A Sneak Peek...
And this time, on the day Beatlemania arrived to the U.S.A !!!
(Photo: AP)
On February 7, 1964, a "Pan Am" flight landed in at Kennedy Airport in New York which took off from Heathrow Airport in London, - that flight signaled the musical and cultural revolution that the United States would go through. The Beatlemania bacterium began to flood America.
This is the first visit of the Fantastic Four to America and it comes at a perfect timing. Six days earlier, the song "I Want to Hold Your Hand" reached number one on the US charts and became the band's first hit on the other side of the ocean.
The four members got off the plane in fashionable suits for that period and with a "plate haircut" (or rather a bowl in their case) on their heads, to hysterical applause from about 3,000 fans who were waiting for them and caused a big commotion at the airport.
Two days later, the band made their first appearance on Ed Sullivan's show, which was a "tribal bonfire" for viewers in the United States at the time. The number of households that watched the show was inconceivable and was estimated at about 73 million viewers, who at the time were about forty percent of the U.S. population, a hysterical figure in itself.
The band made their first live appearance in the United States a few days later, on February 11, 1964. The performance was held at the Colosseum in Washington in front of a particularly screaming crowd of about 20,000 fans. The next day was the first in a series of two performances at the famous Carnegie Hall in New York, and this time the police were forced to close the streets around the hall, again due to hysteria from fans.
The Beatles' first tour in America left a deep imprint on American cultural memory and was recorded in the pages of U.S. history. The perfect catalyst for the process that American society has gone through.