The Beatles’ world tour begins in Copenhagen, Denmark

For all the concerts they played between 1963 and 1966, The Beatles only undertook one world tour. It began on this day in Copenhagen, Denmark, and continued in the Netherlands, Hong Kong, Australia and New Zealand.

The Beatles with Jimmie Nicol at the KB Hallen, Copenhagen, Denmark, 4 June 1964

In the morning The Beatles were driven by their chauffeur, Bill Corbett, to London Airport where they were taken to their aeroplane ahead of the other passengers. There they signed autographs for the captain and crew.

More than 6,000 fans awaited their arrival in Copenhagen, and Danish police had to quell crowds of around 10,000 who brought the city centre to a standstill. As they checked in to the Royal Hotel fans attempted to storm the doors.

In the hotel sitting-room in Copenhagen, Judith Simons from the Express pointed out a telegraph left lying open on a table. It was from America and said: ‘Child dying in this family, two days to live. Please call. Child is Mary Sue.’ Paul said casually, ‘That’s the second telegram. The first said four days to live.’ Fearing Judith would be shocked by this apparent callousness (though in reality I was more shocked than she), I suggested we call the number given. Waste of time, said Paul; it was probably a con, and even if it wasn’t, what could they do? Then he shrugged and said, ‘Call – why not? I’ll talk to them, if you like.’ So I called. There were screams at the other end when I explained who I was. ‘I don’t believe it! Hold on right there – I’ll have the kids pick up telephones…’ I shouted over the bedlam: ‘Is Mary Sue still alive? Are we in time ?’ ‘This is Mary Sue speaking,’ said a whiny teenager-voice, as others chattered and jittered in the background. ‘Please don’t blame Mom, I made her do it… I just had to speak to Paul, oh, Paul, are you there? I just have to talk to him now, please don’t let him be mad at me!’ Paul took the phone from me. He handled the conversation coolly: ‘Now, Mary Sue,’ he said, lofty, dry and mildly admonishing, ‘you know you shouldn’t go around telling lies and frightening people like that…’ When it was over he looked at me, his eyes round and solemn. ‘See?’ Wolf had been cried loudly, not for the first time and assuredly not for the last.

Ringo Starr remained in London, having been hospitalised with tonsillitis and pharyngitis the previous day. His temporary replacement, Jimmie Nicol , had to swiftly adjust to life in the whirlwind of Beatlemania for the next five dates of the tour.

The group rehearsed their set in the afternoon, and Mal Evans taped the setlist to their guitars to help them remember the running order. They were also visited by the British ambassador to Denmark.

The Beatles performed two shows at the KB Hallen venue, at 6pm and 9.15pm, with 4,400 fans seeing each. The setlist for the first was: ‘I Saw Her Standing There’ , ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’ , ‘All My Loving’ , ‘She Loves You’ , ‘Till There Was You’ , ‘Roll Over Beethoven’ , ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’ , ‘This Boy’ and ‘Twist And Shout’ .

‘Long Tall Sally’ was left out of the setlist as it had been performed by Danish support act The Hitmakers. The Beatles requested that The Hitmakers not perform it during the night’s second show, and it was duly performed as the last show in the headliners’ set.

George Harrison: Oh, remember those shows? John Lennon: Just no sense of timing. Harrison: Those tours where we just would miss out half the song. Paul McCartney: That one with Jimmie Nicol. A one, two! A one two! On ‘She Loves You’, in Sweden [ sic ]. Lennon: In Sweden, yeah. McCartney: The first time we’d ever had this new drummer, ’cause Ringo was sick, and he was sitting up on this rostrum but he was just eyeing up all the women. And we just went, ‘One, two!’ Harrison: And we’d have to start. McCartney: Then he’d just go [mimes frantic drumming]. Lennon: It’s so much fun, that it’s over before it’s begun.

The order of the first two songs was switched for the second show of the night, and for all subsequent dates in the tour. At the end of the evening the stage announcer told the audience that The Beatles would not return to the stage, and a potted delphinium was thrown in protest.

As the tour progressed, occasionally ‘Twist And Shout’ replaced Long Tall Sally as the closer.

[John Lennon] drank in excess. In Denmark, for example, his head was a balloon! He had drunk so much the night before, he was on stage sweating like a pig.

At the Royal Hotel after the second show The Beatles were treated to smørrebrødsseddel – Danish sandwiches. Paul McCartney also sent Ringo a telegram which read: “Didn’t think we could miss you so much. Get well soon.”

Paul McCartney and Wings performed at the KB Hallen during the Wings Over Europe Tour on 1 August 1972 .

Also on this day...

  • 2022: Paul McCartney live: JMA Wireless Dome, Syracuse
  • 2022: Ringo Starr live: Bank of New Hampshire Pavilion, Gilford, New Hampshire
  • 2012: Paul McCartney live: the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee concert, London
  • 2012: The Beatles named as UK’s biggest-selling singles act in Queen’s reign
  • 2007: UK album release: Memory Almost Full by Paul McCartney
  • 2004: Paul McCartney live: Zentralstadion, Leipzig
  • 2000: Ringo Starr and his All-Starr Band live: Chastain Park Amphitheater, Atlanta
  • 1993: Paul McCartney live: Silverdome, Pontiac
  • 1991: US album release: Unplugged (The Official Bootleg) by Paul McCartney
  • 1976: Wings live: Civic Center, Saint Paul
  • 1969: US single release: The Ballad Of John And Yoko
  • 1968: Recording, mixing: Revolution 1
  • 1967: McCartney and Harrison watch Jimi Hendrix in London
  • 1965: UK EP release: Beatles For Sale No 2
  • 1964: Recording, mixing, editing: Long Tall Sally, Matchbox, I Call Your Name, Slow Down, When I Get Home, Any Time At All, I’ll Cry Instead
  • 1963: The Beatles live: Town Hall, Birmingham
  • 1962: Rehearsal: Cavern Club, Liverpool
  • 1961: The Beatles live: Top Ten Club, Hamburg
  • 1960: The Silver Beetles live: Grosvenor Ballroom, Wallasey

Want more? Visit the Beatles history section .

Latest Comments

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Bill Corbett who was the Beatles chauffeur was my Grandfather. As a child I remember vividly being given one of the black capes worn by the one of the Beatles in a hard days night or help – the scene with the skis…. He had a series of articles published in a sunday newspaper entitled ‘my life with the beatles.’ However, the one of the most treasured pieces of memoribillia never to found when my mother moved from her house in Richmond – was a series of hand written poems John lennon gave to my grandfather – if only we still had them…

I recall seeing them play live at when I was 4 years old and also travelled in the same car my granfather used to drive the guys about.

The only 2 who stayed in tough were with him were John & George….who always sent xmas cards…

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That’s really fascinating to hear. Many thanks for sharing with us, Andrew. They sound like great memories.

The ski scene where The Beatles were wearing capes was in Help!. Search for ticket to ride on YouTube and you’ll find the footage. What a shame the capes and poems aren’t still with you!

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I am treasurer of the British Beatles Fan Club and we have had an enquiry regarding the Sunday Newspaper articles by your grandfather.

Do you know which Sunday paper it was?

Best wishes

Ernie Treasurer British Beatles Fan club

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The Sunday People. He was my grandfather too.

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I always thought that the Beatles touring of 1966 was classified as a world or global tour. After all, they performed concerts in Europe, Asia and North America.

They did, but for some reason they were always considered two separate tours. There was the tour of Germany, Japan and the Philippines in June and July 1966, and then a final US tour in August.

I don’t know why it was never classed as one world tour at the time. Possibly it’s because The Beatles returned to the UK for more than a month before heading for the US.

However, the 1964 ‘world tour’ only took in Denmark, the Netherlands, Hong Kong, Australia and New Zealand, in less than one month, so it was hardly extensive.

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The Bill Corbett Memories were translated also in Italian. I got them (but written in Italian of course) It was on the year 1966. Regards.

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My uncle was the driver from Copenhagen Airport. There they signed autographs for the him in a speciel book. That book I have today :-). Maybe there is som money here….Brita Abel. Denmark.

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At the first concert in Copenhagen The Beatles did NOT finish playing “Long Tall Sally” since the danish warm-up-band, The Hitmakers was asked do play an unexpected extra number – and chose to play “Long Tall Sally”. The Beatles kindly asked The Hitmakers NOT to play the song at the next show (The entire gig was played at 18.00 and 21.15)! Therefore The Beatles only (at the first concert) played: 1: I Saw Her Standing There 2: I Want To Hold Your Hand 3: All My Loving 4: She Loves You 5: Till There Was You 6: Roll Over Beethoven 7: Can´t Buy Me Love 8: This Boy 9: Twist And Shout

And at the second concert, The Beatles also played: 10: Long Tall Sally.

Notice: “You Can´T Do That” Was NOT played during the two concerts played June 4.th 1964 in Denmark!

Thanks for the info Thies – very helpful. I’ve amended the article.

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“The order of the first two songs was switched for the second show of the night, and for all subsequent dates in the tour.”: shouldn´t it be the other way around, as I saw her standing there stayed as the opener for the other gigs on the tour. I recall from years ago hearing a terrible recording of the show with I want to hold your hand as the opener, and no Long tall Sally at the end. But all I can find now is a recording with Standing there first and no Sally at the end. Ah, confusion!

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I WAS AT THE SECOND CONCERT WHEN THE VASE BROKE !IT WAS 12 O’CLOCK AN THE SUN WAS OUT !

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i have a silver mermaid with an engraving ” To Ringo 2nd may 1966 . i think the initials are E M T Denmark. I am wondering if this could be connected to Ringo Star??? Anyone know anything of this???

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In the narrative above, it says: “The Beatles were treated to a local delicacy, smorrebrodsseddel, a type of jam sandwich.” The Danish word “smørrebrødsseddel” does not mean “a type of jam sandwich”. It means a sandwich menu or a list of sandwiches in a restaurant. Danish open-faced sandwiches are famous for the many fancy and delicious varieties available.

Thank you Arne, and sorry for getting it wrong!

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The Beatles' 1964 world tour

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The Beatles 1964 world tour

The Beatles 1964 world tour was the Beatles' first world tour, launched after their 1964 UK tour. The reception was enthusiastic, with The Spectator describing it as "hysterical". It was followed by their subsequent North American tour in August that year.

Tour history [ ]

The jimmie nicol replacement [ ].

On the morning of 3 June 1964, the day before setting off on a world tour, Ringo Starr fell ill during a photo session. He fainted and was taken to hospital with a strong fever. He was diagnosed with severe tonsillitis, and hospitalized for a few days in London.

The Beatles, especially George Harrison, wanted to postpone the tour, but then the manager Brian Epstein and the producer George Martin after a frantic phone call decided to use drummer Jimmie Nicol to temporarily replace Starr.

When the Beatles asked Nicol during rehearsals how he was doing, his answer was always "It's getting better". The phrase was later used in "Getting Better", a song from the 1967 album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band . Years later he confessed that he would have done it for free, but Epstein offered him £2,500 per performance and a £2,500 bonus. "I couldn't sleep that night, I was one of the fucking Beatles!" he said in a 1988 interview.

The next day, 4 June 1964, there was a show in Copenhagen, Denmark and with the Beatles he did more shows, until Starr, recovered, joined the group in Melbourne, Australia, on 14 June.

Nicol, with a very shy character, was unable to say goodbye to the group and left at night while they were sleeping. At the airport, Brian Epstein handed him £500 and a gold watch with the inscription "From The Beatles and Brian Epstein to Jimmie - with appreciation and gratitude". On the return journey on the plane he was very sad, he felt "like a bastard child rejected by his new family".

Typical set list [ ]

The typical set list for the shows was as follows (with lead singers noted):

  • "I Saw Her Standing There" (Paul McCartney)
  • "I Want To Hold Your Hand" (John Lennon and Paul McCartney) or You Can't Do That" (John Lennon)
  • "All My Loving" (Paul McCartney)
  • "She Loves You" (John Lennon, Paul McCartney and George Harrison)
  • "Till There Was You" (Paul McCartney)
  • "Roll Over Beethoven" (George Harrison)
  • "Can't Buy Me Love" (Paul McCartney)
  • "This Boy" (John Lennon, Paul McCartney and George Harrison)
  • "Twist and Shout" (John Lennon)
  • "Long Tall Sally" (Paul McCartney)
  • 1 Dot Rhone
  • 2 Jim McCartney
  • 3 The Long One

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The View from Inside Beatlemania

By Jill Lepore

A photo of Paul McCartney taking a photo of himself in the mirror.

On November 4, 1963, the Beatles played at the Prince of Wales Theatre, in London, exuberant, exhausted, and defiant. “For our last number, I’d like to ask your help,” John Lennon cried out to the crowd. “Would the people in the cheaper seats clap your hands? And the rest of you, if you’d just rattle your jewelry.” Two weeks later, the band made their first appearance on American television, on NBC’s “Huntley-Brinkley Report.” “The hottest musical group in Great Britain today is the Beatles,” the reporter Edwin Newman said. “That’s not a collection of insects but a quartet of young men with pudding-bowl haircuts.” And, four days after that, “CBS Morning News with Mike Wallace” broadcast a four-minute report from “Beatleland,” by the London correspondent Alexander Kendrick. “The Beatles are said by sociologists to have a deeper meaning,” Kendrick reported. “Some say they are the authentic voice of the proletariat.” Everyone searched for that deeper meaning. The Beatles found it hard to take the search seriously.

“What has occurred to you as to why you’ve succeeded?” Kendrick asked Paul McCartney .

“Oh, I dunno,” he answered. “The haircuts?”

Kendrick’s report had been set to air again that night, on “CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite.” The rerun was cancelled. The sixties started in 1964, observers like to say, and 1964 started that afternoon, November 22, 1963, when Cronkite broke into “As the World Turns.” “In Dallas, Texas, three shots were fired at President Kennedy’s motorcade,” Cronkite said, his voice grave and urgent. You couldn’t see Cronkite; the news had just come in on the wire service, and onscreen was a slide that read, “ CBS NEWS BULLETIN .” Minutes later, with the cameras finally on, Cronkite appeared in shirtsleeves, spruce but shaken. “If you can zoom in with that camera, we can get a closer look at this picture,” he told a cameraman, holding up a photograph of the motorcade taken moments before the shooting. At 2:38 P.M. , Cronkite looked up at the clock, and announced that the President had died.

“We were backstage somewhere on a little tour in England when we heard the news,” McCartney told me last year. We were in his office in New York; McCartney, eighty, wore jeans and a pullover, slouching in his chair like a teen-ager. More pensive than wistful, he remembered that day, how it was surreal, unreal, but, then, everything about that year was surreal. Two days after Kennedy was killed, Jack Ruby shot Lee Harvey Oswald on live television. In 1964, you could hold your camera up to the world. But what madness—what beauty, joy, and fury—would you capture?

In 1964, the Beatles became the first truly global mass-culture phenomenon. As the historian Sam Lebovic has pointed out, they’d been shaped by a wide, wide world. They wore Italian suits and Cuban-heeled boots and French haircuts popular with German students. They played nineteen-twenties British music-hall music, and rhythm and blues, and Black roots music from the banks of the Mississippi and the streets of Detroit. It’s even in the name: “the Beatles” is a mashup of the name of Buddy Holly’s band, the Crickets, and the Beat poets, a label that came from Black slang. Beatles records played on radio stations from Tokyo to Johannesburg. By the time they broke out, the sun had set on the British Empire, but the age of globalization had begun. And something more, too, was catching fire: an unsettling, an upheaval, revolutionary. Time , writing about the Beatles, called it “the New Madness.”

Partly it was the magnificent irreverence, the affectionate cheekiness, the surprisingly soft sexiness. The band’s interviews became a signature, four very clever young men batting back reporters’ endlessly idiotic questions, a patter only barely fictionalized in the 1964 film “ A Hard Day’s Night ”:

REPORTER : Tell me, how did you find America? LENNON : Turn left at Greenland. REPORTER : Has success changed your life? McCARTNEY : Yes. REPORTER : What would you call that hair style you’re wearing? HARRISON : Arthur.

