 1963)] and thought the song was his). When Del Shannon's version charted I thought that history would bear out my opinion. I was incorrect. I changed my mind later.

-- Doug Grose, Turtles' Webmaster

Source: E-mail message, September 30, 2002

MY AWARENESS OF THE BEATLES IN AMERICA was very much due to knowing Bruce Bradley of WBZ radio in the '60s. He was "Juicy Brucey." ... Anyway, I did pick up the buzz around the station though still didn't really know much about the Beatles or their music. Then, like everyone else, I got the album Meet the Beatles and played it, over and over and over... That is why I bought my first guitar for sure. I didn't have a clue about music but learned my chords and meticulously copied the interesting guitar bits from their songs until I had them down pat--the first one I remember mastering (albeit with amateur finesse) was the guitar solo bit in "Till There Was You." Then, "I Don't Want To Spoil the Party," "Words of Love," "Devil in Her Heart," and the Mt. Everest of them all, the guitar riff in "Hard Day's Night." And others because they just kept on coming.

It was a magic time.

-- Kelly Gifford of the Pandoras

Source: E-mail message, September 29, 2002

AND THE BEATLES IN 1963. You remember what a bleak time that was, after Kennedy was assassinated near Thanksgiving. I believe it was in December, shortly after, that there were signs all over Boston, stuck on posts, walls, etc. that said "The Beatles Are Coming." ... [I]t was pretty quick that the DJ's began playing "I Want To Hold Your Hand" ... and I am sure it was definitely Brian Epstein's marketing ploy. The Boston and New York radio stations most likely got early copies and info. I think he hit the two big cities in advance of their appearance here on Ed Sullivan. It certainly worked.

-- Kelly Gifford of the Pandoras

Source: E-mail message, August 11, 2002

THE BEATLES HAD SOME HISTORY in the U.S. record marketplace long before the first appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show put Beatlemania in American living rooms. The initial release was Tony Sheridan and the Beat Brothers (Beatles), "My Bonnie" b/w "The Saints" (Decca), way back on April 23, 1962. The first one that I'm really sorry I didn't hear, "Please Please Me" (b/w "Ask Me Why," on Vee Jay), came out on February 25, 1963. "From Me to You" (b/w "Thank You Girl," on Vee Jay) was issued on May 27, 1963, and peaked (but not very high) on the U.S. charts in August 1963. By that time, the Beatles' U.S. debut album, Introducing the Beatles (LP, Vee Jay 1062, [1963]), had already been released, though finding a copy in a typical American record store might have been a chore. "She Loves You" (b/w "I'll Get You," on Swan) came out here on September 16, 1963.

George Harrison's sister, Louise, lived in St. Louis, where she was calling in requests, to her local radio stations, for Beatles records. At some point in 1963, George actually traveled to St. Louis to visit his sister. This was not, though, the only Beatles connection to America. Strange as it seems, John's grandfather, Jack Lennon, was in the United States in the 1890s, performing as a soloist in Andrew Robertson's band, the Kentucky Minstrels!

-- Alan Lewis, October 12, 2002

IT WAS PRETTY COOL that it was my mother in '63/64 that came home with Introducing the Beatles (on Vee Jay) with one of the ugliest photos of the Beatles on the cover I have ever seen--Ringo hadn't lost his pompador yet.

-- T Max of The Noise and Boston Rock Opera

Source: E-mail message, September 22, 2002

THE BEATLES RETURNED TO ENGLAND on February 22, 1964, having remained in the United States for two weeks. They had played only three concerts--two at Carnegie Hall in New York and one at the Washington Coliseum--but The Ed Sullivan Show had turned them into household faces. The most popular explanation for their phenomenal reception was that America, having just recovered from the assassination of John F. Kennedy, was eagerly looking for heroes. It was a convenient and unprovable theory.

-- Nathan Cobb, Boston Globe, February 9, 1984

THE BEATLES CHANGED EVERYTHING. Like so many others I was glued to the TV watching their first Ed Sullivan performances. You knew you were never going to be the same! ... It's magic! Hard to put into words. I wanted to write songs, play guitar, be in a band. Where the Beatles, went others followed. They were a scrappy bar-band from Liverpool who initially played many, many sets a night in smokey, dingy clubs. A lot of bands today never get that experience. They blossomed into the most major of songwriters and included two of the most amazing voices in rock music ever. When they released a new record it was an event. You would get chills just walking to the record store knowing you'd be going home with the latest Beatles album under your arm. Maybe I'm gushing too much but it won't happen like this for me again. And that's fine! I know what I felt and what I'm still feeling.

-- Ray Mason of the Lonesome Brothers, Ray Mason Band

Source: E-mail message, October 2, 2002

THE BEATLES GAVE ONLY TWO CONCERTS IN BOSTON, but those who attended retain memories of the surging, screaming thousands of teenaged fans who virtually upstaged the music. Beatlemania stormed into Boston Garden on Sept. 12, 1964, and rumbled across the infield of Suffolk Downs racetrack on Aug. 18, 1966.

