It was a remarkable achievement because no British pop artists had ever really cracked America. In 1956 Lonnie Donegan, the "king of skiffle", had reached the Top 10 with Rock Island Line but only after four months of touring. Cliff Richard had toured, released movies and appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show but had managed only a minor hit with Living Doll. The only British records ever to make the No 1 position in the American charts had been Vera Lynn with Auf Wiedersehen in 1952, Acker Bilk with Stranger On The Shore in 1961 and the Tornados with Telstar in 1962. After the disappointing sales on the Vee Jay and Swan labels, the Beatles were now with Capitol in America and Brian Epstein had promised that the first single for them would be designed with an "American sound" in mind.

According to John, I Want to Hold Your Hand sprang into being when, having come up with an opening line, Paul hit a chord on the piano. "I turned to him and said, 'That's it! Do that again!' In those days, we really used to absolutely write like that — both playing into each other's noses."

Gordon Waller, schoolboy friend of Jane Asher's older brother Peter (with whom he had formed the singing duo Peter and Gordon), also remembered being in the house that day. "As far as I can remember John was on a pedal organ and Paul was on a piano," he said. "The basement was the place where we all went to make our 'noise' and they called us down to let us hear this song they'd just written. It wasn't totally complete but the structure and the chorus were there."

The Beatles were, of course, still playing to their market, the teenage girls for whom hand holding and kissing was the ultimate in physical expression. I Want to Hold Your Hand certainly wasn't an indication of their own sexual reticence.

Robert Freeman, the photographer who took the cover photo for With The Beatles, lived in a flat beneath John at 13 Emperor's Gate in Kensington, and tried to educate him in jazz and experimental music while John directed him towards rock'n'roll. "He (John) was intrigued by a contemporary French album of experimental music," Freeman recalled. "There was one track where a musical phrase repeated, as if the record had stuck. This effect was used in I Want to Hold Your Hand — at my suggestion — 'that my love, I can't hide, I can't hide, I can't hide'."

The Beatles heard that I Want To Hold Your Hand had made it to Number 1 in America when they were playing in Paris and it triggered plans for their first Stateside visit. It was because they knew that Cliff Richard had failed to set the charts alight there, despite having toured, that they determined to make appearances only when they could warrant top billing.