Asked, preposterously, to explain their own significance, they made fun of the question. Still, McCartney tried to capture some of that New Madness through the lens of a camera. In 1963, each of the Beatles had been given a Pentax. It helped them cope with the stress of being photographed constantly, and with the worry that they were about to travel to a country where they expected, like Kennedy himself, to be greeted by frenzied crowds and hordes of photographers and exposed to possible gunmen. From 1963 to early 1964, McCartney shot dozens of rolls of film, as the band travelled from Liverpool and London and Paris to New York, Washington, and Miami. Somehow, hundreds of his photographs were saved, and then rediscovered, in 2020, in his archives. The images, which will soon be the subject of an exhibit at the National Portrait Gallery, in London, are a glimpse of Beatleland from the inside. Everyone was looking at the band in 1964. What did the Beatles see?

A photo taken by Paul McCartney of the marquee at the Olympia Theatre.

The New Madness started in Liverpool, where Lennon and McCartney had been playing together since 1957. “We were from the North of England, which was nowhere to a lot of people,” McCartney said. The dark and gritty, war-wearied, working-class North had lately become the subject of a certain fascination. “Coronation Street,” a kitchen-sink soap opera set in Manchester, had débuted, in 1960. But the Beatles became the embodiment of the North, the sound of it. It wasn’t just their music or their accents; it was their wit, which was a little Flanders and Swann, a little “Goon Show,” and a lot Liverpool.

REPORTER : Why do you wear all those rings on your fingers? STARR : Because I can’t get them through my nose.

By 1963, the New York Times was reporting on a development in the U.K. that had been dubbed “Beatlemania”: writhing crowds of young people screaming, shrieking, bursting, blooming, and wilting, like fields of flowers. “By comparison, Elvis Presley is an Edwardian tenor of considerable diffidence,” the reporter Frederick Lewis wrote. The Beatles could claim to be “spokesmen for the new, noisy, anti-Establishment generation.”

The members were born in the hard, rationed, and air-raid-sheltered years of the war: Lennon and Ringo Starr in 1940, McCartney in 1942, George Harrison in 1943. Early on, as the Quarry Men, some of them wore bootlace ties and greased their hair, like other swaggering British boys who called themselves Teddy Boys or, later, Mods and Rockers. In 1960, they shed that look when they left Liverpool for Hamburg, another port city, where they hung out with students and artists and writers from all over the world, everyone groping for the latest ideas, the newest thing, the moment. Even in dingy basement pubs, they played for what was, essentially, an international audience. “It was handy them being foreign,” Lennon said. “We had to try even harder, put our heart and soul into it.” They played till they dropped, and when they dropped they soaked it all up: art-student chic, beret-wearing existentialism, red-light-district bawdyism, German-pub rowdyism. “I grew up in Hamburg,” Lennon said. “We were forced grown, like rhubarb,” Harrison added. They were cultivated in the soil of a postwar, transnational youth movement, aching, yearning, and angry.

REPORTER : Are you a Mod or a Rocker? STARR : No, I’m a Mocker.

The Beatles first appeared on the radio in 1962, on a BBC show called “Teenagers Turn—Here We Go.” Teen-agers could seem tamer in Britain than in America, less anguished, less adversarial. (“America had teenagers but everywhere else just had people,” Lennon pointed out.) British teens were far more likely to work after high school; among the Beatles, only Lennon had gone to college, at the Liverpool College of Art. Unlike previous generations, they weren’t obligated to military service: conscription had ended in 1960. When a reporter asked, “If there had been National Service in England, would the Beatles have existed?” Starr answered no.

REPORTER : Where do you gentlemen stand as far as the draft is concerned in England? LENNON : About five-eleven. STARR : It comes from the door over there.

Freed from the duty of fighting for the Empire, they fought against the establishment, and on behalf of a sexual awakening. In 1960, Penguin had published the long-banned D. H. Lawrence novel “ Lady Chatterley’s Lover ,” after a U.S. court declared that the book wasn’t obscene. The pill was sold in the U.K. starting in 1961; two years later, the Beatles released the single “Please Please Me,” along with the eponymous album. Philip Larkin celebrated the occasion in his poem “Annus Mirabilis”:

Sexual intercourse began In nineteen sixty-three (Which was rather late for me) — Between the end of the Chatterley ban And the Beatles’ first LP.

By June, the band had their own radio show, “Pop Go the Beatles.” They were iconic, inescapable, unable to escape. “We don’t have a private life anymore,” Harrison complained. You can see the walls closing in on them in McCartney’s photographs. Rooftops, car windows, hotel rooms. But not everything was closing. In London, McCartney told me, “the world opened up,” especially at the Establishment, an anti-establishment comedy club opened, in 1961, by the satirist Peter Cook. The club was in Soho, and lifetime members were reportedly presented with a portrait of Harold Macmillan, the Conservative Prime Minister. Macmillan, then sixty-seven, with a walrus mustache, was the last Prime Minister born during the reign of Queen Victoria, his term the end of an era. “All my policies at home and abroad are in ruins,” he wrote in his diary, in January, 1963. Months later, his administration was tarnished by a scandal involving his war secretary, John Profumo, who had been having an affair with Christine Keeler, a showgirl who was also sleeping with a Soviet naval attaché. After Profumo stepped down, a rocker named Screaming Lord Sutch, twenty-two, ran for his seat in Parliament, as a candidate of the National Teenage Party. Macmillan eventually resigned. The Daily Mirror’s front page shrieked, “ WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON IN THIS COUNTRY? ”

A photo taken by Paul McCartney of the photographer Harry Benson who is standing in front of a car.

Whatever was going on was going on all over the place. On December 10, 1963, Walter Cronkite decided to finally broadcast Alexander Kendrick’s report from Beatleland.

REPORTER : Have you ever heard of Walter Cronkite? McCARTNEY : Nope. HARRISON : Yeah. News. LENNON : Good old Walter! NBC News, isn’t he? Yeah, we know him. See? You don’t catch me!

The Beatles had released three singles in the United States; none had broken out. But, on December 26th, their fourth, “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” blasted off like an Apollo rocket. Bob Dylan heard the song on the radio while driving in California. “Fuck!” he said. “Man, that was fuckin’ great. Oh, man—fuck!”

A photo taken by Paul McCartney of a large crowd of people welcoming the Beatles.

The band spent much of January in Paris, performing at the Olympia Theatre. McCartney photographed the marquee: “Les Beatles.” He and Lennon had been to France before, in 1961, to celebrate Lennon’s twenty-first birthday, and had even been to the Olympia, to see the Elvis-influenced French singer Johnny Hallyday . “Everybody went wild, and many was the stamping + cheering in the aisles, and dancing, too,” McCartney wrote in a letter home. Hallyday, born and raised in Paris, pretended that he had grown up in Texas. He was learning to ride a horse. Lennon and McCartney were going in the other direction: it was on that trip that they’d got their artsy haircuts, courtesy of Jürgen Vollmer, a friend from Hamburg. They were making themselves European, not American.

“Everyone dressed up but nothing changed,” Lennon would later say, of the sixties. But, if that applied to culture, it didn’t apply to politics. Even as Johnny Hallyday was offering Parisian teens a French imitation of a white American Southerner’s adaptation of Black American music, civil-rights activists were fighting to dismantle segregation, and independence movements were shifting the balance of power between the Global North and the Global South. In France, Charles de Gaulle, elected President in 1958, fought for a “Free Europe,” independent of American or Soviet influence. France, like Britain, was reckoning with the legacy of its long century of imperial rule. “The final hour of colonialism has struck,” Che Guevara would declare in a speech to the United Nations, in 1964. Millions who rose up were struck down, killed in fighting, crowded into camps and slaughtered. Nelson Mandela and nine other leaders of the African National Congress were put on trial in South Africa, charged with sabotage. “I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony,” Mandela declared from the defendants’ dock, in 1964. “It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.” He was sentenced to life in prison. In 1962, when the United States waged a counter-insurgency war in Vietnam, and Britain had only lately pulled back from its staggeringly brutal campaign to suppress the Mau Mau independence movement in Kenya, de Gaulle agreed to Algerian independence. That August, assassins tried to kill him. The day after the assailants were executed by a firing squad, the Beatles were taping a radio show. The day after that, in Texas, Lee Harvey Oswald ordered a rifle.

Back in Paris, one of the Beatles’ performances was disrupted by a fistfight between photographers and management, and the Olympia had to be ringed by gendarmes. Around that time, they listened to Dylan’s second album, “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan”; after one show, they got a telegram saying that “I Want to Hold Your Hand” had reached the top of the Cash Box chart in America. (It soon topped Billboard .) Capitol Records printed five million stickers featuring four sets of Beatles hair—no faces—and the promise “The BEATLES are coming!” They came on February 7th, flying into an airport named after the dead American President.

A photo taken by Paul McCartney of the Beatles rehearsing and playing musical instruments.

“The British Invasion this time goes by the code name Beatlemania,” Walter Cronkite announced. Thousands of fans, overwhelmingly girls, had gathered, frantic, at J.F.K. “What do you think your music does for these people?” one perplexed reporter asked during a press conference at the airport.

STARR : I don’t know. It pleases them, I think. Well, it must do, ’cause they’re buying it. REPORTER : Why does it excite them so much? McCARTNEY : We don’t know. Really. LENNON : If we knew, we’d form another group and be managers. REPORTER : What about all this talk that you represent some kind of social rebellion? LENNON : It’s a dirty lie. It’s a dirty lie.

They rode to the Plaza in a motorcade, under police escort. McCartney asked a radio station to play Marvin Gaye. Another crowd of thousands had gathered outside the hotel. “We want the Beatles!” they chanted, in scarves and mittens. “So this is America,” Starr said to himself. “They all seem out of their minds.”

McCartney pulled out his camera and took pictures from the plane and from the motorcade: jet engines, skyscrapers, girls in crowds, police in double-breasted dress blues, police on horseback, police in riot helmets, police, police, police. You could “find 200 or 300 of them . . . protecting the Beatles,” a witness later testified, during hearings on race riots, “whereas up in some of the denser areas of the West Side and Harlem, you can’t find a policeman at any time of day.”

REPORTER : Have you been out since you’ve been here? McCARTNEY : I dunno, with the police hanging around all the time.

A contact sheet of photographs of the Beatles that were taken by Paul McCartney.

One reporter called them “prisoners with room service.” Outside, the girls kept shrieking and fainting. Weren’t they the real prisoners? “What did it mean that young women were willing to violate police barricades, ignore police authority completely so that they could try to touch Ringo’s hair?” the feminist critic Susan Douglas asked. “It was kind of a collective jailbreak.”

Many have argued that the Beatles embodied feminism or, in any case, advanced it. (“The feminine side of society was represented by them in some way,” Yoko Ono once said.) Partly this was a product of their own femininity—their androgynous appearance, their tenderness, their songs’ endless lyrics about loving women, learning from women, the sympathy, the compassion:

Eleanor Rigby Picks up the rice in the church where a wedding has been Lives in a dream Waits at the window Wearing the face that she keeps in a jar by the door Who is it for?

A photo taken by Paul McCartney of George Harrison lounging poolside with a drink being handed to him.

Whether it came from Lennon and McCartney’s relationships with their mothers or from Brian Epstein, their manager, who was gay and had his own sense of the fluidity of gender, this quality would only grow, sometimes appearing as a throaty neediness, sometimes as a solemn, wistful longing. And then there was the ecstasy of listening to it, the sexual release—“Close your eyes and I’ll kiss you / Tomorrow I’ll miss you”—or, for the very lucky, the almost unbearable excitement of getting a glimpse of the Beatles themselves, each frenzy taken as yet another symptom of the New Madness. “The cause of this malady is obscure,” David Dempsey insisted, in the Times . He suggested, on the one hand, that these girls were desperate—“homely,” “lonesome,” “ill at ease in social situations”—and, on the other, that both they and the band were somehow threateningly, mysteriously racialized: that the screaming was an expression of primitivism, the music full of “jungle rhythms,” the dancing “instinctively aboriginal.”

Meanwhile, on a planet more closely tied together than ever before, outbreaks of the madness were also attributed to the corroding influence of the West. Between 1962 and 1964, when Beatlemania was spreading to Paris and New York, dozens of teen-age girls in a rural boarding school in Tanganyika, East Africa, began laughing and crying, uncontrollably, and couldn’t stop. They were sent home, but that only seemed to spread the affliction. The epidemic affected more than a thousand people and spurred months of investigation. Experts offered the diagnosis of “mass hysteria,” possibly caused by the strain of modernity itself.

REPORTER : What do you think about all the psychologists that are giving . . . HARRISON : Oh . . . rubbish. REPORTER : . . . all these heavy, heavy definitions of what it all means? HARRISON : A load of rubbish. LENNON : They’ve got nothing else to do, them fellas.

Mass hysteria: you might see it in schoolgirls “after a rock ’n roll concert,” one doctor wrote, analyzing the outbreaks in the light of Beatlemania. Whichever way you looked, women were getting unruly.

On February 9, 1964, the Beatles went on “The Ed Sullivan Show,” spry in suits and ties. “I Want to Hold Your Hand” was still the nation’s No. 1 single. Seventy-three million people tuned in, the largest audience in television history. The band played two short, mind-blowing sets. And then Sullivan, hair slicked back, looking something like a vampire, thanked the New York Police Department for handling the unprecedented crowds outside the theatre. It had been a near-riot. A jailbreak.

I asked McCartney why the girls screamed. He leaned back in his chair and smiled. That smile. “Can you blame them?”

“It’s like I’m running for President, innit?” McCartney said two days after “Sullivan,” as fans asked him for an autograph.

It was an election year. “There is a stir in the land,” the Republican senator Barry Goldwater , from Arizona, would declare. “There is a mood of uneasiness. We feel adrift in an uncharted and stormy sea. We feel we have lost our way.” The Texan Lyndon B. Johnson, who’d replaced Kennedy, was running as the Democratic nominee.

REPORTER : What do you think of President Johnson? STARR and LENNON : Never met him. LENNON : [ Comically, to Starr ] Oh, we’re thinking alike! McCARTNEY : We haven’t met him. STARR : We don’t know. We’ve never met the man. . . . [ Pauses .] Does he buy our records?

Johnson had pledged to pass a proposed civil-rights bill. “No memorial oration or eulogy could more eloquently honor President Kennedy’s memory than the earliest possible passage of the civil-rights bill for which he fought so long,” he told a joint session of Congress. The day after the Beatles appeared on “Ed Sullivan,” the bill passed the House.

The band had planned to fly to Washington, but a snowstorm forced them to take the train instead. McCartney took some of his best photographs on the trip. One image, from a Pennsylvania train station, shows two Black men taking a break from shovelling snow; in another, a Black worker strokes his chin on a station platform, a cargo car hulking behind him. In England, McCartney said, he’d seen scenes of civil-rights protests, the footage at Little Rock, “the two Black girls going into the school and the baying mob.” Now the more the band saw of America, the more they saw segregation. “It was, like, ‘God, is that really true?’ ” McCartney said.

In Washington, he took pictures of the Capitol, where Southern senators were plotting to stop the civil-rights bill. Their filibuster would last sixty days, and both Martin Luther King, Jr. , and Malcolm X travelled to Washington to watch, the only time the men met. “Since the liberal element of whites claim that they are for civil-rights legislation, I have come down today to see, are they really for it, or is this just some more political chicanery,” Malcolm X told a reporter.

A photo taken by Paul McCartney of an armed officer in Miami.

Brian Epstein had warned the Beatles never to discuss politics in public; it would narrow their appeal. But there was no real way to avoid the questions of race and racial justice. The band knew that they’d brought something old, something American, back to America. “We used to laugh at America except for its music,” Lennon said. “It was Black music we dug.” That prompted some resentment—“We don’t have to wait for the Beatles to legitimize our culture,” Stokely Carmichael fumed—but the group had legions of Black fans. “They were so fresh and irreverent,” Julian Bond, one of the founders of the SNCC , said. In a cover story, Time wrote that “the Beatles made it all right to be white,” but civil-rights leaders embraced them as champions of the cause. Internally, SNCC leaders wrote about how a New York fund-raiser would be more successful if “James Brown or the Beatles could be added” to the bill.

In the spring of 1964, as the filibuster wore on, Johnson announced a new agenda. His Administration would not only wage a War on Poverty and secure passage of the Civil Rights Act but would work to produce a Great Society, “a place where the city of man serves not only the needs of the body and the demands of commerce but the desire for beauty and the hunger for community.”

You know I work all day To get you money to buy you things And it’s worth it just to hear you say You’re gonna give me everything So why on earth should I moan

The desire for beauty and the hunger for community after a hard day’s night. How mad was that?

