Rain

Believe it or not, this is a song that somehow managed to fall through the cracks for me.  I do not recall even hearing this B-side when it was originally released in May of 1966; it must not have gotten much airplay, though it did hit number twenty-three on the Billboard chart.  I had already stopped buying many singles by the Beatles once I noticed that Capitol Records was in the habit of putting most - but not all - songs from singles onto albums shortly after their initial release.  Thus, I did not purchase a copy of Paperback Writer.  It was only several years later when a friend gave me some singles that he no longer wanted (yes, really!) that I discovered this mind-bending B-side.

The group began work on this composition by Lennon on the evening of April 14th, 1966, after spending the afternoon session finishing up the A-side Paperback Writer.  They only needed five takes of the backing track of Rain before arriving at the master.  This master was achieved by recording the group playing at a quicker tempo than what we know, then slowing the tape down to create a different aural texture.  The opposite was done with John's lead vocal, speeding it up on playback to make it sound slightly faster.

Much has been made over the years of the drumming on the track, most notably by Ringo himself.  Max Weinberg of the E Street Band interviewed him when compiling his book The Big Beat about drummers and their work, and Ringo told him, "I know me and I know my playing, and then there's Rain."  He proudly considers it to be the best of his career.

What happened at the end of this day's work is the stuff of legend.  As was customary at the time, John was given a tape of the track to take home, so he could listen to it and decide what more might be added.  He mistakenly played the tape backwards and was mesmerized.  (Contrary to this version, producer George Martin naturally knew that voices and instruments sounded different when played backwards, and claimed that he made this known to John.) 

At any rate, the group reconvened two days later on April 16th, with John suggesting that the entire track be played backwards.  Martin appeased him by reversing his lead vocal during the final verse as the song fades out.  Among the many overdubs added on this day were tambourine from Ringo, backing vocals by Paul and George, and double-tracking of John's vocal in the refrains.  One major overdub was of Paul's bass, replacing his bass line from the backing track in the new and improved manner that they had used for the first time only days earlier on Paperback Writer.  Before the session ended, the song was mixed for mono and ready for release.

As it turned out, neither side of the single appeared on the August 1966 album Revolver, nor on the US compilation album Yesterday...and Today.  It was not until the end of the group's career, when new manager Allen Klein struck a deal with Capitol allowing that company to assemble a compilation entitled Hey Jude, that the song made it onto an album.  For this February 1970 release, Rain was finally mixed into stereo.  This stereo version was also used when the group's catalog was issued on CD for the first time in 1988, on the collection Past Masters Volume Two.

Promotional films and videos were made for both sides of the single, with Michael Lindsey-Hogg directing.  On May 19th, 1966, a color performance video of Rain was shot specifically for the Ed Sullivan Show, then a similar black and white video was made for British television.  The next day, May 20th, a color film was produced in the gardens of Chiswick House.  Ringo gets the most exposure here right from the top as he walks toward the camera coming from an archway featuring a sign which reads "Way Out."  This film, as well as a re-edited version of the black and white video, can be viewed on the excellent collection 1+.

Though they never played the song live, the Beatles did make a rare live TV appearance on Top of the Pops on June 16th, 1966, miming to both sides of their latest single.  

The song has only gained in stature over the years, even serving as the title of a long-running touring and Broadway show - Rain: A Tribute to the Beatles.

P.S. I Love You

The music world knows that Love Me Do was the first A-side released by the Beatles but, for a short time, P.S. I Love You was considered for that all-important position, a move which would have given the public a very different impression of the unknown band from Liverpool.  McCartney's brisk crooner is a more sophisticated composition than the raw, bluesy Love Me Do, and Andy White's drumming grounds it firmly in an old-fashioned style, far removed from the rock and roll image that the Beatles were hoping to establish for themselves.

In May of 1962, John, Paul, George and Pete were in the midst of their third stint in Hamburg, West Germany, when they received a telegram from manager Brian Epstein telling them that he had secured a recording contract for them from EMI, and that they should begin rehearsing new material.  This is what prompted McCartney to compose this number, starting with the lyrics in the form of a letter to a faraway love.

The boys did, indeed, rehearse this new composition, and they had it ready when they reported to Abbey Road Studios for the very first time on June 6th.  It was among the four songs that they recorded on this date, yet it has apparently never surfaced, even on bootlegs.  Too bad.  Like the recordings of Besame Mucho and Love Me Do from this session that are available on Anthology 1, it would be fascinating to hear this earliest version with Pete Best on drums.

