Today in 1964: The Beatles’ first concert in the USA.

60 years ago the members of the Liverpool band gave their first concert in the US, feeding the wave of ‘Beatlemania’ that swept the world and left a lot of anecdotes of that trip.

Paul, John, George and Ringo are uploaded to a boxing quadrilateral who has lost his strings. They are in the center of the Washington Coliseum, an enclosure where attendees usually contemplate excited blows of blows and not musical performances. Surrounding the ‘Fab Four’ there are 8,092 fans, mostly girls, who dislike and make it difficult for Liverpool boys to be heard. The noise and confusion are overwhelming, deafening.

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One of the more than 300 police officers who watch over the security of the place has placed bullets in their ears to isolate themselves from the spokesperson. George Harrison’s microphone does not work well in the first song, his particular version of the classic Roll Over Beethoven rock, a statement of intentions for the boys with “spherning hair”, as the journalist defined them to Aronowitz. Some fans pass out and to the screaming is added the continuous launch of jelly beans on stage. Some of those sweets hit Ringo’s battery dishes. They also reach the stage bulbs, popcorn and even hair curls. They are the collateral damage to the remembered first performance of the group in the United States, of which 60 years are completed this February 11.

In 1964, the popularity of the Beatles had already extended to the speed of light in the United Kingdom and for a good piece of Europe. At the beginning of that year, his theme I Want To Hold Your Hand opened a hole in the American successes, and the band stated that the time had come to cross the puddle. Paul McCartney would define that trip years later as his particular ‘search for the Holy Grail.’

On February 9 of that year, already in New York, they acted in the popular television show of Ed Sullivan. Two days later, the beginning of his US tour was planned. The plan was to fly from New York to Washington, but a snowstorm forced them to change half. Thinking about the entourage that accompanied them and in the press, they acquired the bills of two full wagons of the Pennsylvania express, where there were endless anecdotes. Lennon, McCartney, Starr and Harrison were delivered and excited. The trip took it with humor. They chatted with the passengers, dressed as waiters, and joked with them.

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At each stop they could see how dozens of fans crowded behind the windows of the wagons. These shouted and gestured uselessly to approach their admired musicians. The arrival at the Union Station in Washington was complicated. The accumulated snow did not prevent several thousands of fans from waiting there for the passage of the stars of the moment. The police tried to put order, but the agents were overcome. Some of the attendees really scared before the avalanches. The Fab Four got up quickly in limousines and went to give a press conference at the Washington Coliseum, where his performance was later planned hours later.

There they found a distrustful and hostile press. Some of the questions had certain dyes of surrealism: ‘Do you think in madness?’, ‘Is that hair real or a wig?,’ Are you the revenge of Great Britain for having lost the revolution? ‘ But Liverpool musicians were fast and handed the irony to deactivate them. The reality was that for a good part of local journalists, the Beatles were as unknown as extravagant. Lawrence Laurent, a television critic of the Washington Post, had said of his passage through the Ed Sullivan Show that ‘sounded like street cats in agony.’

After raising the release of questions from the press, the quartet went to a radio program of the WWDC-FM station and then moved to the Shoreham hotel. There the seventh plant had reserved. Fans won everywhere. To the police surveillance in the access to the hotel, the most guards were added on the stairs, which ran on the account of the Capitol Records record. Some fans tried all kinds of tricks to try to reach the rooms of the musicians, from trying to bribe an employee to give them their uniform to lock themselves in the elevators. Everything was in vain.

The Washington Coliseum, where the concert would be held, belonged to Harry Lynn, a businessman who had not heard of the Beatles in his life. They offered him the business, accepted and took out a good slice. The tickets, which cost between 2 and 4 dollars, flew and the son of Lynn would recognize years later to the Washington Post that with those ‘unexpected’ benefits his father had given his mother a convertible continental lynch. ‘The Beatles concert bought that convertible from your mother,’ he said.

At 8:30 p.m. on February 11, 1964, in the midst of a thunderous scream world’. The scenario, a boxing quadrilateral from which the ropes had been removed, was located in the center of that enclosure. The quartet took to start. The Ringo Starr battery had to be turned, adjust the guitars and try the microphones. And the first Roll Over Beethoven chords sounded, the song that Chuck Berry had popularized eight years before. George Harrison’s microphone was not going well, so he had to move to his left to use another on stage.

The excitement was absolute. The shouts of the fans rivaled those of the Beatles voices in a decibelial duel that the former vice president Al Gore, present that day at the concert: He made it practically impossible to understand a single word of what they sang. ” In addition, due to the central setting of the stage, the Beatles had to turn to be in front of all parts of the audience. That bothered the band. The most rudimentary thing was to turn Ringo’s battery. As one of the attendees remembered that night to the concert: ‘In the end, the Beatles turned their backs on three quarters of the time.’

Almost from the beginning of the performance they began to rain on the sweets on the stage. Liverpool’s boys had ever expressed that they liked those baby’s -shaped gelatin sweets, and as a result a legion of fans had come that day armed with hundreds of them. But, unlike the British, the jelly beans that flew over the Beatles heads were hard. George Harrison later referred to that ‘sweet hail’: ‘It was dangerous, because if a jelly who travels 60 kilometers per hour hits you in the eye you are finished. You are blind. ”

12 songs were performed: 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.

The Beatles – Roll Over Beethoven

The Beatles – Live In Washington, District Of Columbia (Concert Film) 1964.02.11.

The Beatles – Live In Washington, District Of Columbia (Concert Film) 1964.02.11 DVD

0:00 Intro 2:16 Roll Over Beethoven 4:45 From me to You 7:27 I Saw Her Standing There 10:46 This Boy 13:37 All My Loving 16:30 I Wanna Be Your Man 19:38 Please Please Me 22:01 Till There Was You 24:13 She Loves You 27:58 I Want to Hold Your Hand 31:16 Twist and Shout 35:00 Long Tall Sally

John Lennon – rhythm guitar, lead and backing vocals; Paul McCartney – bass guitar, lead and backing vocals; George Harrison – lead guitar, backing vocals and lead vocals on “roll over beethoven”; Ringo Starr – drums and lead vocals on “i wanna be your man”. Beatles gear: John: Rickenbacker 325 Paul: Hofner bass George: Grestch country Ringo: Ludwig drum set, Paiste cymbals and REMO drumheads set. VOX 100 watts amps.

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