Beatlemania

For the musical, see Beatlemania (musical).

Beatlemania was the intense fan frenzy directed towards the English rock band the Beatles in the 1960s. Their popularity started growing in the United Kingdom in late 1963. By the next year, their worldwide tours were characterised by intense levels of hysteria and high-pitched screaming by female fans, both at concerts and during the band's travels.

In February 1964, the Beatles arrived in the US, and their televised performances on The Ed Sullivan Show were viewed by approximately 73 million people. It established the Beatles' international stature and changed attitudes to popular music in the US. From 1964 to 1970, the Beatles had the top-selling US single one week out of every six weeks, and the top-selling US album one week out of every three weeks. In 1966, the frenzy became so much that they stopped touring and became a studio-only band.

The use of the word "mania" to describe a popular phenomenon predates the Beatles by more than 100 years. It has continued to be used to describe the popularity of musical acts, as well as popularity of public figures and trends outside the music industry.

Explanations and precursors

Fans and media swarm the Beatles at Schiphol Airport in 1964.

In February 1964, Paul Johnson wrote an article in the New Statesman which the magazine now describes as its "most complained-about piece", and he stated that the mania was a modern incarnation of female hysteria and that the wild fans at the Beatles' concerts were "the least fortunate of their generation, the dull, the idle, the failures". A 1966 study published in the British Journal of Clinical Psychology rejected this assertion. The researchers found that Beatles fans were not likelier to score higher on Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory's hysteria scale, nor were they unusually neurotic. Instead, they described Beatlemania as "the passing reaction of predominantly young adolescent females to group pressures of such a kind that meet their special emotional needs".

Beginning in 1841, fans of Hungarian pianist and composer Franz Liszt showed a level of fanaticism similar to that of the Beatles. Poet Heinrich Heine coined the word "Lisztomania" to describe this. At the time, the word was used to indicate that the fan behaviour was a genuine mental illness, which was not implied in the term "Beatlemania". There was also no agreement on why Liszt had such a fanatical fan base.

One factor in the intensity of Beatlemania may have been the post–World War II baby boom, which gave the Beatles a larger audience of young fans than Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley had a decade earlier. Some commentators have argued that the Beatles' famous moptop haircuts signalled androgyny and thus presented a less threatening version of male sexuality to teenage girls, while their presentable suits meant that they seemed less "sleazy" than Presley to middle-class whites.

1963: UK success

"Please Please Me" and first UK tours

Main articles: The Beatles Winter 1963 Helen Shapiro Tour and Roy Orbison/The Beatles Tour

Further information: The Beatles at The Cavern Club

With the success of their second single "Please Please Me", the Beatles found themselves in demand for the whole of 1963. In the UK, the song reached number two on the Record Retailer chart (subsequently adopted as the UK Singles Chart), and topped both the NME and Melody Maker charts. The band released their first album in March 1963, also titled Please Please Me. They appeared on ABC TV's Thank Your Lucky Stars show on 11 January (televised 19 January) and recorded for the BBCs Here We Go on 16 January and the BBC's Saturday Club and Talent Spot on 22 January.

The Beatles completed four nationwide tours in 1963 and performed at a great many single shows around the UK throughout the year, often finishing one show only to travel straight to the next show in another location – sometimes even to perform again the same day. The music papers were full of stories about the Beatles, and magazines for teenage girls regularly contained interviews with the band members, colour posters, and other Beatle-related articles. Lennon's August 1962 marriage to Cynthia Powell was kept from public view as a closely guarded secret.

