Six decades ago, Beatlemania took the world by storm, bringing with it a wave of hope, excitement, and dreams of a brighter future. To honour this enduring legacy, a new box set is being released, featuring seven of The Beatles‘ iconic albums originally launched by Capitol Records and United Artists between January, 1964, and March, 1965.
The albums have been out of print on vinyl since 1995 but will soon arrive analog cut for 180-gram audiophile vinyl from the original masters for a new box set, The Beatles: 1964 U.S. Albums In Mono, featuring eight LPs with six available for fans to get their hands on separately.
The box set includes Meet The Beatles!, The Beatles’ Second Album, A Hard Day’s Night, Something New; The Beatles’ Story (2LP), Beatles ’65, and The Early Beatles. Each record also comes with identically replicated artwork and essays written by Beatles historian Bruce Spizer, and are all available to collect individually except The Beatles’ Story.
Beatlemania was already brewing in the UK before their coveted performance on The Ed Sullivan Show, but this monumental historical event sparked a major boost in US interest, supercharging a global fascination that ripples can still be felt today. At the time, the albums released in the US differed from those released in the UK, mainly due to Capitol Records rushing to release albums with different track listings to their UK counterparts.
As a result, American audiences were introduced to The Beatles through a collection of songs that were similar but not identical to what fans in the UK heard. This continued until 1967, when Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band became the first Beatles album with the same track order in both arenas.
Before this, The Beatles were beginning to experience fortune over the other side of the Atlantic due to George Harrison’s older sister, Louise Caldwell. After the first short ripples of Beatlemania in the UK in 1963, the band decided to take a short break, and during this time, Harrison visited his sister in Illinois.
At one point during his trip, Caldwell took Harrison to a radio station in West Frankfort and convinced the DJ to play a copy of ‘She Loves You’. “Louise came to the station several times over the summer asking us to play the Beatles’ music, which up to that time had only been available in England,” the Illinois Times recalled in 2013.
Of course, this singular radio play alone wasn’t enough to spark Beatlemania the way it had across the pond, but their name began to spread slowly but surely across the US and by February 1964, they had their first US number one single with ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’.
