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COVERFEATURETHE BEATLES: FORTY YEARS AGO TODAY… by Jim Hillegonds
The country was very innocent at that time. Many remember where they were when they heard the news, just as this new generation does with 9-11. Rock ‘n’ roll wasn’t fairing well at that time. Chuck Berry (who was in jail) and Jerry Lee Lewis (boycotted for marrying his 15-year-old cousin Myra) were giving a rock a bad name. And Elvis was away in the Army. Radio stations across the land reacted to all of this by playing little more than homogenized pop by teen idols. But four lads in a faraway land were about to unleash a new sound in America, one that would forever change the face of modern music.
Many of the events leading up to that fateful weekend in February has Chicago-area roots and it took those events to bring the Mop Tops over to hit America. And when they did on February 7,1964...history was made! It was 40 years ago this month…The Beatles landed at JFK. It all started in March 1963, when The Beatles first album, Please, Please Me, was released by EMI Records (parent company of America’s Capitol Records). It was met with great reviews and a few singles began climbing U.K. charts. Journalists coined the phrase “Beatlemania” following the band’s October 13, 1963 performance at the London Palladium as screaming girls mobbed the streets. But here in the US, they were still unknown. Once the band hit Number One on the English charts with the single, “Please, Please Me,” their manager Brian Epstein asked EMI staff producer George Martin, who was working with the quartet, to push the label to release the record in America. Martin had sent their first record “Love Me Do” to Dave Dexter, one of Capital’s producers whose tedious job was to screen all records from England for release. Capital did not have any success with one English band named Freddie & The Dreamers and soon began rejecting anything that came from EMI. Dexter also hated songs with harmonica, and the instrument was prevalent on “Love Me Do,” which only charted at #17 in England. Then Martin sent him “Please Please Me,” another harmonica-driven song. Dexter declined. The Beatles second #1 hit, “From Me To You,” was sent again to Capital. Dexter declined as well, leaving Epstein and Martin furious. Martin then offered the two latter singles to an overseas publishing firm, who agreed to search for a U.S. label to release the records. The one who took the chance and bought the option was Vee-Jay Records. Vee-Jay was an independent record company started in 1953 by the owners of a Gary, Indiana record shop. Vivian Carter and her husband Jimmy Bracken, the “Vee” and the “Jay” respectively –– had made their name and charted big with a Gary, Indiana doo-wop group called, The Spaniels (“Goodnight Sweetheart”) and relocated the label to Chicago. Vee-Jay had a strong R&B roster at the time, boasting the likes of Jimmy Reed, John Lee Hooker, and The Staple Singers. The label had previously taken a chance on an unknown English singer named Frank Ifield and had moderate success, so they gambled taking a chance on The Beatles. The company released the records in early 1963 in America. Dick Biondi, a DJ at that time for WLS (and currently with Chicago’s Oldies Station WJMK/Magic 104) picked up the “Please Please Me” record and played it on the air. The record reached #35 on WLS “Silver Dollar Survey” on March 13th, 1963, but there was little excitement about the song or the band. The song “She Loves You” toppled the sales and radio charts in the U.K. in August of 1963. Again, Martin sent the record to Capital and again (despite having no harmonica), Dexter declined. Oddly enough, Dexter didn’t pass on the current song “I’m Confessin” by none other than Frank Ifield. Seeing that Vee-Jay was not scoring any sales or airplay with the earlier Beatles songs that had been licensed to them, a frustrated Martin started to look at the Philadelphia market, where TV’s “American Bandstand” resided. Finding the small Swan Label (owned by ABC and Dick Clark) to release it, Martin hoped “She Loves You” would make it onto the TV show. It did. But kids did not give it a high score on the show’s “Rate A Record” segment. They were a little scared of the Beatles long hair and felt it did not have a danceable beat. Vee-Jay was granted all of the songs from the bands first album, Please Please Me. The summer of 1963 saw the label producing the Beatles first U.S. album, the aptly named Introducing The Beatles. One problem though, the label did not