They did not return to Abbey Road Studios until September 4th, with new drummer Ringo Starr now in the group.  Producer Ron Richards worked with them on several songs - one of them being P.S. I Love You - before the recording session was scheduled to begin.  Again, we do not know what the arrangement sounded like with Ringo on drums, because the song was not chosen for further work on that day.

One week later, on September 11th, they were summoned back down to London for yet another attempt at finishing off their first single.  They were all taken aback when they saw that drummer Andy White had been brought in for the session.  Ron Richards produced the recordings on this day, and he allowed Ringo to play maracas alongside White, which smoothed over the situation somewhat.  Ten takes were recorded before the song was perfected, and everyone was so happy with the result that talk turned to making it the A-side.  However, Richards knew that another song of the same name had been released in recent years, plus principal producer George Martin was now favoring Love Me Do, so P.S. I Love You would have to be the B-side.

When the song was added to the album Please Please Me, a mock stereo mix was prepared, with treble in one channel and bass frequencies on the other.  In America, the song first appeared on early copies of the VeeJay album Introducing...the Beatles, but it was soon removed due to legal complications.  Once a settlement was reached between VeeJay and Capitol Records, VeeJay released it as the B-side to Love Me Do on the small Tollie label in April of 1964.  The American appetite for anything by the Beatles was so strong at this time that P.S. I Love You actually reached number ten on the Billboard chart.

In the UK, the song appeared on the EP All My Loving.  Capitol finally released it in the US in March of 1965 on the album The Early Beatles.  And P.S. I Love You closes out the 1977 compilation album Love Songs.

Though the Beatles heavily promoted both sides of many of their later singles, such was not the case with their first, nor was this B-side featured much in their live act.  They did play the song on BBC Radio on three occasions.  The third, from June of 1963 for their program Pop Go the Beatles, can be heard on On Air - Live at the BBC Volume 2.  Ringo does a nice job of recreating Andy White's drumming style.  And, unlike on the record, George finishes the performance with a strummed guitar chord.  This may have been the final time they ever played the tune. 

Polythene Pam

This odd little character sketch by Lennon will always be paired with Mean Mr. Mustard for multiple reasons.  They were both written in India in early 1968, they were both overlooked for the "White Album" even though demos for both were recorded before sessions for that album commenced, they were both revived and sequenced back-to-back in the big medley on side two of Abbey Road, and they were both uncharacteristic pieces for Lennon as a composer.

There were a few possible inspirations for Lennon's portrait of the kinky Polythene Pam according to Steve Turner in his book A Hard Day's Write.  The question for me is why would either an old polythene-eating fan from Liverpool or a woman from a one-night stand involving beat poet Royston Ellis even come to mind to Lennon as he was studying Transcendental Meditation in Rishikesh?  And why would he then feel compelled to write such a song?

It was previewed at George Harrison's house in May of '68 when the Beatles met to record demos of the many songs they had written during their time in India.  John double-tracked both his acoustic guitar and his vocals, with a few variations from the finished lyrics we know.  As the song only consists of two verses, he repeats them one and a half times before concluding with an "Amen."

When McCartney came up with the idea for a medley of mostly unfinished song snippets for Abbey Road, Lennon offered up this tune.  They decided beforehand that this song would be linked to McCartney's She Came in Through the Bathroom Window, and that they would be recorded as one.  With John on guide vocal and acoustic guitar, George on electric guitar, Paul on bass and Ringo on drums, it required thirty-nine takes for the band to get the backing track perfected on July 25th, 1969.  Even then, John was unhappy with Ringo's drumming on the track, sarcastically remarking at one point that it sounded like Dave Clark.

Ringo continued working on it, however, with Paul's assistance, later telling John that he felt he finally got it right, but John brushed him off, saying that Ringo could do it as an overdub if he wanted, but they weren't going to play the entire track again.  This rather shoddy treatment of Ringo is related by engineer Geoff Emerick in his book Here, There and Everywhere.  In addition to Ringo's drum overdub, Paul re-recorded his bass part and John added his lead vocal line to the master take.

