The Beatles' First US Concert Ended With Scissors at the Embassy

A Silver Spring 14-year-old got the Beatles on DC radio. Their first US concert came weeks later, in the round, with jelly beans flying.

Show Notes

In December 1963, the British Embassy told a DC disc jockey it couldn't help him get a Beatles record. Two months later, the band played its first American concert at Washington Coliseum, and the embassy threw them a party.

Full story, photos and sources: https://ghostsofdc.org/2012/01/06/beatles-first-concert-washington-coliseum/

Narrated by an AI version of Tom's voice. AI also helps research and write the scripts; facts are checked against the original sources, and Tom reviews the episodes.

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The lost and untold stories of Washington, DC. The buildings, blocks and people the city and region forgot.

The Beatles played their first American concert here. Sharks turned up in the Potomac in 1911. Ford’s Theatre collapsed in 1893 while government clerks worked inside.

Since 2012, Ghosts of DC has been digging through old newspapers, maps and archives for stories like these, from Georgetown to Anacostia and across the whole DMV. Now they’re a podcast.

Short episodes, most around ten minutes. Each one is built on the historical record and tied to a full post with photos and sources at ghostsofdc.org.

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Narrated with an AI version of Tom’s voice. AI also helps with the archival research, and facts are checked against the original sources.

The Beatles' First US Concert Ended With Scissors at the Embassy
Ghosts of DC

In December of nineteen sixty-three, a disc jockey in Washington called the British Embassy. He wanted help getting a copy of a new record from England.

The embassy said it couldn't help.

Two months later, the band on that record played its first concert in America. In Washington. On a stage set up like a boxing ring.

And afterward, the British Embassy threw them a party.

So how did the Beatles' first American concert end up at Third and M Streets Northeast?

Welcome to Ghosts of DC.

I'm Tom. Or really, an AI version of my voice. Since twenty twelve, I've been digging up the stories this city forgot. This was one of the very first I wrote, on the blog's third day, and one of those moments where I thought, I can't believe this happened.

This one draws from sixteen sources, from a nineteen sixty-three Evening Star story to a twenty twenty-one music history. You can find them on the post at Ghosts of DC dot org.

It starts with a fourteen-year-old in Silver Spring. Marsha Albert, a student at Sligo Junior High, wrote to WWDC disc jockey Carroll James. She wanted to hear the Beatles' new single. It hadn't been played in America yet.

So James called the British Embassy, which said it couldn't help. Then he tried BOAC, the British airline.

Here's the answer, as the Evening Star reported it.

Very happy to try, old boy.

A copy of I Want to Hold Your Hand was bought in London and flown over on a BOAC jet. On Tuesday, December seventeenth, WWDC played it on the air. Marsha introduced it herself.

Requests exploded. Other stations followed. Capitol Records scrapped its plan for a January release and rushed the single out the day after Christmas.

By February first, it was number one.

So Washington's teenagers already knew the songs. Now somebody had to book the band.

Accounts differ on who first called Harry Lynn, the owner of the Washington Coliseum. Maybe the radio station, maybe the band's manager.

Either way, Lynn had never heard of the Beatles. He said yes.

On February seventh, nineteen sixty-four, the Beatles landed in New York to about three thousand screaming fans. Two nights later, Ed Sullivan put them in front of an estimated seventy-three million viewers. A record for American television at the time.

The Washington show was four days after they landed, on Tuesday, February eleventh. That morning, a snowstorm crippled New York's airports.

So they took the train, with a private sleeper car hitched on just for them. It was called the King George.

There are some great photos from that ride on the post. George taking a picture of Ringo. John with his feet up. Paul signing a record for a passenger.

Worth a look.

They pulled into Union Station at nine minutes past three. It was snowing. In the concourse, the Washington Post counted teenagers, perhaps two thousand strong. They breathed on the glass and climbed the gates.

The Post's Jerry Doolittle wrote it all up with a perfectly straight face. Here's his police inspector, Inspector Hughes, watching the train door. He let out a sound the reporter couldn't quite spell.

At any rate, it sounded like a police inspector imitating the call of the hysterical teen-ager under his breath.

Then came a press conference at the Coliseum. After it, Carroll James got ten minutes with them in WWDC's mobile studio. Marsha Albert sat in. Then it was showtime, in the round.

The stage was set up like a boxing ring in the middle of the Coliseum floor. Tickets were two, three and four dollars. And Lynn was nervous. He worried the Beatles alone wouldn't sell enough tickets to cover their ten-thousand-dollar fee.

So he padded the bill with other acts.

The show sold out. Eight thousand and ninety-two people. Imagine that. He wasn't sure the Beatles could fill the place.

At eight thirty-one, the Beatles took the stage, in the round. Which meant one side of the crowd was always looking at their backs.

So the road manager kept turning Ringo's drum riser. Half a turn after the third song. Again after I Wanna Be Your Man. A little more after She Loves You.

And every time, the other three dragged their mic stands around to face the new side.

George Harrison's microphone was dead for the first song, and the replacement was faulty too. Not that anyone could hear. Some three hundred sixty-two police officers were on duty, by one count.

And at least one of them, the Post later recalled, stuck a pair of thirty-eight caliber bullets in his ears.

Then came the jelly beans. Back in early nineteen sixty-three, John had joked to a British reporter that George ate all his jelly babies, the soft English candy. British fans started throwing them at the band.

In America, the papers turned that into jelly beans. The hard ones.

The Coliseum crowd threw them from every direction, along with peanuts and burned-out flashbulbs.

Here's how George remembered it.

They don't have soft jelly babies there; they have hard jelly beans. To make matters worse, we were on a circular stage, so they hit us from all sides. Imagine waves of rock-hard little bullets raining down on you from the sky.

Twelve songs in about thirty-five minutes. When they finished Long Tall Sally, they ran up an aisle and out. And then they went to a party.

After the show, the band was driven to the British Embassy on Mass Ave. Yes, that British Embassy. The ambassador's wife was hosting a charity dance, and the Beatles were supposed to hand out the raffle prizes and mingle politely with the diplomats.

Then a guest crept up behind Ringo with a pair of nail scissors.

And snipped off a lock of his hair.

John had had enough and left early. The others followed not long after, and the ambassador and his wife apologized. The band told their manager never to book them into anything like that again.

The next day they took the train back to New York. Their whole first American visit lasted about two weeks.

But the Washington show had one more life. CBS videotaped it, and on March fourteenth and fifteenth, it played in roughly a hundred movie theaters.

As for the Coliseum, in nineteen ninety-four a waste company bought it and ran a trash-transfer station inside. Later it was a parking garage. Then in twenty sixteen, REI opened its D C flagship inside, under the same barrel-vaulted roof.

So if you're in there shopping for a tent, you're standing where eight thousand ninety-two people once pelted the Beatles with jelly beans.

While Ringo's drum riser turned, and the loudest sound in America was a room full of teenage girls.

And that's the Beatles in Washington. One of my first stories, and still one of my favorites. Glad you spent the time with us. There's a lot more to dig into at Ghosts of DC dot org.

We bring back the lost and untold stories of Washington, one post at a time. This has been Ghosts of DC.