From the Cavern to the Palladium

The Beatles first British single, “Love Me Do,” with a B-side of “P.S. I Love You,” ended up selling 100,000 copies in England and got them to number seventeen on the charts. It gave the group a taste of things to come. “All we had wanted was a piece of vinyl—my God, a record that you hadn't made in a booth somewhere! And now we wanted to be Number One. They were both as important,” said Ringo. In December, they played two more weeks at the Star Club in Hamburg (their last trip to Hamburg ever), and began a tour of Scotland in January—in a van. The Beatles were also put on tour along with several other groups, and covered much of England in this time. This sparked a following outside of Liverpool.

The Beatles released their second single, “Please Please Me” in February of 1963, and this became their first number-one single in Britain. They followed this quickly with their first album, also called Please Please Me, and their third single, “From Me To You,” which also made number one. After more brief tours and a handful of TV appearances, the Beatles were starting to cause riots wherever they went. They were mobbed in the theaters where they played and at their hotels. Their fourth single, “She Loves You,” another number one and their biggest yet, took them to another level. On October 13, 1963, they topped the bill on a show that was televised around the nation as Sunday Night at the London Palladium. The TV audience was estimated at 15 million people. The crowds outside the Palladium were hysterical, and the police had difficulty controlling them. The phenomenon called Beatlemania was now in full swing in England.