I Want to Hold Your Hand…and then, America….
It was the first Beatles record I bought, but it wasn’t my favorite Beatles song.
I’d heard “She Loves You” in the fall of 1963, and, while the buddy I first heard it with (a story I have related before) mocked the song (as did the deejay who introduced it), I’d been immediately smitten, though I diplomatically kept my opinion to myself. Thereafter, when I listened to far away radio stations in big cities like Chicago and New York on my transistor radio at night when I was supposed to be going to sleep, I listened for “She Loves You.”
I think I may have heard it twice between that first time and the advent of what we know as Beatlemania. I freely admit that my memory of this period is fuzzy. I was in my 12th year and between the time I first heard “She Loves You” in mid-November and when I began hearing “I Want to Hold Your Hand” and other Beatles songs November 22, 1963 happened. Like most Americans I walked around in a dull daze for a while, so I hope I may be forgiven for an imperfect memory of the timeline of events.
So, Christmas 1963 came and went. I got several replacement batteries for my transistor radio among my presents which kept me tuned in for a while. And I heard a couple of other Beatles songs. I’m pretty sure “Please Please Me” was one. And I have a distinct memory of hearing “Ask Me Why.”
By: Jim Booth
Source: Scholars and Rogues
