Chapter 24 Once Upon a Time in America

[I]

As sunlight struck the silvery wings outside the starboard windows of Pan Am Flight 101, shooting splinters of light across the interior cabin, three of the Beatles huddled at a window to size up the view as the plane banked sharply over the eastern shore of Long Island. In the first-class compartment, John sat rigidly behind the others, holding Cynthia’s moist hand and staring at the back of the seat in front of him. He’d grown subdued during the last, final hour, his face closed over with something a traveling companion read as “doubt.” Initially, John had “been over the moonat the prospect” of the visit—paying homage in the land of his forefathers: Chuck, Elvis, and Buddy. But as the reality of it drew near, he became convinced of certain failure.

That morning a crowd of four thousand fans had swarmed Heathrow to see the boys off as Beatles music “boom[ed] out over the public address system.” It had been a heartening sight as they emerged on the airport tarmac, grinning and handsome in the new pleated mohair suits that Dougie Millings had made in London from a series of Paul’s sketches. Thanks to some last-minute choreography staged by Brian Epstein, they stopped in their tracks less than halfway to the plane, then turned and waved in unison, gazing up at the terraced observation deck draped with banners wishing them well and jammed with cheering, screaming teenagers hanging precariously over the rails. The Beatles laughed and shouted back at them, caught up in the spirit. It was impossible not to feel the excitement, their loyal fans solidly behind them, rooting for them, proud that the Beatles were taking it to the States. There was “nothing like it in the world,” according to Paul.

“In Liverpool, when you stood on the edge of the water you knew the next place was America,” John said much later, but the romance of the States had been with him since childhood. To that restless, rebellious Woolton boy “with a mess of ideas rattling around his head,” everything that spoke to him was out there, somewhere over the western horizon—in America. Brando, the Beat poets, rock ’n roll: he’d long since fallen under their spell. But with America now only minutes away, it may have been too much for John to deal with.

He took a deep breath, an uneasy look crossing his ruggedly handsome face, and glanced around at the cabin full of reporters, photographers, friends, and hangers-on who had attached themselves to the Beatles’ entourage: the ever-chummy Maureen Cleave of the Evening Standard, who’d emerged in recent weeks as the boys’ pet flack; Harry Benson, the pesky Daily Express photographer, a talented man although something of a nuisance, to whom Pan Am had reluctantly given permission to shoot pictures exclusively throughout the flight; George Harrison, the Liverpool Echo’s unlikely-named columnist, who for years had stubbornly refused to write a word about the Beatles; and Phil Spector, as high-strung as a Pomeranian, and as paranoid, who booked himself on the same flight as the Beatles because, as George recalled, “he thought we were winners and he wouldn’t crash.”

Brian, as smooth as a diplomat, had stashed the bulk of the entourage in the 707’s economy cabin, where the less genteel couldn’t badger the Beatles. George, especially, wanted to be left alone; he’d been fighting off some queasiness that the boys initially dismissed as butterflies but was developing rather progressively as a case of the flu. Moreover, there were too many stowaways aboard, British manufacturers who had booked seats on Flight 101 in order to corner the Beatles with far-fetched pitches. Since just after takeoff, they’d been dispatching a stewardess to first class every few minutes, to display various products and ask for endorsements. It never failed to amaze the boys what they came up with. All kinds of cheap junk were already being produced to cash in on their name: night-lights, clocks, sweaters, pillows, scarves, pens, bracelets, games, any number of Beatles wigs, which had become a silly rage. And now here was the chance for even more.

When they were passed to him, John regarded each item as he might a dirty sock, holding it by the edge with two fingers. That stuff had never interested him much, although he had some vague appreciation for the income it produced. From time to time Brian took pains to reassure the Beatles that nothing would be licensed that might embarrass them. Besides, all John could focus on at the moment was the next ten days in New York—and not being embarrassed by that. “Going to the States was a big step,” Ringo admitted. The prospect of it, the significance, had made him “a bit sick,” too, although by the time they were descending into New York, Ringo was in full party mode. Paul was also overheard confiding in Phil Spector about his own misgivings, although they were soon interrupted by word from the cockpit. As Paul remembered it: “The pilot had rang aheadand said, ‘Tell the boys there’s a big crowd waiting for them.’ ”

As the plane taxied toward the gate, the Beatles scrambled over one another to get a better view of the scene unfolding outside at the terminal. Everywhere they looked it was wall-to-wall kids. Shouts—whoops and cheers—erupted inside the plane, and for the first time since London John’s face broke into a beautiful grin. “Just look at that!” one of them whispered hoarsely, his voice fighting the collision of relief and delight. American fans had been gathering there since early morning, whipped up by New York’s most famous radio deejays broadcasting live from the airport. All day they had been urging listeners to head there, playing Beatles records every few minutes and offering prizes: Beatles wigs, sweatshirts, and photographs. As a result, it was a bigger crowd than Kennedy International Airport had ever experienced. “Not even for kings or queens,” according to an official at the gate. The New York Times reported that “three thousand teenagers stood four deep on the upper arcade of the International Arrivals Building… girls, girls and more girls.” From the plane, you could see them jumping up and down, percolating, much in the manner of their British counterparts. Police, using every bit of available muscle, leaned their shoulders into barricades, fighting to hold the kids in check, but as the plane shut off its engines it looked like a losing battle. Every so often a nervy girl threw herself over the thicket of navy blue uniforms like a running back against a goal-line stand, only to be pushed back behind the uprights. One older bystander suffered a mild heart attack, and according to the Daily News, “some punches were exchanged as the fans fought for better views.”

As the boys stood by the aircraft door, grinning and gaping at the crowd, waving at random, a radio commentator breathlessly struggled to give an account of their expressions: “As far as I can tell, the four Beatles are standing at the door of the aircraft almost certainly completely and utterly in shock. No one, I mean no one, has ever seen or even remotely suspected anything like this before!”

“We had heard that our records were selling well in America,” George recalled somewhat disingenuously (sales had hit 2.6 million singles in roughly two and a half weeks), “but it wasn’t until we stepped off the plane… that we understood what was going on. Seeing thousands of kids there to meet us made us realize just how popular we were there.” The Beatles were beside themselves with joy.

For security purposes, the Beatles circumvented Customs on their way to a press conference in the ground-floor lounge of Pan Am’s Arrivals building. More than two hundred reporters and photographers were crammed into the room, jostling for position and firing questions even as the boys were led through the door wearing identical dark overcoats and carrying flight bags.

Commandeering a microphone, Brian Sommerville, the band’s new press officer, attempted to broker peace by initiating an orderly hands-up policy for questions, but it was to no avail. Minutes flew by as tempers grew more heated and voices snarled. Neither side was about to give the other any satisfaction. “All right then. Shut up!” he barked. “Just shut up!”

“Yeah, yeah, everybody just sharrup,” said John, the first official words from a Beatle on American soil.

A stunned press gallery fell silent, then broke into applause. Just like that, the Beatles had snatched the upper hand from the hard-core pack of reporters and never really gave it back. Whatever the press expected from these boys, they were completely unprepared for what they were about to get.

“Will you sing something for us?” a reporter shouted over the racket.

“No!” all four Beatles shouted in unison.

“We need money first,” John shot back. The impertinence of it sent approving snickers through the crowd.

George was asked about the group’s ambition, and without missing a beat, he said, “To come to America.”

“What about you, Ringo? What do you think of Beethoven?”

“I love him,” he said, “especially his poems.”

“Are you for real?”

“Come and have a feel.”

“Some of your detractors allege that you are bald and those haircuts are wigs. Is that true, John?”

“Oh, we’re all bald—yeah. And I’m deaf and dumb, too.”

“What about the movement in Detroit to stamp out the Beatles?”