-- Ernie Santosuosso, Boston Globe, December 10, 1980

ONE NIGHT AT A DRIVE-IN MOVIE THEATER out in San Fernando Valley, between the reel changes "Love Me Do" came on the radio. I was knocked out, mezmerized, like everyone else. The Beatles changed my life. I learned to play the guitar. The Beatles songs helped me get in touch with feelings I didn't even know I had, and I desperately wanted to write my own. My one great influence opened the door for the other influences. One day my mother and I visited a friend of hers who had a house in Laurel Canyon and whose son was working with a new group in town, Buffalo Springfield. Neil Young and Stephen Stills showed up and played some songs. ... Once again, I was smitten, feeling myself connected to something much larger than me as an individual--songs bringing people together, forming community. Neil taught me his song, "Round and Round." Some years later, I recorded it with him on his album Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere. This was a wonderful experience for me in the studio. By that time, I was writing songs myself and performing in and around Los Angeles. Later I moved to the East Coast and started my own band, Robin Lane and the Chartbusters.

-- Robin Lane, e-mail message, September 14, 2002

MY VERY FIRST JOB, when I was 16, was working in my small town's one and only movie theater. I used to sell the tickets out front, then rush in to do the popcorn and candy. An average night, a good crowd was two dozen people. So every few weeks, the manager would run a double feature of A Hard Day's Night with Help!, and the place was packed every time. To this day, I can recite all the dialogue from A Hard Day's Night, I heard it so many times.

-- Kelly Gifford of the Pandoras

Source: E-mail message, October 2, 2002

I Saw Her Standing There

Debbie Chase bought a ticket to the Beatles concert at Boston Garden; but when her father read about the Beatles' effect on girls, he forbid her to go. Jack Thomas of the Boston Globe picked up the story...

AFTER DEBBIE COMPLAINED by letter to The Globe, an editor assigned me to telephone her father. "Tell him you'll chaperone her and write a story about it," the editor said. [The Boston Globe is a full-service newspaper.]

Reluctantly, her father agreed.

At the Madison Hotel next to Boston Garden, security was tight for the press conference, and no one under 18 was admitted. But Debbie was smuggled in. And while the Beatles were answering questions, she stooped under the piano for a better look, then crawled on hands and knees to the table, and stood up in back of McCartney, who turned to see her shaking.

"Could I kiss you?" she asked.

"Sure," he said, and she did, lightly and quickly on the cheek.

-- Jack Thomas, Boston Globe, February 9, 1984

WORCESTER--It was the autumn of 1964. The boy was just out of sixth grade. He'd been taking piano lessons for a while and was pretty fed up with the whole process. His father offered him a deal, or as the boy now calls it, a bribe: If he'd stick with the piano lessons for another year, he'd take him to the nearby Baltimore Civic Center to see the Beatles. It would be the boy's first rock 'n' roll concert.

The boy leapt at the chance--and stuck with the lessons. "It is pretty ironic, isn't it?" recalled Greg Hawkes, who later became the keyboardist for the multi-platinum Boston band the Cars, and who last year traveled to England to play on Paul McCartney's "Flowers in the Dirt" album.

Yesterday, he joined thousands of other fans who made the pilgrimage to see McCartney play the Worcester Centrum.

Hawkes remembers his Beatles concert this way. He stood on his seat amid constant screams. The Billy Black Combo opened up, and then there was the Beatles--"She Loves You," "Roll Over Beethoven," "The Things We Said Today," "Twist and Shout," maybe "A Hard Day's Night." "They played about half an hour, on and off, no encores," says Hawkes, laughing. "Hey, we [the Cars] played twice as long and got grief for it!" He doesn't think he saved the ticket stuff, "but it still could be at my folks'. Who knows?"

"I remember walking past the hotel where they were staying," recalls Hawkes. "It was like a mob scene. The whole block was full of fans; whenever any Beatle would look out of any window, the whole block would go crazy."

-- Jim Sullivan, Boston Globe, February 9, 1990

ONE OF THE INITIAL REASONS for the success of the Beatles was that they sounded good together, that their voices were a direct reflection of the ways their personalities complemented each other--George's voice, slightly opaque, the ideal supporting sound for filling out a harmony; Ringo's voice, a bit lower than the others, uncultivated in timbre, dangerously teetering on the edge of pitch, and somehow therefore sounding sincere; Paul's elegant light high tenor, easily veering off into falsetto; and John's high baritone, grainier than the others, with more edge and grit, its American black inflections counterweighted by the Liverpudlian accent. John's voice could bounce along in simple harmony with Paul's; it was interesting how when he sang in unison with Paul it sometimes sounded like one voice, one more complete than either alone, innocence and experience allied.

-- Richard Dyer, Boston Globe, December 14, 1980

Some of our visitors, to this page in particular, may not know that Richard Dyer is the chief classical music critic for the Boston Globe. Dyer's brilliant article, written and published shortly after the death of John Lennon, is the best I have seen from that sad time.

Man! Those boys have been doing their homework!

-- Doc Watson after hearing Rubber Soul

Source: Baby, Let Me Follow You Down
by Eric von Schmidt and Jim Rooney

WHEN I WAS FIVE, my seven-year-old brother used to make me sit in his room with him while he sang the lead vocals for "Girl" ... the odd part is that I had to be quiet 'til the time came for me to sing the "doo doo doo doos," which I did through an unattached vacuum cleaner hose. Also ... the first song of the first concert I ever played was "I Should Have Known Better." I was fifteen.

-- Lord Russ of the Aloha Steamtrain

Source: Brattleboro (VT) Reformer, June 28, 2001

^THE BEaTLeS

Copyright © 2002 by Alan Lewis.
All rights reserved.

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