Dear Beatle People: The Story of The Beatles North American Fan Club

By Sara Schmidt and Eric Cash

The story about the Beatles Fan Club in North America has never been told in over 50 years.  This book tells the story of The Beatles fan clubs in the United States and Canada from 1963-1972.  The Beatles had a lot of love and respect for their fan club members and frequently met them while they were touring North America.&nb

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sara Schmidt
• Release date: Apr 3, 2023
• ISBN: 9798218359072

Sara Schmidt

The author has been a Beatles fan since the late 1980s. Her first book, Happiness is Seeing The Beatles: Beatlemania in St. Louis, has been featured on television, radio, and podcasts. She is the founder and editor of the website, Meet The Beatles...For Real (meetthebeatlesforreal.com) since 2009. The site averages 2,500 views a day and has had over 8 million hits since it began. She has started a Facebook Book Fan Page and plans to use TikTok and Twitter to spread the word. She is a frequent guest speaker at Beatles conventions and festivals around the country.

Book preview

Introduction

Individuals known as fans have been around for as long as there have been authors, actors, singers, and other performers for people to admire. Fans are a group of people that show devotion toward an artist. They often band together and have their own fashion, language, and customs. The main focus has always been to see or even meet the object of their desire. In 1842, British author Charles Dickens paid a visit to the United States. Thousands of fans tried to meet him.

When motion pictures became popular, fans of the actors began to get together and read movie magazines such as Photoplay or Modern Screen. The fans who read these magazines were typically teenage girls. They would cut out photos and talk about their favorite silent film stars, especially Rudolph Valentino.

Movie magazines and motion picture studios learned about the fans and began to form fan clubs for teenagers to join. These clubs offered glossy photos and membership cards while promoting the movie stars’ latest films. Soon the fan clubs began to target younger viewers. Two of the largest fan clubs in the 1930s were for Mickey Mouse and Shirley Temple.

The 1940s saw a surge in fan clubs for not just movie actors but also singers. Teenage girls known as bobby soxers fell for many big bands and crooners. The largest fan club at this time was for Frank Sinatra. There were two types of clubs fans could join: official and independent. The official clubs were run with the artists’ knowledge and participation. Teenagers themselves started the independent fan clubs. They would write newsletters, organize activities to do together, and trade glossy photographs with one another.

Both rock and roll music and television became important parts of teenage life in the 1950s. Buddy Holly, Ricky Nelson, Chuck Berry, Fabian, American Bandstand, and Annette Funicello all had clubs full of devoted fans. None of those compared to the clubs for the King of Rock and Roll, Elvis Presley. In the United States, clubs for Elvis began to form in 1956. Elvis’ manager, Colonel Tom Parker, saw the independent fan clubs as a great marketing strategy and initially encouraged their creation. As a result, Elvis club officers were sent information about upcoming albums, concerts, and movies, and told to spread the word. This strategy helped Elvis’ records to sell out all around the United States. A 16-year-old, Kay Wheeler, started the first and largest Elvis Presley Fan Club. Membership grew to 60,000 teenage fans. Kay received thousands of letters a week. Because she was the president of his fan club, she was able to meet Elvis seven times.

Elvis Presley.

Elvis was not only popular in the United States but also in Britain. The Official Elvis Presley Fan Club of Great Britain and the Commonwealth was founded in 1957. Members received photographs, a membership card, a badge, and a bi-monthly newsletter. The original founders ran the club until 1961.

While they were not known to be members of the Elvis fan club, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr were big fans of the King of Rock and Roll. Elvis’ music significantly influenced the four guys in Liverpool, England and the music they were making.

The Beatles (John, Paul, George, and Pete Best) were playing lunchtime shows at the Cavern Club in Liverpool regularly in 1961. At that time, they had a large following of fans. One of those fans was a young man named Bernie Boyle. Bernie mentioned to the Cavern Club’s compere, Bob Wooler, that the group should have a fan club. Bob introduced Bernie to two girls, Maureen and Jennifer, who had the same idea. The first Beatles fan club was formed in September 1961 with Bernie as president. As The Beatles became more popular, the club membership grew. Soon it became too much for the original officers to handle.

