ABSTRACT
The velocity of the Beatles’ sudden and spectacular impact in the UK through 1963 was, and is, without precedent in popular music’s history. After several years of performing to small, local audiences in the clubs of Merseyside and Hamburg, they had released their first single, ‘Love Me Do’, in October 1962. It was a minor hit 1 and the group began the new year still relatively unknown, playing out a final engagement at The Star Club in Hamburg, before returning home to Liverpool. By the end of the year, they had, in addition to selling millions of singles and albums, completed four nationwide tours, hosted their own 15-part weekly radio series Pop Go The Beatles, approved the monthly publication of The Beatles Book, been named as the Variety Club’s Show Business Personalities of the Year, given their name to a new form of mass hysteria, contracted to make their US debut on CBS-TV’s The Ed Sullivan Show, performed to more than 100,000 fans over 16 sell-out nights at London’s Astoria Theatre in The Beatles Christmas Show, negotiated a three-picture contract with United Artists, and established their own music publishing company, Northern Songs.
