50 years ago today: Parlophone Records released the Beatles fifth U.K. single, I Want to Hold Your Hand, with This Boy on the flip side, on November 29, 1963. Two weeks later, it rocketed to No. 1, displacing the Beatles She Loves You from the top spot and giving the band a one-two punch. It marked the first time that a recording act had superseded itself in the No. 1 position. At the same time, the Beatles held the No. 1 and No. 2 positions on the U.K. album chart. The October 17 session for the two songs was the first Beatles recording date on which producer George Martin used the new four-track technology in the Abbey Road studio; the previous Beatles releases had been recorded on two-track equipment. John Lennon and Paul McCartney wrote I Want to Hold Your Hand together in the basement of the home of Jane Ashers parents at 57 Wimpole Street in London; Janes mother, Margaret, used the basement to teach music students to play the oboe. Lennon and McCartney wrote the song in response to the urging of band manager Brian Epstein to create a song that would appeal to American teenagers. Skeptical officials at EMIs subsidiary Capitol Records who had declined prior Beatles recordings finally relented to ongoing pressure and agreed to release I Want to Hold Your Hand in the States on December 26, with I Saw Her Standing There as the B-side. A few American radio stations that had begun playing British pressings of I Want to Hold Your Hand created such ballooning demand for the record that Capitol contracted some of the pressing to RCA and Columbia plants. The song burst onto U.S. charts on January 18, 1964, and two weeks later reached No. 1, a position it held for seven consecutive weeks. It remained on the chart for 15 weeks. Their roaring success sent other American labels scrambling to release recordings by other U.K. performers, as the British invasion began.
Posted on: Fri, 29 Nov 2013 23:10:48 +0000
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