One of the first Beatles fan club membership cards. Roberta Bobby Brown was the club’s secretary.

Paul McCartney knew that having a fan club was important, so he asked a girl named Bobby Brown to take over the club. Bobby worked closely with The Beatles’ new manager, Brian Epstein, to relaunch the fan club. Brian realized that the fans were The Beatles’ driving force and wanted them to have a professional-looking club. He never expected the dues collected for club membership to yield a profit. He was even willing to absorb any losses from the club because he valued the fans’ support.

By 1962, Bobby had a serious boyfriend and was no longer interested in running the club. She had a friend, Freda Kelly, who had been helping her. Freda was happy to take over. Freda became the official fan club secretary at a very exciting time. Ringo had just replaced Pete as the drummer and The Beatles had released their first single, Love Me Do. More people became interested in joining the fan club, so Freda moved the headquarters from her home to Brian’s office.

The fan club remained there until Beatlemania took over Britain in 1963. The club moved to London later that year, but Freda chose to stay in Liverpool and became the fan club secretary for her hometown. The club had its own office in London and branches with club secretaries around the country. The Official Beatles Fan Club was well organized and professional, just as Brian wanted.

Chapter 1 — Make Us Real Real Famous Famous

At the beginning of 1963, The Beatles were starting to make waves throughout England. Freda Kelly, from The Beatles’ hometown of Liverpool, ran their first fan club, which had been established two years earlier.

At this time, they were almost completely unknown in North America, but a few North American girls had heard their music and liked the different sound. These early fans became pioneers in The Beatles’ North American fan clubs that would soon be starting there.

Kathie: The First Beatles Fan in the United States

One of the earliest Beatles listeners was Kathie Sexton from San Diego, California. When she was 13 years old, Kathie wrote to some of the people listed in Teen Screen magazine’s pen pal section. She began corresponding with a few boys in England, and traded records with them through the mail. She would send them the popular surf records from California, and they would send her the latest English hits. In late 1962, Kathie received her first Beatles single, Love Me Do. Instantly liking it, she eagerly read newspaper clippings and other information about the lads that her English pen pals had enclosed. Kathie was intrigued by it all, and became one of the first Beatles fans in the United States.

At that time, I was head of the dance committee in my junior high, Kathie recalls. So I took the record and played it for the kids, and the kids actually liked to dance to it.

One day in the spring of 1963, Kathie was sick and didn’t go to school. She was listening to the Top 40 station KDEO on her Emerson radio when the disc jockey announced that he was going to play a song from a weird group popular in England. They had a strange, buggy name. I said, ‘Well, you’re an idiot,’ Kathie remembered. I didn’t know who this guy was, so I called him up and told him that what he said was all wrong. I told him, ‘They are a huge group in England. They’re up-and-coming. They’re really cute. Their music is very popular. Their name is a tribute to Buddy Holly and the Crickets.’ And he goes ‘How do you know all this?’ I said, ‘Well, I have all these newspaper articles and their records because I have English pen pals.’ He invited me out to the radio station. I was 15 years old. I took a box of clippings that had been sent to me, the records, and he played them, and the afternoon disc jockey interviewed me. Before I left, he told me to let him know if I hear anything more about The Beatles.

Kathie continued to hear more about The Beatles from her pen pals. As she started high school in the fall, she did not think much about her day at the radio station. Then came November 1963, when The Beatles’ new album With The Beatles was released. Kathie’s neighbor was a secretary at the station, and she told Kathie’s mother that Kathie should call the program director. Kathie’s mom took her back to the station, and Kathie spent the day telling the program director, Glen, about The Beatles and other British groups.

