February 7, 1964: The Beatles Have Landed

The Fab Four and Ed Sullivan, during the taping of their first appearance on his show.

(Bettmann/Corbis)

It’s pop music stripped down to its essentials: a basic, even derivative cord progression, a simple beat, and lyrics that border on the inane, but “I Want to Hold Your Hand” sent shock waves through young America as it climbed the charts. And a nationwide epidemic of Beatlemania began 42 years ago today, when the group landed at Kennedy Airport in New York for their first U.S. visit.

Thousands of screaming fans jostled to catch a glimpse of the boys from Liverpool. With their playful antics, undeniable style, and catchy pop, they were just what American teens, suffering from the aftereffects of the Kennedy assassination and a dearth of good native rock ’n’ roll, needed. “These guys, the Beatles, were almost like from another planet,” said the filmmaker Albert Maysles, who documented the strange mania that greeted Pan Am Flight 101 from London.

During the 1950s John Lennon had been a shiftless child, passed off by his mom to live with an aunt and constantly in trouble at school. Like many teens in dreary, war-scarred Liverpool, he had fallen in love with the vital music of America, avidly listening to Buddy Holly, Jackie Wilson, and Jerry Lee Lewis on the radio. In 1956 Elvis Presley’s “Heartbreak Hotel” made him want to dedicate his life to music, and he formed a band. The Quarry Men, his scrappy crew, played skiffle, a jazz-blues-country mishmash from New Orleans that became popular overseas because it relied on improvised instruments like washboards and jugs, and so was cheap to play.

Paul McCartney, a middle-class kid who grew up on big-band music, joined the group after catching its act at a church picnic, bringing his schoolmate George Harrison along. The Quarry Men cut their teeth in the seedy clubs of Hamburg, Germany, and when they returned to Liverpool to play in an underground spot called the Cavern Club they were a tight, exciting quartet rechristened the Beatles. They mixed raw rock ’n’ roll energy with the harmonies of pop and sported a sharp modish style courtesy of Astrid Kirchner, an art student they had met in Hamburg.

Brian Epstein, who ran a local record store, became their manager and secured a recording contract—on the condition that they replace their drummer, Pete Best, with Richard Starkey, aka Ringo Starr. In 1963 “Please Please Me,” a jangly pop number that borrowed liberally from American influences, hit number one on England’s Musical Express chart. “First England fell, victim of a million girlish screams. Then last week, Paris surrendered. Now the U.S. must brace itself,” wrote Timothy Green in Life magazine shortly before the invasion.

While British acts were imitating American rockers of the 1950s (none with the success of the Beatles), American rock was at a nadir. Little Richard had found God, Elvis had come back from the Army all grown up, and both Chuck Berry and Jerry Lee Lewis were embroiled in scandal. One of the young fans Maysles interviewed for his film The Beatles: The First U.S. Visit offered her opinion of the man who had changed Lennon’s life: “Elvis Presley stinks. He’s old anyway.” The Beatles, with their driving rhythms and an edge honed in the ragged clubs of Hamburg and Liverpool, were bringing rock ’n’ roll back to America.

The group performed on the Ed Sullivan show three Sundays in a row, playing hits like “All My Loving,” “She Loves You,” and “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” Later they would be known as one of the most innovative rock groups in history, but these first songs were straightforward pop. McCartney even crooned the saccharine “Till There Was You,” from the musical The Music Man. It was the energy and ebullience with which they played that set them apart. That, and they were totally cute. With their impish grins, charming quips, and dapper “mod” suits, they caused a nationwide swoon among young women.

It wasn’t just the girls who were charmed. The phlegmatic Ed Sullivan called them “four of the nicest youngsters we’ve ever had on our stage,” and they kept their entourage of reporters in stitches. “It’s phenomenal,” said a witness of the crowds that greeted the Beatles’ plane, “that people would come out here for this and wouldn’t come out to see the President. Johnson landed here a couple of days ago and there was nobody here but reporters and photographers.” The lads were flooded with fan mail, especially Ringo, who received the most letters. When asked why their music was so popular, he answered, “It pleases them, I think.”

After their three-week tour, they returned to England leaving America smitten. “How in the world are we going to top this?” Ringo asked a reporter while boarding the plane. That was a question that the band kept asking itself over the next five years, constantly evolving, exploring new musical techniques, styles, and identities. Rubber Soul, released a year after that first U.S. visit, already showed signs that the band was maturing. Gone were the poppy anthems to teen love, replaced by the eerie “Norwegian Wood” and the cynical “I’m Looking Through You.” The deeply complex Revolver followed in 1966, and then the group reinvented itself yet again with Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band in 1967. The Beatles have been credited with inventing the concept album, writing the first heavy metal song (“Helter Skelter”), and being the first “boy band.”

The Beatles’ epic popularity, combined with fierce internal competition and jealousy, inflicted growing strain, and the four broke up in 1969. But by then they had indelibly changed the American musical landscape. They had heralded the “British invasion” of groups like the Rolling Stones and the Who, reinvigorated rock ’n’ roll, and influenced countless musicians who followed.

When they landed at Kennedy, 41 years ago today, a little shell-shocked from their European success and swamped by screaming girls, armed only with their innate charm and catchy tunes, few would have predicted they were already on their way to becoming one of the most important and influential rock groups of all time.

—Elizabeth D. Hoover is a former editor at American Heritage magazine.