On February 13, 1964, the Beatles flew to Miami. They spent a week swimming, fishing, waterskiing. McCartney shot in color: seagulls and surf, girls in bikinis, Harrison shirtless, Starr in sunglasses, an advertising sign dragged along by a single-engine plane cutting through a cloudless blue sky: “ THERE IS ONLY ONE MISTER PANTS .”

On February 16th, the Beatles appeared again on “The Ed Sullivan Show,” live from their Miami Beach hotel. “Here are four of the nicest youngsters we’ve ever had on our stage,” Sullivan said, waving them on. Miami was bracing for one of the greatest sports events of all time, the first boxing match between the heavyweight champion Sonny Liston and the rising star Cassius Clay. The Beatles were driven in a limousine to be photographed with Liston, the overwhelming favorite. According to the sportswriter Robert Lipsyte, Liston “took one look at these four little boys and he said, ‘I ain’t posing with them sissies.’ ” So they went to see Clay, who said, “Come on, Beatles, let’s go make some money!” In a series of famous photographs, Clay, in boxing shorts and gloves, punches a row of Beatles, who fall like dominoes, then stands over them. After the band left, Lipsyte recalled, “Clay goes back into that dressing room to get his rubdown. He beckons me over and he said, ‘So who were those little sissies?’ ” Days later, Clay defeated Liston, avowed his conversion to the Nation of Islam, and took the name Muhammad Ali.

REPORTER : How long will you be in America? LENNON : Till we go.

The Beatles flew to London on February 21st, their first American tour wrapped. But their rise had only just begun. By April 4th, their songs occupied the Top Five spots on the Billboard singles chart. In June, they set out again, on their first world tour, which would take them from Denmark to Hong Kong and Australia. Back in the States, the Democratic senator Hubert Humphrey made a speech in the Senate, hoping to end the filibuster: “I say to my colleagues of the Senate that perhaps in your lives you will be able to tell your children’s children that you were here for America to make the year 1964 our freedom year.” The bill finally passed on June 19th. Two days later, three civil-rights workers—James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner—were killed by Klansmen in Mississippi. They’d been trying to register Black voters, part of a campaign called the Freedom Summer. But the season would become, instead, the first of four “long, hot summers” of racial-justice uprisings, following grisly instances of police brutality, the first occurring in Harlem, in July, only weeks after Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act.

That month, the Republican National Convention met in the Cow Palace, in San Francisco. Goldwater had accepted the nomination, denouncing moderation and inaugurating a new era in American politics: the rise of extreme conservatism. Outside, Beatles fans staged “Ringo for President” rallies.

REPORTER : Who do you like for President? McCARTNEY : Ringo—and Johnson’s second choice.

On August 18th, the band returned for a second American tour—thirty-two shows, in twenty-four cities, in thirty-four days. It started with a press conference in Los Angeles.

REPORTER : Ringo, how do you feel about the ‘Ringo for President’ campaign? STARR : Well, it’s rather . . . it’s marvellous! REPORTER : Assuming you were President of the United States, would you make any political promises? STARR : I don’t know, you know. I’m not sort of politically minded. LENNON : Aren’t you? STARR : No, John. Believe me. . . . REPORTER : Ringo, would you nominate the others as part of your cabinet? STARR : Well, I’d have to. . . . Wouldn’t I? HARR?ISON : I could be the door. STARR : I’d have George as treasurer. LENNON : I could be the cupboard!

The next night, the Beatles opened in San Francisco, where they played at the Cow Palace, amid the shadows of Goldwater.

REPORTER : I want to ask the Beatles what they think of Barry Goldwater. McCARTNEY : Boo! [ Shows thumbs down .] [ The crowd cheers. ] McCARTNEY : [ Through the crowd noise ] I don’t like him. . . . I don’t like him . . . unquote!

Johnson accepted the Democratic nomination on August 27th. The following day, in New York, in a room at the Delmonico hotel, the Beatles finally met Bob Dylan, an encounter most often presented as their first introduction to marijuana. Dylan got so high that he kept answering the phone by hollering, “This is Beatlemania here!”

A photo taken by Paul McCartney of clouds shot from an airplane.

The New Madness kept spreading. In September, when what became the Free Speech Movement began at the University of California, Berkeley, the Beatles were playing in Pittsburgh. “You’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop,” the Berkeley student Mario Savio declared. The Beatles were hitting the limits of their own speech. They were scheduled to play one of their first big-venue concerts in the Jim Crow South, in Jacksonville, Florida, on September 11th. On August 26th, they were asked about the hotel they were slated to stay in.

REPORTER : George, I understand that from here you’re going, later on next month, down South. I understand you’re pretty against the segregation down there, and we understood there were some problems about the hotel you might stay in in Jacksonville. HARRISON : We don’t know about our accommodations at all. We don’t arrange that. But, you know, we don’t appear anywhere where there is.

Their contracts, at this point, included a non-segregation clause—though, technically, any segregated concert would have violated the new Civil Rights Act. “Segregation is a lot of rubbish,” Starr said. McCartney continued to be shocked by America. “Off in the woods somewhere, there would be these Nazis, and you’d go, ‘Oh, fucking hell, they’re loonies these Americans,’ ” he told me. “You knew about the Ku Klux Klan, you’d heard all that history about the lynchings and stuff. But you thought it was all over. You thought it was all better.” And then you found out it wasn’t all better.

They ended their American tour on September 20th, in New York. They would chase it with another tour of the U.K. in October, when the British elections were held. The night before the vote, Brian Epstein sent a telegram to the Labour Party leader Harold Wilson: “Hope your group is as much a success as mine.” On Election Day, the band were once again in Stockton-on-Tees, the town they’d been in the night J.F.K. was shot. They sat for an interview.

REPORTER : I think Paul has aspirations to become Prime Minister. Have you still got those ideas? McCARTNEY : No.

Labour won, and Wilson, forty-eight, became the new Prime Minister. He promised to create a “New Britain.” The next month, Americans voted, in a landslide, for Johnson and his Great Society. As the reporter Jon Margolis has noted, “the nationwide triumph of political liberalism” that occurred on November 3, 1964, was the last of its kind: “Within it lay the seeds of conservative ascendancy.” But you couldn’t see that, not yet.

A photo taken by Paul McCartney of a large group of people at a press conference.

Maybe the most powerful photograph Paul McCartney took in 1964, and certainly the saddest, is a closeup of a policeman in Miami, on a motorcycle, a handgun and six bullets at his hip. Malcolm X was shot to death in 1965, followed by Martin Luther King, Jr., in 1968. That year, McCartney wrote “Blackbird,” a quiet anthem about the civil-rights struggle:

Blackbird singing in the dead of night Take these broken wings and learn to fly All your life You were only waiting for this moment to arise

A great upheaval, a new madness, a counterculture, a revolution. The Beatles changed the world in 1964, and the world changed them, and it spun and unravelled and ravelled, and the music thrummed and stirred hearts, and rockets flew to space, and the oceans rose, and the protesters marched and cried, and the girls screamed and screamed and screamed. Everyone dressed up—in Cuban-heeled boots and Italian suits. And then came a counter-revolution, and a descent into political violence.

Don’t you know it’s gonna be All right? Don’t you know it’s gonna be (all right) Don’t you know it’s gonna be (all right)

Maybe it is. Maybe it was. Maybe it will be, if we hold on to the ecstasy, forsaking the fury. ♦

A photo taken by Paul McCartney of John Lennon drying himself off with a white towel near a body of water.

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The Beatles' 1964 world tour

The Beatles 1964 world tour was the Beatles ' first world tour, launched after their 1964 UK tour . The reception was enthusiastic, with The Spectator describing it as "hysterical". It was followed by their subsequent North American tour in August that year.

Tour history

The jimmie nicol replacement, typical set list, external links.

On the morning of 3 June 1964, the day before setting off on a world tour, Ringo Starr fell ill during a photo session. He fainted and was taken to hospital with a strong fever. He was diagnosed with severe tonsillitis, and hospitalized for a few days in London. [1]

The Beatles, especially George Harrison, wanted to postpone the tour, but then the manager Brian Epstein and the producer George Martin after a frantic phone call decided to use drummer Jimmie Nicol to temporarily replace Starr. [ citation needed ]

When the Beatles asked Nicol during rehearsals how he was doing, his answer was always "It's getting better". The phrase was later used in "Getting Better", a song from the 1967 album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band . Years later he confessed that he would have done it for free, but Epstein offered him £2,500 per performance and a £2,500 bonus. "I couldn't sleep that night, I was one of the fucking Beatles!" he said in a 1988 interview. [ citation needed ]

The next day, 4 June 1964, there was a show in Copenhagen , Denmark and with the Beatles he did more shows, until Starr, recovered, joined the group in Melbourne, Australia, on 14 June. [ citation needed ]

Nicol, with a very shy character, was unable to say goodbye to the group and left at night while they were sleeping. At the airport, Brian Epstein handed him £500 and a gold watch with the inscription "From The Beatles and Brian Epstein to Jimmie - with appreciation and gratitude". On the return journey on the plane he was very sad, he felt "like a bastard child rejected by his new family". [2]

The typical set list for the shows was as follows (with lead singers noted):

  • " I Saw Her Standing There " ( Paul McCartney )
  • " I Want To Hold Your Hand " ( John Lennon ) and (Paul McCartney) or You Can't Do That " ( John Lennon ) [5]
  • " All My Loving " (Paul McCartney)
  • " She Loves You " (John Lennon, Paul McCartney and ( George Harrison )
  • " Till There Was You " (Paul McCartney)
  • " Roll Over Beethoven " (George Harrison)
  • " Can't Buy Me Love " (Paul McCartney)
  • " This Boy " (John Lennon, Paul McCartney and George Harrison)
  • " Twist and Shout " (John Lennon)
  • " Long Tall Sally " (Paul McCartney)
  • List of the Beatles' live performances
  • ↑ As Ringo Starr was hospitalized in the UK, Jimmie Nicol was temporarily hired to stand in for Ringo as a drummer for the shows from 4–13 June until Ringo rejoined the group in Melbourne.
  • ↑ Two shows were staged on this day.
  • The Beatles tour New Zealand. [6]

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The English rock group the Beatles toured the United States and Canada between 19 August and 20 September 1964. The 32 concerts comprised the second stage of a world tour that started with the band's tour of Europe, Hong Kong, and Australia and finished with their UK Autumn tour. The shows in the United States were a return to the country after their brief February 1964 tour.

  • ↑ "Het mysterieuze verhaal van Beatles-invaldrummer Jimmie Nicol" [ The mysterious story of Beatles substitute drummer Jimmie Nicol ] . 3voor12.vpro (in Dutch). 23 April 2014.
  • ↑ "The Beatles Bible - Television: Treslong, Hillegom, Netherlands" . 5 June 1964.
  • ↑ On 5 June 1964 VARA organized a Beatles concert in Café Restaurant Treslong in Hillegom as part of their three day visit to the Netherlands as part of their world tour, which got a television registration. On 8 June 1964 a complete summary of the Beatles' visit to the Netherlands was broadcast. The visualization of the three day visit showed: * arrival at Schiphol Airport – young women wearing Volendam folk costumes welcoming, offering tulips and traditional Dutch hats. * the concert at Treslong. * a roundtrip by boat through the canals of Amsterdam . The Beatles visiting the red light district De Wallen was not shown. * arrival at De Doelen Hotel in Amsterdam. * the concert at the Veilinghallen in Blokker . * Waving goodbye while entering an airplane at Schiphol Airport heading for the next destination Hongkong .
  • ↑ "The Beatles - You Can't do That [ Festival Hall, Melbourne, Australia ] " . YouTube .
  • ↑ "The Beatles in New Zealand" . New Zealand Ministry for Culture and Heritage . Archived from the original on 12 March 2008 . Retrieved 2 April 2008 .
  • The Spectator , Volume 213, 1964
  • Baker, Glenn A (1982). The Beatles Down Under: the 1964 Australia & New Zealand tour . Glebe, NSW Australia: Wild & Woolley .
  • Baker, Glenn A (1985). The Beatles Down Under: the 1964 Australia & New Zealand tour (2   ed.). Ann Arbour, Michigan, USA: Pierian Press. ISBN   0-87650-186-2 .
  • Hutchins, Graham (2004). Eight Days a Week:the Beatles' tour of New Zealand 1964 . Auckland, NZ: Exisle. ISBN   0-908988-55-9 .
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For the Beatles-obsessed, here are 3 never-before-seen photos from 1964

Washington, DC - May 03, 2016: Stephen Thompson CREDIT: Matt Roth

Stephen Thompson

beatles first world tour

"The crowds chasing us in A Hard Day's Night were based on moments like this," McCartney writes. "Taken out of the back of our car on West Fifty-Eighth, crossing the Avenue of the Americas." Paul McCartney/1964: Eyes of the Storm hide caption

"The crowds chasing us in A Hard Day's Night were based on moments like this," McCartney writes. "Taken out of the back of our car on West Fifty-Eighth, crossing the Avenue of the Americas."

When the Beatles embarked on the tour that helped launch the British Invasion in 1964, Paul McCartney had a 35mm camera on hand to help document the history-making mayhem. Now, more than half a century later, McCartney's never-before-seen photos from that tour are getting the coffee-table book treatment — as well as an exhibit at London's National Portrait Gallery .

Both collections will be titled 1964: Eyes of the Storm , both are due out in June and both will compile 275 photos taken as the band toured through Liverpool, London, Paris, New York, D.C. and Miami. McCartney himself wrote the book's foreword, as well as notes reflecting on the shots he took — which include portraits of bandmates John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr.

beatles first world tour

John Lennon and George Harrison, photographed in Paris in 1964. Paul McCartney/1964: Eyes of the Storm hide caption

John Lennon and George Harrison, photographed in Paris in 1964.

The archive's title alludes to the massive attention the band received, as Beatlemania took hold — as McCartney asks in his foreword, "What else can you call it [but] pandemonium?" — and the four musicians experienced life-changing upheaval. The three never-before-seen photos on this page capture not only that overwhelming change, but also moments of quiet contemplation.

beatles first world tour

Paul McCartney's self-portrait, taken in a mirror in Paris in 1964. Paul McCartney/1964: Eyes of the Storm hide caption

"Anyone who rediscovers a personal relic or family treasure is instantly flooded with memories and emotions, which then trigger associations buried in the haze of time," McCartney writes in 1964: Eyes of the Storm . "This was exactly my experience in seeing these photos, all taken over an intense three-month period of travel, culminating in February 1964. It was a wonderful sensation to be plunged right back. Here was my own record of our first huge trip, a photographic journal of The Beatles in six cities, beginning in Liverpool and London, followed by Paris (where John and I had been ordinary hitchhikers three years before), and then what we regarded as the big time, our first visit as a group to America."

The book 1964: Eyes of the Storm comes out June 13. McCartney's photos will be part of an exhibition at London's National Portrait Gallery running from June 28 to October 1.

  • The Beatles

Watch CBS News

The Beatles' record-breaking 1964 North American tour

January 28, 2014 / 4:23 PM EST / CBS News

This piece by guest author Chuck Gunderson is part of a series of essays to mark the 50th anniversary of the Beatles' first American television appearance on CBS's "The Ed Sullivan Show." It culminates with  CBS News, 50 Years Later...The Beatles at The Ed Sullivan Theater: Presented by Motown The Musical , a live, interactive multimedia event at The Ed Sullivan Theater on Feb. 9. 

Gunderson_Beatles_book_cover_hi_res-small.jpg

In February 1964, after finally achieving a number-one hit in America, the Fab Four came to the United States with high hopes, performing on the widely popular Ed Sullivan Show both in New York City and Miami Beach and playing concerts at Carnegie Hall and the Washington Coliseum.  In just 15 short days, the Beatles conquered America.

  • Complete coverage of The Beatles: 50 Years Later

All told, the first official tour of North America would have the group play a staggering 32 shows in 26 venues in 24 cities in just 33 days.  In the end they would walk away richer by $1 million -- in today's dollars, about $7.5 million. GAC's Weiss marveled, "In the more than 15 years that I have been in this business, I do not know of any attraction that has come close to this sort of money in so short a tour." 

