Why did The Beatles rise to unprecedented goddamn prominence so quickly? Well, the truth is, it’s because there was nothing quick about it.
They always say that every overnight success is five years in the making, and The Beatles may well be music’s great example of that. The timeline of them going from zero to hero in America feels so quick that we can often forget just how much time and effort went into their music, performance style, and all-around careers before that.
When you look at Beatlemania, the three key moments consist of the song ‘I Wanna Hold Your Hand’ charting in the US, The Beatles flying over to America and then The Beatles playing on The Ed Sullivan Show. After those three phases were complete, everyone was suddenly living in a post-Beatles world, and it was one that looked as though it would be changed forever.
“It transformed America,” said E Street Band guitarist Steve Van Zandt, who was one of the many people who felt the impact of The Beatles almost immediately. “On February 8th, there were no bands in America; on February 9th, we had Ed Sullivan, and on February 10th, everybody had a band in their garage. It was literally overnight.”
So, if it was basically overnight, that in itself satisfies the definition of an overnight success, doesn’t it? Well, in a way, but The Beatles wouldn’t have had that overnight success were it not for the strength of their live show. If they had rocked up to The Ed Sullivan Show and meandered their way through a mediocre gig, the band wouldn’t have had the global impact that they did.
The work they put into perfecting their live show is what led to them having such quick success in the States, and the work they put into perfecting that live showcase in the form of gigs in the UK and Hamburg, to the extent that they had been playing together for years before they even set foot in the States. Playing live was very important to The Beatles, so much so that when they realised they stopped being able to give their best performances to audiences, they stopped playing live.
Of course, when The Beatles split and each member embarked on their separate solo careers, they began playing live again. Paul McCartney has been part of many a great gig since The Beatles, and while the majority of them are shows he was happy to be a part of, a few misfires have slipped through the cracks. One of the worst of these came when he played at Live Aid.
When he was performing ‘Let It Be’ at Live Aid, McCartney couldn’t quite get his vocals right, as feedback started running through the mic with every word. “It was a nightmare,” he said. “This is my only song on this massive global event […] But then, luckily, the dear old audience helped me out, and they started singing it.”
McCartney hated his performance so much that after the show, he asked if he could re-record the lyrics to get rid of the squeaky feedback. “So, I just said, ‘Look, is there any way we can fix this because you are going to show this again and again and again, so can I just re-voice it just for posterity?’” He concluded, “I did it […] The actual real-life version was not there, and it was a complete nightmare that I’m trying to forget. This is therapy, right?”