Unruffled, Paul smiled and said, “We have two answers to the Detroit students who want to stamp us out. We’ve a campaign of our own to stamp out Detroit.” That drew appreciative laughter, distracting attention from his “second answer,” which, though never stated, was implicit.

There were the usual questions about their hair, the origin of the band’s name, and how long they felt the phenomenon would last, all of which the boys handled with off-the-cuff wit and flair. The New York press corps, which had expected awkward, faltering teenagers, was delighted; the Beatles were irresistible, they made great copy. Paul, who still had the mike, couldn’t resist one last crack. “We have a message,” he announced, grinning, as the room suddenly fell silent, notebooks poised, cameras pointed. “Our message is: buy more Beatles records!” That did it! Everyone in the room broke out laughing at what the New York Times dubbed the “contagious… Beatle wit.” According to its reporter on the scene: “Photographers forgot about pictures they wanted to take. The show was on and the Beatle boys loved it.”

As the press conference broke up, George spotted an elfin man with a pencil-thin, crooked grin wearing a brightly patterned madras sport coat and straw boater squeezed into the front row of reporters. “Hey, I dig your hat,” he said. “Yeah, right, you can have it,” the man said, flicking it off with a thumb.

Even without the hat, Murray Kaufman had a prepossessing demeanor that compelled attention. Physically, he was slight, but a streak of brashness and self-importance added to his stature. He had that frantic New York aura about him, a real live wire, with a penetrating crinkly-eyed stare that served a multitude of emotional purposes. As “Murray the K,” he was a well-known radio personality, handling the prime-time evening show, from six o’clock until ten each night, on WINS, a top pop station. His voice reached from one end of New York to the other and deep into Connecticut and New Jersey, a seemingly endless spray of magpie chatter as it spun circuitous webs around the pop hits of the day, light news, commercials, and marginalia, all thickened by a style that Murray referred to as “my shtick.”

And right now Murray was positively glowing with excitement. The Beatles had “done a number on [him],” taken him by surprise. He couldn’t get over their collective sense of humor and the way they’d handled the hard-boiled press corps. It was a welcome turn of events, considering he had come to the airport against his will. At the end of January, Murray had been in Florida, on a vacation that was supposed to extend to the end of February. That was where Joel Chaseman, WINS’s program director, found him and ordered him back to New York. “The Beatles are coming,” Chaseman told him. In October a copy of “She Loves You” had crossed Kaufman’s desk, and thanks to some strong-arming by Swan Records’ promotion man, Murray entered it in the “Swingin’ Soiree,” his nightly record-review roundup. Incredible as it seems, the Beatles came in third—a distant third. Even so, Murray was determined to give them a shot. “I played their record for about two and a half weeks,” he recalled, “and nothing. No reaction.” There was no way he intended to interrupt his vacation for the Beatles, and he told Chaseman as much. “Then he sort of insisted and put my job on the line.”

Murray had been waiting for an opening since the press conference swung into gear, and now he got one from George big enough to drive his massive personality through. “Who are you?” George wanted to know.

“I’m Murray the K,” Kaufman shouted back, giving it that special seductive twist.

George grinned wolfishly. “Hey, this is Murray the K,” he announced, calling over the other Beatles. The Beatles loved disc jockeys, especially those who played their records. Murray immediately went into his “rap,” a long-winded self-promotion that inflated his hipness and influence, and for twenty minutes he had the very hot, exclusive Beatles virtually to himself. They even invited him back to their hotel for a party that would serve as Murray’s scoop.

But first they had to escape. As Nora Ephron reported in the New York Post, “the Beatles were lifted bodily by two policemen each, and each young man was placed and locked in his own Cadillac limousine.” A handful of girls actually threw themselves at the Cadillacs, she wrote, “and were led, briefly sobbing, from the parking lot.” Securely inside the cars, each of the Beatles watched the familiar scene unfold outside, albeit this time with a stunned fascination. The whirlwind at Kennedy had happened without any warning whatsoever; not even Brian had prepared them for such a reception. “I remember… getting into the limo and putting on the radio,” Paul recalled, “and hearing a running commentary on us: ‘They have just left the airport and are coming towards New York City….’ It was like a dream. The greatest fantasy ever.”

[II]

It came as quite a shock to officials at the posh Plaza Hotel, just off the southeastern edge of Central Park, when it was discovered that several guests, Mr. J. Lennon, Mr. P. McCartney, Mr. G. Harrison, and Mr. R. Starkey—all holding reservations booked routinely under their own names—were, in fact, those same Beatles splashed across the news. And by the time they found out, it was too late to do anything about it.

The boys checked in a little after four o’clock, and from then on the hotel fell under siege. Hundreds of fans showed up simultaneously, causing gridlock. A throng of girls clogged the cut-through between Fifty-eighth and Fifty-ninth Streets that doubled as the Plaza’s entrance; others swarmed over the fountain and statue in the tiny arcade along Fifth Avenue or took up position on the sidewalk adjoining the park. It had taken some quick work to move the kids off the front steps and secure the side doors. Those found wandering the halls were also ejected. Before long there were dozens of blue police barricades in place and horse patrols circling the block.

A special detail of guards was also stationed outside the elevators and stairwells on the Plaza’s highest floors. The Beatles shared a gorgeous ten-room suite on the twelfth floor, at the back of the hotel, along with Neil and Mal, while Brian stayed down the hall. Exhausted from their flight, the boys just vegged out that first night, watching themselves on television and listening to the radio. “We wanted to hear the music,” John recalled. “We were so overawed by American radio.”

Unlike in the U.K., New York was covered by a web of independent airwaves. Show formats were insanely flexible, disc jockeys basically playing whatever interested them. All those songs the Beatles had been dying to hear, the obscure hits by their American R&B heroes that the BBC ignored, were finally within earshot. All they had to do was pick up the phone and ask for them—which is exactly what they did all night long. “We phoned every radio [station] in town,” John explained, “saying, ‘Will you play the Ronettes’ ” or Marvin Gaye or Smokey Robinson or the Shirelles? Mostly, however, they besieged Murray the K with requests until the excitable jock jokingly complained to listeners: “This is the Beatles’ station! They’ve taken over! They’re telling us what to play.” Then, coining a phrase that he would exploit for the rest of his life, Murray said, “One more week of this, and I’m going to become the fifth Beatle.” The fifth Beatle! It was an ingenious claim that might have earned the boys’ scorn under routine circumstances, but not now. They were having too much fun and let it slide. Besides, they were amused by Murray. “[He] was as mad as a hatter, a fabulous guy… [who] knew his music,” according to Ringo. And as Paul quickly concluded: “[He] was the man most onto the Beatle[s’] case.” From the minute they hit town, Murray functioned as their personal promo man, playing their records repeatedly and doing his number, his shtick.

The next morning, when George’s temperature nudged past 102, Jules Gordon, the hotel doctor, was finally summoned. George was ordered to bed, with Neil Aspinall standing in for him at rehearsals for The Ed Sullivan Show.

In the meantime, the Beatles entertained a suite full of local press, who conducted what seemed like interminable interviews, one right after another, and shot hundreds of rolls of film. Throughout the day their sitting room was filled with reporters who asked the dopiest questions. “What is your favorite food?” “What does your haircut mean?” “What do you think of American girls?” “How long do you think all this will last?” Incredibly, anyone able to present somewhat professional-looking credentials gained entrance, so that LIFE shared the same couch with Tiger Beat, the New Yorker with the New York Post, and Cousin Brucie with Norman Cousins. To make matters worse, Albert and David Maysles wandered freely around the suite, shooting footage for a Grenada TV documentary. The BBC’s Malcolm Davis made himself at home; Jack Hutton, Melody Maker’s editor, came in with rival NME columnist Chris Hutchins. It was a free-for-all. The Beatles did their best to get through it without incident, putting on a show for the cameras, but it was clear as time wore on that they chafed under the intrusion.