Beatles' first live U.S. show

Elaborate plans were drawn up to transport the Fab Four to hotels and venues.  These included the use of ambulances, police paddy wagons, armored trucks, and, in one case an empty fish truck.  Hucksters as well as managers of fine hotels gathered up bed linens, pillowcases and even the carpet the Beatles walked on to be cut and sold off to fans that were eager to get their hands on anything the Beatles touched.

Perhaps no musical act before or since will ever rival the Beatles on their groundbreaking tour of 1964. John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr would not only leave an indelible impression on their fans in the United States and Canada, but also leave the continent with devotees hungering for more.   

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  • More on the Beatles from CBS Local
  • Win tickets to the live event at the Ed Sullivan Theater on Feb. 9

Chuck Gunderson is author of the upcoming book, “Some Fun Tonight,” an epic two-volume set on the history of the Beatles' North American tours of 1964 to 1966.

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The Beatles 1964 First Tour Of The United States – The Photos And The Mania

7th February 2014 marked 50 years since The Beatles first toured the United States. The band were a massive hit . On 9 February 1964 the Fab Four made their first live US television appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show . At  8 P.M, 73 million Americans saw John Paul, George and Ringo play.

On 11 February 1964 The Beatles’ performed in their first US concert, a show at Washington Coliseum, Washington, D.C. Next day, they performed at New York’s Carnegie Hall, New York. They squeezed in another performance on the Sullivan show before returning to the UK on 22 February 1964.

The Beatles leave London airport in 1964. From left: John Lennon, George Harrison, Ringo Starr and Paul McCartney. (AP Photo)

The Beatles leave London airport in 1964. From left: John Lennon, George Harrison, Ringo Starr and Paul McCartney. (AP Photo)

The Beatles leave London airport in 1964. From left: John Lennon, Ringo Starr, Paul McCartney and George Harrison. (AP Photo)

The Beatles leave London airport in 1964. From left: John Lennon, Ringo Starr, Paul McCartney and George Harrison. (AP Photo)

ARRIVING IN NEW YORK

Britain'’s Beatles make a windswept arrival in New York on Feb. 7, 1964, as they step down from the plane that brought them from London, at Kennedy airport. From left to right, Ringo Starr, John Lennon, Paul McCartney and George Harrison (AP Photo)

Britain’’s Beatles make a windswept arrival in New York on Feb. 7, 1964, as they step down from the plane that brought them from London, at Kennedy airport. From left to right, Ringo Starr, John Lennon, Paul McCartney and George Harrison (AP Photo)

The Beatles arrive at New York's Kennedy Airport Feb. 7, 1964 for their first U.S. appearance. From left are: John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and George Harrison. (AP Photo)

The Beatles arrive at New York’s Kennedy Airport Feb. 7, 1964 for their first U.S. appearance. From left are: John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and George Harrison. (AP Photo)

Police man the barricades outside New York'’s Plaza Hotel, on Feb. 7, 1964, as Beatle maniacs push forward in hopes of a view of Britain'’s singing sensations after their arrival for an American tour. (AP Photo)

Police man the barricades outside New York’’s Plaza Hotel, on Feb. 7, 1964, as Beatle maniacs push forward in hopes of a view of Britain’’s singing sensations after their arrival for an American tour. (AP Photo)

Police enforce the barricades outside New York's Plaza Hotel as fans push forward in hopes of a view of The Beatles after their arrival for an American tour on February 7, 1964. (AP Photo)

Police enforce the barricades outside New York’s Plaza Hotel as fans push forward in hopes of a view of The Beatles after their arrival for an American tour on February 7, 1964. (AP Photo)

The Beatles are shown during a news conference in Forest Hills, N.Y., Feb. 1964. (AP Photo)

The Beatles are shown during a news conference in Forest Hills, N.Y., Feb. 1964. (AP Photo)

The British rock and roll group The Beatles are seen during their first U.S. tour in 1964. The band members, from left to right, are George Harrison, John Lennon, Ringo Starr and Paul McCartney. (AP Photo)

The British rock and roll group The Beatles are seen during their first U.S. tour in 1964. The band members, from left to right, are George Harrison, John Lennon, Ringo Starr and Paul McCartney. (AP Photo)

The Beatles meet reporters at Kennedy Airport in New York City, Feb. 7, 1964 on their arrival from London for their first American tour. The band members, from left, are, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, George Harrison, and John Lennon. (AP Photo)

The Beatles meet reporters at Kennedy Airport in New York City, Feb. 7, 1964 on their arrival from London for their first American tour. The band members, from left, are, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, George Harrison, and John Lennon. (AP Photo)

The Beatles wave to fans assembled below their Plaza Hotel window after they arrived in New York City on Feb. 7, 1964 for a short tour of the United States. From left to right are, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, John Lennon, and George Harrison. (AP Photo)

The Beatles wave to fans assembled below their Plaza Hotel window after they arrived in New York City on Feb. 7, 1964 for a short tour of the United States. From left to right are, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, John Lennon, and George Harrison. (AP Photo)

The four members of Britain's young singing group, the Beatles, stand in front of the microphones in the press room of Kennedy International Airport today during press conference following their arrival, February 7, 1964. From left: John Lennon, George Harrison, Ringo Starr, Paul McCartney. (AP Photo)

The four members of Britain’s young singing group, the Beatles, stand in front of the microphones in the press room of Kennedy International Airport today during press conference following their arrival, February 7, 1964. From left: John Lennon, George Harrison, Ringo Starr, Paul McCartney. (AP Photo)

The Beatles face the media on arrival at the John F. Kennedy ariport in New York City. Feb. 7, 1964. The British rock and roll group was also greeted by a screaming crowd estimated at 5,000. (AP Photo/Charles Tasnadi)

The Beatles face the media on arrival at the John F. Kennedy ariport in New York City. Feb. 7, 1964. The British rock and roll group was also greeted by a screaming crowd estimated at 5,000. (AP Photo/Charles Tasnadi)

The Beatles walk around New York's Central Park, Feb. 10, 1964. From left: Paul McCartney, John Lennon and Ringo Starr. (AP Photo)

The Beatles walk around New York’s Central Park, Feb. 10, 1964. From left: Paul McCartney, John Lennon and Ringo Starr. (AP Photo)

Three members of the Beatles pose on a stack of rowboats in New York's Central Park, Feb. 10, 1964. From top: Ringo Starr, John Lennon and Paul McCartney. (AP Photo)

Three members of the Beatles pose on a stack of rowboats in New York’s Central Park, Feb. 10, 1964. From top: Ringo Starr, John Lennon and Paul McCartney. (AP Photo)

John Lennon, center, holds his forehead as 5-year-old Debbie Fyall, of London, England, sits on his shoulders, in New York, Central Park, USA, February 8, 1964. The other two members of the Beatles are Paul McCartney, left, and Ringo Starr, right. (AP Photo/The Beatles)

John Lennon, center, holds his forehead as 5-year-old Debbie Fyall, of London, England, sits on his shoulders, in New York, Central Park, USA, February 8, 1964. The other two members of the Beatles are Paul McCartney, left, and Ringo Starr, right. (AP Photo/The Beatles)

Three members of the Beatles pose on a stack of rowboats in New York's Central Park, Feb. 10, 1964. From top: Ringo Starr, John Lennon and Paul McCartney. (AP Photo)

ED SULLIVAN

Three of the four member of the British group the Beatles are shown with Ed Sullivan before their live television appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show in New York City, Feb. 10, 1964. From left are, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, partial view, George Harrison and Sullivan. (AP Photo)

Three of the four member of the British group the Beatles are shown with Ed Sullivan before their live television appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show in New York City, Feb. 10, 1964. From left are, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, partial view, George Harrison and Sullivan. (AP Photo)

American fans in New York react during the Beatles' concert on the "Ed Sullivan Show", Feb. 8, 1964. (AP Photo)

American fans in New York react during the Beatles’ concert on the “Ed Sullivan Show”, Feb. 8, 1964. (AP Photo)

The Beatles, minus an ailing George Harrison, perform on the "Ed Sullivan Show", Feb. 8, 1964. In front, left to right: Paul McCartney, Neil Aspinall (standing in for Harrison), and John Lennon. On drums is Ringo Starr. (AP Photo)

The Beatles, minus an ailing George Harrison, perform on the “Ed Sullivan Show”, Feb. 8, 1964. In front, left to right: Paul McCartney, Neil Aspinall (standing in for Harrison), and John Lennon. On drums is Ringo Starr. (AP Photo)

British rock band the Beatles are shown during rehearsals on the set of the "Ed Sullivan Show" in New York, Feb. 9, 1964. On drums is Ringo Starr, bassist is Paul McCartney, left, and guitarist is John Lennon. (AP Photo)

British rock band the Beatles are shown during rehearsals on the set of the “Ed Sullivan Show” in New York, Feb. 9, 1964. On drums is Ringo Starr, bassist is Paul McCartney, left, and guitarist is John Lennon. (AP Photo)

Paul McCartney, bassist for the Beatles, is shown on the set of the Ed Sullivan Show, Feb. 1964. (AP Photo)

Paul McCartney, bassist for the Beatles, is shown on the set of the Ed Sullivan Show, Feb. 1964. (AP Photo)

Ed Sullivan, center, stands with The Beatles during a rehearsal for the British group's first American appearance, on the "Ed Sullivan Show," in New York. Feb. 9th, 1964. From left: Ringo Starr, George Harrison, Sullivan, John Lennon and Paul McCartney. The rock 'n' roll band known as "The Fab Four" was seen by 70 million viewers. "Beatlemania" swept the charts with twenty No.1 hits and more than 100 million records sold. The Beatles broke up in 1970. (AP Photo)

Ed Sullivan, center, stands with The Beatles during a rehearsal for the British group’s first American appearance, on the “Ed Sullivan Show,” in New York. Feb. 9th, 1964. From left: Ringo Starr, George Harrison, Sullivan, John Lennon and Paul McCartney. The rock ‘n’ roll band known as “The Fab Four” was seen by 70 million viewers. “Beatlemania” swept the charts with twenty No.1 hits and more than 100 million records sold. The Beatles broke up in 1970. (AP Photo)

The Beatles perform on the CBS "Ed Sullivan Show" in New York, in this Feb. 9, 1964, file photo. From left, front, are Paul McCartney, George Harrison and John Lennon. Ringo Starr plays drums in the background. The Beatles' "Love" album is being released on Nov. 21, and is a thorough reinterpretation of their work. (AP Photo/FILE)

The Beatles perform on the CBS “Ed Sullivan Show” in New York, in this Feb. 9, 1964, file photo. From left, front, are Paul McCartney, George Harrison and John Lennon. Ringo Starr plays drums in the background. The Beatles’ “Love” album is being released on Nov. 21, and is a thorough reinterpretation of their work. (AP Photo/FILE)

WASHINGTON – AN ‘I WAS THERE’ MOMENT

The Beatles perform at the Coliseum in Washington, D.C., Feb. 12, 1964, during their first American tour. The British band members are, in foreground, Paul McCartney and John Lennon; Ringo Starr on drums; and George Harrison on guitar, far right. (AP Photo)

The Beatles perform at the Coliseum in Washington, D.C., Feb. 12, 1964, during their first American tour. The British band members are, in foreground, Paul McCartney and John Lennon; Ringo Starr on drums; and George Harrison on guitar, far right. (AP Photo)

Surrounded by amplifiers and treading jumping beans underfoot, the Beatles swing into their routine during a show at the Coliseum in Washington, Feb. 11, 1964. From left: lead guitarist George Harrison, bassist Paul McCartney, rhythm guitarist John Lennon, and drummer Ringo Starr. The beans were thrown by excited fans. (AP Photo)

Surrounded by amplifiers and treading jumping beans underfoot, the Beatles swing into their routine during a show at the Coliseum in Washington, Feb. 11, 1964. From left: lead guitarist George Harrison, bassist Paul McCartney, rhythm guitarist John Lennon, and drummer Ringo Starr. The beans were thrown by excited fans. (AP Photo)

DRINKS WITH THE KNOBS

The centre of attraction, four boys from Liverpool enjoy themselves as they attend a charity ball at the British Embassy, in Washington, on Feb. 11, 1964. They are the Beatles , from left: Ringo Starr, George Harrison, Paul McCartney and John Lennon, currently raising a storm on their first tour of the United States. (AP Photo)

The centre of attraction, four boys from Liverpool enjoy themselves as they attend a charity ball at the British Embassy, in Washington, on Feb. 11, 1964. They are the Beatles , from left: Ringo Starr, George Harrison, Paul McCartney and John Lennon, currently raising a storm on their first tour of the United States. (AP Photo)

NEW YORK GIG

Police security is on hand for the arrival of The Beatles as guitarist George Harrison leads the way from a taxi-cab to Carnegie Hall's stagedoor on W. 56th St. in New York City on Feb. 12, 1964 . About 2,000 fans are gathered outside the concert hall to catch a glimpse of the British rock and roll band on their first U.S. tour. (AP Photo)

Police security is on hand for the arrival of The Beatles as guitarist George Harrison leads the way from a taxi-cab to Carnegie Hall’s stagedoor on W. 56th St. in New York City on Feb. 12, 1964 . About 2,000 fans are gathered outside the concert hall to catch a glimpse of the British rock and roll band on their first U.S. tour. (AP Photo)

The Beatles, from left, Paul McCartney, John Lennon, Ringo Starr, and George Harrison, take a fake blow from Cassius Clay while visiting the heavyweight contender at his training camp in Miami Beach, Fla. Tuesday February 18,1964.

The Beatles, from left, Paul McCartney, John Lennon, Ringo Starr, and George Harrison, take a fake blow from Cassius Clay while visiting the heavyweight contender at his training camp in Miami Beach, Fla. Tuesday February 18,1964.

Boxer Cassius Clay lifts Ringo Starr, one of the Beatles into the air while the singers visited Clay's camp in Miami Beach, Fla. February, 18th, 1964. Others are, from left: Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and John Lennon. (AP Photo)

Boxer Cassius Clay lifts Ringo Starr, one of the Beatles into the air while the singers visited Clay’s camp in Miami Beach, Fla. February, 18th, 1964. Others are, from left: Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and John Lennon. (AP Photo)

Ringo Starr of The Beatles Rock group shown on the beach in Florida, February 15, 1964. (AP Photo)

Ringo Starr of The Beatles Rock group shown on the beach in Florida, February 15, 1964. (AP Photo)

Ringo Starr of The Beatles Rock group shown on the beach in Florida, February 15, 1964. (AP Photo)

WELCOME HOME

British pop group the Beatles wave as they arrive at London Airport, England, in 1964 after their successful U.S. tour. (AP Photo)

British pop group the Beatles wave as they arrive at London Airport, England, in 1964 after their successful U.S. tour. (AP Photo)

A Beatle fan claws at a metal fence as she welcomes the pop group on their arrival at London Airport, England on Feb 22, 1964. Some 5,000 people, many of whom had waited overnight, were at the airport. (AP Photo)

A Beatle fan claws at a metal fence as she welcomes the pop group on their arrival at London Airport, England on Feb 22, 1964. Some 5,000 people, many of whom had waited overnight, were at the airport. (AP Photo)

Four thousand fans of The Beatles at London Airport to greet them on their return from a tour of the United States.

Four thousand fans of The Beatles at London Airport to greet them on their return from a tour of the United States.

PA-4719372

Paul McCartney looks up and acknowledges the waves and screams shortly after arriving with the other three Beatles at London Airport from America.

Fans press forward to the restraining linked arms of a chain of extra policemen on duty at London Airport when the Beatles returned from a tour of the United States.

Fans press forward to the restraining linked arms of a chain of extra policemen on duty at London Airport when the Beatles returned from a tour of the United States.

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7th February, 1964 - Beginning of First US Tour

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This Day In History : February 7

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beatles first world tour

The Beatles arrive in New York

On February 7, 1964, Pan Am Yankee Clipper flight 101 from London Heathrow lands at New York’s Kennedy Airport—and “Beatlemania” arrives.

It was the first visit to the United States by the Beatles, a British rock-and-roll quartet that had just scored its first No. 1 U.S. hit six days before with “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” At Kennedy, the “Fab Four”—dressed in mod suits and sporting their trademark pudding bowl haircuts—were greeted by 3,000 screaming fans who caused a near riot when the boys stepped off their plane and onto American soil.

