The Beatles Are Coming!: The Birth of Beatlemania in America

Product Description

The Beatles Are Coming! covers the Beatles first visit to the United States and the events leading up to the group’s arrival on February 7, 1964. It is the most thorough and accurate book ever published on how Beatlemania evolved in America. The book details why Capitol Records turned down the Beatles four times before finally agreeing to release their records. It tells the stories of two small companies, Vee-Jay and Swan, who issued the group’s records without success in 1963. It details the American media coverage of the Beatles in late 1963, when Beatlemania was viewed as a curious fad happening in England that could never catch on in the United States. It explains how the Beatles were booked for The Jack Paar Program and The Ed Sullivan Show, as well as two concerts at Carnegie Hall. The book concludes with stories and pictures of the Beatles historic first U.S. visit in February, 1964. The book contains over 450 images, including many previously unpublished photos of the Beatles. Foreword by Walter Cronkite.

From Booklist

Longtime Beatle authority Spizer’s oversize tome covers the Beatles’ first American appearances in near-absurd detail. Concentrating on 1963 and the first two months of 1964, Spizer exhaustively recounts the Beatles’ recording sessions during the period, the fight between giant Capitol Records and tiny indy label Vee-Jay over the rights to release the group’s early recordings, and the hysterical coverage of the first visit. Informative as the text is, the more than 400 record jackets, advertisements, consumer and trade magazine articles, concert photos, and record labels that only the most obsessed collector knows about, reproduced in the original color or black and white, constitute the book’s raison d’etre. If the minutiae may become oppressive for all but the most fanatical Beatlemaniacs, the latter still comprise a big, eager market for further books on their idols, especially those as lovingly produced as Spizer’s overwhelmingly comprehensive volume.
Gordon Flagg

Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review

A thoroughly researched entertaining account of the group’s first U.S. visit, full of interesting and little known stories. —
Wlater Cronkite, from the foreword

Essential for any fan who wants to know the real “behind-the-scenes” story of the Beatles first U.S. visit. —
Daytrippin’, Winter 2004

From the Author

Bruce Spizer has written eight critically acclaimed Beatles books, including The Beatles Records on Vee-Jay, The Beatles’ Story on Capitol Records, The Beatles on Apple Records, Beatles for Sale on Parlophone Records and The Beatles Are Coming! The Birth of Beatlemania in America. He has appeared on several national television programs (ABC’s Good Morning America and Nightline, CBS’s Early Show, CNN and Fox National News) and radio programs (NPR, ABC, BBC) as a Beatles expert and has given presentations at the Grammy Museum, the Rock ‘N’ Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, the American Film Institute, the Paley Center for Media, the Newseum, New York’s Lincoln Center and Beatles conventions throughout the United States and in Liverpool, England. Bruce serves a consultant for Universal Music Group, Capitol records and Apple Corps, Ltd. on Beatles projects.

About the Author

Bruce Spizer has written eight critically acclaimed Beatles books, including The Beatles Records on Vee-Jay, The Beatles’ Story on Capitol Records, The Beatles on Apple Records, Beatles for Sale on Parlophone Records and The Beatles Are Coming! The Birth of Beatlemania in America. He has appeared on several national television programs (ABC’s Good Morning America and Nightline, CBS’s Early Show, CNN and Fox National News) and radio programs (NPR, ABC, BBC) as a Beatles expert and has given presentations at the Grammy Museum, the Rock ‘N’ Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, the American Film Institute, the Paley Center for Media, the Newseum, New York’s Lincoln Center an