Once word got out that the Beatles were at the Plaza, every hustler and promoter angled to get Brian on the line. It was impossible for him to field these calls, yet inexpedient to entrust them to the overloaded hotel switchboard. The hawkeyed Walter Hofer, who stood by to offer advice, wasn’t about to answer phones. After complaining about the situation to a Capitol A&R rep, the record company, apparently to ingratiate itself, quickly came up with a solution. Someone in the West Coast office knew a classy English woman in New York who could serve as Brian’s secretary while he was in the States.

Much like Brian, Wendy Hanson was from the North, Yorkshire, a posh-spoken girl from “a rather nouveau-riche family”; and much like Brian, she was slavishly proper, sharp-tongued, and meticulous about her appearance. If she seemed self-reliant to a fault, it was because she’d had lots of practice. After her parents died tragically young, Hanson took an au pair job in the States, where she met a number of important figures in the classical music field, perhaps none more impressive than Leopold Stokowski, for whom she worked as a secretary, and later Gian Carlo Menotti, who eventually hired her as his personal assistant. Menotti, as it happened, was off in Italy, which left Wendy free to work for Brian, and she set about this mission with a remarkable show of efficiency. “He was in a terrible state when I walked in there,” she recalled. “There was a queue of people in the hall, many of whom had been waiting for hours and all of whom he seemed to be trying to avoid. Some were hucksters; others were demanding the return of signed documents. There were record-company executives, television commentators, promoters, friends.”

One of the first visitors admitted was a blustery Englishman named Nicky Byrne. A small-time hustler who “trolled with a bunch of characters” nicknamed the Kings Road Rats, Byrne had never dedicated himself to anything long enough to put his name on it. Over the years he had worked in music publishing, designed clothes, staged theater productions, run a nightclub, the Condor, in London—he even tried his hand at marriage—none of which succeeded in holding his interest. What Byrne wanted most, what he had his heart set on, was making a big score.

As Byrne recalled it, he was “sitting around doing nothing for half of [19]63,” when several of his mates began tying up rights to all sorts of Beatles merchandise. David Jacobs, the slightly daft celebrity lawyer who represented NEMS, had let them sweet-talk him out of several exclusive contracts for Beatles dolls, lockets, stationery, wigs, songbooks, photos, badges, calendars, sweaters, figurines, scrapbooks. A sculptor in London advertised wall-size panels of the Beatles carved in relief, which was “useful as a thermometer, too.” There were Beatles bubble bath and Beatles wallpaper. Most of these products weren’t even licensed by NEMS.

From what Byrne could see, they hadn’t even begun to scratch the surface of this phenomenon. “Brian’s made a terrible mess out of this,” Jacobs groaned during his initial meeting with Byrne. That was all Nicky needed to hear. Dazzling the lawyer with an infusion of names and numbers—real or fictitious, it is impossible to say—he spun out a plan to blanket the world in Beatles products and basically walked out with the promise of worldwide rights, excluding the U.K. Jacobs was so uninterested in the whole matter that he instructed Byrne to have his own contract drawn up, stating the terms that were desirable.

On December 4, a contract was delivered to Jacobs’s office. “We left it blank about the percentages,” Byrne recalled, noting that he was prepared to accept a small, but reasonable, royalty for his efforts. “So, what are you going to pay the Beatles?” Jacobs wondered. Byrne gulped hard and said, “Oh, look, just put in ten percent.” It was a ridiculous response, the first thing that popped into his head; 75 or 80 percent was a more realistic figure. Byrne fought to swallow a shit-eating grin as he watched Jacobs fill in the blank as instructed: 10 percent. Byrne suspected that Epstein would fire this lawyer’s ass over such a miscue, “but to my utter amazement it came back signed—the whole thing. They’d initialed in the right places, they’d read the contract. They couldn’t wait to get somebody else to do this, because they were in a mess themselves.”

By the time Brian arrived in New York, however, he realized what a monstrous mistake he’d made. Apparently Nicky Byrne had done a bang-up job, opening a Fifth Avenue office under the corporate name Seltaeb—Beatles spelled backward—and licensing North American companies to manufacture every kind of Beatles paraphernalia. The Wall Street Journal predicted: “U.S. teen-agers [sic] in the next 12 months are going to spend $50 million on Beatle [sic] wigs, Beatle dolls, Beatle egg cups and Beatle T-shirts, sweatshirts and narrow-legged pants.” Another story outlining Nicky’s handiwork, in the New York Times, reported that Reliance Manufacturing Company, whose factories were “smoking night and day to meet… demand” had already sold “Beatle [sic] merchandise valued at… more than $2.5 million retail,” with plans in the works to produce dozens of new products. The Lowell Toy Company was “turning out Beatle [sic] wigs at the rate of 15,000 a day.” Sheridan Clothes claimed to be “a month behind on orders for Beatle-type suits.” Bobblehead dolls, along with other games, were soon to be introduced by Remco Industries. And all these articles referred to the mastermind behind the project: Nicky Byrne.

Nicky Byrne. Nicky Byrne. Nicky Byrne. Every time Brian read that name, it drove a spike into his heart. One thing was certain: Brian had botched this deal something fierce. “Seltaeb was… in a business that I felt they knew very little about,” Walter Hofer explained. There was “a great deal of money” at stake, millions and millions of dollars, and he’d given away 90 percent of it just like that, and to a total stranger. Brian had never even met Nicky Byrne until that Friday night at the Plaza, when he arrived unannounced at the Beatles’ suite with a sackful of gifts—“all sorts of gearwe could manufacture,” Byrne recalled. Negotiations with Byrne to revise the deal promptly began.

Meanwhile, the Beatles, sans George, posed for photographers at the boathouse in Central Park, then rode north in a couple of limousines donated by CBS for an impromptu tour of Harlem, where John instructed the driver to “cruise past the Apollo Theater.” Forecasters had been predicting a major snowstorm, and breath rings froze on the tinted windows where all three boys pressed their faces against the glass. They gazed out at the jumble of blighted brownstones and bodegas with their crumbling wrought-iron balconies strung across the facades like tatty jewelry. The busy, narrow streets were a confusion of mongrel cars parked bumper to bumper, and everywhere there were people jostling on the sidewalk, spilling from stores and jackknifing through traffic at a dizzying speed. Suddenly the car turned onto a wide, fidgety boulevard—125th Street—and the Apollo rose up like a neon-and-concrete castle. TONIGHT—THE MARVELOUS MARVELETTES! read the marquee. De-liveh de-letteh, de-sooneh, de-betteh: the girls themselves! The proximity of it made the Beatles catch their breath with wonder.

There were more sites the Beatles wanted to visit—among them the specialty record shops that beckoned from every corner, but as it was, they barely made it back in time for the first round of Ed Sullivan rehearsals.

Afterward, Brown Meggs showed up with a group of Capitol Records execs—the surest sign there had been a breakthrough. Capitol found itself in an awkward position, having repeatedly rejected the Beatles. Now not only were they Capitol’s star attraction, their records causing gridlock on the U.S. charts, but the label’s pressing plants were so overburdened by the unprecedented demand that RCA Victor had been hired to press Beatles records as well.

Meggs extended greetings from Alan Livingston, who was en route to New York with two gold records for them, and from Brian Wilson, currently in the studio working on a new single with the Beach Boys. Otherwise, Meggs put himself entirely at the Beatles’ disposal. Anywhere the boys wanted to go, anything they wanted to do, could be arranged. He was there to show them a good time, beginning with a sightseeing tour around Manhattan—stopping outside the United Nations and the Empire State Building—followed by dinner at “21,” where Ringo ordered a bottle of “vintage Coca-Cola.”