Two days later, Paul McCartney , age 21, Ringo Starr , 23, John Lennon , 23, and George Harrison , 20, made their first appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show, a popular television variety show. Although it was difficult to hear the performance over the screams of teenage girls in the studio audience, an estimated 73 million U.S. television viewers, or about 40 percent of the U.S. population, tuned in to watch. Sullivan immediately booked the Beatles for two more appearances that month. The group made their first public concert appearance in the United States on February 11 at the Coliseum in Washington, D.C., and 20,000 fans attended. The next day, they gave two back-to-back performances at New York’s Carnegie Hall, and police were forced to close off the streets around the venerable music hall because of fan hysteria. On February 22, the Beatles returned to England.

The Beatles’ first American tour left a major imprint in the nation’s cultural memory. With American youth poised to break away from the culturally rigid landscape of the 1950s, the Beatles, with their exuberant music and good-natured rebellion, were the perfect catalyst for the shift. Their singles and albums sold millions of records, and at one point in April 1964 all five best-selling U.S. singles were Beatles songs. By the time the Beatles first feature-film, A Hard Day’s Night, was released in August, Beatlemania was epidemic the world over. Later that month, the four boys from Liverpool returned to the United States for their second tour and played to sold-out arenas across the country.

Later, the Beatles gave up touring to concentrate on their innovative studio recordings, such as 1967’s Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band, a psychedelic concept album that is regarded as a masterpiece of popular music. The Beatles’ music remained relevant to youth throughout the great cultural shifts of the 1960s, and critics of all ages acknowledged the songwriting genius of the Lennon-McCartney team. In 1970, the Beatles disbanded , leaving a legacy of 18 albums and 30 Top 10 U.S. singles.

During the next decade, all four Beatles pursued solo careers, with varying success. Lennon, the most outspoken and controversial Beatle, was shot to death by a deranged fan outside his New York apartment building in 1980. McCartney was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1997 for his contribution to British culture. In November 2001, George Harrison succumbed to cancer . Ringo Starr was knighted himself for "services to music" in 2018.

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Feb. 11 1964, the Beatles' first concert in the United States

Record album with black and white photo of the Beatles

Eric Jentsch in our Division of Culture and the Arts shares the story of the first Beatles concert in America, which took place right here in Washington, D.C. 

February 11th marks the 48th anniversary of the Beatles' first concert in America. Two days earlier, the group introduced themselves to the nation by performing on New York-based "The Ed Sullivan Show." The "Fab Four" from Liverpool were famously met by more than 3,000 hysterical and nearly riotous fans at JFK airport when they first arrived in the city.

After the concert, the Beatles headed south to Washington, D.C., to play a raucous set before thousands of ecstatic teenagers at the overbooked Washington Coliseum.

Magazine 2011-0106-28[1]

American "Beatle-Mania" was a relatively recent development. Devotion to the group came seemingly overnight, with their first song to hit the U.S. charts, "I Want to Hold Your Hand" rocketing to number one that previous December, selling more than 5 million copies in seven weeks. The Beatles then succeeded themselves at the number one spot with "She Loves You," already a hit in England.

Washingtonian Carroll James is the DJ credited with first playing "I Want to Hold Your Hand" on U.S. airwaves. The Beatles' subsequent popularity in the nation's capital inspired the band's visit to the District after their Sullivan performance.

Ticket envelope 2011-0106-37[1]

A ticket envelope from the Beatles' D.C. concert.

The concert at the now-defunct Washington Coliseum was nothing like the shows that would be staged by rock musicians just a few years later. Sub-par amplification coupled with incessant screaming from throngs of teens made the band hard to hear. The stage was placed in the center of the crowd, forcing members of the band to move their equipment around the stage during the performance in order to face each section of the audience. This was especially inconvenient to percussionist Ringo Starr, who was responsible for moving his large drum-kit about numerous times throughout the night.

None of this seemed deter the enjoyment of the hysterical crowd, whose screaming continued unabated throughout the entire performance. After sitting through opening acts The Caravelles, Tommy Roe, and the Chiffons, fans were given this set by the Beatles: "Roll Over Beethoven;" "From Me to You;" "I Saw Her Standing There;" "This Boy;" "All My Loving;" "I Wanna Be Your Man;" "Please Please Me;" "Till There Was You;" "She Loves You;" "I Want to Hold Your Hand;" "Twist and Shout;" and "Long Tall Sally."

After the appearance, the Beatles went to a party at the British Embassy. They then returned to New York to play two half-hour sets at the famed Carnegie Hall. Their performance on the Ed Sullivan program made the group the talk of the music world, compelling a return trip to the States that summer where they traveled across the country and played larger venues.

Their fantastic success created a "British Invasion" of other English artists inspired by American rock and roll, such as the Rolling Stones and the Kinks, who also found enthusiastic audiences in the United States.

Ticket 2011-0106-37[1]

A ticket stub from the February 11 concert, donated by Patricia Mink.

A ticket stub from the Beatle's historic appearance in the Smithsonian's hometown was recently given to the National Museum of American History by long-time D.C. resident Patricia Mink, who attended the concert with her friends. Ms. Mink also included other materials from her youth, including concert programs, autographs, and sound recordings. We are thankful for these materials, as they help us tell the story of this exciting, transitional time in American popular culture.

Record album with black and white photo of the Beatles

Eric Jentsch is the deputy chair of the Division of Culture and the Arts at the National Museum of American History.

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Music and concerts | today in history: the beatles arrive for first us tour.

The Beatles, foreground from left, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, John Lennon and Ringo Starr on drums perform on the CBS "Ed Sullivan Show" in New York on Feb. 9, 1964.

Today is Wednesday, Feb. 7, the 38th day of 2024. There are 328 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlight in History:

On Feb. 7, 1964, the Beatles arrived to screaming fans at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport to begin their first American tour.

On this date:

In 1857, a French court acquitted author Gustave Flaubert of obscenity for his serialized novel “Madame Bovary.”

In 1943, the government abruptly announced that wartime rationing of shoes made of leather would go into effect in two days, limiting consumers to buying three pairs per person per year. (Rationing was lifted in October 1945.)

In 1948, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower resigned as U.S. Army chief of staff; he was succeeded by Gen. Omar Bradley.

In 1962, President John F. Kennedy imposed a full trade embargo on Cuba.

In 1971, women in Switzerland gained the right to vote through a national referendum, 12 years after a previous attempt failed.

In 1984, space shuttle Challenger astronauts Bruce McCandless II and Robert L. Stewart went on the first untethered spacewalk, which lasted nearly six hours.

In 1985, U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agent Enrique “Kiki” Camarena was kidnapped in Guadalajara, Mexico, by drug traffickers who tortured and murdered him.

In 1991, Jean-Bertrand Aristide was inaugurated as the first democratically elected president of Haiti (he was overthrown by the military the following September).

In 1999, Jordan’s King Hussein died of cancer at age 63; he was succeeded by his eldest son, Abdullah.

In 2009, a miles-wide section of ice in Lake Erie broke away from the Ohio shoreline, trapping about 135 fishermen, some for as long as four hours before they could be rescued (one man fell into the water and later died of an apparent heart attack).

In 2014, the Sochi Olympics opened with a celebration of Russia’s past greatness and hopes for future glory.

In 2018, biotech billionaire Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong struck a $500 million deal to buy the Los Angeles Times, the San Diego Union-Tribune and other publications.

In 2020, two days after his acquittal in his first Senate impeachment trial, President Donald Trump took retribution against two officials who had delivered damaging testimony; he ousted Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, a national security aide, and Gordon Sondland, his ambassador to the European Union.

In 2021, after moving south to a new team and conference, Tom Brady led the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to a 31-9 Super Bowl victory over the Kansas City Chiefs on the Buccaneers’ home field.

Today’s birthdays: Author Gay Talese is 92. Sen. John Hickenlooper, D-Colo., is 72. Comedy writer Robert Smigel is 64. Actor James Spader is 64. Country singer Garth Brooks is 62. Rock musician David Bryan (Bon Jovi) is 62. Actor-comedian Eddie Izzard is 62. Actor-comedian Chris Rock is 59. Actor Jason Gedrick is 57. Actor Essence Atkins is 51. Rock singer-musician Wes Borland is 49. Rock musician Tom Blankenship (My Morning Jacket) is 46. Actor Ashton Kutcher is 46. Actor Tina Majorino is 39. Actor Deborah Ann Woll is 39. Former NBA player Isaiah Thomas is 35. NHL center Steven Stamkos is 34.

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The Beatles may have ushered in the album era of music, but their singles were no less influential on the course of pop music. Here’s why…

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When we look back at The Beatles ’ career, it’s only natural that we trace their progress through the groundbreaking albums they made between 1963 and 1969. But that only tells part of the story. The Beatles may have helped shift the focus from singles to long-playing albums, but at the start of their career they were, first and foremost, a band that made phenomenal singles, many of which didn’t actually appear on their albums. With pop music still primarily a singles market in the mid-60s, The Beatles’ singles, then, offer something of a parallel discography: a different lens through which to trace their artistic trajectory.

1962: ‘Love Me Do’

The group had actually recorded a single even before signing with Parlophone. Credited as The Beat Brothers, John , Paul , George and Pete Best backed the English singer Tony Sheridan on a rocked-up version of “My Bonnie Lies Over The Ocean,” which was released on Polydor in West Germany. It was a customer’s request for that recording that led to Liverpool record-shop owner Brian Epstein tracking down and eventually managing The Beatles.

Once Brian had secured them a short contract with George Martin’s Parlophone Records, a subsidiary of EMI, the producer began looking into which songs to include on their first single. “I picked up on “Love Me Do” mainly because of the harmonica sound,” Martin later recalled. And so it was that the first Beatles single, “Love Me Do”/“PS I Love You,” was issued in the U.K. on October 5, 1962, and entered the U.K. singles charts. After a few weeks of going up, then down, then back up and down again, it finally peaked at No.17 in the last week of 1962. They were off and running.

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Love Me Do (Remastered 2009)

1963: ‘Please Please Me’, ‘From Me To You’, ‘She Loves You’, ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’

For the follow-up, Martin decided to play it safe and get the boys to record a song that he knew would be a hit – “How Do You Do It?,” by songwriter Mitch Murray. The only snag was, The Beatles didn’t like it. But, being good Beatles, they took the song away and rehearsed it, before returning to EMI Studios to give it a go. Martin was not unsympathetic to their renewed protests, and asked them what they had of their own that could compete. It was at this point that they played him “Please Please Me,” a song composed by John at his Aunt Mimi’s house in Liverpool, in the summer of 1962. Originally a slow-rocker in the style of Roy Orbison ’s “Only The Lonely,” they sped the song up on Martin’s advice, and set to work recording it. “They played me ‘Please Please Me’ but it was very slow and rather dreary,” Martin recalled. “I told them if they doubled the speed it might be interesting.”

The single was recorded on November 26, 1962, and, towards the end of the session, Martin told the boys: “You’ve just made your first No.1.” Released on January 11, 1963, “Please Please Me”/“Ask Me Why” topped both the NME and Melody Maker charts, but stalled at No.2 on the Record Retailer chart – the one that would later become the U.K.’s official listing.

Please Please Me (Remastered 2009)

“Please Please Me” was the first of four astonishing singles the group released in 1963, with the next three all topping the U.K. charts. First off was “From Me To You,” which John and Paul wrote while touring the U.K. on a bill with Helen Shapiro. By now, the band was almost continually on the road, driving the length and breadth of the United Kingdom in their cramped van, often playing two or more shows a day, as well as recording TV and radio appearances. Living out of suitcases, John and Paul would have no option but to write on the move.

From Me To You (Mono / Remastered)

For their fourth Parlophone single, Paul McCartney remembered a songwriting session in their hotel room in Newcastle: “We must have had a few hours before the show, so we said, ‘Oh, great! Let’s have a ciggie and write a song!’” “She Loves You” broke all records and became the biggest-selling single of the 60s in the U.K.; its catchy “Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!” chorus became a universal refrain. In mere months, The Beatles had gone from provincial upstarts to national treasures – though not everybody loved the song. Paul recalled how they finished it at his family home on Forthlin Road, Liverpool, before proudly taking it into the living room to play to his dad. “He said, ‘That’s very nice, son, but there’s enough of these Americanisms around. Couldn’t you sing ‘She loves you. Yes! Yes! Yes!’?”

She Loves You (Remastered 2009)

By now, George Martin was becoming increasingly frustrated with EMI’s Capitol Records in the U.S., who steadfastly refused to release The Beatles’ singles stateside. But their next offering proved too tempting even for Capitol. It seemed as though there was no doubt by now that “I Want To Hold Your Hand” would be another No.1 – The Beatles’ fourth of the year, depending on which charts you read. But more than just another sonic smash for Liverpool’s finest, “I Want To Hold Your Hand” would be the single that broke them across the Atlantic – and, subsequently, around the globe.

I Want To Hold Your Hand (Remastered 2015)

1964: ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’, ‘A Hard Day’s Night’, ‘I Feel Fine’

The Beatles began 1964 in fine fettle. Whereas 12 months earlier, they had been fighting to get a Lennon/McCartney composition released as an A-side, 1964 found them writing hit records seemingly to order. With their whirlwind first visit to the U.S. having been perhaps the greatest success in show-business history, the group returned to the U.K. to begin work on their first feature film for United Artists. The first single to be taken from the movie was “Can’t Buy Me Love,” written by Paul at the Olympia Theatre in Paris, and recorded at the city’s Pathé Marconi Studios, making it the only Beatles single recorded outside of London.

The Beatles - Can&#039;t Buy Me Love

With a number of working titles, the work-in-progress movie finally found its identity when John wrote “A Hard Day’s Night,” a song based on a comment from Ringo . “I was going home in the car and Dick Lester suggested the title from something Ringo had said,” John later explained. “I had used it in In His Own Write , but it was an off-the-cuff remark by Ringo, one of those malapropisms – a Ringoism – said not to be funny, just said. So Dick Lester said, ‘We are going to use that title,’ and the next morning I brought in the song.” “A Hard Day’s Night” was their next release. Needless to say, both the movie’s singles topped the charts.

The Beatles - A Hard Day&#039;s Night

However, the idea of lifting their singles from albums went against The Beatles’ belief that this was taking unfair advantage of their fans. Aside from their two movie soundtracks, where the singles and album were a part of the deal, The Beatles preferred that their singles be standalone cuts. And so it was with their final single of 1964.

“I Feel Fine” is notable for being the first Beatles single to feature the sort of sonic innovation that would become their trademark over the coming years, as they spent more time playing around with sounds in the studio. The single opens with a burst of feedback – believed to be the first deliberate use of feedback on a pop single. As George Harrison explained in Anthology , “John got a bit of feedback unintentionally and liked the sound and thought that it would be good at the start of the song. From then on he started to hold the guitar to create the feedback for every take that we recorded.”

The Beatles - I Feel Fine

1965: ‘Ticket To Ride’, ‘Help!’, ‘We Can Work It Out’/‘Day Tripper’

Much as with the previous year, The Beatles kicked off 1965 as actors. Filming on their second movie, Help! , began in the Bahamas in February. Though the film wasn’t released until the summer, the first single from its accompanying soundtrack appeared in April 1965, and, with it, a new period in Beatles singles was born.

“Ticket To Ride” was in so many ways an artistic advance from their output of even just a few months prior. As Ian MacDonald put it in his book Revolution In The Head , “As sheer sound, ‘Ticket To Ride’ is extraordinary for its time – massive with chiming electric guitars, weighty rhythm, and rumbling floor tom-toms.” John Lennon described it as “one of the earliest heavy metal records”.

The Beatles - Ticket To Ride

With the movie came the soundtrack album and title song. But while the film was a madcap comedy in which The Beatles whizz around the world to increasingly exotic locations (for no real reason other than the four of them fancied going there), the title song hid in plain sight the mounting pressures of being a Beatle – especially on John Lennon: “I didn’t realize it at the time – I just wrote the song because I was commissioned to write it for the movie – but later I knew, really I was crying out for help. ‘Help!’ was about me.”

The Beatles - Help!

Its B-side, the Little Richard -inspired “I’m Down,” would be the last time the group would look backwards on a single until consciously doing so in 1969. From here on, everything they put out would signal another advance, beginning with their first double-A-sided single, the remarkable “We Can Work It Out”/“Day Tripper.”

