To celebrate their first No 1 hit in England (Please Please Me) the Beatles are invited for dinner by their manager Brian Epstein in London’s fashionable Soho, on Friday February 22nd 1963.  After their national debut the previous month on ABC’s TV show Thank Your Lucky Stars, the promotional machine gets going.  Concerts, radio and television performances, photo sessions, interviews and studio recordings all follow.

The black leather clad rockers of Hamburg’s Reeperbahn have been transformed into cheerful pop stars in clean-cut Pierre Cardin suits, singing sugary sentimental love songs. The hearts of millions of fans are captured and the hysterical scenes of screaming young girls soon spread through Europe and across the Atlantic to America.  The Beatles sales break all previous records. Beatlemania is born.

1964 provided The Beatles with a year of unparalleled success in the history of pop music. This firmly laid the foundation for unequalled success into the future.

After more than 50 years The Beatles are still regarded as the world’s most influential pop group, with the highest number of record sales and the most No 1 hits. Those fab four musicians shook up the Netherlands [the Dutch] with two legendary concerts in Auction-hall Op Hoop van Zegen in Blokker on June 6th 1964.

The performances still echo to this day.  The presence of The Beatles on that spot, the  immense intensity and impact they made, is a key moment in Dutch history.