pay any royalties for releasing the two previous singles and now was ordered to cease and desist releasing any Beatle records. Figuring legal battles could take time and since the records were already in production, Vee-Jay pushed the album out on the market. They were having financial problems and believed money could be made on The Beatles before the legal bills surmounted. The Beatles records moved a little, but nothing like what was to come. Beatle George Harrison flew to the states in mid-September of 1963 to visit his sister Louise, who resided in Benton, IL, a suburb of Chicago. To see how the band was fairing in America, George stopped in a few record shops looking for Beatle records. Nobody had heard of them. Harrison brought this news back to Epstein and the other Beatles. Brian vowed that they would not go to America unless they had a number one hit. Returning from a tour in Scandinavia, the Beatles arrived to the now common screaming crowds at London’s Heathrow Airport on October 31. Famous U.S. newsman turned TV variety show host, Ed Sullivan, was leaving London at the same time and witnessed ‘Beatlemania’ firsthand. Brian Epstein traveled to America in November to schedule a concert tour and would meet with Ed Sullivan to book a show with the Beatles. Luckily, Sullivan remembered the Heathrow chaos and proceeded to book this unknown (in America) band. His memory of the screaming girls that Halloween Day resulted them getting not just one show, but two! The dates were set for February 9th and 16th. The American media started to take notice of this Beatle craze in early November 1963. TIME magazine published an article on November 15th called, “The New Madness.” That TIME article described the Beatles as a “wild rhythm-and-blues quartet” that had sold 2.5 million records. Newsweek’s first story appeared in their November 18, 1963 edition. American TV’s first glimpse of the fab four was on November 21 on the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite, then a part of NBC’s Huntley-Brinkley Report. But a dark cloud covered the U.S. with news from Dallas on Nov 22, 1963. President John F. Kennedy was shot in his motorcade. Camelot in the White House ended. America was in shock and no one cared about four mop-topped lads with guitars in the wake of what had happened. The Beatles had released their second album With the Beatles on this same day and the single, “I Want To Hold Your Hand,” followed on November 29th and topped the U.K. charts. Radio all over England was playing Beatles records along with news of our President. But the USA was too busy mourning to notice. Again, Dave Dexter passed on their new hit. This prompted Brian Epstein to bypass the channels and call the honchos at Capital himself. News of the band’s popularity reached Alan Livingston, then president of Capital Records. He was getting calls from London and read news stories on The Beatles. Even the international section of Billboard magazine had run a few stories on this phenomenon during 1963. Livingston had started working for Capital records in 1946. That same year he created a soon-to-be-famous clown who came to be adopted by Chicago –– Bozo The Clown! Capital’s sales of Bozo records exceeded 100,000. In 1951, Livingston wrote the song “I Taw I Taw a Putty Tat” for Mel Blanc and released it on Capital, with huge success. He became vice president of the label in 1953. When Frank Sinatra got dropped by Columbia that year, Livingston signed Ol’ Blue Eyes to Capital and jump-started his career all over again. With all the news pouring out of England on this new band, The Beatles, Livingston asked at a weekly meeting about these boys. Dexter assured Livingston that they were nothing. Alan answered a phone call from England just days later. Brian Epstein asked why Capital continued to reject the Beatles for U.S. release. He asked if Livingston had listened to any of the Beatles records. Livingston said, “No” and Epstein asked him to please listen to the records personally and he would call him back. Alan asked Dexter for the records and listened to them. That night he played them for his wife, actress Nancy Olson (who starred with Fred McMurray in 1961’s The Absent Minded Professor). She did not like “I Want To Hold Your Hand,” but Livingston did. When Epstein called back, Livingston gave the ‘green light’ to release the Beatles in America. Epstein boldly insisted on a heavy marketing budget and Livingston gave an unprecedented $40,000 promotional budget to the Beatles, an unheard of figure in those times.
