From 1963 onwards, millions of words were written by people trying to analyse the Beatles’ success. It could take a separate book just to cover all the theories that appeared. The first phase of the analyses was based on their sexual attraction. Then the pundits decided the Beatles were of social significance, symbolizing all the frustrations and ambitions of the new emergent, shadow-of-the-Bomb, classless, un-materialistic, un-phoney teenagers. Then the intellectuals moved in, studying their words and music with great intensity, and coming up with some clever interpretations. All of it was true, and still is true. Any reason that anyone has for liking something is true.
To the ordinary newspaper reporter, back in 1963, the big attraction was to have a word, any word, with the Beatles. Every reporter knew that each interview would be different and funny. They didn’t come out with the same jokes and comments each time, like most supposedly famous personages. Ringo turned out to be as funny as the rest of them. He was asked why he had so many rings on his fingers. He said he couldn’t get them all through his nose.
‘We were funny at press conferences because it was all a joke,’ says John. ‘They’d ask joke questions, so you’d give joke answers. But we weren’t really funny at all. It was just fifth-form humour, the sort you laugh at at school. They were putrid. If there were any good questions, about our music, we took them seriously. We were nervous, though I don’t think people thought so. We were nervous at most functions.
‘Our image was only a teeny part of us. It was created by the press and by us. It had to be wrong because you can’t put over how you really are. Newspapers always get things wrong. Even when bits were true, it was always old. New images would catch on just as we were leaving them.’
In just twelve months, from the release of their first record, they had become an established part of the British way of life. Dora Bryan did a record about them at Christmas 1963, ‘All I Want For Christmas Is A Beatle’. Even that got into the hit parade.
There was by now nobody else on the hit parade scene, unless you counted the other Liverpool groups, all of whom Brian Epstein managed, and all of whom were being recorded by George Martin.
In 1963, out of the 52 weeks in the year, a record produced by George Martin was at the top of the British hit parade for 37 weeks. This is an achievement no one has ever equalled, or is likely to.
The New Musical Express, in their end-of-the-year charts, made the Beatles the world’s top group. They polled 14,666 votes. The American group, the Everly Brothers, were runners-up with 3,232 votes.
In the British Vocal section, the section they had been near the bottom of the year before, they polled 18,623 votes. The second group, the Searchers, were miles away with only 2,169 votes.
The two biggest selling singles of the year were ‘She Loves You’, with 1,300,000, and ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’, with 1,250,000. Cliff Richard, with ‘Bachelor Boy’, was a long way down in third place.
The Times musical critic, William Mann, did a long and serious review of their music, in which he talked about their pandiatonic clusters and submediant key switches. He said John Lennon and Paul McCartney were ‘the outstanding English composers of 1963’.
‘I think I’ll invite them down for the weekend, just to see what kind of fellas they are,’ said Viscount Montgomery.
On 29 December, in the Sunday Times, Richard Buckle, reviewing John and Paul’s music used in the ballet ‘Mods and Rockers’, said they were ‘the greatest composers since Beethoven’.
23 usa
Sandi Stewart is an ordinary American Beatle fan, not silly, not half-witted, just nice and sensible. In early 1964 she was living with her parents in a wealthy middle-class small town in New Hampshire. She was 15 and in the ninth grade at high school.
‘I was going to the supermarket in the car with my mother one day, in our Rolls, that’s what we had at the time, though that’s not important. Over the car radio came “I Want To Hold Your Hand”. It was the first time I’d ever heard of the Beatles. I went, Wow! What a strange sound. I just couldn’t get over it. No tune had ever affected me as much.
‘I found a lot of the girls at school had also heard it and felt the same. I remember walking down the street with two of my friends and discussing them. We all said how ugly they looked in their photographs, especially with no collars on their jackets. The music was great, but we thought they did look ugly.
‘Then slowly we changed our minds. I became really interested in pop music, which I’d never been before. I knew about everything they did. I read everything about them. I grew my hair long, because I read they said they liked girls with long hair.
‘At the beginning I loved Paul most of all. He was so beautiful. I couldn’t pinpoint it. He just seemed very beautiful.
‘I didn’t like George for some reason. I drew in a werewolf’s fangs on his face because I didn’t like him. I suppose the Beatles were outlets for love and hate. I eventually did like George a bit more.
‘Then I went more on John instead of Paul. He seemed so intelligent and witty. His body was very sexy. He became the one I loved passionately.
‘I became obsessed about John. I dreamt about him all the time. We’d compare dreams at school. Tell each other what we did with our own favourite Beatle. I knew when I was depressed I could start a dream about John, just by lying there thinking about him, then falling asleep. Those dreams were absolutely beautiful. We did a lot of things together, John and I. He made love to me and I’d tell my friends next day. They weren’t all sexual, but a lot were. They were so real.
‘I talked and thought about them non-stop. My father was always telling me I’d get over them. I’d shout, “Never, Never, Never!”
‘It was funny, though. Even though I loved John so much, it didn’t stop me chasing other boys at school. That was sort of different. But John was the most important person in my life.
‘I read all the fan mags and listened to Murray the K all the time. He was the disc jockey who was the sort of Beatles expert.
‘I got so desperate about John that I wrote a letter to Cynthia. I was very nice in the letter. I just told her I was very sorry, but I loved her husband. I never got a reply.
‘I got all their records and had their photographs over my bedroom. When I saw a photograph of them in half shadows, my friends and I all went into town and got our photographs taken the same way.
‘When absolutely nothing else in life was good, I’d go to my room and have the Beatles, especially my darling John. They all furnished something I desperately needed. The sort of rich community I lived in in New Hampshire gave me nothing. I didn’t like school and didn’t like home. They gave me something to live for when everything was black and depressing.
‘When I heard they were coming to the Carnegie Hall in New York, I planned with two of my school friends to go and see them. We pleaded and pleaded, as we weren’t allowed to go to New York on our own. No teenage girl is, from our sort of homes. We said it could be our special birthday treat, or we’d run away…’
The Carnegie Hall concert was to be promoted by Sid Bernstein, a short, tubby, ex-Columbia University student, ex-ballroom manager, ex-promoter who had become an agent with General Artists Corporation, one of the biggest agencies in America. Throughout his attempts to break into show business big time, he’d kept up his academic interests.
For ten years he’d gone to evening classes, specializing in English Government. ‘I remember going to hear your Harold Laski give a lecture. He was one of the finest speakers I ever heard. After Churchill, of course.’