When they returned to the Plaza, however, it was inevitable there would be no peace. Edwin Newman and John Chancellor were waiting in the hall with their network camera crews, Tom Wolfe was taking notes for an impressionistic article in Esquire, and their suite was overrun with visitors, all entertained by Cynthia Lennon and George’s sister, Louise, who had to fight her way through security to visit her brother. To make matters worse, that notorious motormouth Murray the K barged in, trailing the Ronettes, to stage a remote broadcast from George’s sickbed.

By that time, Murray’s shtick was beginning to wear increasingly thin. It seemed like every time they turned around, he was there, hogging the spotlight, “asking dumb questions and making bad jokes about their hair.” The Ronettes, on the other hand, were a sight for sore eyes. They’d hooked up with the Beatles in London during a January promotional tour with the Rolling Stones and spent a string of evenings in each other’s company, eating, smoking, dancing, and talking about everything from American rhythm and blues to the burden of fame. The boys found the Ronettes as fascinating as they were attractive, as the girls spun out outrageous backstage tales of working rock ’n roll revues at the Brooklyn Fox with the likes of Ben E. King, Frankie Lymon, Stevie Wonder, and the Impressions. Music aside, John and George quickly developed serious crushes on Ronnie Bennett and her sister, Estelle, who were both knockouts as well as first-rate singers. They’d gone on a series of double dates that crackled with sexual innuendo, but despite some feverish late-night necking, the couples remained platonic. Both girls had steady boyfriends in the States—Ronnie, especially, was devoted to her Svengali, Phil Spector, whom she would eventually marry—which precluded any serious involvement. And, of course, John already was married, not that that stood in his way of having some fun.

Meanwhile, the girls had brought along a copy of their latest single, “Baby, I Love You,” which the Beatles already had in the suite. “There were portable record players in every room, and 45 rpm records scattered everywhere around the floor,” Ronnie recalled. “The Beatles had every record you could think of up there, including a few that hadn’t even come out in the stores yet.” The sound of a mob drifted up from the street below, there were guards posted outside their door, cranks calling every few seconds. Ronnie was struck by the contrast to those idyllic few weeks in London. For all the apparent triumphs that winter, she came to the painful realization that “the Beatles really were like prisoners.”

It was almost a relief to get down to work on Sunday. Feeling nauseous and unsteady, George arrived at Studio 50 along with the other Beatles for an afternoon dress rehearsal. A troop of mounted policeman patrolled Seventh Avenue in front of the theater, where two hundred fans had gathered, hoping to talk their way inside. There was no chance of that, with all the 728 tickets spoken for long in advance. Normally, a sound check and run-through was staged in front of an empty house, but Sullivan had talked Brian into filming the dress camera rehearsal as an extra performance that would air a week after the boys’ departure, so the audience was already in their seats before the Beatles arrived.

The boys got comfortable backstage in the well-upholstered dressing room, drinking tea and listening to their transistor radios, each tuned to a different Top 40 station. They were unusually relaxed, even for the Beatles—reading fan mail, clowning, almost oblivious to the fact that they were making their American debut. A stack of telegrams lay unopened on a ledge by the mirror. One, marked URGENT in red pen and addressed to each of the Beatles individually, caught Paul’s attention, and as he read it his face corkscrewed into a mad grin.

“It’s from Elvis!” he shouted to the others.

John looked up blank-faced. “Elvis who?” he asked.

Paul ignored him and read the cable’s contents aloud. “ ‘CONGRATULATIONS ON YOUR APPEARANCE ON THE ED SULLIVAN SHOW AND YOUR VISIT TO AMERICA. WE HOPE YOUR ENGAGEMENT WILL BE A SUCCESSFUL ONE AND YOUR VISIT PLEASANT. GIVE OUR BEST TO ED SULLIVAN.’ ” He looked up, beaming. “Signed, Elvis and the Colonel.”

The filming came off without a hitch. Standing near the wings, before a closed curtain—his trademark—Sullivan in his role as emcee portentously thanked “these youngsters from Liverpool” for their exemplary conduct while in America and appreciated how they would “leave an imprint on everyone over here who’s met them.” Before he could get another word out, the high-pitched screams started.

The curtain opened as the spotlights snapped on. Opening with “Twist and Shout,” the Beatles stood center stage and belted out a tame but rock-solid version against a backdrop of pastel-colored modular designs. It provided a good contrast to their dark mohair suits and blinding smiles, turned up a few watts higher than usual as a hedge against unfamiliarity. If there was any concern about the impression they’d make, however, it was scrapped before the first “c’mon baby.” Every time they grinned, converged on a mike, or—especially—shook their heads, propelling those famous haircuts, the largely female audience screamed its approval. And before anyone had a chance to cool down, the band launched into “Please Please Me,” followed by “I Want to Hold Your Hand.”

Few had known what to expect. Until that moment, all that Americans had really seen of the Beatles were scattered newspaper photographs, depicting them in a crowd or mugging for publicity stills. A Beatles performance was something else entirely, and the power of it, the emotional charge they sent through the audience, moved teenagers in ways they’d never been moved before. For starters, there was the charisma, that boyish charm, which the Beatles (especially Paul) had perfected as an art form. Several times during the set, Paul stared directly into the camera—or, as a viewer might interpret it, directly at her—opened up his face, and projected, literally, the most innocent, adorable eyeful that American girls had ever witnessed. Hearts melted in an instant when he flipped that particular switch. John was more coy in how he went about it, but he also knew the right moment to flash a winning grin. From time to time he’d glance sidelong at Paul, then turn it on, just for a few seconds, until he’d produced the desired effect. Nor were George and Ringo wholly innocent of striking a theatrical pose, displaying an innate sense of timing when it came to raising an antic squeal.

So, too, did they flaunt their musical skill. At a time when few rock ’n roll acts got a shot on TV, those with the opportunity rarely appeared with a band. Networks favored young pop singers who performed their hits in front of a studio orchestra. It was rare they were allowed to bring their own musicians. For one thing, most teenage bands couldn’t cut it as pros, and unlike playing a concert hall, where horrible acoustics masked most slipups, TV was unforgiving; for another, a four-piece guitar band usually sounded thin and tinny on TV. Even self-contained bands such as Buddy Holly and the Crickets or Little Stevie Wonder adjusted their act to work with a canned ensemble that included horns and strings. On a show like Bandstand, where groups lip-synced to their records, there was no live music at all. Therefore, seeing the Beatles perform by themselves, working, so to speak, without a net, was a fairly eye-opening experience. And how those boys could play! This wasn’t just a hunk strumming chords, like Ricky Nelson. This was a batch of boys as nimble as they were energetic, spanking their guitars and executing tasty licks and fills seamlessly. It would be a mistake to overlook the sexual heat they delivered.

Unfortunately, CBS had been unprepared to deal with miking a proper rock ’n roll band. “We weren’t happy with the… appearance,” said Paul, “because one of the mikes weren’t [sic] working.” John’s vocals sounded washed-out and occasionally lost, all the more infuriating because they’d worked painstakingly on sound during rehearsals. Throughout it all, the Beatles themselves had consulted with Sullivan’s technicians, running back and forth to the control booth after each take. “Finally,” George recalled, “when they got a balance between the instruments and the vocals, they marked the boards by the controls, and then everyone broke for lunch. Then, when we came back to tape the show, the cleaners had been round and had polished all the marks off the board.”

