Did JFK’s Assassination Help The Beatles Break America?

In Beatles ’64, the new documentary that charts the impact of the band’s first American tour and how it catapulted them to global superstardom, Paul McCartney offers a suggestion as to why they achieved so much so quickly.

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

“Maybe America needed something like The Beatles to get it out of its misery.”

Beatles scholars and cultural historians have long commented on how much the band lifted an America in mourning.

But was McCartney right? Was the rise of the world’s most famous band partly down to the assassination of the 35th president of the United States?

Did The Beatles Break America Because Kennedy Was Killed?

It was a moment that shook the nation to its core, in part because of JFK’s own pop culture persona, said Dr. Patrick Andalek, assistant professor of American history at Northumbria University.

“In a sense, Kennedy was the first TV president, which was relatively new at the time,” he said.

“By the early ’60s, 90 percent of American households owned TVs, so the way news and media were consumed completely changed.”

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

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

“And it makes the shock and trauma of his death all the more intense as a result.

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

Of course, it was TV that also helped The Beatles become a phenomenon in their homeland.

Set to their final line-up of Paul McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr in 1962, the Liverpool four-piece released Please Please in 1963. had already scored two number one albums with Me and With the Beatles.

When this success was coupled with the famous Royal Variety Performance of 1963, during which Lennon “asked the people in the cheap seats to clap” and the rest to simply “jingle their jewellery”, he became a national sensation. went

Dr Holly Tessler, senior lecturer in music industry at Liverpool University, said it was the show that “made them stars overnight”.

“At the time, The Beatles were an unstoppable force in Britain,” he said.

The Beatles’ youthful exuberance was central to their success, which resonated with the legions of British teenagers who began to follow them.

JFK had a similar appeal in America, Dr Andalek said.

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

“His death cut it short in a shocking way.”

After that, the nation began looking for “more positive things, stability and reassurance,” he said.

“When the Beatles come on, I think they represented that.

“They were also young, important and [in the footage] Of them getting off the plane, they were going crazy.

“So, for a nation shattered by trauma, The Beatles represented a chance to laugh and have fun once again.”

Winning over a segment of America’s youth was one thing, but cracking the national market was another.

Many British acts tried and failed to mirror the transatlantic appeal of their American counterparts, who had seen great success in Britain, and cracked the American market.

Those who preceded The Beatles had limited success.

Lonnie Donegan, the titular “King of Skiffle”, scored two top ten hits, while Cliff Richard, Britain’s biggest act at the time, only managed to crack the US top 40 on one occasion.

Spencer Lee, the author of several books on the Beatles, said that the tendency for British acts to fail to “make it” in the United States had seen one of the country’s biggest record companies, Capital, drop the Beatles out of fear. It has also refused to distribute the music. of the same result.

“British artists haven’t sold well in America and capital seems to have turned its nose up at British work,” he said.

Capital’s concerns were understandable. The singles Please Please Me, From Me To You and She Loves You were all released in the US in 1963 and saw limited success, so I Want to Hold. Were reluctant to offer your hand.

The band’s manager Brian Epstein and Capitol’s parent company EMI managed to change the label’s minds and on Boxing Day 1963, about a month after Kennedy’s assassination, the single hit US stores.

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

The success meant that over 3,000 fans and a large press pack were at the airport when the band touched down.

For Spencer Lee, it was what came next, not what came before, that led to his global success.

“I think the people 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.”

At 20:00 on 9 February 1964, The Beatles made the first of three appearances on the program, one of America’s most popular TV variety shows.

TV channel CBS reportedly received more than 50,000 requests for seats in its 700-capacity studio ahead of the band’s tour, and those at home eagerly huddled around the TV. Failed to pick up.

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

One moment that really grabbed the audience’s attention was when the cameras panned to each band member, flashing their names on the screen, he said.

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

“I’m not sure how much [the band] Appreciated it.”

About a month after these first three performances, The Beatles made US chart history by becoming the first act to simultaneously hold the top five slots.

Beatlemania had now gone global and the rest was history.

For Dr. Tessler, the notion that America went down with the death of JFK came back up with the arrival of The Beatles.

For him, too, it was an appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, rather than the events that followed the assassination, that put The Beatles on the path to immortality.

“I really struggle with the idea that the Beatles’ American success is due to the shooting of JFK,” she said.

“Their manager Brian Epstein had already been to America and had made a deal to get them on the Sullivan show a few weeks before Kennedy was killed, and when the band finally landed in America there was a lot of publicity.

“America wanted a distraction from that sense of ‘what’s next’ after the assassination, but the Beatles became the story so quickly that the connection to Kennedy was fleeting.”

Beatles ’64 is available to watch on Disney+.