Afterward, Glen said she had a good radio voice and asked if she would like to be the station’s high school representative, which involved taping a show that would air once a week. Kathie and her mom were both excited about this new opportunity, and worked out a schedule. Glen also told her that she should start a chapter of The Beatles fan club, and gave her a phone number to call in New York. The people there would tell her how to do it.

In November, when Kathie called New York, they told her that she would have to join the Los Angeles chapter of the fan club. Kathie tried to explain that San Diego was over 100 miles from Los Angeles, and most San Diego radios couldn’t even get the L.A. radio stations. Her reasoning was ignored, and Kathie decided to give up on her idea for a San Diego chapter, but her local radio station was still promoting a Beatles fan club, and Kathie was listed as its head. Girls were starting to mail her dollar bills to join up.

The Beatles Book MonthlyIssue No. 1. August 1963.

I had enough money, and I told my parents, ‘I’m calling London. I’ll call Brian Epstein’s office, and I’m getting a Beatles fan club — an official one,’ Kathie says, still remembering her determination. I called, and I talked to a girl named Maureen Payne. I had to call her a couple of times, and finally, in December, she issued me the 11th charter of the National Beatles Fan Club. It took off from there. The name Kathie gave to her new Beatles fan club was The Yeah Beatles Fan Club.

Early Beatlemania in Canada

The Beatles had also impressed a girl named Jody Fine, who lived in what was then Canada’s largest city, Montreal. In the spring of 1963, Jody and her friend Valerie Jaffe had seen a photo of The Beatles in a British newspaper. Because she liked their looks, Jody wrote a letter to the boys. I guess they took a special interest because I was about the first person to write them from North America, Jody told the Montreal Gazette in 1964. On an impulse Jody decided to start the club, and was thrilled when she received a photo of The Beatles with a special handwritten thank you from John Lennon. Make us real famous, it said. So we can come visit you. By June, the Canadian branch of The Official Beatles Fan Club was listed in the summer newsletter with Valerie as the contact person.

At the beginning, The Official Beatles Fan Club in London didn’t give Jody much material. She got a negative of a Beatles photograph, and used it to develop prints for new club members. She obtained members through an ad she placed in the newspaper and The Beatles Book Monthly magazine. The magazine had been operating in the U.K. since August of 1963.

In 1963, Trudy Medcalf of Toronto, Ontario spent her summer with relatives in England. She was 13, but her cousins were slightly older. These cousins adored The Beatles, and Trudy watched the group on television. When the family went on a holiday to the seaside town of Margate, Trudy got to see The Beatles in concert, and she became a full-fledged Beatlemaniac herself. At a different relative’s house, she spotted an article in a newspaper about starting a Beatles fan club. I didn’t have a lot to do, Trudy recalls. So I wrote to the address of The Beatles fan club in London. I told them that I wanted to start a fan club in Canada and told them I was 17 because I thought that was old enough to start a fan club. About two months later, I heard back from them. They said, ‘Sure, you can start a fan club.’ They didn’t say anything else. I had never even been in a fan club. I didn’t even know what running a fan club was all about.

Trudy decided to see if she could get help from a local radio station. She went to the station CHUM in Toronto, and ended up going on air to talk about the fan club. She gave out her home address and phone number. Soon letters and telephone calls came pouring in from teenagers hungry for any information about The Beatles. These teens asked for the boys’ names, which one sang on each song, their favorite colors, and other basic things. Trudy also started receiving letters from fans who saw her address in The Official Beatles Fan Club magazine, The Beatles Book Monthly. By November, there were 300 members of The Official Beatles Canadian Fan Club. Trudy’s neighbor Dawne Hester came on board as the club’s vice president to help with the incoming mail. Two years later, this club became the largest Beatles fan club outside of England, with 90,000 members.

