As Ed Sullivan predicted, the Beatles bring out the fans. More than four thousand of them are crowded into the arrivals terminal at the newly renamed John F. Kennedy International Airport, craning their necks to catch a glimpse of their idols.

CBS musical director Ray Bloch believes he’s discovered the reason for the crush, and he’s unimpressed. “The only thing that’s different is the hair as far as I can see,” he says. “I give them a year.”

But the hair is important. “Won’t be long before every group with long hair will be sought by American companies,” Cashbox music magazine predicts.

As Dr. Joyce Brothers, writing on the front page of the New York Journal-American about “Why They Go Wild Over the Beatles,” explains: “The Beatles display a few mannerisms which almost seem a shade on the feminine side, such as the tossing of their long manes of hair.…These are exactly the mannerisms which very young female fans (in the 10-to-14 age group) appear to go wildest over.”

“They’re so cute,” June Clayton of Brooklyn tells the New York Daily News. “And Ringo’s the cutest. Look at them comb their hair!”

But before they can take the stage at Broadway’s Hammerstein Theater, the Beatles have to contend with the New York press corps.

“Do you wear wigs?” one of them asks.

John shuts down the attack on their signature look. “If we do they must be the only ones with real dandruff.”

Although the boys from Liverpool don’t wear wigs, everyone else seems to—not only does Ed Sullivan don a mop-top wig to introduce them on his show, but their airplane pilot also puts on a Beatles wig when they fly to Miami. Official promotional “Beatle Kits” (comprising an autographed photo, an I LIKE THE BEATLES button, and a wig) are even getting handed out.

Opinion makers seek to quantify what makes fans love the Beatles. Though it’s no big mystery—England’s Daily Mirror has already proclaimed, “You have to be a real sour square not to love the nutty, noisy, happy, handsome Beatles.” Documentarians Albert and David Maysles capture every moment—from the Beatles’ dazed emergence to screaming crowds waiting on the tarmac at JFK Airport to four limos carrying each individual band member to the Plaza Hotel, on Fifth Avenue, where they have rooms on the twelfth floor. The February 1964 footage for Granada TV is eventually released as the film What’s Happening! The Beatles in the USA.

“The Americans will never understand it,” Ringo later explains. “Now kids come to Liverpool and say, ‘Oh, this is where they came from.’ But for us, it was ‘We’re in America—where the music came from!’ It was always about the music.”