The Beatles had certainly arrived, and their sound was helplessly reverberating down the industry's prejudiced tin ear. These were the very songs which had already swept British listeners off their feet and onward to audiophonic satori. But without decent distribution across the U.S., widely-available airplay, or substantive reviews, the Beatles' songs could only register the merest flicker of Yankee passion in localized American music markets. Passion there was, nevertheless, against all expected odds. Naturally these minor marketing abberrations from Vee Jay and Swan were just flukes.
Trends are stubborn things, once firmly entrenched.
Actually, we can thank Brian Epstein, among others, for pushing the Fabs to the fore, not just in England but in the States. But the growing hysteria in Britain was a welcome adjunct in that battle. Ed Sullivan had seen that phenomenological tempest when changing planes at Heathrow on 31 October 1963, when the Beatles just coincidentally were returning from their conquest of Scandinavia. And Jack Paar, an American talk-show host of considerable fame, witnessed the hoopla over the Royal Variety Performance on 4 November. In the minds of both men, something clicked.