On 2 February 1963, the Beatles opened their first nationwide tour at a show in Bradford featuring Helen Shapiro, Danny Williams, Kenny Lynch, Kestrels, and the Red Price Orchestra. Heading the tour bill was 16-year-old Shapiro followed by the other five acts – the last of which was the Beatles. The band proved immensely popular during the tour, however, as journalist Gordon Sampson observed. His report did not use the word "Beatlemania", but the phenomenon was evident. Sampson wrote that "a great reception went to the colourfully dressed Beatles, who almost stole the show, for the audience repeatedly called for them while other artists were performing!" The Beatles' second nationwide tour began on 9 March at the Granada Cinema in London, where the group appeared on a bill headed by American stars Tommy Roe and Chris Montez, both of whom had firmly established themselves in the UK singles charts. Throughout the tour, the crowds repeatedly screamed for the Beatles, and the American stars were less popular than a homegrown act for the first time. The Beatles enjoyed the overwhelming enthusiasm, but they also felt embarrassment for the American performers at this unexpected turn of events, which persisted at every show on the tour.

The Beatles began their tour as a supporting act to Roy Orbison (pictured 1965) and ended it as co-headliners.

The Beatles began their third nationwide tour on 18 May, the bill this time headed by Roy Orbison. Orbison had established even greater UK chart success than either Montez or Roe, with four hits in the top 10, but he proved less popular than the Beatles at the tour's opening show staged at the Adelphi Cinema, Slough. It soon became obvious that this was not going to change, and a week into the tour the covers of the souvenir programs were reprinted to place the Beatles above Orbison. Starr was nonetheless impressed with the response that Orbison still commanded, saying: "We would be backstage, listening to the tremendous applause he was getting. He was just doing it by his voice. Just standing there singing, not moving or anything." The tour lasted three weeks and ended on 9 June.

Follow-up records and coinage of "Beatlemania"

The Beatles starred on Val Parnell's Sunday Night at the London Palladium on 13 October 1963, the UK's top variety show. They also had two more UK hit singles in "From Me to You" and "She Loves You", each building the excitement of Britain's teenagers. Their performance on Sunday Night at the London Palladium was televised live and watched by 15 million viewers. One national paper's headlines in the following days coined the term "Beatlemania" to describe the phenomenal and increasingly hysterical interest in the Beatles – and it stuck. Publicist Tony Barrow saw Beatlemania as beginning with the band's appearance on that program, at which point he no longer had to contact the press but had the press contacting him.

McCartney, Harrison, Swedish pop singer Lill-Babs, and Lennon on the set of the Swedish television show Drop-In, 30 October 1963

Scottish music promoter Andi Lothian said that he coined "Beatlemania" while speaking to a reporter at the band's Caird Hall concert, which took place as part of the Beatles' mini-tour of Scotland on 7 October. The word appeared in the Daily Mail on 21 October for a feature story by Vincent Mulchrone headlined "This Beatlemania". The band returned from a five-day Swedish tour on 30 October and were greeted at Heathrow Airport in heavy rain by thousands of screaming fans, 50 journalists and photographers, and a BBC TV camera crew. The wild scenes at the airport delayed the British prime minister, being chauffeured in the vicinity, as his car was obstructed by the crowds. The Miss World of the time was passing through the airport, as well, but she was completely ignored by journalists and the public.

On 1 November, the Beatles began their fourth nationwide tour of 1963. It produced much the same reaction from those attending, with a fervent, riotous response from fans everywhere they went. Police attempting to control the crowds employed high-pressure water hoses, and the safety of the police became a matter of national concern, provoking controversial discussions in Parliament over the thousands of police officers putting themselves at risk to protect the Beatles. On the first tour date at the Odeon in Cheltenham, the volume of sound from the screaming crowds was so great that the Beatles' amplification equipment proved unequal to it – the band members could not even hear themselves speaking, singing, or playing. As a result, they were unable to count songs or perform in unison. The next day, The Daily Mirror carried the headline "BEATLEMANIA! It's happening everywhere ... even in sedate Cheltenham".

On 4 November, the Beatles sang before Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother at the Royal Variety Performance, sharing the bill with Marlene Dietrich and Maurice Chevalier. Harrison expressed surprise to find the group sharing the limelight with such show business greats. "We're just four normal folk who have had a couple of hit records", he said. Maureen Lipman attended a concert in Hull as a sceptic, but 50 years later she recalled her "road to Damascus moment" when Lennon sang "Money (That's What I Want)": "Someone very close to me screamed the most piercing of screams, a primal mating call … I realised with an electric shock that the screaming someone was me. I continued to scream for the next 40 minutes. The rest of the concert is a blur." She heard that the arena "cleared away 40 pairs of abandoned knickers" from other young female fans, "and life, as I knew it, was never the same again". The tour continued for the next six weeks, with stops in Dublin and Belfast, and ended on 13 December.

