In Beatles ’64, the new documentary which charts the impact of the band’s first US tour and how it catapulted them to global superstardom, Paul McCartney makes a suggestion as to why they achieved so much so quickly.
“When we came, it was quite shortly after Kennedy had been assassinated,” he said.
“Maybe America needed something like The Beatles to be lifted out of sorrow.”
Beatles scholars and cultural historians have long remarked upon how much of a lift the band gave to an America in mourning.
But was McCartney right? Was the rise of the world’s most famous band partly down to the murder of the 35th president of the United States?
Did The Beatles crack America because Kennedy was killed?
‘Unstoppable force’
Dr Patrick Andelic, assistant professor of American History at Northumbria University, said it was a moment that shook the nation to its core, partially because of JFK’s own pop culture persona.
“In a sense, Kennedy was the first TV president, which was relatively new at this point,” he said.
“By the beginning of the ’60s, 90% of American families had TVs, so the way news and media was consumed totally changed.”
He said the president was, like The Beatles, “young, handsome, witty and energetic, which translated really well to TV”.
“He embraced television and was well suited to it,” he said.
“And that makes the shock and trauma of his death sharper in the aftermath.
“It was the first killing of a sitting president in 60 years.”
It was, of course, TV which also helped The Beatles become a phenomenon in their homeland.
Settling on their now final line-up of Paul McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr in 1962, the Liverpool four-piece had already scored two number one albums in 1963 with Please Please Me and With The Beatles.
When that success was coupled with the famous 1963 Royal Variety Performance appearance during which Lennon asked “the people in the cheaper seats to clap their hands” and the rest to just “rattle their jewellery” they became a national sensation.
Senior music industries lecturer Dr Holly Tessler, from the University of Liverpool, said it was that show that “made them stars overnight”.
“At this point, The Beatles were an unstoppable force in the UK,” she said.
Fear of failure
The Beatles’ youthful exuberance was central to their success, chiming with the legions of British teenagers that had begun to follow them.
Dr Andelic said in America, JFK had a similar appeal.
“Kennedy projected youth and vitality and in his inaugural address, he spoke of the torch being passed to a new generation of Americans,” he said.
“His death cut that short in a shocking way.”
He said in the aftermath, the nation started “to look for more positive things, stability and reassurance”.
“When The Beatles arrive, I think they represented that.
“They were also young, vital, and [in the footage] of them getting off the plane, they were being silly.
“So, for a nation shattered by a trauma, The Beatles represented an opportunity to laugh and have fun again.”
Winning over a portion of America’s youth was one thing, but cracking the national market was another.
Many British acts had tried and failed to mirror the transatlantic appeal of their US counterparts, who had seen great chart success in the UK, and crack the American market.
There had been limited success for those that came before The Beatles.
Lonnie Donegan, the titular “King of Skiffle”, had two top ten hits, while Cliff Richard, then the biggest act in Britain, had only made it into the US top 40 on one occasion.
Spencer Leigh, author of many books on The Beatles, said the trend of British acts failing to “make it” in the United States, had seen Capitol, one of the country’s biggest record companies, even refuse to distribute The Beatles’ music for fear of the same result.
“Artists from the UK didn’t sell well in America and it seemed Capitol looked down its nose at the British work,” he said.
Capitol’s concerns were understandable. The singles Please Please Me, From Me To You and She Loves You had all been released in the US in 1963 and seen limited success, so they were reluctant to put out I Want To Hold Your Hand.
The band’s manager Brian Epstein and Capitol’s parent company EMI managed to change the label’s minds and on Boxing Day 1963, about a month after Kennedy’s assassination, the single hit America’s stores.
Its impact was huge and by the first week of February, it was at the top of the US charts, a position it would hold for seven weeks.
The success meant more than 3,000 fans and a large press pack were at the airport when the band touched down.
For Spencer Leigh, it was what came next, not what had happened before, that led to their global success.
“My view is the people screaming for The Beatles at the airport were young and didn’t know much about politics,” he said.
“For me, the turning point was the Ed Sullivan Show.”
‘Fleeting at best’
At 20:00 on 9 February 1964, The Beatles made the first of three appearances on the programme, which was one of America’s most popular TV variety shows.
The TV channel CBS reportedly received more than 50,000 requests for seats at its 700-capacity studio ahead of the band’s visit and those who failed to get their hands on any huddled excitedly around TVs at home.
“More than 70 million people watched the first one and they performed so well,” Leigh said.
He said one of the moments that really caught the audience’s attention was when cameras panned to each band member, flashing their names on the screen.
“They put a caption on John Lennon saying ‘sorry girls he’s married’,” he said.
“I’m not sure how much [the band] appreciated that.”
About a month after those first three performances, The Beatles made US chart history by becoming the first act to hold the top five slots simultaneously.
Beatlemania had now gone global and the rest was history.
For Dr Tessler, the notion that America went down with the death of JFK and back up with the arrival of The Beatles is too simplistic.
For her too, it was the Ed Sullivan Show appearances, rather than the assassination aftermath that set The Beatles on the road to pop immortality.
“I really struggle with the idea that The Beatles owe their US success to JFK being shot,” she said.
“Their manager Brian Epstein had already been to America and done the deal to get them on the Sullivan show weeks before Kennedy was killed, and there was so much hype when the band finally landed in the US.
“America might have wanted a distraction from that feeling of ‘what’s next’ after the assassination, but The Beatles became the story so quickly that the connection to Kennedy was only fleeting at best.”
Beatles ’64 is available to watch on Disney+