At the start, Trudy tried to answer each letter by hand. Things quickly got too big for the two 14-year-olds to handle, and CHUM got involved. I went in to CHUM, Trudy recalled. And they had drop-down bins that held letters, and each bin had 5,000 letters. He pulled two of these bins, so 10,000 letters from fans.

For a cost of 25 cents, each member received a membership card and a newsletter written by Trudy. The membership cards, made by CHUM, had The Beatles Fan Club on the front, and a Dezo Hoffman Beatles photograph on the back. The newsletters were four pages long. I wrote these newsletters, and it was quite wonderful because CHUM never changed anything, said Trudy. They printed them up, and they had a distributing company that sent them out. People would send 25 cents to The Official Canadian Beatles Fan Club in care of CHUM. Trudy was getting Beatles information frequently from the fan club in London. She was also corresponding with The Beatles’ press officer, Tony Barrow. Barrow helped supply Trudy with Beatles photographs from the U.K. Club and NEMS so she could give them to club members.

Ontario’s Official Beatles Fan Club creator Trudy Medcalf’s, response to Beatles fan Taya who wrote in asking for information. Andrew Croft collection

CHUM 1050 AM Ontario Official Beatles Fan Club card, front and back. Patricia Woodcock collection

Front page of the first issue of The Official Ontario Beatles Fan Club newsletter. February 1964.

The Official Canadian Beatles Fan Club introduction letter. Biographies of The Beatles as a group and individuals prepared by Jody Fine of Montreal, Quebec, Canada in early 1964. Jody would meet The Beatles on stage at the band’s September 8, 1964 appearance in Montreal. Andrew Croft collection

Because Trudy had the most up-to-date Beatles information, in December, CHUM asked her to do a radio show. On Fridays, a taxi would come and pick me up at my high school and take me to the CHUM station. We would tape a week’s worth of half-hour shows. After I would tape each night, a technician would go in and edit the three or four songs that went into the right slots.

The First Official Beatles Fan Club in the United States

Please Please Me U.K. LP released March, 1963.

Two American sisters attending boarding school in England served as catalysts for the first official Beatles fan club in the United States. In early 1963, Carol and Jenny Condit left their home in Mountain Lakes, New Jersey and began attending the same school their British mother had attended, The Convent of the Sacred Heart, located in Hove on Britain’s southeast coast. The 16-year-old and her 13-year-old sister were allowed to play pop music on the weekends, so on the girls’ trips to Brighton they bought The Beatles’ Love Me Do single, followed by their Please Please Me album. We listened to it nonstop and read everything on The Beatles we could find, Carol remembered.

That summer, Carol’s best friend from home, Karen Commarato, visited for two months. As soon as Karen arrived, Carol wanted her to hear The Beatles: Carol said to me, ‘You’ve got to hear this new group that’s popular over here.’ She played me a Beatles record. I loved it immediately. It was a new sound. I loved the music, and I was a Beatles fan after one play. It hit me. It was happy music. When the first issue of The Beatles Book Monthly came out in August, the girls pored over the magazine, with Carol claiming John as her favorite and Karen liking George. There they found information about The Official Beatles Fan Club. The two friends came up with the idea of having an American branch of the club. The first step was to call the fan office, which had recently moved from Liverpool to London. This task was given to Carol’s little sister, Jenny, who went into a phone booth to place the call. I remember being forced on the phone at 14 years old saying ‘We’re Beatles fans. We’re American, and we want to start a fan club for The Beatles in America.’ They said, ‘Well, come on over and talk about it.’

Carol recalls making the trip to Monmouth Street in London to the fan club office. Can you imagine how intimidated we would have been to go to an office above a sex shop? It was just a stairway to some little offices jam-packed with photos on the wall of The Beatles, Gerry and the Pacemakers, everyone. We talked to a young woman and told her, ‘We’re American. We’re big fans of The Beatles, we’ve got friends in America who want to run the American fan club,’ and they kind of glommed on to us.

The location of the Beatles Fan Club in London (2017).