1964–1965: US success

American political climate

The Beatles' ascendancy in the US has been widely attributed to a nation in need of uplift in the wake of John F. Kennedy's assassination in November 1963, although some commentators question the connection between the two events.

America had been in mourning, fear and disbelief over the assassination of President John F. Kennedy 11 weeks before the Beatles arrived, and many commentators suggest a link between the public shock and the Beatles' arrival; some suggest that the Beatles reignited the sense of excitement and possibility that faded in the wake of the assassination. In 2015, however, Slate writer Jack Hamilton consulted music journalist Greil Marcus, who contributed the Beatles' entry in The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock and Roll (1980), and Beatles historian Mark Lewisohn. Marcus remembered hearing "Please Please Me" when it was a regional hit in San Francisco a year earlier and stated that he had never made any connection between "the malaise or shock over the assassination and the arrival of the Beatles". Lewisohn said that no connection was made at the time in the UK, and "The coincidence only became apparent with hindsight."

Arrival in the US and Ed Sullivan performances

EMI owned Capitol Records, but Capitol had declined to issue any of the band's singles in the US for most of the year. The American press regarded the phenomenon of Beatlemania in the UK with amusement. Newspaper and magazine articles about the Beatles began to appear in the US towards the end of 1963, and they cited the English stereotype of eccentricity, reporting that the UK had finally developed an interest in rock and roll, which had come and gone a long time previously in the US. Headlines included "The New Madness" and "Beatle Bug Bites Britain", and writers employed word-play linking "beetle" with the "infestation" afflicting the UK. The Baltimore Sun reflected the dismissive view of most adults: "America had better take thought as to how it will deal with the invasion. Indeed a restrained 'Beatles go home' might be just the thing."

The Beatles' American television debut was on 18 November 1963 on the Huntley-Brinkley Report, with a four-minute report by Edwin Newman. On 22 November, the CBS Morning News ran a five-minute feature on Beatlemania in the UK which heavily featured their UK hit "She Loves You". The evening's scheduled repeat was cancelled following the assassination of President Kennedy the same day. On 10 December, Walter Cronkite decided to run the piece on the CBS Evening News. American chart success began after disc jockey Carroll James obtained a copy of the British single "I Want to Hold Your Hand" in mid-December and began playing it on AM radio station WWDC in Washington, DC. Listeners repeatedly phoned in to request a replay of the song, while local record shops were flooded with requests for a record that they did not have in stock. James sent the record to other disc jockeys around the country, sparking similar reaction. On 26 December, Capitol released the record three weeks ahead of schedule, and it sold a million copies and became a number-one hit in the US by mid-January. Epstein arranged for a $40,000 American marketing campaign, which Capitol agreed to due to Ed Sullivan's agreement to headline the Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show.

On 3 January 1964, The Jack Paar Program ran Beatles concert footage licensed from the BBC "as a joke" to an audience of 30 million viewers. On 7 February, an estimated 4,000 Beatles fans were present as Pan Am Flight 101 left Heathrow Airport. Among the passengers were the Beatles on their first trip to the US as a band, along with Phil Spector and an entourage of photographers and journalists. On arrival at New York's newly renamed John F. Kennedy International Airport, they were greeted by a crowd of 4,000 Beatles fans and 200 journalists. A few people in the crowd were injured, and the airport had not previously experienced such a large crowd. The band held a press conference where they met disc jockey Murray the K, then they were put into four limousines (one per Beatle) and driven to New York City. On the way, McCartney turned on a radio and listened to a running commentary: "They have just left the airport and are coming to New York City." When they reached the Plaza Hotel, they were besieged by fans and reporters.

