Shake it Up, Baby: The Rise of Beatlemania and the Mayhem of 1963

By (author) Ken McNab

It’s 1963. The year of the Profumo scandal, the Great Train Robbery, the rise of teenage consumerism and sexual emancipation, and Kennedy’s assassination . . . and the birth of Beatlemania, the pop revolution that transformed the slate-grey, post-war years of austerity into a Day-Glo landscape.

In the beginning, The Beatles were a band of brothers who really did make Britain twist and shout. This is the unprecedented story of the Beatles’ remarkable journey from Liverpool dance hall favourites to becoming the biggest band in the world in the space of just twelve rollercoaster months. From playing to fewer than twenty people in January in the remote Scottish Highlands to being met by a tsunami of screams from 10,000 fans at London Airport in November. From being bottom-of-the-bill after-thoughts to making royalty blush at a frenzied London Palladium.

It was a year lived at breakneck pace. Two number one albums, four number one singles, almost 300 gigs, countless radio and TV sessions and the astonishing transformation of four lives into something less ordinary.