After a decade’s absence from the most popular music store on earth, the Beatles have finally come to iTunes today… and to pay tribute to Beatlemania both past and present, Apple is celebrating the occasion by streaming The Fab Four’s history making concert at the Washington Coliseum back in February 11th 1964 on the official Apple.com website.
The concert is one of the most epochal gigs in rock and roll history. Following their historic appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show, it was the first time the Beatles had ever performed live and in concert in the United States, and despite conventional music reviewers saying that the band “could not carry a tune across the Atlantic,” their performance at the Washington Coliseum still brought in an estimated 8,000 shrieking teenage girls… well above capacity.
Music critic richie Unterberger writes about the concert, “[H]ere are the early Beatles at their on-stage best. They’re more visibly delighted, indeed almost overwhelmed, by the crowd’s enthusiasm here than at any time before or since. Despite the seeming overnight success of their invasion of America, it had in reality been a long hard climb to the top, taking about seven years of diligent work and numerous excruciating setbacks, and also a year or so where they’d made virtually no inroads into the U.S. market despite their mushrooming British superstardom. This was the payoff, and though the group would get fed up with touring before screaming teenagers within a couple of years, at the Washington Coliseum they were if anything having an even greater time than their admirers….”
The Apple stream is a perfect way to relive a seminal moment in music history on a day when the British have once again invaded an entirely new frontier: the iTunes store.