Paul had written”‘We Can Work It Out” as a “more uptempo thing, country and western”. But the band all contributed to its evolution, with John helping on the “Life is very short” middle eight (John: “You’ve got Paul writing ‘We can work it out’, real optimistic; and me, impatient: ‘Life is very short and there’s no time for fussing…’”), and George suggesting the waltz-time section.

The Beatles - We Can Work It Out

For John’s “Day Tripper,” Paul’s driving bass guitar underpins a great R&B track, his simple rhythmic playing on the middle eight serving to build that passage to a frenzied climax. The combination of the two gave the group their third No.1 hit of a year that also featured two albums, a full-color movie, a US tour that included a record-breaking concert at New York’s Shea Stadium, and the MBE, awarded by the Queen.

Day Tripper (Remastered 2015)

1966: ‘Paperback Writer’, ‘Eleanor Rigby’

By comparison, 1966 might on the surface seem something of a quieter year. Just the one new album, Revolver , no movies, and only two singles – one of which having uncharacteristically been lifted from an album. However, where they may have reduced the quantity, they ramped the quality up to hitherto unimagined levels.

Spending much of April to June at EMI recording their revolutionary new album, The Beatles’ first single of the year was breathtaking, both in its vitality and innovation. The A-side, “Paperback Writer,” was a song Paul had begun while driving out to John’s house in Surrey. “Because I had a long drive to get there, I would often start thinking away and writing on my way out, and I developed the whole idea in the car. I came in, had my bowl of cornflakes, and said, ‘How’s about if we write a letter: “Dear Sir or Madam,” next line, next paragraph, etc?’ I wrote it all out and John said, ‘Yeah, that’s good.’ It just flowed.”

The Beatles - Paperback Writer

“Paperback Writer” featured layers of harmony vocals and a stinging electric guitar from George. On the flipside was John’s “Rain,” which became the first Beatles record to use backwards music, and was also notable for its brilliant rhythm section, in the shape of Ringo’s drums and Paul’s bass. Released on June 10, 1966, the single soundtracked a baking-hot British summer that saw the England football team win the World Cup at Wembley, and the streets of London throb with hip young people, as swinging London’s Carnaby Street and King’s Road boutiques fitted the dedicated followers of fashion with the latest fab gear.

The Beatles - Rain

For The Beatles, however, that summer was a very different scene, as they courted controversy on their world tour. They landed first in Japan, where locals protested their performance at Tokyo’s Budokan, a venue previously only used for sacred traditional martial arts. Things boiled over in the Philippines, as a perceived snub on President Marcos and his wife saw them pleased to escape the country with their lives. And in the wake of John Lennon’s comments about how The Beatles were becoming more popular than Jesus Christ, their tour of the United States was marred by protests again his supposed blasphemy.

The band returned to England on August 31, determined never to tour again, and promptly all took a well-earned few months off.

With the demand for a Christmas single and the new album growing, but with no new product on the horizon, Brian Epstein and George Martin made the decision to release the Revolver album and, on the same day, a single with two tracks – “Eleanor Rigby” and “Yellow Submarine” – lifted from it, despite the group’s hesitance to make fans pay twice for the same song. That Christmas saw the release of A Collection Of Beatles Oldies (But Goldies!) , a compilation of singles, B-sides, and album cuts. Had The Beatles finally run out of ideas?

1967: ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’/‘Penny Lane’, ‘All You Need Is Love’, ‘Hello, Goodbye’

In December 1966, they regrouped at EMI to begin work on their next project. Initial ideas included making a concept album about their childhood, and the first songs they recorded reflected that. First up was “Strawberry Fields Forever.” John had begun writing the song during breaks from filming How I Won The War , in Almeria, Spain. The title referred to Strawberry Field, a Salvation Army children’s home close to John’s childhood home with his Aunt Mimi in the leafy Liverpool suburb of Woolton, where John would play while growing up, and which became an escape as a teenager.

Two versions of the song were recorded, one with orchestration from George Martin, the other a heavier and faster version with the full band. Unable to choose between the two, John asked Martin to create a third version by splicing the two together. This “cut-and-shut” was achieved as much by luck, as the two versions were in different pitches and speeds. By chance, slowing one down matched the pitches perfectly.

The Beatles - Strawberry Fields Forever

Paul’s foil to this was “Penny Lane,” written about a district of Liverpool that he would pass through on his way into the city center. The song perfectly evokes life under the blue suburban skies, with its fireman, barber, and “four of fish and finger pie” behind the bus stop in the middle of the roundabout. Layering pianos one on top of the other, Paul created a bright piece of pop on top of which he wanted to add a “tremendously high trumpet” that he’d heard on the TV. George Martin hired the same player, David Mason, to play a piccolo trumpet part that stretched even perhaps the country’s finest trumpeter to the limit.

The Beatles - Penny Lane

With recording taking so much longer now, and the group in no apparent hurry to deliver a finished album, demand for new Beatles product became so great that Epstein and Martin opted to release “Strawberry Fields Forever” and “Penny Lane” as a double-A-side in February 1967. Still considered by many critics to be one of the finest 7” singles ever released, it seems impossible now to think that this was The Beatles’ first single not to top the charts since “Love Me Do,” being kept from the top spot by Englebert Humperdinck’s “Release Me.” The Beatles were philosophical about this, however, with Paul remarking, “It’s fine if you’re kept from being No.1 by a record like ‘Release Me,’ because you’re not trying to do the same kind of thing. That’s a completely different scene altogether.”

With their attention now firmly on completing Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band , it began to look as though the group was shifting their focus from the singles market to albums. And yet, no sooner had they finished Sgt Pepper than they were back in the studio, working on yet another hit single written to order.

Brian Epstein had been approached to invite The Beatles to represent Britain on Our World , the world’s first live, international satellite-television broadcast. John wrote “All You Need Is Love” for the occasion. As George Harrison explained in Anthology , “Because of the mood of the time, it seemed to be a great idea to perform that song while everybody else was showing knitting in Canada or Irish clog dances in Venezuela.”

All You Need Is Love (Remastered 2015)

“All You Need Is Love” became the anthem for what would go down in history as the Summer Of Love , and the single was backed with a tasty tune called “Baby, You’re A Rich Man,” boasting the Flower Power refrain, “How does it feel to be one of the beautiful people?”

But the group wasn’t done for the year. Following the accidental death of manager Brian Epstein in August, they embarked on their latest project, a self-made movie for TV, called Magical Mystery Tour . While these days, most people consider the Magical Mystery Tour album to be part of The Beatles’ catalog, it was originally only ever released as an album in the U.S.; in the U.K. it was released as a beautifully packaged gatefold double-EP. But before that came “Hello, Goodbye”/“I Am The Walrus” – another No.1 hit, which featured one of the greatest B-sides in history, as Lennon’s Lewis Carroll-inspired masterpiece featured all kinds of psychedelic sound effects, random radio sounds, backwards music and surreal lyrics. His ideas, it seemed, just wouldn’t stop flowing.

The Beatles - Hello, Goodbye

1968: ‘Lady Madonna’, ‘Hey Jude’

For John, Paul, George, and Ringo, 1968 would be dominated by two major events. Firstly, from mid-February, the four bandmates, plus wives and girlfriends, as well as other friends, journeyed to Rishikesh, India, to study Transcendental Meditation under Maharishi Mahesh Yogi . Though Ringo and then Paul left within around a month, John and George remained at the Maharishi’s Ashram until mid-April.

The second major Beatles event of 1968 was recording “The White Album” , which consisted of many songs written in India. Recording started on the sprawling double-album in May and took up most of their time until its completion in October.

Despite these two events spanning three quarters of the year, The Beatles still managed to find time to record two more No.1 singles. The first of these was released while the group was in India, in order to maintain a public profile. Written by Paul on the piano, ‘Lady Madonna’ was inspired by Fats Domino – hence the distinctly New Orleans flavor to the song. The B-side, however, traced its origins to the other side of the world, in India. “The Inner Light” marked the first time a George Harrison song was included on a Beatles 7” in the U.K. and featured no Beatles on the instrumental backing, which was created by Indian musicians under Harrison’s supervision.

The Beatles - Lady Madonna

The group’s next single would be one of their biggest-selling and one of their most enduring. It would also be the first release on their newly established Apple record label. Written again by Paul, this time after visiting John’s estranged first wife, Cynthia, and their son, Julian, “Hey Jude” began life as “Hey Jules.” At over seven minutes long, it was an unusual choice for a single, and yet its nine-week run at the top of the US charts was the longest of any Beatles single.

The song’s famous singalong ending had its first outing in the unlikely venue of a pub in a Bedfordshire village called Harrold, chosen simply because Paul and some friends liked the name. As publicist Derek Taylor recalled, “In the pub, Paul got to a piano and a sing-song was started – he’d always been good at that sort of thing – and he said, ‘Well, here’s a new one,’ and he played ‘Hey Jude’. Taught them how it went: ‘Na, na, na, na, na, na, naa…’ so they were all at it! That was the premiere of ‘Hey Jude’. It was an unbelievably wonderful night. We didn’t leave there until dawn was coming up.”

The Beatles - Hey Jude

“Hey Jude” was backed by a ferocious rocker from John, which reflected the social upheaval in the air. 1968 was a year of riots on the streets of Paris, Chicago, London and other cities, as civil-rights issues and increasing opposition to the war in Vietnam brought tensions around the world to a head. John’s “Revolution” called for change, while at the same time leaving the Beatle on the fence when it came to his involvement. On the single version he sings, “When you talk about destruction/Don’t you know that you can count me out,” but on other versions he’s more ambiguous, changing the lyric to “… count me out/in”.

The filming of a promo clip for each side of this latest single saw The Beatles performing in front of an audience for the first time in two years. Their enjoyment of interacting with a roomful of people would inspire their next project.

1969: ‘Get Back’, ‘The Ballad Of John & Yoko’, ‘Something’

Having spent much of 1968 in the studio, The Beatles entered 1969 with another No.1 album to their name; but their work rate showed no signs of stopping, and the group reconvened on January 2 to begin a new project. The idea was to film The Beatles preparing new songs to be performed at an unspecified venue, with the result being issued as an album. The group began filming rehearsals – known as the “Get Back” sessions – at Twickenham Film Studios, before moving to their own Apple Studios, recently built in the basement of their Savile Row office building, where they staged the famous rooftop concert .

While the sessions have gone down in Beatles-lore as their darkest hour, much of the footage from Savile Row shows the band enjoying playing together, working on songs that would eventually form the Let It Be album. After the rooftop performance, however, the sessions wrapped without a full project having taken shape, though the single “Get Back”/“Don’t Let Me Down” was released in April. Joining the four of them at Savile Row was an old friend, the American keyboardist Billy Preston. Such was his contribution that the single was credited to “The Beatles with Billy Preston” – the only time the group credited an outside artist on a single.

Get Back (Remastered 2009)

“Get Back” was still at the top of the charts when The Beatles issued a follow-up. Unusually, only two of the group appeared on “The Ballad Of John & Yoko.” The song told the story of the titular couple’s whirlwind wedding and honeymoon , and Lennon was keen to get it recorded and released as quickly as possible. “John and Yoko came round to see me,” Paul remembered. “And John said, ‘I’ve got this song about me and Yoko, and I’m hot to record it. I’d like to ring up the studio, get some time and we could do it right now. You could play bass and you could play drums,’” which is exactly what happened.

The Beatles - The Ballad Of John And Yoko

If The Beatles were getting towards the end of their time working together, it didn’t seem to be denting their productivity. With the bulk of one album and a film already in the can, they began work in earnest on their third album within 12 months that summer (though the first session for what became Abbey Road dated back to February 1969). With that album having been issued in September, the release of “Something” / “Come Together” as a single in October proved the only time in their lifespan as a group that The Beatles put out a single of tracks in the U.K. that were already available.

The Beatles - Something

1970: ‘Let It Be’

By now, the group’s energy and enthusiasm was waning. With each band member moving in a different direction, the final session for Abbey Road , in August 1969, had marked the last time the four Beatles would ever work together. No more recording took place at all in 1969, but on January 3, 1970, Paul, George, and Ringo returned once more to Abbey Road, where they spent two days working on songs for the revived “Get Back” project. Their last recording session together involved overdubs on what would become their next single, “Let It Be.” Paul’s gospel -tinged ballad had first surfaced during a break in recording “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” , in September 1968.

Let It Be (Remastered 2009)

And that was it. In April 1970, in a “self-interview” press release accompanying advance copies of his first solo album McCartney, Paul announced a break from The Beatles. Replying to the question of whether it was “temporary or permanent”, he said, “I don’t know.” Nevertheless, news media around the world reported The Beatles had split up. Rumors persisted for years to come of a reunion, all of which were silenced by the murder of John Lennon in December 1980. And yet…

The 90s: ‘Free As A Bird’, ‘Real Love’

Fast-forward a quarter of a century. Since before their split, long-term associate Neil Aspinall had been charged with the task of acquiring rights to footage of the group, as they sought to tell their own story in a documentary style. But it wasn’t until the mid-90s that the project, by now expanded to a multi-part series entitled Anthology , saw the surviving Beatles reunited – and not just to recount their history.

After Paul had been given a cassette of some of John’s unfinished home demos by Yoko Ono, he, George, and Ringo returned to the studio to finish them off. The result was two new Beatles recordings – the first in 25 years. First came “Free As A Bird,” released for Christmas 1995, and then “Real Love.” The Beatles always had impeccable timing, and so it was that these new recordings emerged just as Britain was enjoying its most vibrant music scene for decades. Dubbed “Britpop”, the music created by bands like Blur, Pulp , and avowed Beatles fanatics Oasis had journalists recalling the glory years of the 60s, when The Beatles and their string of hit singles had first made Britain No.1 in the world for pop music…

The Beatles - Real Love

Spanning 23 7”s, The Beatles: The Singles Collection box set is out now. Buy it here .

December 11, 2022 at 7:47 pm

I’m 70 now and still singing Beatles songs. I might be more of a Tome Waits guy now but I still get to sing along with The Beatles. I had The Beatles in the car for my kids and their friends who loved it all. Now it’s their kids singing along. The four year old was recently asked at school what her favourite music was… THE BEATLES!!!! She also likes some Stones Doors Mamas and Papas and even some Waits! I can’t imagine The Beatles ever fading away.

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beatles first world tour

Bruce Springsteen setlist 2024: Every song he sang at Phoenix tour relaunch

B ruce Springsteen and the E Street Band came to downtown Phoenix on Tuesday, March 19, to relaunch their world tour cut short in 2023 on the advice of Springsteen’s doctor as the star was treated for peptic ulcer disease.

The Footprint Center concert also marked Springsteens's return to metro Phoenix for the first time since 2016, when he brought the River Tour to that venue , then called Talking Stick Resort Arena.

Unlike last time, Springsteen and his E Street Band weren’t here to revisit a two-record set by dusting off all 20 songs . This night allowed for a much more evenly distributed journey through his catalog, from his first album, “Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J.,” through 2022’s “Only the Strong Survive,” a collection of soul and R&B covers.

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The March 2024 tour relaunch was classic Springsteen, stretching the boundaries of what it means to prove it all night while chasing moments of transcendence that can range from deeply moving to profoundly silly with the 18-member E Street Band, including the Valley's own Nils Lofgren as part of the three-guitar army, firing on all cylinders.

He 'just kind of shot through the roof': How Phoenix radio made Bruce Springsteen the Boss

Bruce Springsteen setlist 2024: Every song he played in Phoenix

Here’s every song Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band played at Footprint Center in downtown Phoenix on Tuesday, March 19, 2024.

“Lonesome Day”

“No Surrender”

“Two Hearts” (with snippet of “It Takes Two” by Marvin Gaye/Kim Weston)

“Darlington County”

“Prove it All Night”

“Darkness on the Edge of Town”

“Letter to You”

“The Promised Land”

“Spirit in the Night”

“Don’t Play That Song (You Lied)” (Ben E. King cover)

“Night Shift” (Commodores cover)

“Mary’s Place”

“Last Man Standing”

“Backstreets”

“Because the Night”

“She’s the One”

“Wrecking Ball”

“The Rising”

“Thunder Road”

“Born to Run”

“Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)”

“Glory Days”

“Dancing in the Dark”

“Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out”

“Twist and Shout” (The Top Notes/Isley Brothers/Beatles cover by sign request)

“I’ll See You in My Dreams”

The Boss is back: Bruce Springsteen launches 2024 tour with a joyous Phoenix concert

Reach the reporter at  [email protected]  or 602-444-4495. Follow him on X  @ EdMasley .