Meanwhile, Karen had returned to New Jersey and was trying to recruit an American Beatles fan base. She had bought the Please Please Me album in England, and as her senior year of high school started that September, she shared the music with her classmates. Both boys and girls gathered at Karen’s aunts’ house after school to listen to The Beatles. They liked the new sound. In October, Karen and her friends sent a barrage of postcards to WABC radio station, asking them to play Beatles music. They were thrilled when they heard She Loves You one Saturday morning.

The Beatles manager, Brian Epstein, 1963.

NEMS business card, 1963.

At the end of 1963, Karen got a letter from Carol, who wrote that The Beatles were soon coming to America, and the London office wanted to know if Karen would be the U.S. address for the club. Shortly thereafter, a carton arrived from London with different color sheets with a bio of each Beatle, and an autographed photograph, and also a Beatles blanket, said Karen.

Back in England, the Condit sisters also received a box from the London office. They provided us with enormous stacks of photos of The Beatles, some of them conveniently pre-autographed, said Jenny. They started to divert mail to us, the American mail. It started coming by the mail-sack. And for some period of time, at least we dealt with it. People would send money. The deal was, they sent money, and in return, they got a picture, a newsletter, and whatever. The sisters were receiving the mail from Americans that the London office had not answered. As Carol explained: The office was sitting on mail from the U.S. which they’d not dealt with yet, and we got it. There was a mailbag full of letters. Many American kids were coming to Europe between high school and college – maybe they’d been writing.

Beatles U.K. Fan Club welcome letter. Early 1963.

Jenny and Carol worked on answering the first big batch of American letters, and then those became Karen’s job. One of the sisters’ duties was to forge The Beatles’ autographs on photos, and they got good at it. Answering for The Beatles was exciting, but it was a surreal experience, as Jenny explained: Here I was, a 14-year-old reading the mail of many other 14-year-olds proposing marriage to Ringo Starr.

Front of letter sent out to Beatles Fan Club members in the United States from Karen Commarato. Early 1964.

Back of letter sent out to Beatles Fan Club members in the United States from Karen Commarato. Early 1964.

The mail was slow coming into Karen’s house at first. After short clips of the Fab 4 ran on a few news programs in November and December, letters began to trickle in to Karen’s home address. She didn’t realize that this was just a small preview of the volume of mail her fan club would soon experience.

Beatles (U.S.A.) Ltd. Begins

In the spring of 1963, Debbie Gendler, a 13-year-old Beatles fan living in the New York City area, was fortunate enough to get a copy of the Please Please Me album straight from England. With the record came an advertisement telling readers: If you love The Beatles, join the fan club. It included the club’s address. In late May, Debbie wrote a letter saying that she wanted to join the club. She did not hear back from the fan club, but she remained a loyal fan throughout that summer.

In late October, The Beatles’ manager, Brian Epstein, responded to Debbie’s fan mail request with a Western Union telegram. He said he was coming to New York City to arrange for The Beatles’ upcoming appearances in America. He wanted to meet with fans and explore the possibilities of working together. Listed in the telegram was a New York City phone number, which Debbie’s mother called. It led to the law office of Walter Hofer.

Hofer was a young business and music lawyer who had met Epstein through Dick James, The Beatles’ London music publisher. Hofer became instrumental in establishing Epstein in the United States. He held a party at his home in honor of Epstein and invited many top American music executives to network with the Liverpool manager. Hofer was also one of the key figures in negotiations between The Beatles and The Ed Sullivan Show. Epstein developed a good working friendship with Hofer and his wife Sondra, hiring the American to be the NEMS New York attorney. Epstein knew the importance of a Beatles fan club. He’d been key in developing The Official Beatles Fan Club in the U.K., along with Freda Kelly. Hofer agreed to use a small room in his office suite as the center for the fan club in the United States.

The Official Beatles Fan Club card. 1964.