It was no better that night when the Beatles returned to Studio 50 for the live broadcast of The Ed Sullivan Show. This time, the crowd outside had tripled in size, giving the place the jacked-up feeling of a Broadway opening. There were flowers in the dressing room and visiting dignitaries, including Dizzy Gillespie, who was playing around the corner at Birdland and “just stopped by to get a look at them,” and Carroll James, the plucky disc jockey from Washington, D.C. When Leonard Bernstein, an acquaintance of Wendy Hanson’s, swept in with his daughters, George was in the midst of “having a row” over the sound with Bob Precht, Ed Sullivan’s son-in-law, who produced the show. Bernstein babbled on endlessly about Washington, D.C., and about how when he was there “he sung rounds with Jackie at breakfast.” One could tell from the look in their eyes that the Beatles had no idea who he was or what he was talking about. (A “round” to an English working-class lad meant a piece of buttered bread, and as for Jackie, they were completely stumped.) John turned to Wendy Hanson and said, “Look, love, we haven’t known you long and we like you very much—but could you keep Sidney Bernstein’s family out of this room?”

Outside, the corridor was crowded with other acts and technicians making their way backstage. Whether intentionally or not, Sullivan’s show that night was top-heavy with British acts, including the vaudevillian banjo player Tessie O’Shea and the cast of Oliver!, a West End smash that had recently opened on Broadway, written coincidentally enough by Lionel Bart, who was quite friendly with Brian Epstein.

At the very top of the show, Sullivan lumbered onstage and wasted no time in introducing the boys. “Now, yesterday and today, our theater’s been jammed with newsmen and press from all over the world, and these veterans agree with me that the city’s never witnessed the excitement stirred by these youngsters from Liverpool who call themselves the Beatles.” A smattering of screams ripped through the audience. “Now, tonight, you’re gonna twice be entertained by them, right now and later. Ladies and gentlemen—the Beatles!”

If the Beatles seemed daunted by the prospect of a live American television audience, it did not show. They stood confidently center stage when the cameras hit them and launched right into a loose, if unimaginative and tightly controlled, version of “All My Loving.” Paul sang it note-perfect, with all the raw edges polished off, as though he’d decided to whitewash it for a more general listening crowd. With effortless determination, George twanged a florid country-and-western riff during the instrumental break, throwing a nice light on his skill. But John’s feeble mike left his voice muted and indistinct, especially with George doubling at Paul’s side for the harmonies. Then, after taking a gracious bow amid energetic applause, Paul soloed on “Till There Was You.” It was a curious choice, considering the song’s saccharine, almost tranquilized, romanticism, as if the objective were to downplay the Beatles’ rock ’n roll roots. There had been so much to-do made over their hair and the mania. A lot of Americans who’d tuned in out of curiosity already had their backs up, anticipating something menacing or vulgar. The song seemed to demonstrate how harmless it all was—and Paul sang it so sweetly, oozing sincerity. How could hard-nosed parents continue to disapprove?

But even the Beatles must have felt the inertia it created. The second it was finished, right after George’s little cha-cha flourish on guitar, Paul jerked sideways on a heel and whipped his finger around a few times to launch Ringo into gear. A clatter of drums exploded into “She Loves You,” and when they hit the “woooos” at the end of the chorus, Paul and John exaggerated the shake of their heads, which triggered shrieks of delirium from the new fans. This, girls got especially caught up in. During the song, those at home were given a special introduction to the band, with the names of each Beatle superimposed over a lingering close-up; John came last, and below his name an unexpected postscript: “Sorry, girls, he’s married”—at last a formal acknowledgment of the Beatle’s well-rooted heartthrob status.

When the Beatles returned at the end of the show, the audience was ready for them. Both “I Saw Her Standing There” and “I Want to Hold Your Hand” delivered on the promise of something thrilling. The boys rocked out, giving it the old high-octane treatment, and as the camera cut to the crowd, there were glimpses of budding Beatlemania churning in the seats. Girls were ecstatic, flustered, their faces frozen in rapturous glee. Yet by British standards, it still was a pretty tepid affair. Reports of “crazy girls, who were going bananas… screaming, tearing out their hair,” were grossly exaggerated. No one fainted or leaped toward the stage. For that matter, no one even left her seat. A kinescope of the event reveals a fairly well-disciplined group of kids—screaming, yes, at times bouncing up and down, but never on the verge of pandemonium.

The mad rush took place in living rooms. The viewing audience was estimated at 74 million—a record, according to the A. C. Nielsen Company, whose survey revealed that 58 percent of all homes with televisions were tuned to Ed Sullivan. But over breakfast the next morning, with newspapers strewn across the table, the tone of the reviews showed markedly in the Beatles’ furrowed faces. The New York Times’ TV critic, Jack Gould, dismissed the Beatles as nothing more than “a fad” while giving them credit for a “bemused awareness” that acknowledged their complicity in the clever affair. “Televised Beatlemania,” Gould wrote, “appeared to be a fine mass placebo,” and he summed up the performance itself as a “sedate anticlimax” to all the hype New York had withstood since the Beatles hit town. Unsure of how to critique the finer points of their musicianship, he deferred to a more learned colleague, who analyzed their vocals as one might a Gregorian chant, citing the Beatles’ tendency to create “false modal frames… suggesting the Mixylydian mode.” The other reviews were less convoluted, although similar in opinion. The Washington Post thought they “seemed downright conservative… asexual and homely.” And Newsweek was scathing in its overall appraisal of the Beatles:

Visually they are a nightmare: tight, dandified Edwardian beatnik suits and great pudding-bowls of hair. Musically they are a near disaster, guitars and drums slamming out a merciless beat that does away with secondary rhythms, harmony and melody. Their lyrics (punctuated by nutty shouts of yeah, yeah, yeah!) are a catastrophe, a preposterous farrago of Valentine-card romantic sentiments.

The Herald Tribune carried the story on its front page under the puzzling headline BEATLES BOMB ON TV. Its columnist pointedly decried what he heard as the absence of talent in their performance, calling it “a magic act that owed less to Britain than to Barnum.” The Beatles “apparently could not carry a tune across the Atlantic,” he wrote, rating them as “75 percent publicity, 20 percent haircut, and 5 percent lilting lament.”

If it bothered the Beatles that the reviews were largely hostile, they refused to let it show, other than a mention by George who felt the Tribune’s crack about Barnum was “fucking soft.” After all, they’d gotten what they wanted: the largest American TV audience in history. “If everybody really liked us, it would be a bore,” John told a reporter. “It doesn’t give any edge to it if everybody just falls flat on their face saying, ‘You’re great.’ ”

Privately, Brian fumed. Damning the reviews as a “vicious attack,” he peevishly demanded cancellation of the remainder of interviews on the schedule as retribution, though Brian Sommerville eventually talked him out of it. But by the time he chaperoned the boys to a press conference in the Plaza’s Baroque Room that morning, his irritation with the reporters burned clearly on his face. To an official from Capitol Records who was observing the scene, the manager was a changed person. “Before Epstein came here he had ice-water in his veins,” he said. “Now it’s turned to vinegar.”

For their part, the Beatles handled the press with complete poise. Ostensibly, the conference was called to announce their three-film deal with United Artists, but the boys, as usual, played it strictly for laughs. John drew chuckles first, revealing that his choice for a leading lady was Brigitte Bardot. How about you, Ringo? someone called out. “I don’t mind meself,” he said, “as long as it’s not Sophia Loren. She’s so tall, I’d have to climb a ladder to kiss her!” The reporters tried in vain to get Brian involved, but he declined, redirecting their attention to the four boys. When confronted with the charge of creating “false modal frames,” John grinned and said, “We’re gonna see a doctor about that.” A woman on the other side of the room asked George which of them was sexiest. “Our manager, Brian Epstein,” he fired back, which failed to placate her. “Who chooses your clothes?” she persisted. “We choose our own,” John said. “Who chooses yours?” Refusing to be intimidated, she replied, “My husband. Now tell me, are there any subjects you prefer not to discuss?” John leaned close to the microphone and without missing a beat said, “Yes, your husband.” The room erupted in appreciative laughter.