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Bruce Springsteen setlist 2024: Every song he sang at Phoenix tour relaunch

Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band perform for fans during his tour relaunch at the Footprint Center in Phoenix on March 19, 2024.

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XG Announces Initial Dates for First World Tour: See the Schedule

The tour is scheduled to hit North America in October and Europe in November, with details to be announced later.

By Billboard Japan

Billboard Japan

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XG

XG announced the details of its highly anticipated first world tour kicking off in May, entitled XG 1st WORLD TOUR “The first HOWL.” 

The seven-member girl group that recently celebrated its second anniversary on Mar. 18 is set to launch its global trek in Japan two months later on May 18 and 19 at the Osaka-jo Hall. The group will then perform at K Arena Yokohama on May 25 and 26 and go on to do shows in a number of Asian cities and regions including Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, Seoul, Taipei, Bangkok, and Manila.

Sandra Crouch, Grammy-Winning Gospel Musician, Dies at 81

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ALPHAZ are invited to check out the movie celebrating the group’s second anniversary since its debut called XG 2nd Anniversary Movie ‘Space Conference.’

XG 1st WORLD TOUR “The first HOWL” Schedule

May 18 & 19 Osaka, Japan / Osaka-jo Hall

May 25 & 26 Kanagawa, Japan / K Arena Yokohama

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Jeff Lynne’s ELO announce final tour

The ‘over and out tour’ will take place from august to october this year, article bookmarked.

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Jeff Lynne’s ELO have announced that their final tour will take them across North America later this year.

Dubbed “The Over and Out Tour”, the trek will see the veteran band play 27 dates starting in Palm Desert, California on 24 August before arriving back on the West Coast in Inglewood for the last date on 26 October.

Jeff Lynne , 76, was born in Birmingham, England in 1947 and formed the Electric Light Orchestra (ELO) in 1970.

Jeff Lynne performing with ELO at Glastonbury in 2016

The group, who were heavily influenced by The Beatles, are best known for Lynne-penned hits including “Mr Blue Sky”, “Evil Woman” and “Don’t Bring Me Down”.

Lynne is also known for his lush production work and his time as a member of supergroup the Traveling Wilburys, alongside George Harrison, Bob Dylan, Roy Orbison, and Tom Petty.

Jeff Lynne’s ELO played the “Legends Slot” at Glastonbury Festival in 2016. In a three-star review for The Independent , critic Jack Shepherd wrote that the show featured “a large orchestral backing and numerous supremely professional musicians”,

Jeff Lynne of the Electric Light Orchestra

“Kicking things off with a trio of relatively upbeat numbers - ‘Evil Woman’, ‘Showdown’ and ‘All Over The World’ - it quickly became apparent that the rain, which is gradually growing heavier, has dampened some campers’ spirits, many scrambling for their anoraks, not quite taken by the relatively mute frontman,” he continued.

“Thankfully, ‘Livin’ Thing’ quickly followed by ‘Rockaria!’, offers the first singalongs, engaging more casual fans with their Beatles-esque rock ‘n’ roll. ‘Telephone Line’ then rolls out more applause, while the upbeat double whammy of ‘Turn to Stone’ and ‘Don’t Bring Me Down’ offer up more chances to dance, the second of which elicits the band’s biggest clap along.”

The Over and Out Tour calls at:

Acrisure Arena in Palm Desert, CA - 24 August

Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle, WA - 27 August

Pepsi Live at Rogers Arena in Vancouver, BC - 28 August

Moda Center in Portland, OR - 30 August

Chase Center in San Francisco, CA - 1 September

Enterprise Center in St Louis, MO - 6 September

Gainbridge Fieldhouse in Indianapolis, IN - 7 September

Scotiabank Arena in Toronto, ON - 9 September

PPG Paints Arena in Pittsburgh, PA - 10 September

Heritage Bank Center in Cincinnati, OH - 13 September

Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse in Cleveland, OH - 14 September

Madison Square Garden in New York, NY - 16 September

Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia, PA - 20 September

TD Garden in Boston, MA - 23 September

Capital One Arena in Washington, DC - 25 September

United Center in Chicago, IL - 27 September

Xcel Energy Center in St, Paul, MN - 30 September

Ball Arena in Denver, CO - 2 October

Little Caesars Arena in Detroit, MI - 9 October

Bridgestone Arena in Nashville, TN - 11 October

State Farm Arena in Atlanta, GA - 12 October

Moody Center in Austin, TX - 15 October

Toyota Center in Houston, TX - 16 October

American Airlines Center in Dallas, TX - 18 October

Footprint Center in Phoenix, AZ - 21 October

Golden 1 Center in Sacramento, CA - 23 October

Kia Forum in Inglewood, CA - 25 October

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Bruce Springsteen returns to the stage in Phoenix after health issues postponed his 2023 world tour

Bruce Springsteen, left, and Stevie Van Zandt, right, sing during a concert of Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band World Tour 2024 performance Tuesday, March 19, 2024, in Phoenix. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)

Bruce Springsteen, left, and Stevie Van Zandt, right, sing during a concert of Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band World Tour 2024 performance Tuesday, March 19, 2024, in Phoenix. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)

Bruce Springsteen plays his guitar on stage during his concert of Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band World Tour 2024 performance Tuesday, March 19, 2024, in Phoenix. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)

Bruce Springsteen sings on stage during his concert of Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band World Tour 2024 performance Tuesday, March 19, 2024, in Phoenix. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)

Bruce Springsteen performs during his concert of Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band World Tour 2024 performance Tuesday, March 19, 2024, in Phoenix. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)

Bruce Springsteen, right, is joined by guitarist Nils Lofgren, left, Jake Clemons second from left, on saxophone, Soozie Tyrell, center, on violin, and Max Weinberg, second from right, on drums as they perform during Springsteen’s concert of Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band World Tour 2024 performance Tuesday, March 19, 2024, in Phoenix. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)

Bruce Springsteen, left, and Stevie Van Zandt, right, play their guitars on stage during his concert of Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band World Tour 2024 performance Tuesday, March 19, 2024, in Phoenix. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)

Bruce Springsteen shouts to the crowd on stage during his concert of Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band World Tour 2024 performance Tuesday, March 19, 2024, in Phoenix. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)

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PHOENIX (AP) — Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band returned to the stage Tuesday evening at the Footprint Center in Phoenix in a triumphant reboot of the Boss’ postponed 2023 world tour.

In September Springsteen, 74, announced his tour would be delayed until 2024 , citing doctor’s advice as he recovered from peptic ulcer disease.

“The Boss” arrived on stage to an audience chorus of “Bruuuuce!” Wearing dark jeans and a rolled up red plaid flannel shirt, he had the energy of a man half his age. His signature “One, two, three, four” was the only thing that separated most songs, showing no signs of his illness from the previous year. Once he shouted, “Good evening, Arizona” the show was off and running.

Springsteen spoke to the crowd briefly about his illness prior to playing his final song “I’ll See You In My Dreams” solo on stage. “Phoenix, first I want to apologize if there was any discomfort because we had to move the show last time. . . . I hope we didn’t inconvenience you too much.”

Bruce Springsteen, left, and Jon Bon Jovi perform during MusiCares Person of the Year honoring Jon Bon Jovi on Friday, Feb. 2, 2024, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)

The 29-song show came in just under three hours, but “The Boss” hardly broke a sweat while showing off a strong voice, all the while dancing, tearing into guitar solos, playing the harmonica and even ripping his shirt open near the end of the show.

Bruce Springsteen performs during his concert of Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band World Tour 2024 performance Tuesday, March 19, 2024, in Phoenix. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)

On stage with Springsteen was the legendary E Street Band which features drummer Max Weinberg, bassist Garry Tallent, keyboardists Roy Bittan and Charlie Giordano, guitarists Stevie Van Zandt and Nils Lofgren, saxophonist Jake Clemons — nephew of original and still missed sax man Clarence Clemons who died in 2011 — guitarist and violin player Soozie Tyrell, a full horn and brass section and four backup vocalists. The only missing member of the band was Springsteen’s wife, singer and guitarist Patti Scialfa.

Springsteen performed most of the hits in his vast collection, minus “Born In The U.S.A.,” but he added covers “Nightshift” by the Commodores, “Because The Night” by Patti Smith Group, and a surprise: “Twist and Shout” by The Beatles. Fans went wild for “No Surrender,” “Born To Run,” “Rosalita,” “Dancing In The Dark,” “Glory Days” and “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out” that left the rocker grinning from ear-to-ear as he conducted fans singing along like his own chorus.

This year has been particularly challenging for Springsteen. In addition to his health issues, in January his mother, Adele Ann Springsteen, a fan favorite who could frequently be seen dancing at his shows, died . She was 98.

Two days after her death, Springsteen performed at the 2024 MusiCares Person of the Year event, which honored Jon Bon Jovi for his musical achievements and philanthropic efforts.

The 2024 edition of the tour kicked off in Phoenix and ends Nov. 22 in Vancouver, Canada. It hits 17 countries across 52 dates, including a special performance on Sept. 15 where Springsteen will headline the Sea.Hear.Now Festival in his hometown of Asbury Park, New Jersey.

beatles first world tour

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Watch Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band Kick Off Their 2024 World Tour

  • By Andy Greene

Andy Greene

Six months after Bruce Springsteen suspended his world tour so he could recover from a painful peptic ulcer, he was back onstage with the E Street Band Tuesday night in Phoenix, for the first gig of the year. And while the setlist was largely the same as the one he delivered nightly in 2023, he did make some minor alterations, and create space for further additions as the year progresses.

The majority of last year’s concerts kicked off with “No Surrender,” but it loosened up during the stadium portion at the very end when he started breaking out “Lonesome Day” and “Night” prior to it. He stuck with that trio of songs at the top of the Phoenix show, and also performed “Darlington County” and “Darkness on the Edge of Town” early in the night. Both songs were only played on selection occasions last year.

The second half of the show, kicking off with the story of his late Castiles bandmate George Theiss and the emotionally-charged double shot of “Last Man Standing” and “Backstreets,” was largely identical to previous sets. But he did bust out “Twist and Shout” at the end of the first encore in response to a sign from an 18-year-old fan that was seeing him for the first time.

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If the past is any precedent, the setlist should continue to evolve in the coming months. It may never reach the point Springsteen hit in the 2010s where the show changed radically from night to night, and he took random sign requests throughout the evening, but it’s impossible to say for sure. We have a long way to go until closing night in Vancouver.

Here is the complete Phoenix setlist: “Lonesome Day” “Night” “No Surrender” “Two Hearts” “Darlington County” “Ghosts” “Prove It All Night” “Darkness on the Edge of Town” “Letter to You” “The Promised Land” “Spirit in the Night” “Don’t Play That Song (You Lied)” “Nightshift” “Mary’s Place” “Last Man Standing” “Backstreets” “Because the Night” “She’s the One” “Wrecking Ball” “The Rising” “Badlands” “Thunder Road” Encore “Born To Run” “Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)” “Glory Days” “Dancing in the Dark” “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out” “Twist and Shout” Encore “I’ll See You in My Dreams”

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Opinion KISS, a-ha and Stevie Wonder: Why I made it a mission to see my music heroes live

beatles first world tour

When Frank Sinatra came to Washington in 1992, I almost went to see him. But then I thought: Tickets are expensive, and his voice isn’t what it once was . I skipped the show — and immediately regretted it. Next time , I told myself. But there was no next time. A few years later, he was gone. I had passed up the chance to see one of the greatest voices of the 20th century.

So, I made a decision: Every chance I had, I would see a performer whose music I love — regardless of age, infirmity or musical style. My mantra became: See them before they die. Over the past three decades, that quest has taken me to venues across the country to see every imaginable genre of live music.

That vow took me, in the years that followed, to RFK Stadium, where I saw Pink Floyd and the Grateful Dead . In November, it brought me to Huntington Beach, Calif., for the Darker Waves Festival , where I spent 12 hours in an ’80s music nirvana: the English Beat , Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark , Violent Femmes , Devo , Soft Cell , the Psychedelic Furs , the Human League , the B-52s , New Order and Tears for Fears . And this summer, it will take me back to Los Angeles for the Fool in Love festival , where I’ll see Lionel Richie, Smokey Robinson, Santana, Gladys Knight, Kool & the Gang, Chaka Khan, the Isley Brothers, Eric Burdon and the Animals, War, George Clinton and Parliament-Funkadelic, Morris Day and the Time, Evelyn “Champagne” King and others.

During the actual ’80s, when I grew up, I didn’t see a lot of these performers live. As a teen, I hung out in New York clubs such as Danceteria, where Madonna got her start, and my first concert was her Virgin Tour at Madison Square Garden. I camped out with friends overnight outside Tower Records for tickets. Otis Day and the Knights , of “Animal House” fame, played my high school, and I was one of the official greeters (“You get Otis high, Otis will be your friend,” he told us as he got out of the car). I saw Van Halen in college (but missed the David Lee Roth era) and David Bowie on his Glass Spider Tour in Paris (with the Cult as his opening act). But that was pretty much it.

beatles first world tour

It was not until the ’90s that I began concert-going in earnest. In those days, one of my best friends, Mark Franz, was dating his now-wife, Sara, who lived in New York, so we would drive up to the city pretty much every weekend, playing mixtapes on the car’s cassette deck. As soon as we arrived, we’d grab a copy of the Village Voice to see which bands were playing. One day, we saw a postage-stamp-size ad that read: “ Donald Fagen and the New York Rock and Soul Revue at Lone Star Roadhouse.” Steely Dan had quit playing live back 1974. Could it really be that Donald Fagen? It was. We saw him play before a few hundred people — an unforgettable night.

Mark also turned me on to a group called Poi Dog Pondering he’d discovered as a student at the University of Texas in Austin. They never made the Billboard charts but are still my favorite band. We’d see them at the old 9:30 Club in D.C . and traveled up and down the East Coast for their shows. One of my as-yet-unfulfilled musical dreams: The lead singer, Frank Orrall, is an accomplished chef who will come to your house and cook dinner for you and play a set in your living room. Maybe to mark their 40th anniversary this year.

In 1996, I met my now-wife, Pam. I knew she was The One when she accepted my invitation to go on a first date to see … KISS . How could I not fall in love? She got me back years later when, for my 40th birthday, she took me to Las Vegas to see … Barry Manilow . (What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas!)

We have four kids, and they have joined us on our eclectic musical journey. We wanted them to have a cool answer to the question “What was your first concert?” So, we took our oldest, Max, to see Van Halen with Roth back in the band in 2012. He got to hear “ Eruption ” — the greatest guitar solo of all time — live before Eddie Van Halen stopped performing a few years later (and died a few years after that). Max’s siblings, Jack, Eva and Lucy, saw Bon Jovi for their first show a few years later. (Truth be told, their first live show was the Wiggles — but that doesn’t really count.)

Almost a quarter-century after our first date, Pam and I took the whole family to see KISS on their End of the Road farewell tour. (My daughters and I wore full makeup.) Eva drove up to New York with me to see a-ha when they made a rare U.S. stop, and she joined me for the Sugarhill Gang (and even got a picture with Master Gee!). Lucy has gotten me into country and Christian music. She and I have gone to the Grand Ole Opry, where we saw Carrie Underwood, and we have seen Morgan Wallen , Rodney Atkins Zach Bryan and Lauren Daigle , as well as (at her insistence) Michael Bublé .

In turn, I have made it my mission to make sure they see music history live while they can. I would have given anything if my parents had taken me to see Sinatra at his height, or Elvis or Queen with Freddie Mercury before they died. So we’ve taken the kids to see many legendary acts: Diana Ross (age 79), the Rolling Stones (Mick Jagger and Keith Richards both 80), Paul McCartney (81), as well as U2. And this weekend, we went to see Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons . Valli is 89, and though he does not move much onstage anymore, his voice is still crisp and strong .

“Live music allows us a real, incarnational connection to the music we love,” Mark, my original partner in concert-going, told me. “Like time spent ‘in person’ with a friend versus a phone call. It’s spontaneous and a little unpredictable; something we all crave in our overscheduled, often virtual lives.”