When Debbie’s mom called, she learned that Epstein and Hofer would like to meet with her daughter on November 11, 1963. Because that was Veterans Day, a U.S. holiday, Debbie did not have school. Her father drove her into the city to find out exactly what these two men wanted.

I don’t think they were expecting someone quite 13 years old, said Debbie. I walked into the room, and Walter Hofer was there, a tiny man with a slight German accent. Brian was standing there with another man who also had a British accent. My first thought of Brian was that he was so elegant. I remember his glistening cuff links. They were so bright and sparkling. He greeted us nicely, asked me a little bit about myself. He looked at me and said ‘I’m looking for someone to organize fans and run the fan club and get involved in organizing because fans are so important to The Beatles’ success.’ Being so young, Debbie had to turn down the offer because she had high school and college ahead of her. The entire meeting lasted only 15 minutes, but Debbie was impressed by Epstein’s professionalism. He thanked me for coming. He was really very nice with my Dad. Everyone shook hands and were very, very civil.

Before she left, the secretary at the front desk stopped Debbie. At Walter Hofer’s request the secretary wrote down Debbie’s phone number. Hofer had a feeling that the fan club might need her help at some point. As 1963 was ending, Hofer had no idea just how much help he was going to need by the end of 1964.

Chapter 2 — The Fan Club People

As 1964 began, teenagers across the United States experienced the first wave of Beatlemania. The Beatles’ U.S. record label, Capitol Records, contacted many AM radio stations about starting Beatles fan clubs to promote the group’s upcoming arrival. As Chicago disc jockey Clark Webber explained, this promotion was beneficial for both the radio stations and The Beatles. "Radio and The Beatles were a perfect marriage because both used the other so effectively.

We were into it because we recognized it was a massive infusion into a very sick body [that] had become stagnant, and it desperately needed that excitement. Capitol Records desperately needed that hit. We both got on the bandwagon of massive teenage hysteria and exploited it."

Capitol Records and AM Radio Stations

Capitol Records got things rolling at the start of the New Year by sending disc jockeys pin-back buttons that said, Be A BEATLE Booster! The first radio station that joined with Capitol Records in starting a fan club was America’s first Top 40 radio station, WTIX in New Orleans, Louisiana. The membership cards were printed "Beattle Fan Club" on the front, with the band’s name misspelled. Initially, the name was also misspelled on the Vee-Jay Records 45 single of Please Please Me.

Beatles buttons given to radio disc jockeys. Jeff Augsburger collection

Other stations started Beatles fan clubs and joined forces with Capitol Records. WLS in Chicago claimed to be the first Beatles fan club in America. Disc jockey Art Roberts said, I had the first Beatles fan club way before they ever came to this country. I started Beatles fan club number one. We had maybe 150 members. But then when they hit, it was kind of neat to know that those few were very proud of the fact that they belonged to the Chicago Beatles Fan Club number one. Art Roberts and Ron Riley got a photograph made of The Beatles and a photograph of themselves. With Capitol Records’ assistance, 25,000 photos were made and sent out to fans in the Chicago area. A fan club membership card was also printed with The Beatles’ single I Want to Hold Your Hand and their LP Meet The Beatles listed as being on Capitol Records on the back of the card.

Vee-Jay Records Please Please Me single with the misspelling of The Beattles on the label.

Another AM station that started a club was WSAI in Cincinnati. Dusty Rhodes was the disc jockey who started it. I was on the air and said, ‘Let’s form the first Beatles fan club’ and wham! It was like the dam had burst. Mail started coming in, and we had to hire secretaries to handle requests. We called Capitol Records and asked them to print us The Beatles Boosters cards. It was overwhelming.

Not all radio stations jumped on the Capitol Records fan club bandwagon. Some places started clubs separately from Capitol Records. On January 10, 1964, WABC in New York City announced the Scott Muni Beatles Fan Club. Disc jockey Scott Muni offered fans a membership card free of charge if they each sent a self addressed, stamped envelope to the station. In two weeks, he was receiving from two to three thousand pieces of mail each day about the fan club.

