January 1963. Cliff Richard at number one. 'Dance On.' Before you say anythin' — I like Cliff. Proper entertainer. But 'Dance On' is not a song that changes the world. It's nice. It's polite. It's what British pop was before four lads from Liverpool grabbed it by the scruff of the neck.
The charts that month were trad jazz, easy listenin', show tunes. The Shadows at number two with an instrumental. Frank Ifield yodellin' at three. Yodellin'. At number three. That's where we were.
Then February. Four lads walk into EMI's Abbey Road Studios at ten in the mornin', walk out at quarter to eleven that night. Cost four hundred quid. Ten songs — most of 'em covers they'd been playin' in Hamburg and the Cavern, plus a handful they'd written on hotel notepads. The album came out March. Please Please Me. Number one. Stayed thirty weeks. Thirty. Then it got replaced by the next Beatles album.
August. 'She Loves You.' That openin' guitar chord. The 'yeah yeah yeah.' Sounds simple now because you've heard it a million times. Hearin' it for the first time in 1963 — there was nothin' else like it. Fastest-sellin' single in British history at that point. One point eight seven million copies in the UK alone. Still their biggest seller here. And it's not even their best song. That's the mad part. They hadn't peaked.
October. Sunday Night at the London Palladium. Fifteen million people watchin'. Outside, thousands of teenagers blockin' the streets. Traffic chaos. The papers called it Beatlemania. First time British kids had gone that mad for a homegrown band. Previously that hysteria was for Elvis — an American they'd never meet. Now the object of it was from Liverpool. From their own country.
I've got a newspaper from that week. Front page is all Beatles. The world news — and there was plenty in 1963 — is on page four. Says everythin'.
The NME from November 1963. Headline: 'Beatles Still Top — But Can They Last?' Underneath, in smaller print, a story about a band called the Rollin' Stones who'd just released their first single. 'I Wanna Be Your Man.' Written by Lennon and McCartney. The Stones. Written by the Beatles. That's 1963 in a nutshell. The old guard didn't stand a chance.
December. 'I Want to Hold Your Hand' at number one. The gateway drug for America. That song broke the States in early 64, and suddenly Britain wasn't a musical backwater anymore. We were the epicentre. The Beatles kicked the door open and every British band with a guitar and a dream piled through.
I wasn't there. Born 65, missed it by two years. But I've got the evidence spread out on my floor when I want to spend an afternoon in 1963. The yellow pages. The reviews that got it completely wrong. The records that some teenager bought, took home, played until the grooves wore thin. That's what collectin' is. Not hoardin'. Time travel.