I Want to Hold Your Hand

Recorded: October 17th, 1963
Released: December 26th, 1963
Number One for seven weeks, February 1st-March 20th, 1964

"I Want to Hold Your Hand," the Beatles' first Number One single in America, was the shot across the bow that announced the British Invasion. The Beatles had already become an unprecedented phenomenon in the U.K., France and Germany, but Capitol, which had rights to the Beatles' songs in the U.S., had refused to release their records here.

At the time, the notion that an English rock & roll band could have a hit in America was absurd. But the Beatles, their manager, Brian Epstein, and George Martin (whose entreaties to Capitol were rebuffed with the declaration, "We don't think they're any good"), were determined.

John Lennon and Paul McCartney wrote "I Want to Hold Your Hand" sitting at the same piano in the basement of McCartney girlfriend Jane Asher's parents' home, "playing into each other's noses," as Lennon put it. The duo pulled out every trick in their songwriting bag - the song is a dazzling 2:24 anthology of irresistible melodies, harmonies, hand claps and hooks. "Another sick thing about the Beatles is they make almost everything the chorus," Billy Corgan says. "You'll think you've heard all the hooks, and then some hook that really sells you on the song surfaces in the middle, only lasts a few seconds and disappears, never to return again." That's "I Want to Hold Your Hand" in a nutshell.

The Beatles recorded the song on October 17th, 1963, at Abbey Road, on the studio's brand-new four-track equipment, and the single was released in England on November 29th. In December, a disc jockey at WWDC in Washington, D.C., got a copy of "I Want to Hold Your Hand" from his girlfriend, who was a flight attendant on a British airline, and began playing it. When other stations followed suit, Capitol's hand was forced, and "I Want to Hold Your Hand" was rush-released in the U.S. on December 26th. America had fallen to Beatlemania, and nothing would ever be the same.

ANTHONY DECURTIS