They returned to this section of the medley three days later, on July 28th.  Ringo added tambourine, maracas and cowbell, George overdubbed more electric guitar, and John re-recorded his lead vocal.  Paul also reportedly added acoustic and electric piano parts, but I am not able to pick these out in the mix.  The final session for the song, on July 30th, involved John, Paul and George adding backing vocals to both Polythene Pam and She Came in Through the Bathroom Window.

Despite John's treatment of Ringo at the initial session for the song, Geoff Emerick felt that the group was playing and sounding like the Beatles of old, and he said so to producer George Martin in the privacy of the control room.  Martin's response was, "You're right.  You'd never guess that the four of them actually can't stand each other."     

Please Please Me

In an alternate reality, The Beatles give in to producer George Martin and release the song of his choosing as their second single.  They have a brief but undistinguished career, are remembered fondly by some Britons as a one-hit wonder, and the face of popular music over the last fifty-plus years is dramatically different from what we have known it to be.  This easily could have come to pass - except for one song.

Yes, it's fairly safe to assert that without the song Please Please Me we never would have heard of the Beatles.  Their second single had to be a breakout hit for the Parlophone label to have any faith in them and allow them to record an album, or even a follow-up single.  But the fact that it improbably shot up to number one only sped up the process of their meteoric rise to national fame.  (And it was a number one.  Read any accounts from the time in early 1963.  None of them say otherwise.  Only retroactively has it lost that claim due to the fact that it stalled at number two on one of the four accepted British charts.)

John Lennon wrote the song shortly after the group had its first meeting with George Martin on June 6th, 1962.  He told them that they would have to come up with better material than what they had presented on that day if they hoped to record any of their own compositions.  Lennon conceived it as a bluesy Roy Orbison number, with a play on the word please inspired by a 1932 Bing Crosby hit entitled Please, which contained the line "please lend a little ear to my pleas."

The Beatles reported to EMI Studios on September 4th, 1962 to record the Mitch Murray composition How Do You Do It, which Martin had picked to be the A-side of their first single.  The B-side would be chosen from their own material.  Martin listened to Lennon's song, but felt it was too slow and far too short.  While he did tell them to speed up the tempo and offered some tips for a better arrangement, he wasted little time on the number, choosing to record Love Me Do for the B-side.

As luck would have it, there were some issues with the publishing companies regarding How Do You Do It, so the band returned to London a week later on September 11th to make another recording.  Love Me Do would now be the A-side of the single, but Martin had been unhappy with Ringo's drumming on the track, so he brought in session drummer Andy White for a remake.  A new B-side would have to be recorded, as well, and Lennon took the opportunity to push for Please Please Me again after they had recorded McCartney's P.S. I Love You.  The band had taken Martin's notes from the previous week and rehearsed the song with the new tempo and arrangement.  Martin felt that it still wasn't quite right, but they did record it with Andy White on drums, as can be heard on Anthology 1.  George plays the distinctive riff on guitar a bit unsteadily, and White has a little drum break in the bridge, but otherwise it is close to the finished product.  Martin wisely passed on it at the time, saving it from being buried as the group's first B-side.

After the moderate success of Love Me Do, Martin was determined that the September 4th recording of How Do You Do It would be the group's second single, but Lennon and McCartney were now equally determined that only their own compositions should be released as singles.  On November 26th, Martin let the Beatles have another shot at Please Please Me.  Wanting to establish a signature sound for the group, Martin suggested that John should play the song's distinctive riff on harmonica as an overdub in addition to George playing it on guitar.  It took eighteen takes before the producer made his legendary announcement, "Gentlemen, you've just made your first number one."

While the harmonica does provide a link back to Love Me Do, this performance is already miles ahead of that relatively tame number.  The excitement is palpable from the outset with the brisk tempo, Paul's pulsing bass line, and John's building call-and-response vocal section with Paul and George.  A confident Ringo is back behind his drumkit with Martin's blessing, faithfully reproducing much of Andy White's work from the September 11th recording.

With manager Brian Epstein sitting in his office, music publisher Dick James got the group booked on the television program Thank Your Lucky Stars by playing the song to that show's producer over the telephone.  That appearance occurred in January of 1963, within the first week of the single's release, and snowed-in Britons gathered around their TV sets to watch a little-known group from the North mime to their latest record.  As a result, sales immediately took off, the group was rushed into the studio a month later to record their first album, and the rest, as they say, is history.

