Fifty years after their first single,to listen to The Beatles is to feel the shock of the new Fifty years ago today,the first Beatles single was three days from being released. Composed four years earlier by a 16-year-old Paul McCartney,its skiffle roots still showing,and accompanied by a dockside harmonica,Love Me Do reached number 17 on the UK charts. Ringo Starr was relegated to the tambourine in that first version,and a professional drummer hired. Used to playing the greats,such as Little Richard and Ray Charles,in their live performances,the band was shy about its own pieces at first We thought our numbers were a bit wet. But in 1964,Love Me Do would reach number one on the US charts. It was the beginning of the Beatles transformation from band to icon. For one,by 1962,the Beatles had abandoned drainpipes and leather jackets for the mop tops and tailored suits that would become part of so many iconic images. But these were no crooners. The numbers belted out by the four lovable mop tops in an unvarnished Liverpudlian accent held a raw,radical energy that would prompt the poet Philip Larkin to call 1963 his annus mirabilis the year the sexual revolution arrived in Britain,somewhere between the end of the Chatterley ban and the Beatles first LP. Perhaps it was the contrast between the bands seraphic veneer and the explosive music it made that drove fans crazy,with girls fainting at Beatles concerts and people screaming so hard the four could barely hear themselves play. Regular,respectable people,it was suddenly discovered,could rock and roll as well. Half a century later,the Beatles have become their own institution,endlessly memorialised,eulogised and imitated. Yet their fans range from the generation that went to their concerts in the 1960s to teenagers whose growing years have been soundtracked by their songs. For to hear the Beatles for the first time is to feel,as always,the shock of the new.