With Ed Sullivan, February 1964

The Beatles made their first live US television appearance on 9 February, when 73 million viewers watched them perform on The Ed Sullivan Show at 8 pm – about two-fifths of the American population. According to the Nielsen ratings audience measurement system, the show had the largest number of viewers that had been recorded for an American television program. The Beatles performed their first American concert on 11 February at Washington Coliseum, a sports arena in Washington, DC, attended by 8,000. They performed a second concert the next day at New York's Carnegie Hall, which was attended by 2,000, and both concerts were well received. The Beatles then flew to Miami Beach and made their second television appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show on 16 February, which was broadcast live from the Napoleon Ballroom of the Deauville Hotel in Miami Beach with another 70 million viewers. On 22 February, the Beatles returned to the UK and arrived at Heathrow airport at 7 am, where they were met by an estimated 10,000 fans.

The first Beatles album issued by Capitol, Meet the Beatles, hit number one on the Billboard Top LPs chart (later the Billboard 200) on 15 February, and it maintained that position for 11 weeks of its 74-week chart stay. On 4 April, the group occupied the top five US single chart positions, as well as 11 other positions in the Top 100. As of 2013, they remained the only act to have done so, having also broken 11 other chart records on the Billboard Hot 100 and Billboard 200. David P. Szatmary states, "In the nine days, during the Beatles' brief visit, Americans had bought more than two million Beatles records and more than 2.5 million US dollars worth of Beatles-related goods." The Beatles' Second Album on Capitol topped the charts on 2 May and kept its peak for five weeks of its 55-week chart stay.

British Invasion, A Hard Day's Night and first US tours

Main article: British Invasion

The Beatles' popular success in America established the popularity of British bands and affected the musical style of American bands, including those subsequently formed in Memphis, Tennessee. By mid 1964, several more UK acts had come to the US, including the Dave Clark Five, Billy J. Kramer and Gerry & the Pacemakers, and ultimately one-third of US top ten hits in 1964 were performed by British acts. The music press forged a rivalry between the Rolling Stones and the Beatles, largely because of the contrast between the Beatles' initial clean-cut personas and the Rolling Stones' "bad boy" image. Beatles biographer Barry Miles writes that it was media-invented sensationalism and "there was actually no contest between the two groups in anything other than chart positions." In terms of US record sales, the closest competing act to the Beatles was the Beach Boys. Beach Boys leader Brian Wilson recalled feeling that the Beatles "eclipsed" his band's successes as well as "the whole music world" to that point.

Holding a press conference in the Netherlands, June 1964

The Beatles' first feature-length motion picture, A Hard Day's Night, premiered in America in August 1964, with the band playing themselves in a mock-documentary. The accompanying soundtrack album spent 14 weeks at number one on the Billboard Top LPs chart during a 56-week stay – the longest run of any album that year. The band returned to the US for a second visit in August, this time remaining for a month-long tour. The White House press office asked the Beatles to be photographed with President Lyndon B. Johnson laying a wreath on the grave of John F. Kennedy, but Epstein politely declined, as it was not the group's policy to accept "official" invitations.

The Beatles performed 30 concerts in 23 cities, starting in San Francisco and ending in New York. One of the major stipulations was that the band would not perform for segregated audiences or at venues which excluded blacks. The tour was characterised by intense levels of hysteria and high-pitched screaming by female fans, both at concerts and during their travels." At each venue, the concert was treated as a major event by the local press and attended by 10,000 to 20,000 fans whose enthusiastic response produced sound levels that left the music only semi-audible. Some Billboard headlines were: "The U.S. Rocks and Reels from 'Beatles' Invasion'", "Chicago Flips Wig, Beatles' and Otherwise", "New York City Crawling with Beatlemania" and "Beatle Binge in Los Angeles". The tour earned the Beatles over a million dollars in ticket sales, and stimulated a further increase in record and Beatles-related merchandise sales.

The Beatles' performance at Shea Stadium (pictured 1964) was the first of its kind.

