Beatlemania was the fanaticism surrounding the English rock band the Beatles from 1963 to 1966. The group's popularity grew in the United Kingdom in late 1963, propelled by the singles "Please Please Me", "From Me to You" and "She Loves You". By October, the British press adopted the term "Beatlemania" to describe the scenes of adulation that attended the band's concert performances. Their world tours were characterised by the same levels of hysteria and high-pitched screaming by female fans, both at concerts and during the group's travels between venues.
In February 1964, the Beatles' televised performances on The Ed Sullivan Show were viewed by approximately 73 million people; the band soon held both the number one and number two spots on the Billboard Hot 100, with "I Want to Hold Your Hand" and "She Loves You", respectively. Their instant popularity in the United States and their unprecedented domination of the national sales charts was mirrored in numerous other countries. Their August 1965 concert at New York's Shea Stadium marked the first time that a large outdoor stadium was used for such a purpose, and with an audience of 55,000, set records for attendance and revenue generation. To protect themselves from their fans, the members typically travelled to these concerts by armoured car. From the end of that year, the band embraced promo clips for their singles to avoid the difficulties of making personal appearances on television programmes. Their December 1965 album Rubber Soul marked a profound change in the dynamic between fans and artists, as many Beatles fans sought to appreciate the progressive quality in the band's look, lyrics and sound.
Commentators likened the intensity of this adulation to a religious fervour and to a female masturbation fantasy. Among the displays of deity-like worship, fans would approach the band in the belief that they possessed supernatural healing powers. In 1966, John Lennon controversially remarked that the group had become "more popular than Jesus". Soon afterwards, when the Beatles toured Japan, the Philippines and the US, they were entangled in mob revolt, violence, political backlash and threats of assassination. Frustrated by the restrictions of Beatlemania and unable to hear themselves play above their fans' screams, the group stopped touring and became a studio-only band. Their popularity and influence expanded in various social and political arenas, while Beatlemania continued on a reduced scale from then and into the members' solo careers.
Beatlemania surpassed any previous examples of fan worship in its intensity and scope. Initially, the fans were predominantly young adolescent females, sometimes called "teenyboppers", and their behaviour was scorned by many commentators. By 1965, their fanbase included listeners who traditionally shunned youth-driven pop culture, which helped bridge divisions between folk and rock enthusiasts. During the 1960s, Beatlemania was the subject of analysis by psychologists and sociologists; a 1997 study recognised the phenomenon as an early proto-feminist demonstration of girl power.
Interpretations and precursors
In the description of author and musician Bob Stanley, the band's domestic breakthrough represented a "final liberation" for the nation's teenagers and, by coinciding with the end of National Service, the group "effectively signaled the end of World War II in Britain".
During the 1840s, fans of Hungarian pianist and composer Franz Liszt showed a level of fanaticism similar to that of the Beatles. Poet Heinrich Heine coined "Lisztomania" to describe this. Once it became an international phenomenon in 1964, Beatlemania surpassed in intensity and reach any previous examples of fan worship, including those afforded to Rudy Vallée, Frank Sinatra, and Elvis Presley. One factor in this development may have been the post-World War II baby boom, which gave the Beatles a larger audience of young fans than Sinatra and Presley had a decade earlier.
Psychologists during the 1960s were especially drawn to the significance of the long hair preferred by the Beatles and the bands that emerged soon after their breakthrough. Academics proposed that the long hair signalled androgyny and thus presented a less threatening version of male sexuality to teenage girls, as well as allowing male fans to view the group in a sexual regard that they normally reserved for young females. Other concerns related to the Beatles' own sexuality; whether the haircuts were a projection of latent homosexuality or confident heterosexuality. In their 1986 book Re-making Love: The Feminization of Sex, authors Barbara Ehrenreich, Elizabeth Hess and Gloria Jacobs argued that the band's presentable suits meant that they seemed less "sleazy" than Presley to middle-class whites.