(In this shot from that appearance, note the old logo on Ringo's drumkit, before the iconic lettering had been designed in a London music shop at Epstein's request.)

As the big hit, it naturally became the title song of their first LP, and later appeared on the EP The Beatles' Hits.  It was their first song to be released in the US, although the small VeeJay label did little to promote it outside of Chicago.  When Beatlemania crossed the Atlantic a year later, VeeJay rereleased it and it went to number three on the Billboard chart.  It also appeared on the second iteration of the VeeJay album Introducing...the Beatles, and Capitol Records issued it on the album The Early Beatles in 1965.

They promoted the song heavily in the first half of 1963 during their relentless schedule of live shows and television appearances.  Please Please Me was also featured on twelve BBC radio broadcasts.  The eleventh can be heard on On Air - Live at the BBC Volume Two from their own program Pop Go the Beatles.  Note that George plays the distinctive riff alone on guitar.  John apparently did not attempt to play harmonica whenever the group performed the song.

Though the song was a lock for the Red Album in 1973, its status as a number one was already coming into question by 1982, keeping it off of 20 Greatest Hits, and, sadly, off of the collection 1 in 2000.  It did, however, make it onto the second DVD of the video collection 1+, featuring their performance of the song for their third appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show, which was actually recorded in the afternoon before their first appearance on that show on February 9th, 1964.  The tempo on this occasion is even faster than on the record, perhaps driven by the excitement of the moment.

Please Please Me was finally retired after being played as part of a medley of the group's hits for their television special Around the Beatles in mid '64.

Please Mister Postman

The Beatles were big fans of American girl groups, particularly those that appeared on the Motown label.  Whenever they were searching for new material for their stage act, they had no problem in adapting songs from these groups, simply flipping the pronouns as necessary.  This song by the Marvelettes was Motown's first number one record, a feat achieved in December of 1961.  The Beatles were the first Liverpool group to discover it, quickly learn it and make it their own.

When they appeared on BBC Radio for the very first time in March of 1962 on the program Teenager's Turn - Here We Go, Please Mister Postman was one of three songs they chose for the broadcast.  John, Paul, George and Pete played in front of a live studio audience in Manchester, wearing their new suits for the occasion - another first.  They continued performing the song throughout that year in Liverpool and in Hamburg, but once their recording career began, it was dropped from their act along with most other cover versions of other people's songs, as they tended to feature more and more Lennon/McCartney compositions.

Many of those "oldies" resurfaced, however, as they became regulars on BBC Radio programs.  When they were offered their own series Pop Go the Beatles, they made a concerted effort to treat their fans to the songs they loved from the acts that had influenced them and their sound.  Thus it was that on July 10th, 1963, they revisited this Motown favorite from the previous year.  This performance, available on the release On Air - Live at the BBC Volume 2, is relatively tame compared to the recording they would make only a few weeks later.  It has a four-note descending guitar phrase at the top and a tidy ending, neither of which appear on the official recording.  John is also a bit unfamiliar with some of the lyrics, not having sung the song for several months.

With the song fresh in mind, they reported to the second session for their second album on July 30th.  Initially, they played it as they had on Pop Go the Beatles.  By take seven, the intro was merely a tap on the hi-hat from Ringo, the tempo was brisk, and John was singing with desperation in his voice over strong backing vocals from Paul and George.  Another new touch were two breaks by the band toward the end of the number, adding to the breathless excitement of the track.  The only overdub deemed necessary was for John to double-track his brilliant lead vocal.

Producer George Martin placed Please Mister Postman as the last track on side one of the album With the Beatles.  Capitol Records in the US decided to withhold it along with the group's other Motown covers from Meet the Beatles!, preferring to highlight their self-penned numbers on that album.  Instead, the covers were all included on The Beatles' Second Album released in April of 1964.  Yet, some American fans were already familiar with the recording, because Capitol of Canada had released it as the B-side of the single Roll Over Beethoven back in December of '63, and copies of that single had been available in the US as an import.

Capitol Records in the US belatedly recognized the popularity of the four songs available on Canadian singles (the other single was All My Loving b/w This Boy), and combined them on an EP titled Four by the Beatles, released on May 11th, 1964.  Since all four songs had already appeared on American albums, the EP only hit number ninety-two on the Billboard chart.

