American reporters and TV interviewers immediately started arriving in hordes. American Beatle fans, like Sandi Stewart, besieged the Carnegie Hall and Ed Sullivan for tickets. ‘She Loves You’, having lingered nowhere in the American hit parade, suddenly started climbing after ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’. In the LP charts, Please Please Me was just about to get to the top.
The American press, like the English press the previous year, were arriving late but in deadly earnest.
‘Tell me about your hairdos,’ asked an American reporter.
‘You mean hair-don’ts,’ said John.
‘We were coming out of a swimming baths in Liverpool,’ said George. ‘And liked the way it looked.’
Sheilah Graham, the syndicated columnist, arrived and asked them which one was which. Life magazine came out with a six-page story on the Beatles.
To capitalize on all the free press publicity and the success of their records, Brian persuaded Capitol records to spend 50,000 dollars on what they called a ‘crash publicity programme’. Five million ‘The Beatles Are Coming’ posters were plastered throughout the States, every disc jockey got a copy of every Beatles record brought out in Britain, they gave out a million copies of a four-page newspaper on the Beatles and they photographed their top executives wearing Beatle wigs.
‘There was a lot of hype,’ said Voyle Gilmore, Vice-President of Capitol records. ‘But all the hype in the world isn’t going to sell a bad product.’
The Ed Sullivan Show couldn’t cope with the demand for tickets — 50,000 applied for 728 seats. Sid Bernstein could have sold tickets for Carnegie Hall at twice the price. ‘Even Mrs Nelson Rockefeller couldn’t buy a ticket. I had to give her mine.’
Brian was offered another New York date, this time at Madison Square Garden, at double the fee for Carnegie Hall, but it was too late to fit it in.
As the Beatles left London Airport, on Pan Am flight 101, on 7 February 1964, station WMCA in New York made the first of a series of announcements. ‘It is now 6.30 a.m. Beatle time. They left London 30 minutes ago. They’re out over the Atlantic Ocean heading for New York. The temperature is 32 Beatle degrees.’
On the plane the Beatles were nervous. They hadn’t heard details of all the promotion that was being done, but they had read reports of people criticizing them and saying they were ugly.
Cyn was on the plane with John, the first and only time she went on tour with them. The un-famous George Harrison was there from the Liverpool Echo. He thought he’d retired from national news for good, when, at the age of 45, in 1954, he’d left Fleet Street and London for Liverpool. Now he was setting off on his first of four coast-to-coast trips with a group he’d once refused to write about. He says they were all very dubious about what sort of reception they would get. ‘They all said to me, “America’s got everything, George, so why should they want us?”’ People always call George by his Christian name in his stories.
George Harrison, the famous one, said he was feeling ill. ‘I was worrying about my hair as well. I’d washed it, but when it dried it had gone up a bit.’
‘We did all feel a bit sick that first time,’ says Ringo. ‘We always did, though we never showed it, before anything big. We’d felt a bit sick before the Palladium Show. Going to the States was a big step. People said just because we were popular in Britain, why should we be there?’
Neil and Mal were busy on the plane, forging Beatle signatures on photographs to give to any fans. Brian was also busy. Several British businessmen, having failed to get a second with him in London, had decided that 30,000 feet above the Atlantic was the best place to get him. They sent little notes to him, asking if he would endorse their products. They were all politely refused.
But all the doubts were swept away the minute they saw Kennedy Airport, when they landed at 1.35 in the afternoon. Over 10,000 screaming teenagers were choking the airport. They were all singing ‘We Love You Beatles, Oh Yes We Do’, a song, or at least a doggerel, peculiar to American Beatle fans.
Capitol was still pursuing its crash publicity, and handed each person who got off the aeroplane a ‘Beatle Kit’, complete with wig, autographed photo and a button saying ‘I Like the Beatles’.
They fought their way eventually to the airport press lounge and faced the biggest press conference they’d ever had. John shouted at them all to shurrup. Everyone applauded him.
‘Will you sing something for us?’
‘We need money first,’ said John.
‘How do you account for your success?’
‘We have a press agent.’
‘What is your ambition?’
‘To come to America.’
‘Do you hope to get haircuts?’
‘We had one yesterday.’
‘Do you hope to take anything home with you?’
‘The Rockefeller Centre.’
‘Are you part of a social rebellion against the older generation?’
‘It’s a dirty lie.’
‘What about the movement in Detroit to stamp out Beatles?’
‘We have a campaign to stamp out Detroit.’
‘What do you think of Beethoven?’
‘I love him,’ said Ringo. ‘Especially his poems.’
It was chaos at the Plaza Hotel, a hotel that prides itself on its discreet exclusiveness and hadn’t checked the professions of the five English businessmen who’d booked some months ago. When a Plaza executive saw his hotel besieged by thousands of screaming teenagers he went on radio and offered the Beatles to any New York hotel who wanted them.
Not that the Beatles were grateful. ‘What made you pick the Plaza?’ a reporter asked George. ‘I didn’t. Our manager did. All I can tell you is, I don’t like the food.’
George was by this time ill in bed and looked like missing the Ed Sullivan Show. Neil stood in for the rehearsal, but George managed the show, filled up with dope. The screams echoed across America. The show had a record audience of 73 million.
In New York, during the show, not one hubcap from a car was stolen. Throughout America, so it was reported, not one major crime was committed by a teenager.
Elvis Presley sent them a congratulatory telegram. Next morning the Herald Tribune said they were ‘75 per cent publicity, 20 per cent haircut and 5 per cent lilting lament’. The Daily News said: ‘The Presleyan gyrations and caterwauling were but lukewarm dandelion tea compared to the 100-proof elixir served up by the Beatles.’
Every paper gave them huge coverage. The analyses were long and complicated. There was another huge press conference. ‘Do you have a leading lady for your film yet?’ ‘We’re trying for the Queen,’ said George. ‘She sells.’
Billy Graham said he’d broken his strict rule and watched TV on the Sabbath, just to see them. ‘They’re a passing phase,’ he said. ‘All are symptoms of the uncertainty of the times and the confusion about us.’ Then they set off by train for Washington.
‘What happened in the States was just like Britain,’ says Ringo, ‘only ten times bigger. So I suppose it wasn’t like Britain at all. That first Washington crowd was 20,000. We’d only been used to 2,000 at home.’
The Coliseum, where the Washington concert was held, their first one on American soil, is normally used as a boxing ring or baseball field. The Beatles were put on a revolving stage, so the whole audience could see. It meant they were hit from all angles by jelly babies.
‘It was terrible,’ says George. ‘They hurt. They don’t have soft jelly babies in America, but hard jelly beans like bullets. Some newspaper had dug out the old joke, which we’d forgotten about, when John once said I’d eaten all his jelly babies. Everywhere we went I got them thrown at me.’