| The Beatles had five years to prepare for their first album and five months to prepare for their second. After years of meeting up at Paul's house, with hours of spare time on their hands, they were now forced to write in hotel bedrooms, on tour buses and in dressing rooms - anywhere they could snatch a quiet moment.
Such pressures cause some songwriters to freeze up, but it proved to be a positive stimulus to John and Paul who, as time went on, developed the ability to write Number 1 hits to order. John and Paul seemed to have an innate sense of what their public wanted to hear. Believing that it was important for each girl in the audience to feel that they were singing personally to her, many of their songs had the word 'you' in the title - for example, From me to You, Thank you Girl, and I'll Get You. However, if in the early days they'd been able to write for an audience they could see and for people they knew on first name terms, everything changed once they became successful. Suddenly, the police had to devise ingenious ways of smuggling them in and out of venues, and they were even becoming popular in countries they hadn't visited. Nonetheless at the height of Beatlemania, often pursued by scores of screaming fans, they still managed to write a steady stream of successful singles. I Want To Hold Your Hand, for example, was written with the American market in mind, and propelled them to the top of the Billboard charts, making them the first British recording artists to truly conquer America. Indeed, constant international travel and the move to London were beneficial for their songwriting as it exposed them to a greater variety of influences. Everybody they met seemed to want to turn them on to something new. Through his relationship with the actress Jane Asher, Paul was becoming more familiar with stage musicals, theatre and classical music. Meanwhile, John was holed up in his Kensington flat listening to imported albums by black American groups like the Miracles, the Shirelles and the Marvelettes. With the Beatles, their second album, was a much more considered recording than the first, with sessions spread over a three-month period. It went Number 1 in Britain shortly after its release on November 22, 1963, and became the first pop album to sell over a million copies. In America it was released as "Meet the Beatles" in January 1964 and also went to Number 1. |
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