Despite the terrific recorded version, the group played the song just a handful of times afterwards, including a mimed performance on the TV show Big Night Out on February 23rd, 1964, only a day after their return from America, and later that same week for their BBC Radio program From Us to You, recorded on February 28th.

Piggies

The sessions for the double album The Beatles lasted almost five months - from the end of May to late October in 1968.  Thirty four songs were recorded in that time, including five by George Harrison, but he had to wait until the midpoint of those sessions before his bandmates finally turned their attention to one of his compositions.  Ironically, that composition - Not Guilty - did not even make the final cut for the album.

The satirical Piggies was the third Harrisong to be recorded by the Beatles for the "White Album."  It was among the many that the group put on tape at George's house back in May before the official sessions began.  Unlike most of the songs previewed at that time, it had not been written in India.  Harrison claimed that he had written most of it a few years earlier, but left it unfinished and put the lyrics away in a book.

The demo foreshadows the elegant arrangement of the finished recording in the way George plays it on acoustic guitar.  As with most of these demos, the vocals are double-tracked.  Lyrically, the only difference is the phrase "to cut their pork chops" instead of Lennon's suggestion "to eat their bacon."  One other contributor to the lyrics was George's mother Louise, who gave him the line "what they need's a damn good whacking."

September 19th, 1968 was the first official recording session for the song, during the time that producer George Martin was away on holiday and young Chris Thomas served as producer for the Beatles.  With Paul on bass, Ringo on tambourine and George on acoustic guitar, they recorded ten takes of the song in studio two.  While on a break, Chris Thomas noticed a harpsichord set up in studio one and thought it would sound ideal on the track.  The session was moved into that studio, the classically-trained Thomas sat at the keyboard, and take eleven proved to be the keeper.

On September 20th, George overdubbed his lead vocal with occasional double-tracking.  John, who had been present the previous day, finally joined in with Paul and George at the microphone as they recorded harmonies for the final verse.  One other contribution from John was a tape loop of grunting pigs which was dropped into the song, although somewhat differently on the mono and stereo mixes.

When a refreshed George Martin rejoined the sessions and listened to the tracks that had been recorded in his absence, he suggested that Piggies could use a string arrangement to augment the irony of the harpsichord part.  Harrison agreed, and an octet performed Martin's score on October 10th.  One final touch added at the mixing stage was George saying "one more time" before the final cadence played by the strings.  This verbal comment was actually from September 20th when the vocal harmonies were being recorded. 

The song sits on side two of the "White Album" between two other songs with animals in their titles - Blackbird and Rocky Raccoon.  The Beatles never revisited Piggies, but George revived it for his brief tour of Japan in 1991, also playing a final verse that he had omitted when the song was originally recorded.  This can be heard on his album Live in Japan.  But wait...there's more...

Hunter Davies, who had written the official biography of the Beatles during their career, collected handwritten manuscripts of as many of the group's songs as he could over the years and published the book The Beatles Lyrics in 2014.  In it, he reprints a set of lyrics in George's own hand that contains yet another verse, never before seen or heard.

Penny Lane

The songwriting team of Lennon and McCartney was not just a partnership, but also a rivalry that slowly managed to increase in intensity over the years.  In late 1966, that rivalry was still friendly for the most part, and the two old chums were more likely to be cooperative rather than adversarial.  On some occasions, a composition that one of them wrote on his own would inspire the other to come up with something of equal merit.  Thus it was that Lennon's dreamy Strawberry Fields Forever, with its idyllic image of one of their childhood haunts, spurred McCartney on to write a tribute to the neighborhood of Penny Lane.  

Lennon's composition was largely an internal meditation on identity, one that only referred to its title locale obliquely.  McCartney, on the other hand, opted to write a piece about specific places and the characters who inhabited them.  Most of us think of it as a sunny song with its "blue suburban skies," but Tim Riley points out in his book Tell Me Why that the third line of every verse shifts into a minor key as the characters deal with the "pouring rain."  Then there is the verse about the pretty nurse, who, "though she feels as if she's in a play, she is anyway."  McCartney very subtly hints that under the shiny surface, things are not always what they seem.  "Very strange."

