TH^eBEaTlE^s!

In 1964 the Beatles conquered America. The pop music quartet from Liverpool,
England—John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Star—swept the
nation off its feet and inspired a musical and cultural revolution from coast to coast.
Nothing in their path was immune to their music, humor, and playful innocence.

Theories abound as to why the Beatles impacted us like they did a half-century ago.
Some sociologists believe that with America still mourning the recent assassination of
President John Kennedy, the Beatles took our minds off the national tragedy. That the
band was introduced to the nation via one of its most popular television programs,
The Ed Sullivan Show, also might have had something to do with it, say others.

Many music historians point to the homogenized condition of rock & roll in the early
sixties for the answer to the Beatles' success in America. The era they say, begged for
new sounds, styles, and faces, and the Beatles had all three. Still other experts abide
by the theory that the look and the “British-ness” of the Beatles proved irresistible,
especially to American teens.

Undoubtedly it was all of this, plus the fact that the music the Beatles made—deeply
influenced by American rock & roll and wrapped in a Union Jack—was, in a word, brilliant,
and impossible to ignore. From their arrival in February 1964 to their final concert in
August 1966, Beatlemania ran rampant in America. Though the group continued to
record for a few more years, this was the period of their greatest impact. Song after
song, album after album, film after film, concert after concert—the Beatles took pop
music and everything else affiliated with it to a much higher and more meaningful plane.