In February 1964, Paul Johnson wrote an article in the New Statesman which stated that the mania was a modern incarnation of female hysteria and that the wild fans at the Beatles' concerts were "the least fortunate of their generation, the dull, the idle, the failures". The article became the "most complained-about piece" in the magazine's history. A 1966 study published in the British Journal of Clinical Psychology rejected Johnson's assertion; the researchers found that Beatles fans were not likelier to score higher on Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory's hysteria scale, nor were they unusually neurotic. Instead, they described Beatlemania as "the passing reaction of predominantly young adolescent females to group pressures of such a kind that meet their special emotional needs".
1963: UK success
"Please Please Me" and first UK tours
The Beatles attracted a fan frenzy in the north of England since the start of the 1960s. Beatles historian Mark Lewisohn says that some who attended the band's 27 December 1960 show in Litherland claim that Beatlemania was "born" there, while Bob Wooler, who regularly presented the Beatles at Liverpool's Cavern Club, wrote in August 1961 that they were "the stuff that screams are made of" and were already playing to "fever-pitch audiences" at the Cavern. However, national recognition of "Beatlemania" eluded the band until late 1963.
With the success of their second single "Please Please Me", the Beatles found themselves in demand for the whole of 1963. In the UK, the song reached number two on the Record Retailer chart (subsequently adopted as the UK Singles Chart), and topped both the NME and Melody Maker charts. The band released their first album in March 1963, also titled Please Please Me. They completed four nationwide tours and performed at a great many single shows around the UK throughout the year, often finishing one show only to travel straight to the next show in another location – sometimes even to perform again the same day. The music papers were full of stories about the Beatles, and magazines for teenage girls regularly contained interviews with the band members, colour posters, and other Beatle-related articles. Lennon's August 1962 marriage to Cynthia Powell was kept from public view as a closely guarded secret.
On 2 February 1963, the Beatles opened their first nationwide tour at a show in Bradford featuring Helen Shapiro, Danny Williams, Kenny Lynch, Kestrels, and the Red Price Orchestra. Heading the tour bill was 16-year-old Shapiro followed by the other five acts – the last of which was the Beatles. The band proved immensely popular during the tour, however, as journalist Gordon Sampson observed. His report did not use the word "Beatlemania", but the phenomenon was evident. Sampson wrote that "a great reception went to the colourfully dressed Beatles, who almost stole the show, for the audience repeatedly called for them while other artists were performing!" The Beatles' second nationwide tour began on 9 March at the Granada Cinema in London, where the group appeared on a bill headed by American stars Tommy Roe and Chris Montez, both of whom had firmly established themselves in the UK singles charts. Throughout the tour, the crowds repeatedly screamed for the Beatles, and the American stars were less popular than a homegrown act for the first time. The Beatles enjoyed the overwhelming enthusiasm, but they also felt embarrassment for the American performers at this unexpected turn of events, which persisted at every show on the tour.
In May, the Beatles achieved their first number 1 single on the Record Retailer chart with "From Me to You". McCartney later cited the song title, along with that of its B-side, "Thank You Girl", as an example of him and Lennon directly addressing the group's fans and appreciating that such a seemingly personal message resonated with their audience. According to Stanley, the band provided a sense of liberation for fans of both sexes, in that "The boys could make as much noise as possible; the girls had something with dirt under its fingernails they could scream at."
The Beatles began their third nationwide tour on 18 May, the bill this time headed by Roy Orbison. Orbison had established even greater UK chart success than either Montez or Roe, with four hits in the top 10, but he proved less popular than the Beatles at the tour's opening show staged at the Adelphi Cinema, Slough. It soon became obvious that this was not going to change, and a week into the tour the covers of the souvenir programs were reprinted to place the Beatles above Orbison. Starr was nonetheless impressed with the response that Orbison still commanded, saying: "We would be backstage, listening to the tremendous applause he was getting. He was just doing it by his voice. Just standing there singing, not moving or anything." The tour lasted three weeks and ended on 9 June.