It went on like that, back and forth, for nearly three hours, with a volley of one-liners that befitted a Friars Club roast. The Beatles seemed able to handle anything thrown at them, never remotely becoming rattled by the barrage of caustic questions. The result was a public relations sensation. Over Brian’s mild objections, the Beatles continued to charm a professional lynch mob that had come to bury them. Not one word was said about the crummy reviews, nor was another bad word written. By the time Alan Livingston interrupted the questioning to present them with two gold records, the Beatles had climbed back into America’s good graces.

[III]

On Tuesday, February 11, the Beatles and what seemed like most of the New York press corps left for Washington, D.C., where the boys were to give their first live stage show in America. It had been snowing heavily for several hours, and plans to fly were scrapped at the last minute in favor of a private sleeping car that Brian Sommerville had chartered expressly for the trip. The train had nothing on the limos and luxury planes they’d grown used to, not even on the Liverpool-to-London express. It was a dingy, malodorous cubicle, yellow from cigarette smoke and cramped with rows of dilapidated leather seats blistered by springs. None of that, however, seemed to dampen the festive spirit. Grateful to escape the confinement of their hotel room, the Beatles were at their uproarious best. John and Paul fluttered about the train, chatting with passengers and mugging for the press. George, still recovering from his illness, climbed up into a luggage rack, where he managed to take a catnap. And Ringo, juiced by the unstoppable scene, swept out the car with a broom before grabbing half a dozen camera cases from photographers, then strolled up and down the aisle, shouting, “Exclusive! LIFE magazine! Exclusive! I am a camera!”

It was their last chance to unwind before a tumultuous—and rather nightmarish—evening that started the minute they reached Washington. Word had leaked that the Beatles were arriving by rail, and an estimated three thousand kids, spurred on by local disc jockeys, jammed the platform when the train pulled into Union Station. A giant banner dangled above the crowd: WWDC WELCOMES THE BEATLES. Flashbulbs exploded ceaselessly, reporters converged on the train, pushing, shoving. There was complete chaos, with fans and press battling fiercely for position. The police, befuddled by the melee, stood uncertainly on the sidelines as Paul led the others out of the wheezing car. Somehow the Beatles fought their way through the crowd and into two waiting limos that skidded along the slushy streets past the capital’s illuminated landmarks. The sky over the city held an immense and shifting light, reflecting off the monuments, pale as pieces of a child’s board game. “Just like in the movies,” Ringo muttered as the scenery whipped by. To their right, in roughly the direction of the Potomac, they passed a mansion that looked like the White House. Or maybe not. While they debated the accuracy of the discovery, the cars pulled up short in front of an enormous concrete building.

The Washington Coliseum was the biggest venue they’d ever played, a crusty old 18,000-seat downtown arena that catered mostly to ice hockey and boxing events. Brian hadn’t quite prepared them for the size of the place, nor had he warned them about the uncustomary staging. It had been set up like a boxing match, which meant they’d be playing on a platform in the round, a layout that required moving their equipment every few songs.

Three opening acts warmed up the crowd—a British group called the Caravelles, their old friend Tommy Roe from the first U.K. tour, and the Chiffons.^* The Beatles’ plans to watch the girls’ set were scrapped when Murray the K showed up unannounced and determined to broadcast his show from their dressing room. It came almost as a relief when it was time for them to play.

In most theaters-in-the-round, performers enter through tunnels situated under the floor, but because of the mechanics of the ice rink, there was no way to get the Beatles onstage without marching them through the audience. So Harry Lynn, the promoter, sent out three disc jockeys in Beatles wigs to distract the crowd, while the boys, flanked by forty ushers, charged up the aisle to a deafening blast of screams. A blinding explosion of flashbulbs blanketed the arena in light. Then another wave of screams, louder and more unruly, echoed off the walls. “The reaction was so overwhelming,” Paul gushed breathlessly minutes after the show, calling it “the most tremendous reception I have ever heard in my life.”

From the moment they hit the stage, the Beatles knew this would be no ordinary show. The atmosphere was electric and vaguely dangerous, with a fight-crowd current that harkened back to places like Wilson Hall in Garston. Fearlessly, they huddled together on a postage-stamp-size stage, with fans spilling right over the edges onto it. It was like “an obstacle course,” between the tangle of arms reaching toward them and the cables snaked across the floor. Ringo teetered precariously atop a circular skirted platform that, under ideal circumstances, was supposed to have functioned as a turntable for his drum kit. The amps, perched on stands, threatened to topple under the slightest provocation.

“Good evening, Washington!” Paul screamed into a mike, giving the other guys time to plug in and catch their breath.

A camera crew was filming the show for a future closed-circuit broadcast, and from the opening bars of “Roll Over Beethoven” the audience—mostly teenagers—“went berserk.” Several dozen police lining the stage “eyed the audience uneasily,” then leaped into action, tackling fans who tried to vault toward the band. “All the Beatlemania ingredients are here in Washington,” reported NME, including, the paper noted, “the throwing of jelly beans”—not the soft, squishy jelly babies, as was the custom back home, but their American cousins, with a hard outer shell. “That night, we were absolutely pelted by the fucking things,” George recalled. “To make matters worse, we were on a circular stage, so they hit us from all sides… waves of rock-hard little bullets raining down on you from the sky.” It made “the ring-side seem like Omaha Beach,” according to a journalist covering the show. “Every now and again, one would hit a string on my guitar and plonk off a bad note as I was trying to play,” George said.

In the long run, it didn’t make a lick of difference to the quality of the show. The Beatles’ performance that night was lit by something special from within. They played with a ripping, amphetamine intensity last glimpsed in Hamburg that went far beyond their usual slick, tightly controlled set. “Ringo, in particular, played like a madman,” writes Albert Goldman, “revealing a fire that nobody had ever glimpsed before beneath his workmanlike surface.” It was less a put-down of Ringo’s ability than a revelation of the implicit power contained in his solid backbeat. Something primitive had taken hold of him that converted every thrust, every blow, into energy. Ringo’s arms flailed feverishly and his head shook with a demonic pendulation, making him seem at times almost spastic, at others dynamic and Herculean. It didn’t even matter that “the acoustics were terrible” or that the equipment had to be hastily rearranged after every song. Incredibly, it never interrupted the flow or the tension gripping the arena. By the finale, a fantastic sweat-stained rendition of “Long Tall Sally,” the capacity crowd was on its feet, screaming uncontrollably in one mad, sustained roar.

Afterward, the Beatles were dizzy from exhaustion—and exhilaration. Ringo, especially, was in thrall of the fans. “They could have ripped me apart and I wouldn’t have cared,” he related backstage, drenched in sweat. “What an audience! I could have played for them all night.” As it was, the entire act lasted a mere twenty-eight minutes.

But, after all, it was an embassy party, a very la-di-da affair and not at all the kind of crowd that appealed to the boys. They had been told it would be “a quiet little party” for the overworked embassy staff, but as it turned out, the building was packed with an obnoxious, aggressive mob—the “full quota of chinless wonders,” as George Martin described them. “People were touching us when we walked past,” John recalled, none too pleased by the situation. It seemed, in Ringo’s estimation, as if the Beatles were on exhibit, “like something in a zoo.” Paul did his best to “exchange pleasantries” with the guests, but that became too much even for him. When a “slightly drunk woman” wrapped her arms around him and demanded to know his name, Paul responded, “Roger. Roger McClusky the Fifth,” before ducking out from under her clutches.

