The Beatles took America by storm in 1964 – but it was the beginning of the end
It’s like the light came on, after total darkness,” is how author Joe Queenan remembers the arrival of Beatlemania in America at the dawn of 1964. He’s not alone in citing the coming of the Fab Four as the true beginning of the 1960s, of the modern era, of a transformative period driven in no small part by the music, words and actions of four young lads from Liverpool. But if you were a teenager in America when “I Want to Hold Your Hand” arrived on Boxing Day 1963, then it’s personal. And if you caught any of the concerts on their first US tour in February 1964, or watched their performances on TV’s The Ed Sullivan Show, or stood outside Manhattan’s Plaza Hotel hoping for an autograph, it’s likely you’ve never forgotten their impact.
That first US tour and the special relationship between The Beatles and America are explored in depth by the new documentary Beatles ’64. “The trip was a dream come true for [them],” says the movie’s producer, Margaret Bodde. “They’d always loved American music, and now they were coming to the home of everything they’d dreamed about.”
But America was going through some issues. The nation had spent a bleak winter mourning its princelike president John F Kennedy, assassinated in Dallas that November. “JFK represented hope, youth, the future,” says the movie’s director, David Tedeschi. “A gloom had descended upon the US. One interviewee told us his girlfriend locked herself in her room for four days after the assassination.” But just as it seemed like this grief would never abate, “I Want to Hold Your Hand” arrived, topping the charts. “From that gloom,” says Tedeschi, “there was this spark of life and optimism and joy.”
Tedeschi’s movie chronicles this cultural moment through the words of surviving Beatles Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr (and, via archival footage, the late John Lennon and George Harrison) as well as interviews with Beatle heroes such as Smokey Robinson and Ron Isley and the then teenaged Beatlemaniacs like Queenan and Jamie Bernstein (daughter of composer Leonard). Much of the film originates from footage shot during the tour by Albert and David Maysles, later recognised as pioneers of the modernist documentary form via masterpieces like Gimme Shelter and Grey Gardens, but only just beginning their careers when Granada TV commissioned them to film the 1964 documentary What’s Happening! The Beatles in the USA.
Source: Stevie Chick/the-independent.com
