20. American record producers felt rehashed American rock and roll wouldn’t appeal to audiences
The press in America covered Beatlemania in Britain as the British finally accepting rock and roll music, at a time when the fad had run its course. EMI tried again to sell Beatles records in the United States, through Philadelphia’s Swan Records. The Beatles’ She Loves You on that label also failed to sell when released in September. In November, Brian Epstein and Ed Sullivan came to an agreement for the band to appear on The Ed Sullivan Show in February, 1964, and Epstein leveraged a record distribution deal with Capitol using the substantial influence of Sullivan’s large weekly audience. On November 22, 1963, the CBS Morning News aired a segment on Beatlemania in Great Britain.
The segment was to have been repeated on the CBS Evening News that same day. That afternoon John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. Through the end of the year and well into January, the nation remained in a state of shock as well as suspicion over the events surrounding the assassination and its aftermath. Such was the national mood when The Beatles appeared on Sullivan’s show in February. By that time, I Want to Hold Your Hand had been released by Capitol, and was a major hit in the United States. American rock and roll had returned to the land of its birth, Anglicized along the way.
