Did JFK's assassination help the Beatles break up the United States?

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By the time The Beatles visited the United States, they were already big stars in the United Kingdom.

In Beatles '64, the new documentary that charts the impact of the band's first US tour and how it catapulted them to global superstardom, Paul McCartney suggests why they achieved so much so quickly.

When we arrived, it was shortly after the Kennedy assassination,” he said.

“Maybe America needed something like the Beatles to come out of its heartbreak.”

Scholars and cultural historians of the Beatles have long noted how the group provided a boost to a grieving America.

But was McCartney right? Is the rise of the world's most famous band due in part to the murder of the 35th President of the United States?

Did The Beatles Break America Because Kennedy Was Killed?

“An unstoppable force”

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Like the Beatles, JFK seduced American youth

Dr Patrick Andelic, assistant professor of American history at Northumbria University, said the moment shook the nation to its core, in part because of JFK's persona in pop culture.

“In a sense, Kennedy was the first television president, which was relatively new at that point,” he said.

“In the early 1960s, 90% of American families owned a television, which completely changed the way news and media were consumed.”

He said the president was, like the Beatles, “young, handsome, witty and energetic, which translated very well to television.”

“He embraced television and was a perfect fit for it,” he said.

“And that makes the shock and trauma of his death more acute afterwards.

“It was the first assassination of a sitting president in 60 years.”

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A major press kit met the Beatles when they arrived in America in February 1964.

Of course, it was also television that helped the Beatles become a phenomenon in their home country.

Settling on their now definitive line-up of Paul McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr in 1962, the Liverpool quartet had already recorded two number one albums in 1963 with Please Please Me and With The Beatles.

When this success was combined with the famous appearance at the 1963 Royal Variety Performance, during which Lennon asked “the people in the cheaper seats to clap” and others to simply “shake their jewels”, they became a national sensation.

University of Liverpool music industries lecturer Holly Tessler said it was the show that “made them stars overnight”.

“At that point, the Beatles were an unstoppable force in the UK,” she said.

Fear of failure

The Beatles' youthful exuberance was central to their success, echoing the legions of British teenagers who had begun following them.

Dr Andelic said that in America, JFK had a similar appeal.

“Kennedy projected youth and vitality and in his inaugural address he spoke of the torch being passed to a new generation of Americans,” he said.

“His death brought that to a shocking end.”

He added that subsequently, the nation began “to seek more positive things, stability and comfort.”

“When the Beatles came along, I think they represented that.

“They were also young, dynamic and [in the footage] when they got off the plane, they were stupid.

“So for a nation shattered by trauma, the Beatles represented an opportunity to laugh and have fun again.”

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Publicity photos of the Beatles saw them posing in front of the American flag.

Winning over a portion of American youth was one thing, but breaking into the national market was another.

Many British groups have attempted, unsuccessfully, to replicate the transatlantic appeal of their American counterparts, who enjoyed great success in the British charts, and to break into the American market.

Success was limited for those before the Beatles.

Lonnie Donegan, the reigning “King of Skiffle”, had two top ten hits, while Cliff Richard, then Britain's biggest band, only reached the US top 40 on one occasion .

Spencer Leigh, author of numerous books about the Beatles, said the trend of British artists failing to “make it” in the United States had seen Capitol, one of the country's biggest record labels, refuse to even distribute the Beatles music out of fear. of the same result.

“Artists from the U.K. weren’t selling well in the U.S. and it seemed like Capitol looked down on British work,” he said.

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More than 70 million people reportedly watched the Beatles' first appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show.

The Capitol’s concerns were understandable. The singles Please Please Me, From Me To You and She Loves You were all released in the United States in 1963 and had limited success, so they were reluctant to release I Want To Hold Your Hand.

The band's manager, Brian Epstein, and Capitol's parent company, EMI, managed to change the label's mind and on Boxing Day 1963, about a month after Kennedy's assassination, the single was released in the American stores.

Its impact was enormous and by the first week of February it was at the top of the US charts, a position it would hold for seven weeks.

This success meant that more than 3,000 fans and a large press kit were present at the airport when the group landed.

For Spencer Leigh, it was what happened next, not what happened before, that led to their global success.

“In my opinion, the people who were shouting for the Beatles at the airport were young and didn't know much about politics,” he said.

“For me, the turning point was The Ed Sullivan Show.”

“Fugee, at best”

On February 9, 1964, at 8 p.m., The Beatles made the first of three appearances on the show, which was one of America's most popular television variety shows.

The CBS television network reportedly received more than 50,000 requests for seats in its 700-seat studio ahead of the group's visit and those who failed to get their hands on any seats enthusiastically gathered around the televisions at the house.

“Over 70 million people watched the first one and they did very well,” Leigh said.

He said one of the moments that really caught the audience's attention was when the cameras panned to each member of the group, displaying their names on the screen.

“They put a caption on John Lennon saying 'sorry girls, he's married',” he said.

“I don't know how much [the band] I enjoyed that.”

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By August 1964, Beatlemania had spread throughout the United States.

About a month after these first three performances, the Beatles made American chart history by becoming the first group to hold the top five spots simultaneously.

Beatlemania had now gone global and the rest was history.

For Dr. Tessler, the idea that America collapsed with the death of JFK and went backwards with the arrival of the Beatles is too simplistic.

For her, too, it was the appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show, rather than the aftermath of the assassination, that put the Beatles on the path to pop immortality.

“I have a really hard time accepting the idea that the Beatles owe their success in the United States to the murder of JFK,” she said.

“Their manager Brian Epstein had already gone to America and made a deal to have them appear on the Sullivan show weeks before Kennedy died, and there was so much hype when the group finally landed in the United States .

“America might have wanted to distract itself from that feeling of 'what's next' after the assassination, but the Beatles became history so quickly that the connection to Kennedy was fleeting at best .”

Beatles '64 is available on Disney+

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