It was 50 years ago today (Capitol released the "I Want to Hold Your Hand" Single)*

I actually have a Scranton 'Hofer' variant pressing with New York P1 / P1 lacquers (the proverbial 'dub of a dub of a dub', I suppose), amazing considering that most such variants use Hollywood F# / G# lacquers.

 

Note the "1-134" under "Recorded In England" on the label. That's January 13-1964. The labels were printed up and then the single was rush released in December.

 

Here's a cool item - 30th anniversary promo cd-single:

 

Long-time forum members, please suppress an eye-roll as I drag out this hoary story I've told so often here just one more time! I promise I'll give it a rest after this, but it being the 50th anniversary and all, it seems appropriate to give it one more telling.


I heard "I Want to Hold Your Hand" for the first time on Youngstown's perennial Top 40 station, WHOT. (And I'm sure in was in January, 1964...not the previous month.)

It was played by legendary DJ Boots Bell. He was an irrepressible personality, but he gave the song an outro that was over the top, even for him. He raved about how this was a new group from England that was taking the world by storm, and that they were gonna be the biggest thing in rock 'n' roll since Elvis.

Virtually the exact words I spoke in my head were these: "Well, if that's what those guys from England think we like over here, they're crazy!!"

That's how completely different "I Want to Hold Your Hand" was from anything I had heard in my previous year's worth of listening to rock 'n' roll.

Needless to say, within a week I had completely changed my view...and the rest is history. An earlier poster called this event life-changing, and I would agree entirely.

I got Meet the Beatles for my 12th birthday on February 25 (yes, same as George's!), and the reverberations are still being felt in my life 50 years later.

 

The rest is history.....

 

I'll be getting an original mono WTB soon.Need to do an A to B with my original US IWTHYH 45.

 

Just had a conversation with a friend the other day, I don't remember too much commotion until a week or two before the Sullivan shows. I had seen them on a clip on the Jack Paar Show some months before but it didn't register until the Sullivan show. Then it was cue the voice over.. "Now it all begins", fade out-the nuns demanding "Get that hair off your forehead!"

 

Well I hope you know better now, and that you store your records next to the refrigerator!

 

50 years ago Paul White said "What took you so long?"

 

Only had to happen once. I put them away because of the sleeves but they were lost, probably in a move in 1972.

 

Sure you can-- Mark Lewisohn lays out the case against Capitol in his new book, and it doesn't make Dave Dexter look too great.

 

Yes, it sounds as if there was bad blood between EMI (Martin) and Capitol (Dexter) long before the Beatles.

 

It still sounds fresh. But today she is 67, I don't think the way she looks is way beyond compare anymore.

 

Jeepers!! A lot of you were ALIVE when this happened!!!
Being born in 1967, it was all 'passed-down' history, only seen when a TV station played "A Hard Days Night", the doc "All You Need Is Love".....
To paraphrase John, .... "I should'a been there."

 

Even on "Can't Buy Me Love"? It should say "Recorded in France"!

 

I suppose I've never thought of it like that. Obviously I have a hard time in thinking anything English as 'exotic'

Coming out of the 'US Albums' thread though, it does seem a bit of a cheek that Capitol took (for example) the tapes of the stereo 'Second Album', gave them the reverbed and Duophonic treatment, and STILL labelled it 'Recorded in England'. It may have been, but it sure sounded nothing like that! In fact, that album is probably the nearest they got to 'Recorded in the USA'

 

Anybody here attend either the Sullivan Shows or Washington Concert?

 

This is why I wasn't a Beatle fan growing up.

I was just a lil guy back then. My parents never listened to pop music of the day. It was the easy listening stations, Sinatra, Streisand etc is what I grew up with and all I knew. And I was an only child then so no older siblings around.

It wasn't till I was like 12ish that I heard the Beatles on a regular basis thanks to my friends older sister.

But alas, it wasn't meant to be. I ended up a Stones fan for life. Never really got into the Beatles, though I do have all their regular albums.

 

I have that promo cd also, I was hoping all the Capitol 45's would get released like that but never happened, I think there were three others released as promo's also.

 

It's not a remix. Capitol received a mono tape copy from the UK and compressed the hell out of it. The stereo LP version is the same mono mix, but Dexterized.

 

Truly a holy object!

 

We used to sing it this way:
Well she was just 117
You know what I mean
And the way she looked
She was way beyond repair.

 

Regarding the release date being moved up, from wiki:

The single had actually been intended for release in mid-January 1964, coinciding with the planned appearance of the Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show. However, a 14-year-old fan of the Beatles, Marsha Albert, was determined to get hold of the single earlier.[21] Later she said:

“It wasn't so much what I had seen, it's what I had heard. They had a scene where they played a clip of 'She Loves You' and I thought it was a great song ... I wrote that I thought the Beatles would be really popular here, and if [ Carroll James] could get one of their records, that would really be great.[22]”
James was the DJ for WWDC, a radio station in Washington, DC. Eventually he decided to pursue Albert's suggestion to him and asked the station's promotion director to get British Overseas Airways Corporation to ship in a copy of "I Want to Hold Your Hand" from Britain. Albert related what happened next: "Carroll James called me up the day he got the record and said 'If you can get down here by 5 o'clock, we'll let you introduce it.'" Albert managed to get to the station in time, and introduced the record with: "Ladies and gentlemen, for the first time on the air in the United States, here are the Beatles singing 'I Want to Hold Your Hand.'"[21]

The song proved to be a huge hit, a surprise for the station since they catered mainly to a more staid audience, which would normally be expecting songs from singers such as Andy Williams or Bobby Vinton instead of rock and roll. James took to playing the song repeatedly on the station, often turning down the song in the middle to make the declaration, "This is a Carroll James exclusive",[22] to avoid theft of the song by other stations.
Capitol threatened to seek a court order banning airplay of "I Want to Hold Your Hand", which was already being spread by James to a couple of DJs in Chicago and St. Louis. James and WWDC ignored the threat, and Capitol came to the conclusion that they could well take advantage of the publicity, releasing the single two weeks ahead of schedule on 26 December.

 

Trust me...to us Yanks, it was!

I have a clear memory of impressing a girl at a high school football game in the fall of 1964 with my carefully practiced imitation of George Harrison, complete with the Liverpudlian accent.

"Oh, you sound just like him!," said she. I can still see her face. (Regrettably, it never got me anywhere with her, though!)

 

There is more of the world ouside UK than just the USA. Perhaps you mean that this release kicked off Beatlemania in the US. Unless you really do think that the US is the whole of the world (i am always astonished at the conceit of world series baseball).