It was then announced that “I Want To Hold Your Hand” would be released in America on January 14, 1964. But something funny was already happening in the major radio markets. On December 7th, a 15-year-old girl named Marsha Albert saw a rerun of The Beatles segment on The CBS Evening News With Walter Cronkite. She wrote a letter to disc jockey Carroll James at radio station WWDC in Washington DC asking why the station did not play any Beatles music? James then contacted a stewardess he knew at BOAC Airlines and requested she bring him back the new Beatles record. Once in his possession, he invited Marsha Albert down to the station to introduce the new Beatles record. On December 17, 1963 for the first time anywhere in America, Marsha introduced, “I Want To Hold Your Hand.” The station’s switchboard lit up with requests to replay the song. DJ Dick Biondi, who had championed The Beatles at WLS back in March, was a good friend of Carroll James. When Biondi heard the commotion in Washington over the record, he had James send him a copy on tape of the song. The song was a smash in Chicago as well, and Biondi sent a copy to a DJ friend in St Louis, where it had the same effect. Soon, there were three major markets playing import copies of the song. Capital realized that 200,000 advanced orders by mid-January would not be sufficient. They had to act fast. They opted to move the release date up to December 26 and had all of their record plants working overtime and though the holidays. Capital even hired other label’s pressing plants to help with the rush of records. ‘Beatlemania’ in America was starting. Everybody wanted a piece of the action. Vee Jay Records started heavily pushing their LP, Introducing The Beatles, and re-released “Please Please Me” backed with “From Me To You” as a single. Swan followed suit by re-releasing, “She Loves You.” MGM Records went overseas and licensed some early recordings of The Beatles with Tony Sheridan for U.S. release. Now teenagers had the chance to run out and buy LOTS of Beatle records. This caused all sort of legal problems between the publishers who granted the various labels to release the songs, and Capital records. Capital found out that the past royalties had not been paid so they demanded them to cease production. The failing Vee-Jay rush released different album covers with the same record to capitalize on the group’s rising fame, and released many other singles. Records were flooding the market by the time “I Want To Hold Your Hand” made its way into the publics’ hands. Lawsuits were flying all over the place. All this and the group had not even stepped foot on American soil yet. On December 23, an outline on Capital’s Beatle promotion was presented and the Marketing Department was not to stop for Santa. The three largest radio stations in New York added “I Want To Hold Your Hand.” Stickers mimicking the Revolution of 1776’s catch phrase “The Beatles Are Coming!” were everywhere. Business execs were wearing Beatle wigs and radio stations were counting down the days in “Beatle Time” to when they would arrive. TV host Jack Paar poked fun at The Beatles on his late night talk show (later to be “The Tonight Show”). Buttons, record displays, posters, all from the $40,000 promo budget were seen all over the country. It was working. “I Want To Hold Your Hand” entered the Billboard Hot 100 charts at #45 on January 18, then exploded to #3 the following week, and reached #1 on February 1st. John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr boarded Pan Am flight 101 at London’s Heathrow Airport on Friday, February 7th, 1964. They landed at New York’s JFK International Airport, which had been renamed in honor of the late President, just two months earlier. When The Beatles landed in New York, later they initially thought there was some famous figure nearby in the terminals because of all the screaming girls. They were knocked over when they were told the commotion was for them. Radio stations everywhere were playing Beatles music almost non-stop. The death knell was sounding for the era of teen idols as the British Invasion began. When Sunday night came, three-quarters of American households were tuned in to “The Ed Sullivan Show” in anticipation of watching The Beatles perform live. People fell in love with lovable Mop Tops that night and the two successive Sundays that followed as Sullivan brought the band back twice more. That weekend, The Beatles changed many lives. Boys everywhere raced out to buy guitars and stopped going to the barbershop. Girls pasted their bedrooms with pictures of the Fab Four. On that weekend 40 years ago this month, The Beatles changed the world, the face of popular music and pop culture forever! |
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As
it was on September 11th, 2001, a day placed all Americans (and around
the world) in a quiet, somber mood. A very sad day in America. A
similar mood was felt on Nov. 22, 1963 when President John F. Kennedy
was shot and killed. 
On
the same day President Kennedy died, a group called The Beatles,
released their second album and their fourth chart topping hit “I
Want To Hold Your Hand.” It reached Number One on England’s record
charts and soon took the world by storm. 
On
December 4th, a memo at Capital announced the signing of the Beatles and
nine days later CBS-TV announced The Beatles would perform on “The
Ed Sullivan Show” on February 9th, to coincide with their
arrival in the United States two days earlier.