BEATLEMANIA

BEATLEMANIA STARTED WITH TELEVISION APPEARANCE ON SUNDAY NIGHT AT THE LONDON PALLADIUM AND SOON BECAME A GLOBAL PHENOMENON.

The Beatles already had a huge following in the clubs of Liverpool and Hamburg by the time they signed a recording contract in 1962, and within a year of releasing their first single, " Love Me Do," that club following had been turned into a national phenomenon. On October 13, 1963, after three No. 1 singles, the Beatles topped the bill on the British television show Sunday Night at the London Palladium and drew and estimated 15 million viewer for a performance that was almost completely drowned out by the screams of the live audience - a hysterical and soon typical reaction that the media named Beatlemania.

The symptoms of Beatlemania, which mainly affected teenage girls, were a tendency to block streets by gathering in large crowds near theaters, television studios, or airports; a high incidence of screaming, crying, an hysterical wailing; uncontrollable clutching pf the face and hair; fainting; and occasional loss of bladder control.

BEATLEMANIA CROSSES THE ATLANTIC

If the Beatles had ever worried about "breaking" the American market, those fears were laid to rest when, with " I Want to Hold Your Hand" at No.1 om the U.S. charts, they arrived in New York on February 7, 1964, to be greeted by the now familiar sight of some 3,000 screaming, faiting girls. They made three consecutive appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show,  the first of which was watched by record 73 million people, and two months later " Can;t Buy Me Love became the first single to simultaneously top the UK and U.S. charts. Beatlemania had crossed the Atlantic, and with the phenomenon also begining to affect Australia and Europe, It soon took over the world.