ALL these decades later, it is still a little hard to make sense of it: why, 50 years ago this month, did America seem to go slightly bonkers over a boy band from Britain?
It is considerably less surprising that the semi-centenary of The Beatles’ first live performance in the United States has occasioned a bit of a fuss this week, given the group’s eventual stature in Western popular culture.
But all that was unknowable back in February 1964. Even the band members themselves were uncertain about the likelihood of a breakthrough on the other side of the Atlantic, although Beatlemania was already evident in the UK and on the Continent. Most of their idols, after all, were American — from Elvis Presley, Buddy Holly and Carl Perkins to Chuck Berry, Little Richard and the girl groups produced by Phil Spector.
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