The Beatles didn’t stick around for any last-minute backslaps. Instead, they were whisked a few miles east to the British embassy, where a “champagne party and masked charity ball” was held ostensibly in their honor. This was precisely the kind of function they routinely avoided, full of stuffed shirts and other genteel functionaries who regarded the Beatles as a novelty. The embassy was packed with well-dressed British diplomats and their families for whom the Beatles provided a much-needed glimmer of home pride. Lavish trays of food stretched from one side of the ballroom to the other. And as the boys made their entrance down a grand swan-shaped staircase to the rotunda, it seemed as though the entire floor of dancers swirled around them in greeting. It was a lovely gesture. The British ambassador, Sir David Ormsby-Gore, proved gracious and hospitable, even chuckling when Ringo, who looked him up and down, asked: “So, what do you do?”

That night it was Ringo who, in a mock Etonian accent, managed to talk John out of making a scene while announcing the winners of the embassy raffle, daring the recipients to exchange their signed copies of Meet the Beatles “for a Frank Sinatra.” But as the raffle presentation wound down, a debutante snuck up behind Ringo and lopped off a hank of his hair with nail scissors. That did it. Ringo swung around and said, “What the hell do you think you are doing?” He was furious, totally out of character. “This lot here are terrifying—much worse than the kids,” he fumed. John started for the door, swearing under his breath, with Ringo right behind him, calling for a cab. It was all they could do not to make a scene. “They were very sad,” recalled photographer Harry Benson, who was part of the Beatles’ entourage. “They looked as if they wanted to cry. John, in particular. They weren’t pugnacious. They were humiliated.”

All of the Beatles felt the same way. They knew how the social set regarded them—four yobbos from Liverpool who’d gotten lucky—how people like that were slumming in their presence. People like that. The boys had played along, acquiescing for Brian Epstein even when they dreaded attending such functions. It was part of the game, they decided, though not fully understanding the rules. But that night had finished it. Yobbos they might be, but that didn’t render them insensitive. It didn’t matter what Brian thought it might do for their career. They wouldn’t play that part of the game again, not with people like that, not ever.

The next day most of the entourage flew back to New York, while the Beatles and a handful of selected journalists returned on the train. What should have been a relaxed trip up the East Coast turned out to be another long ordeal. The nuisance and scrutiny of clicking cameras acted like a magnifying lens, focusing the anxiety and resentment of the previous night to an incendiary point. George Martin described the experience as “some giant three-ring circus from which there was no let-up.” John, still seething, attempted to bury his nose in a book but was hounded relentlessly by photographers to “be a good sport.” It was as shabby as he’d ever been treated. “The only place we ever got any peace,” George recalled, “was when we got in the suite and locked ourselves in the bathroom. The bathroom was about the only place you could have any peace.”

There was the usual mob scene at Pennsylvania Station when the train arrived in New York. In an effort to clear crowds from in front of the Plaza, the police on detail outside the hotel had announced that the Beatles were going straight from the train to Carnegie Hall. As a result, thousands of fans jammed the upper waiting area, with the overflow milling through the lower concourse and scattered along the platforms. In no time it became a perilous scene. The transit police force was unprepared to handle such an enormous crowd and panicked when a mad rush of kids broke through a line of barricades to greet the arriving train.

Unbeknownst to the fans, however, the Beatles’ car had been detached from the train and diverted to an isolated platform at the opposite end of the station, where security guards planned to evacuate them by private elevator. Yet, resourceful kids had already anticipated that, too, and in the end the boys merely charged up the stairs and jumped into a taxi idling on Seventh Avenue.

The Beatles appeared twice that evening at Carnegie Hall, lounging between shows in an elegantly appointed green room that had provided sanctuary to such icons as Tchaikovsky, Ravel, and Judy Garland. If the Beatles felt awed by the august surroundings, it didn’t show. To them, it wasn’t a shrine but “simply another theater, like the Albert Hall or the Finsbury Park Astoria.” They were totally relaxed, chain-smoking American cigarettes, not at all intimidated about performing at the most prestigious and legendary concert hall in America, if not the world. Nor were they fazed by the extraordinary circumstances that marked the occasion. Until that night, no rock ’n roll act had ever set foot on the Carnegie Hall stage, which was governed like a prize duchy by a bluenosed board of directors. Even a bid by Elvis Presley had been rejected. Sid Bernstein claimed that he convinced the board that an appearance by the Beatles would go toward promoting international relations, but it seems more likely that he misrepresented them as a folk group.

Considering the historic importance of the concert, however, Capitol had every intention of recording it for a future release. By February 3, a deal had been struck, with George Martin on hand to guide the production in tandem with Capitol’s East Coast A&R man, Voyle Gilmore. Carnegie Hall granted permission in exchange for a trivial $600 fee. There remained only one hurdle: the American Federation of Musicians registered an objection over the proposed use of nonunion personnel on the session; in essence, they refused to allow George Martin to work in the States. Capitol promptly offered to pay his membership dues or do whatever was required to solve the problem, but the union held firm, claiming it would set an irreversible precedent. Without Martin, the Beatles wouldn’t participate, ultimately killing any possibility for a live album.

In the long run, it was just as well. There was no way for them to connect through the impenetrable wall of screaming that went up the moment they took to the stage. “Yells and shouts rose to an absolutely ear-shattering volume,” wrote Jack Hutton, the editor for Melody Maker, who reduced the crowd’s reaction to a single word: “bedlam.” No one could hear a word they sang, not that it seemed to matter to the young fans. Kids tore up and down the aisles, threw stuffed animals and handfuls of jelly beans. It was a free-for-all; there was no shape or purpose to the adulation. “A move by any Beatle in any direction induced renewed and more piercing cries.” In Washington the Beatles had worked the crowd like politicians, but here in New York they remained aloof, frustrated by the audience’s apparent refusal to listen. Although they remained earnest, if workmanlike, through the opening numbers, John’s impatience finally broke through after the seventh song, when he stepped forward, “looked the audience sternly in the mouth and yelled, ‘Shut up!’ ” The indifference to the music became, apparently, too much to bear. After a meteoric appearance, lasting only thirty-four minutes, the Beatles dropped their instruments and headed for the wings.

The critics treated the show less as a concert than a skirmish. None of the dailies devoted so much as a paragraph to the quality of the performance. The coverage focused entirely on audience reaction, which had mystified the forum of middle-aged reviewers whose experience with delirious behavior was limited to bravos at the opera. The New York Times paid only backhanded respect to the Beatles’ “thumping, twanging rhythms” and referred obliquely to a number as “a ballad of tender intent”; otherwise, its verdict on the music, including the hits, was nonexistent. Only the weekly New Yorker weighed in with an opinion that gave no more than the slenderest support to their talent: “They are worth listening to,” its intrepid reporter conceded, “even if they aren’t as good as the Everly Brothers, which they really aren’t.”

The reviews, though condescending, were generally overlooked by the Beatles, who came to view the New York entertainment establishment as largely ignorant of what they were all about. More conspicuous, perhaps, was the absence of their peers, the local cadre of pop-music stars, none of whom made an effort to meet them during their stay. Where was Gene Pitney or Dion and the Belmonts or Lesley Gore or Frankie Valli? Where was Chubby Checker or the Singing Nun, for that matter? At a ceremony for ASCAP’s fiftieth anniversary, held at City Hall the day after the Carnegie shows, the geriatric songwriters seemed to go out of their way to distance themselves from these budding British upstarts. “I hear they write their own music,” one elderly songwriter insinuated, to which Dorothy Fields (the author of “I Can’t Give You Anything But Love”) replied: “If you can call it writing.”

