The Beatles: How they Conquered America
Enjoy an extended read and definitive version of how the Beatles became the biggest band in history, with new and unique insight into the greatest musical phenomenon that has ever taken place. Just the Good Stuff!
First, Conquer the UK
Nothing arrives out of a vacuum.
People think we were an overnight success, we weren’t, it took years. Paul McCartney
The Beatles did not arrive perfectly formed. They had honed their performative skills in the clubs of Hamburg, Germany. They ‘paid their dues’ living in flop houses, playing 8 hours a night they soon had their 10,000 hours under their belts. They became musically tight, what musicians term as ‘In the pocket’ meaning holding a groove as a band.
People forget we were a great little Rock & Roll band. Paul McCartney
When they returned to Britain from Germany the Beatles would have just been another gigging band, and the British Invasion would never have happened, without the Mersey Beat boom. This was the Liverpool ‘scene’ of the early 1960’s that provided a support network of clubs to play at driven by demand from young fans for something different to what their parents listened to. It was a grass roots movement in a rising demographic with a disposable income.
It was at the Cavern Club that they had their first stroke of luck, they were spotted by local record store owner Brian Epstein, who became their manager.
He had a vision of us beyond what we had for ourselves. Paul
Epstein bought them suits, got them a record deal and proved to be a marketing genius. He paid teenage girls to scream at Beatles gigs, something which caught on and later became Beatlemania.
The Beatles were soon all over the BBC TV channel culminating in an appearance on Val Parnell’s “Sunday Night at the London Palladium,” the biggest TV variety show in the country. It was judiciously leaked and thousands of screaming fans descended on the venue, closing off streets and clashing with the police for hours. It was the day that the tabloid Daily Mirror newspaper coined the term “Beatlemania”. John Lennon said onstage at the gig, which was attended by the royal family...
Will the people in the cheaper seats clap your hands? And the rest of you, if you’ll just rattle your jewellery. John Lennon at the Royal Variety performance
The Beatles had gone viral before viral was a thing! But could they crack America?
We didn’t want to tour the US until we had a #1 there, we had to be sure we wouldn’t flop. Paul McCartney
Did the Music Industry make the Beatles or did the Beatles make the Music Industry?
The Beatles succeeded despite the record industry, not thanks to it.
Back then, the music business was riddled with corruption like Payola scandals (paying to get unfair advantage) and rampant incompetence.
We’ve all heard about the record company executive Dick Rowe whose only claim to fame is as the man who turned down the Beatles
They’re not going anywhere…
The British music industry in the 1960’s was run by risk-averse old men in pinstripe suits who were out of touch with societal changes. For them it was easy money and, as is still the case now, they were not in the music business, they were in the intellectual rights business. They licensed their products to anyone who would part with their cash.
But, unlike nowadays, the record companies did nurture new talent through their A&R departments, who were run by slightly more clued-in individuals. The companies could afford to draw a wide net and relied on trial and error delivering the few bands that took off to sustain the rest.
They had deals with other record companies in other countries (AKA territories) but with typical incompetence failed to place the hottest ever music product into the US market on multiple occasions.
According to Billboard, who were a trade only chart back then, the first two UK No. 1 Beatles singles that Parlophone offered to Capitol, “Please Please Me” and “From Me to You,” were turned down by US labels and licensed instead to a small independent label.
It was left to radio DJ’s (no social media) to get the music heard. The Beatles had champions like KRLA who added “From Me to You” to its playlist, even though the record had tanked nationally. However, it was enough to crack Billboard’s Bubbling Under Singles chart even though it had sold fewer than 15,000 singles. A cover version of “From Me to You” by Del Shannon fared better, peaking at No. 77 on the Billboard Hot 100 in July. It was the first time a Lennon-McCartney song hit the US Hot 100.
Subsequent attempted placements of Beatles songs in the US also failed. Even though “She Loves You” was racing up the U.K. charts. Capitol turned down the Beatles yet again. Dave Dexter, the exec responsible said…
The Beatles, they’re dead in the water!
It was not an isolated view either, the teens on “Bandstand” laughed when host Dick Clark held up a photo of the Beatles. Clark recalled…
I figured these guys were going nowhere
Initially there was similar backlash from ‘serious’ pundits, but it backfired and propelled the boys even higher with their base, teenagers. This was the very definition of counterculture and it was winning. NBC TV host Jack Paar derided them at first, but it didn’t stop him licensing Beatles footage from the BBC in an attempt to be the first show to air. He doubled his viewing figures, proving to all industry sceptics there was a new powerful demographic TV had never had before.
