1963: The year The Beatles shook things up | Daily News Commentary
"Shake It Up, Baby: The Rise of Beatlemania and the Mayhem of 1963" by Ken McNab
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It was like squashing a cockroach, they said. Put your toe down in one spot, rotate your hips and your ankle, shimmy them shoulders, and snap your fingers to the beat. That’s how you kill a bug, and it’s how you do The Twist — but beware. In the new book "Shake It Up, Baby" by Ken McNab, there are some Beatles you really want around.
The first day of 1963 was remarkable for one thing: Great Britain was in the midst of "an extraordinary polar plunge that would last three long, depressing months." Also on that day, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr arrived on a plane home from Hamburg, "just four nameless faces in the crowd."
They had no idea that this would be the year "when everything changed."
They were still getting used to one another, jostling for control. Their manager, Brian Epstein, was toiling to make the four men famous, constantly calling record companies, landing gigs, booking recording studios — one at which the Beatles would record an entire album in a single day. They toured constantly, dozens and dozens of concerts with one reward: their song, "Please Please Me" started to rise on British music charts.
Source: gmtoday.com
