The Beatles Are Coming! Everywhere they went in the first week of February 1964, New Yorkers heard this Paul Revere-like warning of a looming British invasion. That was because Capitol Records had shelled out $50,000 to plaster the town with 5 million posters, buttons, bumper stickers and radio ads, all trumpeting the arrival of the Whatles?
“A shrieking, stamping quartet” of young musicians from Liverpool, England, explained the Daily News, pretty much summing up the official grownup point of view. “Dishmop hairdos.” “An inescapable, ear-jangling pitch.” The photo was of four slender young men, in four black suits and four knit ties, with four Prince Valiant haircuts and four bemused expressions. They seemed largely indistinguishable from one another, but The News helpfully sorted things out: The oldest, 23-year-old Ringo Starr – Ringo? – “attacked the drums”; John Lennon was “the chief Beatle, who is married and has a son”; a third one, Paul McCartney, “with Lennon, writes Beatle songs,” and the last one, George Harrison, was “the lead guitar.”
It seemed they had recently taken the UK by storm. “At first, British adults dismissed them, then protested, then succumbed,” the paper reported. “Finally, the whole population was swept along.” Why, the queen herself had pronounced them “young, fresh and vital.” British riot police, though, struggling to control legions of hysterical female fans, appeared to be taking a dimmer view of this “Beatlemania.”
Suddenly the four shaggy Britons were exploding across the American popular music charts as well. This week they had two – two! – wild songs in the Top 10, rolling over the pleasant likes of Bobby Vinton, Bobby Rydell and the Singing Nun; their first U.S. album was just hitting the stores. Now they were en route to New York to play Ed Sullivan’s program and Carnegie Hall. The Beatles Are Coming!
Their plane touched down at Kennedy at 1:20 p.m. on Friday the 7th of February. Emblazoned on the side of their Pan Am Yankee Clipper was a single word: DEFIANCE.
Three thousand screaming fans greeted them. Signs and banners waved aloft. Girls swooned. At first, the Beatles thought the President must be nearby.
“So this is America,” mused Ringo Starr. “They all seem out of their minds.”
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What an ugly race, John Lennon thought.
Those who couldn’t make it out to Kennedy stayed glued to their radios. Beatlemania’s prime carrier was 1010 WINS, where deejay Murray (The K) Kaufman was in frenzies. Triple ripple! Triple play! Three in a row! Without commercial interruption! Here’s what’s happenin’, baby! THE BEATLES!
She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah . . .
The New York press corps was waiting to mob the moptops too. Do you plan to get a haircut at all? “I had one yesterday.” What do you think of Beethoven? “I love him. Especially his poems.” Why does your music excite your fans so much? “If we knew, we’d form another group and be managers.” Jousting done, the four Englishmen were hustled away in Cadillacs to the sedate Plaza hotel on Central Park South, whose managers had not been expecting a singing group and who were now horrified to find police barricades and hundreds of delirious teenagers outside their doors.
Girls charged through the mounted cops, swarmed the arriving cars, pounded on their doors, wept hysterically. Even elderly women ran up and tried to touch the Beatles as the phalanx of guards bore them inside. Kids ran through the hotel corridors, trying to find their idols. “If this keeps up,” sniffed a Plaza official, “the Beatles will have to go.”
“We sent three cameramen out to Kennedy this afternoon to cover the arrival of a group from England known as the Beatles,” said an unimpressed Chet Huntley on the NBC newscast that evening. “However, after surveying the film our men arrived with, and the subject of that film, I feel there is absolutely no need to show any of that film.”
George immediately came down ill, so he stayed in while Murray The K took John, Paul and Ringo out on the town. They hit the Playboy Club and the Peppermint Lounge. Paul found himself a Bunny; Ringo disappeared for hours. John, for his part, was accompanied by his wife, Cynthia. The next day the three of them sat for photo shoots while radio bulletins updated the nation on George’s condition.
Ed Sullivan vowed to stand in for the sick Beatle himself if he needed to, but George managed to stagger out of his bed in time for the broadcast. Seventy million people were watching, 60% of American TV viewers.
“The city has never witnessed the excitement stirred by these youngsters from Liverpool,” Sullivan announced, rubbing his hands together.
“Ladies and gentlemen, THE BEATLES!”
Backstage, a Sullivan studio hand covered his face as screams shook the house. “Good God,” he murmured.
First published on October 9, 1998 as part of the “Big Town” series on old New York. Find more stories about the city’s epic history here.
