61 years ago today, the Beatles landed in NYC: How the Fab Four captivated the US
President Donald Trump has referred to the presence of millions of undocumented immigrants in the U.S. as an “invasion.’’ Sixty-one years ago, the country experienced the first stage of a different kind of invasion – and much of it was welcome, at least by the younger set.
On Feb. 7, 1964, the Beatles arrived on American shores for the first time, about to launch a cultural revolution as they rode a wave of chart hits in England that had started to make their way across the Atlantic.
The British quartet brought their unique style to a nation still recovering from a history-making tragedy, landing at New York City’s newly renamed John F. Kennedy Airport less than three months after the American president had been assassinated.
Their Pan Am Flight 101 was greeted by 3,000 screaming fans on the airport’s observation deck and about 200 journalists, who promptly got a taste of the four 20somethings’ cheeky sense of humor.
“How do you find America?’’ a reporter asked, to which drummer Ringo Starr promptly responded, “Turn left at Greenland.’’
Two days later, the band’s legendary appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show was watched on television by an estimated 73 million of the nation’s 191 million people, or 38%. That edges out even last year’s largest-ever Super Bowl audience, which represented 36% of the population.
It may seem quaint now to remember the Beatles caused consternation among parents, many of whom watched their daughters go ga-ga over a quartet of nattily attired young men playing such innocent-sounding songs as “I want to hold your hand’’ and “She loves you.’’
Those were two of their five songs on the Sullivan show, along with “All my loving,’’ “I saw her standing there’’ and “Till there was you.’’ Both “I want to hold your hand’’ and “She loves you’’ rocketed to the top of the U.S. charts, among the record-setting six No. 1’s the Fab Four lodged in 1964, followed by five the next year. Sixty years later, no other act has tallied more than four.
No wonder, then, that every appearance on that first two-week visit by John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Starr was met by shrieking teenagers, signs of what became known as Beatlemania.
Along the way, the Beatles reversed a trend of rock ‘n’ acts from the U.K. failing to make a dent on the American music scene, leading a British Revolution that later included storied bands like the Rolling Stones and the Who.
“We came out of nowhere with funny hair, looking like marionettes or something,’’ McCartney said, according to TheBeatles.com. “That was very influential. I think that was really one of the big things that broke us – the hairdo more than the music, originally.’’
Part of that was based on the belief rock ‘n’ roll was on the way out as a leading musical genre. That notion changed as the Beatles’ hit songs accumulated – 20 of them reached No. 1 in the U.S., the most ever to this day, until their breakup in 1970 – and their influence became impossible to deny.
The timelessness of their music, innovative recording techniques and pioneering moves like playing at sports stadiums remain a testament to their impact, as do their fashion choices and cultural statements during the turbulent ’60s.
Six decades after their U.S. arrival and despite the deaths of Lennon (1980) and Harrison (2001), the Beatles remain a source of fascination.
“Today, music scholars look back at the performance (on the Sullivan show) as a watershed moment, a turning point in the history in American music that inextricably influenced a huge proportion of all the pop and rock that’s come since,’’ the Smithsonian Magazine wrote in 2015.
On that first visit, the Beatles went on to play a concert at the Washington Coliseum and two in New York’s Carnegie Hall, where the authorities had to close down nearby streets to contain the crowds. They also performed twice more on the Sullivan show, one of them in Miami Beach, Florida.
There they met and clowned around with a brash young boxer who was training to fight for the heavyweight championship of the world, resulting in comical photographs. A week later, Cassius Clay – later to be known as Muhammad Ali – dethroned Sonny Liston in a monumental upset.
He went on to become an iconic figure, much like his newly arrived guests that day at a Miami Beach gym.