Beatlemania conquered the United States on this day in 1963, launching the British invasion

On December 26, 1963, Hollywood columnist Erskine Johnson published one sharp statement in newspapers in the United States.

“Warning: ‘Beatles’ Coming,” read the headline, like a 20th-century version of Paul Revere’s midnight ride.

Johnson, for example, was unimpressed with the British band, who had just released their breakout singles: “I want to hold your hand“And”I saw her standing there”, that day in the US.

“I’m looking. I am shocked,” he wrote after attending a Beatles show in London. He described the stage presence of John Lennon, Ringo Starr, George Harrison and Paul McCartney as ‘eel after an explosion in a wedge factory.’

Their music was brash, loud and full of guitars, and apparently had ‘little or no melody’ in it. Even worse, Johnson thought, were the rabid fans who used the term “Beatlemania.” Girls fell to their knees and banged their fists on the ground during the concert, he reported.

“The thought of American teenagers becoming Beatle Bewitched is frightening,” Johnson wrote. “It’s not fair. Yes, yes, yes.”

The Beatles’ first appearance on American television: NBC News

But sure enough, the Beatles came to the United States having already conquered their home island. By December 26, they already had five top-20 slots over the British pop chartsincluding the coveted first two. (The Fab Four also made a cameo appearance at the 20th spot on Dora Bryan’s single “All I Want for Christmas Is a Beatle,” in which the singer pine for “a real boy from Liverpool.”)

Four days before they release their second studio album With the Beatles on November 22, the same day that President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, the Beatles had their first television appearance in the US during a four-minute report from NBC’s Edwin Nieuwman. Millions of people watched and hype for the British group’s American visit skyrocketed.

“Whatever the nature of Beatlemania, this country is about to be exposed by its vectors,” he said. New Yorker wrote in a profile of the Beatles’ manager Brian Epsteinwho worked tirelessly to arrange the band’s visit to America.

On February 7, 1964, the time had finally come: The Beatles touched at the newly renamed John F. Kennedy Airport in New York. When they stepped off their plane, “they were met by a crowd of 200 jostling reporters and photographers and some 4,000 fans, mostly teenage girls, who lined the observation deck of the airport’s International Arrivals Building in a tremendous chanting, shrill mass .” Jonathan Gould wrote Can’t Buy Me Love: The Beatles, Britain and America.

After a chaotic and quippy press conferenceFour black Cadillac limousines took each Beatle individually to the Plaza Hotel, where they were located captured by large numbers of press and fans.

Then, on February 9, the Beatles had their formal television introduction to American audiences via a live performance on the “Ed Sullivan Show.” Seventy-three million Americans, about 34 percent of the population tuned in, and Beatles fans in the studio were so rowdy while the show’s other guests performed that at one point Sullivan joked“If you don’t shut up, I’ll send for a hairdresser.”

The four Beatles entered the stage amid joyful shouts phase. They ripped through three songs: “All My Loving,” “Till There Was You,” and “She Loves You.” During the second song, the camera cut between the individual Beatles, showing their first names and personally introducing them to America. (Under Lennon’s name, the lyrics read: “SORRY GIRLS, HE’S MARRIED.”) The show then went commercial, but the direction of rock music was changed forever.

Write for SmithsonianJoseph Stromberg described the Beatles’ appearance on the show as “a turning point, a turning point in history [of] American music that has inextricably influenced a large part of all pop and rock that has emerged since then.”

In retrospect, Johnson’s warning on December 26 was appropriate. The British invasion was going on.