Front and back of the Beatles Fan Club membership cards for Chicago’s WLS radio station.

On January 18, DJ Dick Moreland of KRLA in Los Angeles recommended that a fellow disc jockey, Dave Hull, start The Official Beatles Fan Club of Southern California and be its president. At the start Hull thought The Beatles looked too scruffy and would never make it, but after some discussion, Hull was convinced that it was going to be the right decision. I told Dick (Moreland) that was great, but that I not only wanted to be president – I wanted to be vice president, secretary, treasurer, and sergeant-in-arms! By the beginning of February, KRLA was officially known as the original Beatles station in L.A. KRLA printed out numbered membership cards and sent them to fans. A fan club member won Beatles prizes if her membership number was announced on the air. Between January and June 1964, over half a million fan club cards were mailed out to Beatles fans in the Los Angeles area.

AM radio stations helped establish and promote fan clubs in many American cities, including New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, New Orleans, Cincinnati, Miami, and some smaller areas. The stage had been set for the next wave of Beatlemania: the Fab Four’s arrival on American soil.

Fan Club membership card for Beatles Fan Club of Southern California from Los Angeles’ KRLA radio station.

They’ve Arrived!

The New York radio stations used their power to make The Beatles’ U.S. arrival into a historic event. February 7, 1964 was dubbed B-day. Radio stations WINS, WABC, and WMCA gave moment-by-moment updates on the current whereabouts of the Pan Am airliner carrying The Beatles. Stations aired the news that The Beatles would be arriving on Pan Am Flight 101 at 1:20 PM. Nicky Byrne, the head of The Beatles’ merchandising company Seltaeb, arranged a bus ride to John F. Kennedy Airport for fan club members. Club members each also got a free Beatles T-shirt to wear while welcoming the band to the United States. The bus held only a small fraction of the 3,000 teenagers, who stood and screamed as the airplane rolled onto the tarmac. After it stopped, John, Paul, George, and Ringo descended the stairs.

Beatles fans in Miami wave to the Beatles.

Beatles wave to New York fans.

WABC DJ and Beatles fan club founder Scott Muni was there that day. In 1989, he recalled what happened after the boys got off the plane: They ushered The Beatles into this little room, and shut the door. And then they had the press conference. The Liverpudlian charm and wit illuminated the first meeting between the press and The Beatles. They had this keen sense of humor, and it proved the perfect foil to some of the questions the assembled media threw at them. The press quickly became unwilling straight men for these four comedians. In all fairness, I don’t think anyone assembled really knew what was taking place. But at least the radio people didn’t ask dumb questions.

WINS had Murray the K, who called himself The Fifth Beatle. WMCA started telling listeners that it was 32 Beatle degrees outside. Scott Muni later recalled: That day our station went from WABC to W-A-Beatles-C. The management of the station was a little hesitant about that nickname. It took a while for them to OK the fact that we would devote a lot of time and energy to The Beatles and their music.

The Beatles arrived at the Plaza Hotel to find it besieged by fans, who kept vigil the entire time The Beatles were in New York City. One fan who stood outside the hotel on those chilly winter days was 12-year-old Linda: They came to the window. We were screaming and screaming. Just screaming and singing: ‘We love The Beatles!’ I was dying for anything from them. I just wanted to touch them, and say hello to Paul.

The Beatles performed on The Ed Sullivan Show on February 9, 1964. Seventy-three million American viewers tuned in to see the group that, up until then, they had only heard on the radio. Fans who had joined a fan club through a local radio station were familiar with the music, but seeing them moving on their screens for the first time allowed them to pick their favorite Beatle. Girls took photos of their television screens. All over the country they screamed, cried, and swooned. Many future fan club members later pinpointed seeing The Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show as the moment they fell in love with the Fab 4.