The Tipping point?
The boys had a bit of luck, a ‘sliding doors’ moment that could be seen as the tipping point in their careers. On returning from touring Sweden on Oct. 31, the Beatles were met at a rainy London Heathrow Airport by 1,000+ screaming fans. Coincidentally, Ed Sullivan the famous chat show host who would later break them to the US on his TV show, was also there. On seeing the hullabaloo, he asked…
Who the hell are the Beatles?
Sullivan however recognized that this frenzy was reminiscent of the early days of Elvis Presley. It must have started him wondering - should he book them?
And book them he did. Their manager Brian Epstein settled for $10,000 total for three appearances, a paltry sum but he recognized the opportunity. This exposure was unprecedented for new bands and Sullivan later confirmed…
I made up my mind that this was the same sort of mass hysteria that had characterized the Elvis Presley days.
After news of the Sullivan booking broke, Capitol finally got onboard with an enlarged marketing budget. That’s why I think the chance meeting at London Heathrow Airport was so pivotal.
Soon all the press sat up, jumped onboard and were publishing articles. All three U.S. TV networks sent camera crews to film the Beatles in the UK. The landslide had too much momentum to be derailed now. Another happy accident, news shows were expanding and needed more content to air, which they filled with coverage of the four ‘moptops’.
Reaction to this increased coverage by the previously hapless record companies meant they were dragged kicking and screaming behind the narrative. Better late than never, they realised they had a hit on their hands and geared up production to meet demand.
Technology played its part, cheap Japanese-made transistor radios had flooded the market in the mid-’60s, giving local radio stations on AM exponentially increasing audiences a subsequently more clout.
The Beatles had transistor radios with them on tour. McCartney once said…
We had the whole floor of the Plaza hotel in New York, and we were amazed every time we turned on the radio we heard our songs
Another stroke of luck contributed to their success, the release date of “I Want to Hold Your Hand” was moved up to before Christmas. The average American teen listened to the radio for more than three hours per day, it was their equivalent of social media. On Christmas week the track was on heavy rotation playing through all those transistor radios, it made them ubiquitous.
The single was in the right time and right place however, due to the vagaries of chart production this success was not reflected in the charts until February when it hit No. 1 and stayed there.
Remember, they had yet to set foot in America!
The Eagle has Landed: The day Music changed forever
The Beatles arrived stateside at 1:20 p.m. EST on Feb. 7th 1964 off Pan Am flight 101 from London.
Before they walked down the steps onto US soil for the first time a deafening chorus of 5,000 frenetic teenagers drowned out the plane’s engines. The World’s press documented the mayhem that looked like it would engulf the 130 crowd control police officers, outnumbered and looking nervous. They cleared passport control and were whisked into the now famous press conference where their charisma floored sceptical journalists. They effortlessly won over the initially hostile crowd like seasoned stand-up comics batting off hecklers, shooting quips and witticisms with a cheeky smile.
So the madness began!
From the press conference they were whisked off to the Plaza hotel in Manhattan shadowed by a convoy of fans shouting from the windows of moving cars on the expressway. There they found thousands more fans waiting for them, tipped off to the band’s whereabouts by DJ’s who’d gotten their information straight from Capitol records.
The arrival of the Beatles was all over that evening’s news, and every day until they left. Even Cronkite on CBS was conciliatory…
The British invasion this time goes by the code name Beatlemania
The British Invasion now had a name, and four faces. The rest is History.
On a personal Note,
As a schoolboy I bunked off from Ellesmere Port Grammar School on the Wirral and hitch hiked to Liverpool with 3 friends, something I remember vividly now. We stood outside the Cavern, rode the Ferry across the Mersey, and visited Dawson’s Music store, the place where the bands bought their instruments. This was long before Beatles Tours and Beatles museums. The atmosphere was palpable. The Beatles were four young working-class local lads that made good. Along with Liverpool (and OK Everton) football clubs they were something to be proud of.
Along with the Moon landings we huddled around Black and White TV’s to experience the Beatles landing at JFK.
I later played at the Cavern in the 1972 (before it was moved) and the band I played with have been immortalized by being awarded a brick in the new Cavern wall. It was a dirty, filthy hole of a club but it had an energy all of its own.
Another huge Beatles fan, Richard Curtis made a movie called Yesterday that asked
What would the World look like without the Beatles?
I have no doubt it would be a less joyous place.