IT WON'T BE LONG THE BEATLES IN 1964: THE FIRST 60 DAYS

As 1964 dawned, The Beatles were still virtually unknown in the United States, although I Want To Hold Your Hand was picking up massive radio airplay less than a week after its American release.

- Richie Unterberger

Two months later, they had the No 1 and No 2 singles on the US charts, as well as the No 1 and No 2 LP; they had been featured on three broadcasts of the country's most popular TV variety show, to record-setting viewerships; they'd played their first American concerts to overflow screaming crowds; and they were about to start filming their first featurelength movie, a big commercial and critical hit all over the world.

It wouldn't stop there. On 4 April, they held the top five positions on Billboard's singles charts, also holding onto the top two spots on the album listings. The Beatles had conquered America, and The Dave Clark Five had entered the Top 10 with Glad All Over, to be followed by dozens of other UK groups in the mid-60s. The British Invasion was underway.

How did this unprecedented, and still unrepeated, virtual takeover of the American music business happen so quickly and thoroughly? Many books have, in part or whole, tackled the subject, the best being Bruce Spizer's The Beatles Are Coming! On the 60th anniversary of The Beatles storming the American charts and airwaves, RC spotlights some of the lesser-known aspects - especially the rare recordings and films of their first 60 days in 1964.

Roy Marinell is best known for co-writing Werewolves Of London and Excitable Boy with Warren Zevon. But in 1963, he was a struggling young folk musician from Chicago, where he’d known another aspiring folkie, the teenaged Roger McGuinn. “In the first week of July in ’63, I heard Please Please Me by The Beatles on the radio, driving through some obscure part of Arizona, New Mexico,” he tells me. “‘What is this?’ We cranked up the volume, and thought it was black guys, to be honest. I never heard it again until the following year.