In the documentary 'Beatles '64', Paul McCartney suggests that The Beatles' rise to fame in America was partly due to the nation needing 'something like The Beatles to be lifted out of sorrow' following President John F. Kennedy's assassination.
In Beatles '64, the new documentary which charts the impact of the band's first US tour and how it catapulted them to global superstardom, Paul McCartney makes a suggestion as to why they achieved so much so quickly."Maybe America needed something like The Beatles to be lifted out of sorrow."
Dr Patrick Andelic, assistant professor of American History at Northumbria University, said it was a moment that shook the nation to its core, partially because of JFK's own pop culture persona."By the beginning of the '60s, 90% of American families had TVs, so the way news and media was consumed totally changed."
Senior music industries lecturer Dr Holly Tessler, from the University of Liverpool, said it was that show that "made them stars overnight".The Beatles' youthful exuberance was central to their success, chiming with the legions of British teenagers that had begun to follow them."Kennedy projected youth and vitality and in his inaugural address, he spoke of the torch being passed to a new generation of Americans," he said.
Spencer Leigh, author of many books on The Beatles, said the trend of British acts failing to "make it" in the United States, had seen Capitol, one of the country's biggest record companies, even refuse to distribute The Beatles' music for fear of the same result. The band's manager Brian Epstein and Capitol's parent company EMI managed to change the label's minds and on Boxing Day 1963, about a month after Kennedy's assassination, the single hit America's stores.
For Spencer Leigh, it was what came next, not what had happened before, that led to their global success.
The Beatles Paul Mccartney John F. Kennedy Beatlemania US Tour 1964
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