"She Loves You" and coinage of "Beatlemania"
There was tremendous anticipation ahead of the release of the Beatles' fourth single, "She Loves You". Thousands of fans ordered the single as early as June 1963, well before its title had been known. In July, the band convened at EMI Studios for the song's recording session, an occasion that was publicised in advance by the weekly pop papers. More than a hundred fans congregated outside the studios, and dozens broke through a police blockade, swarming the building in search of the band. By the day before the single went on sale in August, some 500,000 advanced orders had been placed for it. "She Loves You" topped the charts and set several UK sales records. The song included a "Yeah, yeah, yeah" refrain that became a signature hook for their European audiences; in addition, the song's falsetto "Ooh!"s elicited further fan delirium when accompanied by the vocalists' exaggerated shaking of their moptop hair.
On 13 October, the Beatles starred on Val Parnell's Sunday Night at the London Palladium, the UK's top variety show. Their performance was televised live and watched by 15 million viewers. One national paper's headlines in the following days coined the term "Beatlemania" to describe the phenomenal and increasingly hysterical interest in the Beatles – and it stuck. Publicist Tony Barrow saw Beatlemania as beginning with the band's appearance on that program, at which point he no longer had to contact the press but had the press contacting him. Scottish music promoter Andi Lothian said that he coined "Beatlemania" while speaking to a reporter at the band's Caird Hall concert, which took place as part of the Beatles' mini-tour of Scotland on 7 October. The word appeared in the Daily Mail on 21 October for a feature story by Vincent Mulchrone headlined "This Beatlemania".
On 23 October 1963, the band flew from London to Stockholm for a seven-day concert tour to five cities in Sweden; their very first international tour as a famous group. When they returned to London Airport on 31 October, they were greeted in heavy rain by 10,000 screaming fans, 50 journalists and photographers, and a BBC TV camera crew. The wild scenes at the airport delayed the British Prime Minister Alec Douglas-Home, being chauffeured in the vicinity, as his car was obstructed by the crowds. The Miss World at the time was passing through the airport as well, but she was completely ignored by journalists and the public. Ed Sullivan was also among those held up at the airport. He was told the reason for the delay and responded: "Who the hell are the Beatles?"
Autumn UK tour and Christmas shows
An admirer from their pre-fame days in Liverpool was shocked to witness a Beatles performance in 1963, at which every note of their music was buried beneath the screams of young girls. Why didn't they listen to their idols? she asked. "We came to see the Beatles", a fan replied. "We can hear them on records. Anyway, we might be disappointed if we heard them in real life."
On 1 November, the Beatles began their 1963 Autumn Tour, their first tour as undisputed headliners. It produced much the same reaction from those attending, with a fervent, riotous response from fans everywhere they went. Police attempting to control the crowds employed high-pressure water hoses, and the safety of the police became a matter of national concern, provoking controversial discussions in Parliament over the thousands of police officers putting themselves at risk to protect the Beatles.
On the first tour date, at the Odeon in Cheltenham, the volume of sound from the screaming crowds was so great that the Beatles' amplification equipment proved unequal to it – the band members could not hear themselves speaking, singing or playing. The next day, the Daily Mirror carried the headline "BEATLEMANIA! It's happening everywhere ... even in sedate Cheltenham". The Daily Telegraph published a disapproving article in which Beatlemania and the scenes of adulation were likened to Hitler's Nuremberg Rallies. Adults, who had been accustomed to wartime deprivation in their youth, expressed concerns at the frenzied reaction given to pop groups such as the Beatles. Alternatively, a Church of England clergyman remarked that a Beatles version of the Christmas carol "O Come, All Ye Faithful", sung as "O Come, All Ye Faithful Yeah Yeah Yeah", might restore the popularity and relevance of the church in Britain.
The tour continued until 13 December, with stops in Dublin and Belfast, and marked the "pinnacle of British Beatlemania", according to Lewisohn. Maureen Lipman attended a concert in Hull as a sceptic, but 50 years later she recalled her "road to Damascus moment" when Lennon sang "Money (That's What I Want)": "Someone very close to me screamed the most piercing of screams, a primal mating call … I realised with an electric shock that the screaming someone was me." Lipman heard that the theatre "cleared away 40 pairs of abandoned knickers" from other young female fans, and she concluded, "life, as I knew it, was never the same again."