The Beatles arrive in the United States for the first time, being welcomed with extreme media coverage and already rampant Beatlemania. The demands on their time never let up from the moment they set down at John F. Kennedy International Airport, greeted by 5,000 screaming fans, until their return home on February 21. Reporters, photographers, radio stations, and TV news crews follow their every move. Added to this was the film crew accompanying The Beatles to shoot a documentary of their first American visit. The results of the documentary filming was a UK broadcast on February 12 titled, "Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! The Beatles in New York" and a US broadcast on February 13 called, "The Beatles in America" (the US broadcast was presented by actress Carol Burnett as part of a weekly documentary series called "The Entertainers").
The Beatles Arrive in New York
Over the next few days, The Beatles give extensive interviews to disc jockey Murray the K and Ed Rudy. The Beatles' US merchandising company, Seltaeb, is inundated with requests for licenses to market Beatles merchandise. It was also the day that Baskin-Robbins introduced "Beatle-Nut" ice cream. The Beatles entourage included record producer, Phil Spector, a hearty contingent of press, and for the first time in public, Cynthia Lennon. They are wisked through immigration into a chaotic press conference: a reporter asks, "Aren't you embarrassed by all this lunacy?" John Lennon says, "No. It's crazy." When asked what he thinks of Beethoven, Lennon says, "He's crazy. Especially the poems. Lovely writer." Their off-the-cuff wit wows the hard-nosed American media...and the world will never be the same.
They gave their first live US television performance two days later on The Ed Sullivan Show, watched by approximately 74 million viewers—over 40 percent of the American population. The next morning one newspaper wrote that The Beatles "could not carry a tune across the Atlantic", but a day later their first US concert saw Beatlemania erupt at Washington Coliseum.
Ed Sullivan Show (February 9, 1964)
The band appeared on the weekly Ed Sullivan Show a second time, before returning to the UK on 22 February. If The Beatles expected to be able to rest upon returning to England, they were wrong. Arriving at London Airport in the morning, they hold a press conference, which is broadcast in the middle of a popular sports television show, "Grandstand." Pathe News covered The Beatles return to England and made a documentary film out of the footage for distribution to theaters. There was plenty of radio coverage, too. The Beatles gave a phone interview to Brian Mathew for the program "Saturday Club." That interview was followed by a song request dedicated to George Harrison for his upcoming birthday; it was sent in by his mother (and the song was Shop Around).
During the week of 4 April, The Beatles held twelve positions on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart, including the top five. That same week, a third American LP joined the two already in circulation; all three reached the first or second spot on the US album chart. The band's popularity generated unprecedented interest in British music, and a number of other UK acts subsequently made their own American debuts, successfully touring over the next three years in what was termed the British Invasion. The Beatles' hairstyle, unusually long for the era and still mocked by many adults, was widely adopted and became an emblem of the burgeoning youth culture.
SHOP: The Beatles Boutique at Tower
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