The Beatles attended the London premiere of their film Help! in July 1965, after completing a two-week tour of France, Italy and Spain, and then returned to the US for another two-week tour. The tour commenced at Shea Stadium in New York City on 15 August. The circular stadium had been constructed the previous year with seating arranged in four ascending decks, all of which were filled for the concert. It was the first time that a large outdoor stadium had been used for such a purpose, and the event sold out in 17 minutes. The rest of the tour was highly successful, with well-attended concerts on each of its ten dates. The concert at Shea Stadium attracted an audience of 55,000, the largest of any live concert that the Beatles performed.

1966: Final tours and controversies

Main articles: The Beatles' 1966 tour of Germany, Japan and the Philippines and The Beatles' 1966 US tour

Released in June 1966, the Capitol LP Yesterday and Today caused an uproar with its cover, which portrayed the grinning Beatles dressed in butcher's overalls accompanied by raw meat and mutilated plastic baby dolls. While on tour in the Philippines in July, the band unintentionally snubbed first lady Imelda Marcos, who had expected them to attend a breakfast reception at the Presidential Palace. Epstein had politely declined the invitation on the band's behalf, as it had never been his policy to accept such official invitations. Riots resulted which endangered the group, and they escaped the country with difficulty.

File:Morrowbeatles.jpg

Bruce Morrow (with microphone) interviewing Lennon about his "more popular than Jesus" remark

The Beatles returned to the US in August for their last tour, following the release of their album Revolver. The tour coincided with a storm of American public protest caused by a remark that Lennon had made about Christianity. Epstein had considered cancelling the 14-concert tour, fearing for their lives because of the severity of the protests, which included Beatles' records publicly burned and claims that the Beatles were "anti-Christ".. There were disturbances on the tour, and one performance was brought to a temporary halt when a member of the audience threw a firecracker, leading the Beatles to believe that they were being shot at. They received telephone threats, and the Ku Klux Klan picketed some concerts.

The tour ended with a concert at Candlestick Park and was commercially successful. All the same, it had been affected by the prevailing mood of controversy, and there had been rows of empty seats at some venues. Their final concert marked the end of a four-year period dominated by touring and concerts, including nearly 60 American appearances and more than 1,400 worldwide.

Audience maturation and sustained popularity

Main article: Cultural impact of the Beatles

The Beatles were introduced to Bob Dylan in New York in 1964, after the last concert of their first US tour. New York journalist Al Aronowitz had arranged for Dylan to visit them at their hotel before they returned to the UK. Beatles biographer Jonathan Gould argues that there was musical and cultural significance in this meeting, because the Beatles' fan base and that of Dylan were "perceived as inhabiting two separate subcultural worlds". As a result, Gould continues, the traditional division "nearly evaporated" between folk and rock enthusiasts, as the Beatles' fans began to mature in their outlook and Dylan's audience embraced the new, youth-driven pop culture.

File:The Beatles magical mystery tour.jpg

The Beatles pictured in 1967 filming their third motion picture Magical Mystery Tour

The Beatles gave no more commercial concerts from the end of their 1966 US tour until their break-up in 1970, instead devoting their efforts to creating new material in the recording studio. Between 1964 and 1970, they maintained the number one single in the US for a total of 59 weeks and topped the LP charts for 116 weeks. In other words, they had the top-selling single one out of every six weeks, and the top-selling album one out of every three weeks. The Beatles won the annual best-band poll conducted by NME every year between 1963 and 1969, except in 1966 when they came second to the Beach Boys. Billboard reported that the result was "being taken as a portent that the popularity of the top British groups of the last three years is past its peak". A double A-side single containing "Strawberry Fields Forever" and "Penny Lane" was issued in February 1967, but it failed to reach number one in the UK, and British press agencies speculated that the group's run of success might have ended, with headlines such as "Beatles Fail to Reach the Top", "First Time in Four Years" and "Has the Bubble Burst?"

Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band was released in May 1967 and became a major critical and commercial success. According to Gould, the record immediately revolutionised "both the aesthetics and the economics of the record business in ways that far outstripped the earlier pop explosions triggered by the Elvis phenomenon of 1956 and the Beatlemania phenomenon of 1963". The group's popularity grew from the Beatlemania fad into what was seen as an embodiment of socio-cultural movements of the decade. In Gould's belief, they became icons of the 1960s counterculture and a catalyst for bohemianism and activism in various social and political arenas, fuelling movements such as women's liberation and environmentalism. Commentators Mikal Gilmore and Todd Leopold trace their socio-cultural impact earlier, interpreting even the Beatlemania period as a key moment, particularly on their first visit to the US.

As of 2009, the Beatles remain the best-selling band in history, with estimated sales of over 600 million records worldwide. According to music critic Richie Unterberger, they held the rare distinction of being artists who were "simultaneously the best at what they did and the most popular at what they did."

See also

• The Beatles: Eight Days a Week – 2016 documentary film on the Beatles' peak touring years
• Apple scruffs – a loosely-knit group of Beatles fans who were known for congregating outside the Apple Corps building and at the gates of Abbey Road Studios
• The Fest for Beatles Fans – twice-annual Beatles convention first held in New York in 1974
• Kolya Vasin – one of the main popularizers of the Beatles' work inside the USSR and Russia
• List of cover versions of Beatles songs
• Tributes to the Beatles

References

Footnotes

Citations

Sources

• Badman, Keith (1999). The Beatles After the Breakup 1970–2000: A Day-by-Day Diary. London: Omnibus. ISBN 978-0-7119-7520-0.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: ref duplicates default (link)
• Coleman, Ray (1987). Lennon. Mcgraw-Hill. ISBN 978-0-07-011786-0.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: ref duplicates default (link)
• Gilliland, John (1969). "The British Are Coming! The British Art Coming!: The U.S.A. is invaded by a wave of long-haired English rockers" (audio). Pop Chronicles. University of North Texas Libraries. {{cite web}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Gould, Jonathan (2008). Can't Buy Me Love: The Beatles, Britain and America. Piatkus Books. ISBN 978-0-7499-2988-6.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: ref duplicates default (link)
• Harry, Bill (2000). The John Lennon Encyclopedia. Virgin Books. ISBN 978-0-7535-0404-8.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: ref duplicates default (link)
• Harry, Bill (2000). The Beatles Encyclopedia: Revised and Updated. London: Virgin Publishing. ISBN 978-0-7535-0481-9.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: ref duplicates default (link)
• Jovanovic, Rob (2004). Big Star: The Story of Rock's Forgotten Band. London: Fourth Estate. ISBN 978-0-00-714908-7.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: ref duplicates default (link)
• Miles, Barry (1997). Many Years From Now. Vintage-Random House. ISBN 978-0-7493-8658-0.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: ref duplicates default (link)
• Palmer, Robert (1982). Deep Blues: A Musical and Cultural History of the Mississippi Delta (paperback ed.). Penguin. ISBN 978-0-14-006223-6.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: ref duplicates default (link)
• Pawlowski, Gareth L. (1990). How They Became The Beatles. McDonald & Co (Publishers) Ltd. ISBN 978-0-356-19052-5.
• Pedler, Dominic (2001). The Songwriting Secrets of the "Beatles". Omnibus Press. ISBN 978-0-7119-8167-6.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: ref duplicates default (link)
• Roberts, David (ed.) (2001). The Guinness Book of British Hit Singles. Guinness World Records Ltd. ISBN 978-0-85112-156-7. {{cite book}}: |author= has generic name (help)
• Spitz, Bob (2005). The Beatles: The Biography. Little Brown. ISBN 978-0-316-80352-6.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: ref duplicates default (link)
• The Beatles; et al. (2000). The Beatles Anthology. Apple Corps. ISBN 978-0-304-35605-8.

Further reading

• André Millard, Beatlemania: Technology, Business, and Teen Culture in Cold War America. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012.
• Candy Leonard, Beatleness: How The Beatles and Their Fans Remade The World, New York: Arcade Publishing, 2014.
• G. A. De Forest, Beach Boys versus Beatlemania: Rediscovering Sixties Music. Auckland, New Zealand: Best Books, 2007