The best was yet to come. The next day the Beatles left for Miami, to appear on another Ed Sullivan Show, broadcast live from Florida. “Miami was like paradise,” Paul recalled, dazzled by the difference between a tropical sun-drenched beachfront vista and New York. “The place itself is a bit like Blackpool, only with sunshine,” they wrote to friends not long after the trip. Gazing like “real tourists” at the palm trees and local “bathing beauties,” the Beatles landed at the Deauville Hotel—nicknamed “Beatle Central” by the press—where they immediately hit the beaches running. Unlike at the Plaza, where they’d basically been shut-ins, there was plenty of opportunity to soak in the sights. Several times a day the boys would slip into their “cozzies,” as Scousers called bathing suits, and head outside, wandering along the shore and chatting with people their own age. “It was a big time for us,” Paul recalled, “and there were all these lovely, gorgeous, tanned girls. We did a photo session by the beach and immediately asked them out.” The freedom they experienced there was a slender relief. Each time, the Beatles ventured farther and farther, gamboling in the bracing Atlantic surf, waterskiing, and tooling around on powerboats that skipped the waves at unbelievable speeds. As for nighttime entertainment, it was a movable feast, with the boys flitting from one club to another. Comedian Don Rickles was hurling insults in the Deauville’s buttoned-down lounge, the Supremes were appearing around the corner at another beachfront hotel, and the Coasters, their longtime “heroes” (Ringo considered them “rock ’n roll gods”), were the featured attraction at a local joint called the Mau Mau Lounge. “[Miami] was just about the most brilliant place I’d ever been to,” declared Ringo, who favored nightspots farther inland, at the open-air drive-in theaters that drew young crowds.

But the relaxed, unfettered lifestyle didn’t last long. Within days the fans became a nuisance, and the Beatles left the Deauville—stashed in the back of a refrigerated butcher’s truck—relocating to a private estate on Star Island, borrowed from one of the local Capitol Records affiliates. The owners had left the place well provisioned. There was a pool in the backyard, an armed guard on the premises, and a yacht at their disposal, a gorgeous sixty-footer called The Southern Trail, courtesy of manufacturing tycoon Bernard Castro. On the rare days when nothing was scheduled, the boys lounged in picture-perfect, sunny, eighty-five-degree weather, but it was a busman’s holiday. Brian, who prized publicity, kept the Beatles tirelessly in the public eye. Even while they sunbathed, LIFE and the Saturday Evening Post conducted interviews poolside, interspersed with phone interviews to important disc jockeys, such as one with Bandstand’s Dick Clark, during which they gratefully acknowledged their reception in the States.

The Beatles had reason to be grateful. By February 15, just two and a half weeks after its release and three weeks since their Ed Sullivan debut, Meet the Beatles claimed the top spot on Billboard’s album chart, establishing them across the country as an unqualified pop sensation. As for their singles, the Beatles practically owned the Hot 100: “I Want to Hold Your Hand” was number one, “She Loves You” number two, “Please Please Me” number twenty-nine, “I Saw Her Standing There” number thirty-five, and “My Bonnie” number fifty-four. Columnist Nat Hentoff reported that a spokesman for the U.S. Treasury Department had made the Beatles “an economic issue,” due to what he called “a gold drain” resulting from their record sales and personal appearances. When a skeptical reporter speculated in a column as to whether the Beatles’ longevity would last through the month, a colleague pointed out that their ratings for the second Ed Sullivan Show had doubled, and at that rate, there weren’t enough people left in the United States to cover the third appearance.

Now everybody wanted to see the Beatles, as if they gave off some special juju, as if they would make everything all right, which, in a sense, they actually did. The Sullivan audience was filled with celebrities eager to lay eyes on the Beatles, among them boxing legends Joe Louis and Sonny Liston, who was scheduled to fight Cassius Clay the next week for the heavyweight title. Lest their presence be perceived as a show of favoritism, Paul felt compelled to predict that Clay would win the bout, which prompted an invitation from publicist Harry Conrad to meet the young boxer during a workout at his Fifth Street Gym.

The Beatles had never been fight fans. They’d showed no interest in it while in Liverpool, even though Pete Best’s father, Johnny, promoted major boxing events at the stadium. But now they carved out precious time to stage a meeting with Cassius Clay. Why, suddenly, had that become a priority? According to George: “It was a big publicity thing. It was all part of being a Beatle, really, just getting lugged around and thrust into rooms full of press men taking pictures and asking questions.” It was no secret that Clay had upended the boxing world with his flamboyant personality. An incorrigible motormouth “who could talk at the rate of three hundred new words a minute,” he constantly played to the cameras, boasting comically and spouting silly strings of verse. No one as of yet had a real grip on his potential in the ring, but he’d impressed most critics as a first-rate entertainer. In that respect it seemed fitting that the greatest entertainers of the moment should veer into each other’s orbit.

Yet suffice it to say, the dingy, smoke-filled gym he inhabited was thrown by the invasion of four shaggy-haired boys wearing skintight pants and white terry-cloth jackets. “Get a load of them Beatles. They look like girls,” grunted a ringside tough smoking a “fat cigar.” The Beatles, for their part, were feeling no more well disposed, bummed by the imposition and resentful of being kept waiting fifteen minutes for Clay to appear. “Where the fuck’s Clay?” Ringo asked no one in particular, clearly annoyed by the delay. Next it was John’s turn to grumble with a diva’s indulgence. “Let’s get the fuck out of here,” he told the others. But two Florida state troopers blocked the door until their host arrived.

If the boys entertained thoughts about bolting, they evaporated the second Cassius Clay—the Louisville Lip—strode through the door. “Hello there, Beatles!” he roared, walloping them with his charm. (Clay, according to Harry Conrad, “didn’t know who they were.”) “We ought to do some road show together. We’ll get rich.” He was a fireball, a spirit, beautiful indeed, stamped for greatness and unspoiled by celebrity. The Beatles took an immediate liking to him, rolling right into the campy floor show that he staged with flair. He “insisted on having fun while he trained.” Luring them into the ring, he shouted, “Get down, you little worms,” to which the boys dropped on their backs. Then John instructed him to stand over them “with his gloved hand in a victory pose,” instructions Clay obediently followed. No one needed much coaxing. They were all, Beatles and boxer alike, consummate showmen; they knew their roles, hit all their cues. For an encore, Clay grabbed Ringo, hoisted him above his head, and swirled him around like a pinwheel—whoosh-whoosh-whoosh-whoosh-whoosh—the way Popeye dispensed with his foes.

The spectators and court jesters hollered and pounded their fists in approval; the cornerman, Drew “Bundini” Brown, mock-pleaded for the skinny drummer’s life; and forward stepped Clay to deliver a few lines with great profundity:

“When Sonny Liston picks up

the papers and sees,

That the Beatles came to see me,

He will get angry and I’ll knock him out in three.”

It wasn’t exactly Byronic, though it delighted the authors of “Love, love me do / you know I love you.” For the Beatles, who were fast on the way to becoming cultural icons, the twenty-two-year-old Clay was something of a soul mate. “He had the whole crazy scene under his thumb,” they were said to have told Brian. Glib and graceful, he was larger than life on his own terms, without all the bullshit. They left the gym a short time later “with great reluctance.” “Clay mesmerized them,” recalled photographer Harry Benson. But what captivated and moved them was not Clay’s charisma; it was his power. Clay looked beautiful, but he also punched like a sledgehammer. The Beatles knew that if Brian had his way, pretty and cute would be all that mattered. Still, the image they had cultivated, although it annoyed them, remained useful and, at the moment, afforded them something of a franchise.

Perhaps no one appreciated this more than John Lennon. Later that day, when photographer Dezo Hoffman snapped a few candid shots of the boys waterskiing, John went ballistic. Image-conscious to the nines, he suspected that the pictures, in which his hair had been swept back off his forehead, would make him—a Beatle—appear bald. Instead of reasoning with Hoffman, John laced into him, berating the genial Czech in front of a flock of lackeys. One witness recalled how Hoffman stood clutching the camera to his chest as if somehow it might help shield an indiscreet blow. “Vied you do that?” he asked in his accented English. “You’ll look good.”

“I’ll look like shit,” John replied. “Everyone will recognize that it’s me.”