THE BEATLES ANTHOLOGY TWO

EPISODE TWO

In this phase of The Beatles’ progress, there’s a sense of the four of them rapidly making their way up a staircase, going from theatres and ballrooms around their native country to massed adulation across the world. And as that story takes shape, there are regular stories that highlight their amazing closeness.

In the midst of a biting English winter, for example, the windshield falls out of their touring van, and they have to take drastic steps to protect themselves from sub-zero temperatures, by simply lying on top of each other. “When the one on the top just got so cold that it was like hypothermia was setting in,” says Ringo, “it was his turn to get on the bottom. We’d warm each other up that way.”

Their tight internal bond was also highlighted by their confidence as musicians. “We were performers in Liverpool, Hamburg and other dance halls, you know,” says John, “and what we generated was fantastic. And there was nobody to touch us in Britain.” As if to prove it, “From Me To You” brings them their second British number one in April 1963. And their third, “She Loves You,” coincides with a new development: massed teenage screams, and the birth of what we now know as Beatlemania.

Among all the hysteria, it starts to become clear that the four of them are going to combine their success with a new kind of authenticity. “We were the first working-class singers that stayed working class,” says John. “[We] didn’t try and change our accents, which in England were looked down upon.”

Their first album, “Please Please Me,” is followed by “With The Beatles,” on which John and Paul’s talent as songwriters comes to the fore, and George contributes his first self-written track. By now, they have mastered bringing the madly infectious energy of their stage shows to television, as evidenced by brilliant footage from Sweden of their show-stopper, “Long Tall Sally.”

In January 1964, they play in Paris—where, at their first show, they’re somewhat bamboozled to be confronted by a crowd mostly made up of boys, and a more hesitant atmosphere than usual.

They soon bring their audiences round, but everything is then turned on its head by the small-hours telegram telling them that “I Want To Hold Your Hand” is number one in America. The news reaches them in the small hours of the morning; no-one gets any sleep that night. And at this point, everything changes once again.

On February 7, they fly into the US, full of amazement and excitement. Beatlemania has crossed the Atlantic, and in the States, it feels even more frantic. To close, there’s a quotation from Brian Epstein. “It was a turning point in rock’n’roll: a specific date on which the breadth and scope of their future was to be altered,” he says. “And it was the day their Pan-Am jet touched down at John F. Kennedy International in New York, to a welcome that has seldom been seen in history.”