The Beatles: We're More Popular Than The Big O Now

Fifty years ago this month, The Beatles released their first vinyl in the US.  I Want To Hold Your Hand charted by mid-January, and by February it reached number 1.  A week later, on February 9, 1964, they played The Ed Sullivan Show. You know the rest.


Lesser known is what had happened that previous spring and summer during Roy Orbison's 1963 UK tour. Orbison was very popular in England but nascent Beatlemania upstaged him.

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John Lennon later recalled:

We were selling records [in the UK] but we were still second on the bill, and one of our first big tours was second on the bill to Roy Orbison. It was pretty hard to keep up with that man. He really put on a show; well, they all did, but Orbison had that fantastic voice.  ~John Lennon, 1975

That fantastic voice.

From the Wiki regarding that summer of '63 tour:

Orbison's first meeting with John Lennon was awkward because Orbison was overwhelmed with the amount of advertising devoted to The Beatles when Orbison was supposed to headline the show. Beatlemania, however, was taking hold and Orbison accepted that he was not quite the main draw, so he decided to go first on stage. On opening night, the audience reacted intensely toward Orbison's ballads, as he finished with 'In Dreams'. 

Philip Norman, a Beatles biographer, later wrote: 'As Orbison performed, chinless and tragic, The Beatles stood in the wings, wondering how they would dare to follow him'. After demanding Orbison play for double the time he was scheduled, the audience then screamed for a fifteenth encore, which Lennon and Paul McCartney refused to allow by holding Orbison back from re-entering the stage.

Years later, a reviewer distilled the essence of In Dreams, including a sublime reference to Orbison's superior vocal range:

Echoes of ranchera music offer bittersweet counterpoint from the lulling intro, through the aching verses to a finish that just seems to evaporate.

Listen again and try not to think of Dean Stockwell and Dennis Hopper:

Orbison's popularity peaked in 1964 with "Oh Pretty Woman." A series of personal tragedies -- some of them alluded to in "She's A Mystery To Me" -- led to a long career dormancy until, ironically, David Lynch reawakened his popularity.