And that brings me to one of the very best things about live music: sharing the experience with friends. Mark and Sara moved to Texas years ago, but we meet up for festivals and use those weekends to reconnect. And I have a core group of D.C. friends from my days on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee staff with whom I have seen every imaginable ’80s act: Erasure , Yaz , Alison Moyet , Depeche Mode , the Cure , the Pretenders , Duran Duran , Nile Rodgers and Chic , Simple Minds , Squeeze , the Fixx and Culture Club , to name only a few. Our friends Ziad Ojakli and Devon Spurgeon took us to the 2022 Mark Twain Prize ceremony at the Kennedy Center (where we saw Bruce Springsteen play an acoustic “Born to Run” and join Gary Clark Jr. for a rocking cover of the Beatles’ “ Come Together ”). And last week, they took us to see Elton John and Bernie Taupin receive the Library of Congress’s Gershwin Prize at DAR Constitution Hall (where we watched Annie Lennox do a stunning rendition of “Border Song,” Metallica perform “Funeral for a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding” and John deliver incredible performances of “Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting” and “Your Song”).

But the other great thing about live music is that you can always go by yourself. When Stevie Wonder came to town, no one could join me, so I went alone. In an age when many feel lonely and isolated, seeing a show is a great way to get out and connect with others who share your passion for music.

Another reason live music is magical is that you get to see not only the talent of the headliners but also just how accomplished all the band members are in their own right. My friend Matt Dyckman told me he had never really appreciated what an incredible guitarist Steve Stevens was until we saw him live with Billy Idol. And Billy Joel’s longtime sax player Mark Rivera brought down the house with his “ New York State of Mind ” solo at Nationals Park. Live shows also allow the artists to change up their classics with improvisations and orchestrations. I have seen Joe Jackson perform multiple unique arrangements of “ Is She Really Going Out With Him? ,” Paul Weller perform his Style Council classic “ My Ever Changing Moods ” with strings, and Idol and Stevens do an entire acoustic show .

One of my pet peeves is artists who don’t play their hits. Last year, I saw Peter Gabriel for the first time, and it took him over an hour to sing a single song anyone knew. (The crowd jumped to its feet when he finally got to “ Sledgehammer .”) I often love new material, but we’re there for the songs we already love. I also saw Elvis Costello last year, and he played almost nothing from his classic songbook and often seemed as though he couldn’t carry a tune — the only concert I regret attending. His opening act, Nick Lowe & Los Straitjackets , was spectacular, however.

I also hate it when politics gets in the way of music. Pat Benatar won’t play “Hit Me With Your Best Shot” live anymore to protest gun violence . (I’m pretty sure the song refers to sex, not firearms.) But I’m happy to see artists whose politics I disagree with — if I weren’t, I’d have a very narrow list to choose from. Last year, I saw John Mellencamp, an outspoken man of the left, for the first time. Hearing “ Pink Houses ” and “ Small Town ” live was well worth the political commentary. The only artist whose music I love but won’t see is Roger Waters. Antisemitism is a bridge too far for me.

The only time I wear my political allegiance openly is at ’80s festivals. Before the 2022 Cruel World festival in Pasadena, Calif., we toured the Reagan Ranch and the Reagan Presidential Library, where I bought a “Reagan-Bush ’84” baseball cap to wear to the show. To my surprise, I got compliments. “I would have hated that hat in the ’80s,” one person told me, “but now I kind of miss him.” And I have loved seeing my friend John Ondrasik of Five for Fighting perform “ Superman ” — which has become a 9/11 anthem and always brings me to tears as someone who was in the Pentagon that day — and can’t wait to see him play his incredible songs about Ukraine (“ Can One Man Save the World? ”) and the Oct. 7 Hamas attack in Israel (“ OK ”) live.

My other frustration are bands who stubbornly refuse to reunite. I’ve seen Sting, but the Police have not played together since 2008. The Eurythmics played an incredible eight-minute set at their Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction in 2022, and Annie Lennox’s voice is in peak form — but despite Dave Stewart’s pleading, she doesn’t tour. She reportedly hates travel. So do a residency somewhere, Annie — we’ll come to you! I saw David Byrne’s “American Utopia” on Broadway, where he played many of his Talking Heads hits, but he won’t tour with his former bandmates. I’m sure glad I got to see Hall & Oates live before they fell into a bitter legal dispute . And the Kinks keep teasing a reunion that never happens.

All of which makes me even more grateful for those artists who do tour despite physical infirmity. Phil Collins can no longer stand or play the drums because of a spinal injury, but he sang seated in a chair with Genesis recently for a final tour. Five years ago, Peter Frampton was diagnosed with degenerative inclusion body myositis, which causes muscle atrophy, so he launched a farewell tour. When it was over, he found that, though he could no longer stand through a show, his fingers still worked. So, he went on his Never Say Never Tour playing seated. He was incredible. (And he just launched his Never EVER Say Never Tour.)

The toughest “go or not go” calls are the one-hit wonders. You sometimes have to listen to an hour of songs that never made it (for a reason) just to hear the one great song you loved. Modern English were terrible except for “Melt With You.” Tommy Tutone had one big hit (“867-5309/Jenny”), and it was a great one. Fortunately, I saw him perform it on a triple bill with Men at Work and Rick Springfield (who played “Jessie’s Girl” shirtless at age 72 and pulled it off).

I’m still seeing artists for the first time. Over the past year or so, I’ve gone to my first Eagles and Elton John shows on their farewell tours, and seen the Doobie Brothers , reunited with Michael McDonald, on their 50th-anniversary tour (better late than never!), Bryan Adams , Joan Jett and the Blackhearts , ABC , Kenny Loggins , Journey , Toto , Alabama , Boz Scaggs and jazz legend Herbie Hancock (still going strong at 83!), as well as Genesis, Mellencamp, Gabriel and Bublé. (I would also have seen my first Aerosmith show, but Steven Tyler suffered a vocal cord injury). This coming year, I’m seeing Foreigner, Styx, Adam Ant, Bow Wow Wow, Thomas Dolby, Men Without Hats, Thompson Twins’ Tom Bailey, The Romantics, Wang Chung, General Public, Heatwave, the S.O.S. Band, the Black Crowes and the Beach Boys. But I’ve still got a long list of acts I’m longing to see.

Sadly, I never saw Ric Ocasek of the Cars, Robert Palmer, Tina Turner, Tony Bennett, Meat Loaf, J. Geils or Prince before they died. I was in Toronto in 2017 and Tom Petty was in town, but I skipped it — and he died not even three months later.

And this exposes the one big flaw in my plan: Even if I do see them all, eventually all my favorite artists will, like Sinatra, leave us. What then? I’m seeing many of the musicians I love performing well into their 70s and beyond. But who will I see in when I’m in my 70s? So, I’m on the lookout for younger acts. I’ve become a big fan of Mayer Hawthorne , Twin Tribes , Young Gun Silver Fox, Blossoms , Lovelytheband, Izo FitzRoy and Smoove & Turrell , among others. Even in late middle age, I still find immeasurable joy in discovering a new song and playing it until I know the words by heart — just like I did as a kid on my record player.

But as great as records are, nothing compares to seeing the songs you love performed live. So, I plan to keep going to see my favorites until they die — or I do.

What moment from a live music performance will you remember for the rest of your life? Submit your response.

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beatles first world tour

IMAGES

  1. Rare photos of Beatles' first world tour visit to Seattle

    beatles first world tour

  2. Rare photos of Beatles' first world tour visit to Seattle

    beatles first world tour

  3. Rare photos of Beatles' first world tour visit to Seattle

    beatles first world tour

  4. Rare photos of Beatles' first world tour visit to Seattle

    beatles first world tour

  5. The Beatles Performing in Munich, Germany

    beatles first world tour

  6. Rare photos of Beatles' first world tour visit to Seattle

    beatles first world tour

VIDEO

  1. The Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show changed music 60 years ago

  2. BEATLES WORLD TOUR

  3. 60 years ago today, The Beatles first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show

  4. Inside The Beatles Tour Experience 🇬🇧

  5. 60 Years Since The Beatles’ First US Visit

  6. The world of Beatles coloured vinyl albums

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  1. The Beatles' 1964 world tour

    The Beatles' 1964 North American tour. The Beatles 1964 world tour was the Beatles ' first world tour, launched after their 1964 UK tour. The reception was enthusiastic, with The Spectator describing it as "hysterical". It was followed by their subsequent North American tour in August that year.

  2. 4 June 1964: The Beatles' world tour begins

    The Beatles' world tour begins in Copenhagen, Denmark. Thursday 4 June 1964 Live 15 Comments. For all the concerts they played between 1963 and 1966, The Beatles only undertook one world tour. It began on this day in Copenhagen, Denmark, and continued in the Netherlands, Hong Kong, Australia and New Zealand.

  3. List of the Beatles' live performances

    The Beatles arriving for concerts in Madrid, July 1965. From 1962 to 1966, the English rock band the Beatles performed all over the Western world. They began performing live as The Beatles on 15 August 1960 at The Jacaranda in Liverpool and continued in various clubs during their visit to Hamburg, West Germany, until 1962, with a line-up of John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Stuart ...

  4. The Beatles' 1964 world tour

    The Beatles 1964 world tour was the Beatles' first world tour, launched after their 1964 UK tour. The reception was enthusiastic, with The Spectator describing it as "hysterical". It was followed by their subsequent North American tour in August that year. On the morning of 3 June 1964, the day before setting off on a world tour, Ringo Starr fell ill during a photo session. He fainted and was ...

  5. The View from Inside Beatlemania

    The Beatles first appeared on the radio in 1962, on a BBC show called "Teenagers Turn—Here We Go." ... In June, they set out again, on their first world tour, which would take them from ...

  6. The Beatles' 'out of control' world tour in photos

    "The Beatles: On the Road 1964-1966," a book from photographer Harry Benson, captures the band's first world tour. Harry Benson, TACHEN Unseen Beatles photos from 1964-1966 —

  7. The Beatles' 1964 World Tour: Iconic Venues And Lasting Legacy

    The band's world tour began in Europe, Hong Kong, and Australia, before wrapping up with a UK tour in autumn. The Beatles' 1964 tour of North America. The Beatles concert chronology can be found in 32 rows. On Sunday, February 9, 1964, at approximately 8 p.m. Eastern time, The Ed Sullivan Show returned from a commercial (for Anacin pain ...

  8. The Beatles' 1964 world tour

    The Beatles 1964 world tour was the Beatles' first world tour, launched after their 1964 UK tour. The reception was enthusiastic, with The Spectator describing it as hysterical. It was followed by their subsequent North American tour in August that year. The Beatles' 1964 world tour - WikiMili, The

  9. The Beatles

    1.2.4 1964 world tour, meeting Bob Dylan, and stand on civil rights. 1.2.5 Beatles for Sale, Help! and Rubber Soul. 1.2.6 Controversies, Revolver and final tour. ... The band toured the UK three times in the first half of the year: a four-week tour that began in February, the Beatles' first nationwide, preceded three-week tours in March and May ...

  10. Never before seen photos of the Beatles from 1964 : NPR

    For the Beatles-obsessed, here are 3 never-before-seen photos from 1964. January 25, 202312:00 PM ET. Stephen Thompson. Enlarge this image. "The crowds chasing us in A Hard Day's Night were based ...

  11. The Beatles Concert & Tour History (Updated for 2024)

    988 Concerts. The Beatles were an English rock band formed in Liverpool in 1960. With the line-up comprising John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr, they are regarded as one of the most influential bands of all time. The group was integral to the development of 1960s counterculture and popular music's recognition as an art ...

  12. Rare photos of Beatles' first world tour visit to Seattle

    Seattle was the third stop on the Beatles first official world tour. On August 21, 1964, the Fab Four played to a crowd of over 14,000 in the Coliseum at Seattle Center. The local paper reported ...

  13. The Beatles' record-breaking 1964 North American tour

    Chuck Gunderson is author of the upcoming book, "Some Fun Tonight," an epic two-volume set on the history of the Beatles' North American tours of 1964 to 1966. First published on January 28 ...

  14. The Beatles 1964 First Tour Of The United States

    The Beatles perform on the CBS "Ed Sullivan Show" in New York, in this Feb. 9, 1964, file photo. From left, front, are Paul McCartney, George Harrison and John Lennon. Ringo Starr plays drums in the background. The Beatles' "Love" album is being released on Nov. 21, and is a thorough reinterpretation of their work.

  15. 7th February, 1964

    On 7th February, 1964, the Beatles began their first US tour, a historic event that changed the course of rock music. Learn more about their arrival, their concerts, and their impact on American culture and fans. Discover the stories behind their songs, such as "Cry for a Shadow", "Eight Days a Week", and "I Want to Tell You".

  16. John, Paul, George, and

    Jimmy Nichol briefly replaced Ringo on extraordinary 1964 tour. Photo by Eric Koch. June 1964, London: Photoshoot. On the eve of The Beatles first world tour Ringo Starr was suddenly taken ill.

  17. The Beatles arrive in New York

    On February 7, 1964, Pan Am Yankee Clipper flight 101 from London Heathrow lands at New York's Kennedy Airport—and "Beatlemania" arrives. It was the first visit to the United States by the ...

  18. Feb. 11 1964, the Beatles' first concert in the United States

    February 11th marks the 48th anniversary of the Beatles' first concert in America. Two days earlier, the group introduced themselves to the nation by performing on New York-based "The Ed Sullivan Show." The "Fab Four" from Liverpool were famously met by more than 3,000 hysterical and nearly riotous fans at JFK airport when they first arrived in ...

  19. On Feb. 7, 1964, the Beatles first came to U.S.

    News reports at the time said there were 3,000 "screaming teenagers" on hand at Kennedy Airport on Feb. 7, 1964, when the Fab 4 walked off a Pan American World Airways jet. Two days after ...

  20. Today in History: The Beatles arrive for first US tour

    Today in History: The Beatles arrive for first US tour. The Beatles, foreground from left, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, John Lennon and Ringo Starr on drums perform on the CBS "Ed Sullivan ...

  21. The Beatles' 1964 North American tour

    The English rock group the Beatles toured the United States and Canada between 19 August and 20 September 1964. The 32 concerts comprised the second stage of a world tour that started with the band's tour of Europe, Hong Kong, and Australia and finished with their UK Autumn tour. The shows in the United States were a return to the country after their brief February 1964 tour.

  22. The Beatles' Singles: 22 Songs That Changed The World

    Please Please Me (Remastered 2009) Click to load video. "Please Please Me" was the first of four astonishing singles the group released in 1963, with the next three all topping the U.K. charts ...

  23. Bruce Springsteen setlist 2024: Every song he sang at Phoenix tour relaunch

    Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band came to downtown Phoenix on Tuesday, March 19, to relaunch their world tour cut short in 2023 on the advice of Springsteen's doctor as the star was ...

  24. XG World Tour Dates: See the Schedule

    ALPHAZ are invited to check out the movie celebrating the group's second anniversary since its debut called XG 2nd Anniversary Movie 'Space Conference.'. XG 1st WORLD TOUR "The first HOWL ...

  25. Jeff Lynne's ELO announce final tour

    The 'Over and Out Tour' will take place from August to October this year. Related video: Electric Light Orchestra founder Jeff Lynne inducted into Songwriters Hall of Fame. Jeff Lynne's ELO ...

  26. Bruce Springsteen returns to the stage in Phoenix after health issues

    PHOENIX (AP) — Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band returned to the stage Tuesday evening at the Footprint Center in Phoenix in a triumphant reboot of the Boss' postponed 2023 world tour. In September Springsteen, 74, announced his tour would be delayed until 2024, citing doctor's advice as he recovered from peptic ulcer disease. "The Boss" arrived on stage to an audience chorus ...

  27. The Beatles' 1966 tour of Germany, Japan and the Philippines

    The English rock group the Beatles toured West Germany, Japan and the Philippines between 24 June and 4 July 1966. The thirteen concerts comprised the first stage of a world tour that ended with the band's final tour of the United States, in August 1966.The shows in West Germany represented a return to the country where the Beatles had developed as a group before achieving fame in 1963.

  28. Watch Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band Kick Off 2024 World Tour

    By Andy Greene. March 20, 2024. Bruce Springsteen and Jake Clemons onstage in Phoenix — the opening night of Springsteen and the E Street Band's 2024 world tour. John Medina/Getty. Six months ...

  29. Opinion

    Over the past year or so, I've gone to my first Eagles and Elton John shows on their farewell tours, and seen the Doobie Brothers, reunited with Michael McDonald, on their 50th-anniversary tour ...