The Beatles went viral before there was viral.
In 1964, after playing to a staggering 45% of American households on “The Ed Sullivan Show” in February, the band embarked upon a chaotic tour of North America. The dates included a Sept. 5 show at Chicago’s International Amphitheatre, 60 years ago this week.
“It’s hard to understand how it was before the internet, but there was a thing called word of mouth,” says Beatles historian Martin Lewis. “The Beatles became successful because friends told friends. They said, ‘Have you heard this? It’s astonishing.’ ”
On the podcast “The Excerpt,” Lewis talked recently about how The Beatles went from being virtually unknown in the U.S. in 1963 to global icons in 1964. Here are a few highlights:
Q. What was happening in the American music scene when The Beatles toured the country in 1964?
A.The audience was still in the 1950s. They were still in that gray Eisenhower decade, but The Beatles were in 3D Technicolor … just giddy and optimistic and exuberant with their own energy, their enjoyment of music. And America was sorely in need of that authenticity and that expression of youthful vitality.
Q. What role did The Beatles’ manager, Brian Epstein, play in the band’s rapid success?
A. On Christmas Day 1963, practically nobody in America had heard of The Beatles. And yet, by the time of “The Ed Sullivan Show” 45 days later, 73 million people tuned in. How did that happen? It was triggered mainly by Brian Epstein having secured a contract for them to appear on “The Ed Sullivan Show” at a time they didn’t even have a record contract in America.
He went about convincing Capitol Records to sign The Beatles, and he did that by saying, “Hey, I’ve got them on ‘Ed Sullivan.’ ” The record was released on the day after Christmas, which was crucial because kids were at home. So instead of hearing the record on the radio maybe two or three times a day, they were hearing it 10 times a day.
By the time of “The Ed Sullivan Show” on Feb. 9, 1964, they were already No. 1. It took what was already exploding and just took it into the stratosphere.
If you think of the wonderful enthusiasm for Taylor Swift — a terrific artist — it was like that times 100 million. It is no disrespect to Taylor Swift and her incredible fans, but the electricity of The Beatles and their success without the internet was astonishing.
Q. The Beatles’ music still endures. Do you think that would surprise the Fab Four of 1964?
A. It would have surprised The Beatles to know that their music would last that long. But if we take a broader perspective, it shouldn’t surprise us.
We don’t say ‘Oh, that Shakespeare, he’s 400 years old, we don’t want any of his plays.’ Or we don’t say about the Marx Brothers, ‘Oh, it’s so 1930s, it’s not funny.’ It’s just either good or it’s not good. And what The Beatles did was timeless because it connected with the noblest part of the human spirit, which is the part that yearns to make itself and the world a better place.
The laws of celebrity physics are: You come along, you’re successful for a few years, you fade away. Each new generation discovers The Beatles and says, “Wow, this stuff’s fantastic.”
Q. The songwriting team of John Lennon and Paul McCartney led to an evolution of the rock ‘n’ roll sound. What did each of them bring to The Beatles’ distinct sound?
A. What most artists did was they got better at doing the same thing. You played guitar better, you sang better. Your lyrics were a little more interesting. The Beatles weren’t interested just in getting a little better. They were interested in changing the boundaries of what you could do. Their approach to songwriting, the topics, the lyrics, the sophistication of all the elements was just unimaginable beforehand.
There was no way that, as great as they were, Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley, Buddy Holly could never create what The Beatles created. They could only work with the building blocks they had.