Riley states that Penny Lane is "as perfect as pop gets," and goes on to say that "McCartney's command of the 45 genre in this song is masterful," forgetting that neither this song nor Strawberry Fields Forever were written as singles.  Rather, they were both intended to be part of an album built around the concept of childhood.  Though that concept album was abandoned once these songs were selected for immediate release, the double-A sided single was issued in a picture sleeve with photos of the Beatles as children on one side.

In the book Here, There and Everywhere, engineer Geoff Emerick reveals that Paul was still heavily influenced by the Beach Boys album Pet Sounds at this time, and he told Geoff that he wanted a "clean American sound" for this song.  Emerick suggested that they record each instrument individually in order to achieve this, instead of the usual practice of having the band lay down a backing track onto which overdubs could be added.  The process became very complex as a result and was spread out over many days.

On December 29th, 1966, Paul began this process by recording six takes of the piano track.  He then recorded two more piano tracks, each with slight variations and different effects added to make them sound distinct.  He played a high-pitched harmonium on track four, most prominent at the very end of the song.  Along the way Ringo joined in playing  tambourine, and a sped-up drum roll and cymbals were also added.  On December 30th, these four tracks were reduced to a single track before overdubs continued with Paul's lead vocal and occasional backing vocals from John.

January 4th, 1967 saw John add yet another piano part as George played guitar and Paul double-tracked his vocal line.  On the 5th, Paul re-recorded his lead vocals.  On the 6th, Paul played bass, John added rhythm guitar and Ringo drums.  John also played conga drums!  Another reduction mix followed before John and producer George Martin added - you guessed it - even more piano.  Handclaps and scat singing by Paul, John and George of what would eventually become the brass part finished out the day's work.

For some reason, George Martin's arrangement was recorded by different sets of instruments on different days.  The first group of flutes, trumpets, piccolos and a fluegelhorn played their parts on January 9th.  In between, on the 10th, Ringo added tubular bells to the track at the two points where the fireman is mentioned.  On the 12th, more trumpets, oboes, cor anglais and a double bass finished recording Martin's arrangement.  At this session, Paul told Martin about a tiny trumpet he had seen on a television program the previous evening.  It turned out that Martin knew the player, David Mason, and that he played the piccolo trumpet in Bach's Brandenburg Concerto on the BBC program in question.

Though the track had probably been considered complete at this point, Paul could not resist the opportunity to add the piccolo trumpet to the mix, so Mason arrived at the studio on January 17th to apply the crowning touch.  Paul figured out the melody he wanted, Martin wrote it down and Mason nailed it in two takes.  

A mono mix was made and quickly sent along with the Strawberry Fields Forever mono mix to the US for the single release.  But Paul belatedly decided that he did not want the final little piccolo trumpet flourish at the end of the song, so a new mono mix was sent to the US on January 25th.  Promotional copies of the first mix had already been played on American radio.  These, of course, instantly became collector's items.

While Penny Lane became a number one hit in the US, it stalled at number two in the UK, unable to dislodge Engelbert Humperdinck's Release Me from the top spot.  At the end of the year, Capitol added it along with the other songs from 1967 singles to the Magical Mystery Tour album, although in mock stereo.  The first true stereo mix was created in 1971, and first heard only on the UK version of the Blue Album in 1973.  The US version of the album Rarities in 1980 finally used the true stereo mix and included the final trumpet flourish. 

Anthology 2 from 1996 presents a version of the song highlighting some elements buried in the final mix, especially a lovely brass instrumental section before David Mason's piccolo trumpet solo was added in its place.  50th anniversary editions of Sgt. Pepper include the stripped down backing track of pianos, plus various voices and sound effects barely heard or not heard at all on the finished product.

Promotional films were made for Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields Forever at the time of the single's release.  To create the illusion that they were in Liverpool, a crew was dispatched to get some location shots of the Penny Lane district, but the Beatles were actually shot walking and riding white horses around Angel Lane in the east end of London.  The horses were used again around Knole Park near Sevenoaks in Kent, where another scene was shot of the boys around a dinner table in the park.  As was the case when the Beatles were placed on skis for the film Help!, they seem to have had no prior experience riding horses.  Oddly, John, not Paul, is the primary focus of the film.

The films were quickly edited and shown on various programs in the UK including Juke Box Jury and Top of the Pops.  In the US, they appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show, American Bandstand and ABC's variety show The Hollywood Palace.  These films were the first time that audiences saw the Beatles' new look with moustaches and beards, and reaction was definitely mixed.