Despite The Beatles’ incredible contributions to music, they would not have become the pop cultural icons they are known as today if not for their ardently devoted fans. Upon their emergence in the early 1960s, the Fab Four were unlike anything England had seen before. Sporting mop-top haircuts and matching suits, the young musicians instantly charmed listeners with their songs on love and heartbreak, often covering classic rhythm and blues tracks.
Before long, the band attracted a large following of fans, particularly teenage girls, leading to a phenomenon known as Beatlemania. These fans screamed so loudly that The Beatles’ performances were often hard to hear, and these concerts needed to be manned by an extensive amount of police and security guards.
The extent of Beatlemania was so extreme that the band even penned a song about an experience with a highly dedicated fan – ‘She Came in Through the Bathroom Window’. Several fans had attempted, some successfully, to break into the members’ houses, desperate to catch a glimpse of them in their natural habitats.
The phenomenon found its roots in the band’s early days, with some claiming that The Beatles were greeted with crazed screams when they were Cavern Club regulars, with no released music to their name. However, when the band released their debut single, ‘Love Me Do’, in 1962, they started to find mass national appeal. As they released more singles, they gained even more popularity, quickly becoming British heartthrobs.
The Beatles found success in the United Kingdom first before becoming part of the British Invasion, taking the United States by storm. However, their popularity across the pond can be greatly attributed to a 15-year-old girl named Marsha Albert, a superfan who led the band to receive their first instance of American airplay.
The teenager had watched a segment of CBS Morning News that referenced The Beatles, describing them as a band who were gaining traction in their home country. Enamoured by what she was seeing, Albert sent a letter to a radio station called WWDC-AM, asking DJ Carroll James Jr to try and play The Beatles on his show.
James obliged, managing to successfully get his hands on a British copy of ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’ from a British Airways flight attendant. When James played the song on his show, it was the first time The Beatles had ever been played on American radio – a landmark moment for the band. Due to Albert’s suggestion to play the track, James invited the teenager onto the show to introduce it.
Subsequently, The Beatles began to achieve widespread attention in the United States, leading to the full-blown explosion of Beatlemania that made them the biggest band in the world. According to historian Bruce Spizer, “Marsha Albert’s actions forced a major record company to push up the release date of a debut single from an unknown band during the holiday season, a time when record companies traditionally released no new product.”
