The Beatles: Fifty Fabulous 14
Nicola Edenholm
"Two epic events occurred on the same night." said Pat O'Day "The Beatles made Seattle a stop on their first tour of the US. The excitement cannot be adequately described with words; you simply had to be there. Tiny amps, a tiny little Coliseum house speaker system with screaming surpassing the 12th man Seahawks crowd. But, you got to see them, the immortal Beatles! It was a double thrill for me to be the Emcee that night. These two events were to herald the concert business as we know it today. Frankly, that Seattle night opened our eyes to what would become Concerts West, our Seattle based firm that went on to become the largest concert company in the world. All thanks to The Beatles... And a thrill it is to join hearts, in treasured McCaw Hall, named for Marion Oliver McCaw, mother of communication giants Craig and Bruce McCaw, who were just kids when they attended that great Beatles visit to Seattle. 50 fabulous years ago!"
In a reversal of then standard practice, EMI released the album ahead of the impending single "I Want to Hold Your Hand", with the song excluded to maximise the single's sales.[81] The album caught the attention of music critic William Mann of The Times, who suggested that Lennon and McCartney were "the outstanding English composers of 1963".[78] The newspaper published a series of articles in which Mann offered detailed analyses of the music, lending it respectability.[82] With the Beatles became the second album in UK chart history to sell a million copies, a figure previously reached only by the 1958 South Pacific soundtrack.[83] When writing the sleeve notes for the album, the band's press officer, Tony Barrow, used the superlative the "fabulous foursome", which the media widely adopted as "the Fab Four".[84]
For many, the magic associated with the best of the 1960s will always be inextricably entwined with the phenomenon of the Beatles. Success was certainly in the cards for John, Paul, George and Ringo fifty years ago this month, when they stepped off a plane in New York, with a modest entourage that included their manager Brian Epstein. They soon won over the hearts of a nation's youth via their legendary Ed Sullivan Show appearances and first American concerts.
In the early days, their hit singles and 13- or 14- track UK LPs were shamelessly cut and pasted into a proliferation of 10-track American albums which didn't even attempt to respect the integrity of the musicians' vision, but from 1966 on, they controlled their US releases too. Leaving aside all the classic non-LP UK singles, from "I Feel Fine" and "Ticket to Ride" to "Lady Madonna" and "Hey Jude", the fabulous foursome's main recorded legacy is a dozen albums over a seven-year period, representing a streak of productivity, musical vision, and artistic growth unmatched in the history of popular music.
Being able to create great imagery was always a part of their talent (think no further than that genius strut across the zebra crossing at Abbey Road). And for the last fifty years, Paul McCartney has kept up the tradition of always keeping himself in the public eye, albeit in a gentler way than the younger artists who have come and gone around him. So it shouldn\u2019t have come as a surprise when two ex-Beatles, both now in their 80s, took over the charts with a piffling little song hardly worth a listen. It was done through masterful imagery and storytelling. The music itself had nothing current about it, but the public\u2019s need, even today, to learn more about the Beatles made it a contemporary story.
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