If you weren't alive on February 7, 1964 when the Beatles arrived at JFK Airport in New York on their first trip to America, it's truly impossible to fully understand the electric current that ran through kids then and the sonic boom of cultural change that was felt. I suppose the only contemporary event that comes close is the introduction of the iPhone in January 2007. [Photo above of Albert Maysles, left, and Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr in their suite at New York's Plaza Hotel in February 1964, courtesy of the Maysles estate]
Both the Beatles and the iPhone dramatically redefined the youth culture by liberating it from adult control and by setting new horizons. By demonstrating how famous great rock musicians could become, the Beatles launched a new form of music that would dominate the culture for 50 years. The iPhone made everyone famous by altering how teens communicated, promoted themselves and absorbed and processed unfiltered information.
Most boys back in early 1964 didn't think much of the Beatles when they emerged from their Pan Am jet and found them rather annoying. Seemingly overnight, sisters, female cousins and girls in school all seemed to go mad. When they weren't screaming and crying, they were amassing troves of Beatles merchandise and deciding which one they would marry. In early 1964, I was 7 and in second grade. My eyes were almond shaped, which instantly transformed me into a pint-sized John Lennon (my best friend Glenn was a ringer for an adolescent Paul).
One day shortly after the Beatles appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show, Abbey, a girl in class, filled a paper bag with Beatles buttons ("I Love John") and a ton of other Fab Four stuff and gave it to me. I innocently brought it home and showed my mother. The next day, she marched me and the bag to school and made me give it back to Abbey. What my mother was afraid of in second grade is still beyond me. Now I wish I asked her before she passed in 2020.
All of this male animosity, fed by jealousy, would change, of course, with the release of the Beatles' Rubber Soul in late 1965, when boys got their first glimpse of what they'd look like in a bunch of years. The Beatles had grown up and so would we. Frankly, to an 8-year-old boy, they looked pretty good.
The first American documentary made on the Beatles was by Albert and David Maysles in 1964. We talked about What's Happening! The Beatles in the U.S.A. when I interviewed Albert in 2010, on the 40th anniversary of the Maysles' Gimme Shelter (go here). Albert recalled the phone call from Britain's Granada Television in January 1964 asking him to film the Beatles when they arrived in New York. Albert had no idea who they were when he and his brother set out for Kennedy Airport to await the Beatles' arrival.
For years, this film could not be viewed in the U.S. due to the lack of a release from the Beatles. The film is still hard to find today and doesn't appear on any streaming platform as far as I can tell. Fortunately, I recently found it on a foreign platform. This is the closest you will come to experiencing the dawn of Beatlemania and the sea change that took place, when their music and celebrity dominated everyday life for years. The problem for parents was that once the Beatles were seen and heard, the experience and sexual awakening couldn't be undone. Life as we know it changed profoundly on February 7, 1964. Kids finally had power.
Here's Albert and David Maysles' What's Happening! The Beatles in the U.S.A. The radio DJ, of course, is WINS's Murray the K, who worked harder than most to hype the band before and after their arrival. The discotheque where Ringo is filmed dancing is the Peppermint Lounge. Ronnie Spector, who was there that night, talks about it in my book, Rock Concert: An Oral History...
