In 1964, West Indies almost filled up the coveted Wisden's Five Cricketers of the Year list, with four of its players — Sir Gary Sobers, Rohan Kanhai, Sir Conrad Hunte and Charlie Griffith — figuring in it. Four-out-of-five is anytime enough proof of world dominance. But in the summer of 1964, that was not good enough.
If 5-lists across pursuits were compared, that was not the most spectacular list of the year.
The world of music provided it, with The Beatles garnering the top five positions on Billboard's Hot 100 in the week starting April 4, 1964.
In that year, everything clicked into place for the phenomenal British band. They made their first tour of America, and wherever they went, reining in delirious teenage fans, mostly girls, proved quite a handful for organisers. To see the surreality and magic of the adulation they enjoyed, you should probably watch Ron Howard’s documentary The Beatles: Eight Days A Week – The Touring Years.
And the top five — ‘ Can't Buy Me Love’, ‘Twist and Shout’, ‘She Loves You’, ‘I want to Hold Your Hand’, and ‘Please Please Me’ — seemed like official confirmation that Beatlemania is a ‘pandemic’.
In The Ultimate Beatles Encyclopedia , Bill Harry writes that The Beatles dominated the whole of Billboard Hot 100, then. Soon after achieving the top-five, a record that still stands, The Beatles had 14 of their singles in the Billboard Hot 100, Harry points out.
However, the greatest proof of dominance came from the fact that two other songs on Billoard’s Hot 100 were there simply on account of what they had to say about the moptops. One was a syrupy fan song, and the other came with barbs attached to it.
We Love You Beatles offered by The Carefrees seemed to reinforce images of what was happening at that time — mail by the tonnes from female fans of the ‘fabulous four’.
The simple pop song was largely written in the form of a fan mail, and sung by the female vocalists of The Carefrees. It begins with delirious cries reminiscent of female fans at Beatle concerts, and ends in the same manner. The song has a paragraph dedicated to each of the four Beatles.
ALetter To The Beatles by The Four Preps, an American band, seemed to offer a counter-offensive to the song that euologised the moptops. It’s about a man singing about his Beatle-stricken girlfriend, who wrote a letter to “a singing group from England far away”.
The song has a pastiche of the main tune-line from The Beatles’ I Want to Hold Your Hand to express American girl’s love for the British band.
And then, the deadly lines:
"Beatles, I'd give you anything/ All of my true love"/ But they wrote a letter back to her/ Sayin' that ain't enough/ You gotta send us twenty-five cents/ For an autographed picture/ One dollar bill for a fan club card/ And if you send in right away/ You get a lock of hair from our St. Bernard.
This song did not survive the Beatlemania of those times. Music history has it that it was scraped by The Four Preps’ record label Capitol Records, and the band had to be content having it as a part of a compilation work.
