Beatles: We Loved Them Yeah

It is now 6:30 A.M. Beatle time. The left London 30 minutes ago. They’re out over the Atlantic Ocean heading for New York. The temperature is 32 Beatle Degrees”(Szatmary 113). The transistor radio reported every few minutes on the morning of Friday, February 7, 1964. It was a day that would mark a musical milestone sending shockwaves through the United States. The plane landed, the Beatles stepped out, and for the first time Americans caught a glimpse of these young men with their long hair and their mod cut suits. The Beatles had landed, Elvis had left the building, and for the first time, Americans were embracing a British band as the standard. Rather than crediting the Beatles and their promoters for their success, credit should be given to Americans alone. America created its own need for The Beatles, priming the country for a fun and fresh act in a time of mourning and melancholy. They were the right act, at the right time, with a built in audience.

According to author Nicholas Schaffner, the most widely accepted explanation for the success of The Beatles draws a parallel between the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in November of 1963 and the

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American music became the vehicle for the Beatles artistic expression.

America did not fall to the Beatles by accident. The initial reasons for their success have been overlooked, often mistaken for legend and theories that hold no validity. The Beatles made it possible for other countries to have musical influence and to infiltrate American music. To promote this appearance, Capitol Records launched the largest promotion it had known, printing up five million posters bearing the words “The Beatles Are Coming!” These posters were plastered anywhere they would fit, and people started to wonder who the Beatles were. Anyone even remotely involved with the campaign received Beatles Kits containing wigs, photographs and buttons proclaiming “I like the Beatles!” With this massive campaign underway, how could a teen avoid hearing about the Beatles? This hype was enough to get the teens excited, but still shrouded in a bit of secrecy, therefore it was a very effective marketing venue for the Beatles and Capitol Records. This generation was just coming of age as the Beatles gained popularity. America created the need for the Beatles, and the band impacted American music and popular culture in very significant ways. was constructed around their ability to take several American music, styles such as jazz, blues and rock, and reassemble them in order to create music.

The Beatles had a built in audience in the form of the Baby Boomer generation. Out of this generation, the potential Beatle audience was described as the most powerful group of teens that America had ever seen. These audiences were largely (but not solely) drawn from a population of newly affluent teenagers. Author David Szatmary, a rock and roll historian, says that there was a heavy tendency in England to promote British singers whose styles were evidently, often embarrassingly, copied from American musicians (Cliff Richard from Elvis Presley, Adam Faith from Buddy Holy, Wee Willie Harris from Jerry Lee Lewis). It was a massive campaign of hype, and on this rare occasion the hype was worth the effort (Szatmary 117).

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Approximate Word count = 1288
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)

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