It was fifty years ago today...

...that the first Beatles single was released (not counting their backup work for Tony Sheridan). Love Me Do reached a respectable but not yet sensational No.17, and one of the undying suburban legends is that this was only because their manager, the industrious Brian Epstein, ordered so many copies for his own record store. (Not true, but you'll find the story in many an article anyway.) No.17 was still good enough for a band from the North that it got them a spot as one of the warming up acts on the Helen Shapiro tour in the coldest British winter since eons (62/63); their first No.1 , Please Please Me followed when they were still touring (and freezing), and history ensued. I'm going to cheat and won't post good old Love Me Do in celebration, but the opening sequence of and the song to A Hard Day's Night, not lest because it captures the early Beatlemania so very very well:

Incidentally, Richard Lester didn't have to exaggarate for comedic effect when it came to the fan chasing. Here's a report by EMI engineer Geoff Emerick on what happened during the recording of She Loves You. Mal and Neil are the roadies, Mal Evans and Neil "future head of Apple" Aspinall.

As John, Paul and George tuned up in the studio, Normann noticed that the microphone on the bass amplifier was distorting, so he asked me to go downstairs and move it back a few inches. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Mal and Neil go out of hte studio door, no doubt heading for the canteen to fetch the first of an endless tream of cups of tea for the four musicians. On this day, though, they wouldn't be gone for long.
"FANS!"
There was no mistaking Big Mal's booming voice as he shot back through the door, tailed closely by a breathless Neil. The four Beatles stopped what they were doing and stared at him.
"What the bloody hell are you on about?" Lennon demanded.
Before Mal could get the answer out, the studio door flew open again and a determined teenage girl sprinted in, heading straight for a bewildered-looking Ringo hunched behind his drum kit. Instinctively, Neil launched himself at her in a perfect American football-style tackle and brought her to the ground before she could reach her quarrry. It all seemed to be happening in slow motion before my widened eyes.
As Mal dragged the sobbing teenager out the door, Neil caught his breath and broke the news: somehow the huge crowd of girls that had been gathered outside had overpowered the police and broken through the front door. The canteen was swarming with them, and dozens of rabid fans were racing around the EMI facility in desperate search of the Fab Four.
"It's a bloody madhouse out there," Neil shouted. "You've got to see it to believe it!"
I stood rooted to the ground, not sure what do do. Looking up at the control room, I could see George, Norman, and Brian staring down at us with great concern. Brian was the first down the steps. (..) Curious as to what the fuss was all about, I poked my head out the door. What I saw astounded, amazed and frightened me - but it also made me burst out in laughter. It was an unbelievable sight, straight out of the Keystone Kops: scores of hysterical, screaming girls racing down the corridors, being chased by a handful of out-of-breath, beleaguered London bobbies. Every time one would catch up with a fan, another two or three girls would appear, racing past, screeching at the top of their lungs. The poor coppers wouldn't know whether to let go of the nutter he was struggling with and go after the others, or whether to keep his grip on the bird in hand.
As I wandered down the hallyway, I could see the scene being repeated everywhere. Doors were opening and slamming shut with alarming regularity, terrified staffers were having their hair pulled (just in case they happened to be a Beatle in disguise), and everyone in sight was running at top speed. The fans were totally out of control - Lord knows what they would have done to the four Beatles if they had actually gotten their hands on them. The grim determination on their faces, punctuated by squalls of animal-like screaming, made the whole thing even m ore bizarre.
I returned to the studio, which seemed strangely calm in comparison, like the eye of the hurricane; things did seem to be somewhat more in control there. Neil had decided to do reconnaissance, prmising to keep us informed, and a grim Mal was stationed at the doorway, literally standing there with arms crossed; he reminded me of one of the Queen's guards at Buckingham Palace. Ringo, still on his drum stool, seemed a bit shaken, but John, Paul and George Harrison soon began taking the piss, racing around the room, giggling and screeching in imitation of the poor fan who had launched herself at him.
George Martin, flustered at first, finally regained his schoolmasterly disposition and, with a good deal of formality, announced that the nonsense was over and that the session would now begin.

If there is one image associated with the early Beatles making their impression on the world, it's running: the band, the fans, and it's running with joy yet: an escape for both. All that running practice came in handy in other ways, too; talking to kalypso_v lately reminded me of another of my favourite Beatles anecdotes. When they were shooting the promo for Paperback Writer, someone had the idea to organize a race between the Beatles and the camera crew. This to the camera crew seemed to be a no brainer, since none of the Beatles did any sports, and all four were heavy smokers. Lo and behold the surprise as the band won anyway, due to by then several years (1962-1966) of training in short distance sprints, courtesy of the fans who kept them in shape this way. :)

Roz Kaveney: Rhapsody of Blood (Volume I: Rituals)

If you're in the mood for a fantasy saga that combines history, myth, locations that range from archaic times to present day (well, in the first volume, the 90s), want said story to be told both suspensefully and wittily, and want an epic which has more than one LGBT character adrift in an otherwise solely heterosexual world to offer (in fact, offers rather the reverse: a story where all the romances are same sex, though there are also strong friendships between the sexes), you're in luck: Rhapsody of Blood: Volume I is the book for you.

Admittedly I'm biased. Ever since becoming aquainted with rozk back when Buffy was broadcast both via her great meta and her splendid fanfiction, I've been reading what she wrote avidly and with great fascination. I also love her poetry, which is in print these days as well but will get a separate review. Given how wonderfully well rozk handles language in her fannish life - I remember in particular a stunning portrait of the First Slayer on one end of the scale (forming those glimpses from the show into a fascinating whole which feels genuinenly archaic) and a hilarious BTVS/Six Feet Under crossover which, using the fact Michelle Trachtenberg stars in both shows, tells a story in which Dawn Summers gets kidnapped by accident in place of film star Celeste which lives of its witty dialogue and clashing of worlds - I'm wasn't exactly surprised to find both qualities in her professional fiction, but I was swept away by the sheer scale of it.

Rhapsody of Blood has two plot threads which, one early encounter aside, are separate yet constantly inform on each other. One is the story of Emma and Caroline; Caroline gets killed right at the start in the first appearance of the saga's villains, but considering she becomes one of the busiest chattiest ghosts you can imagine, this is just the beginning of her relationship with Emma Jones, one of our two point of view characters. (It also puts a cramp in their love life, but such obstacles are there to be overcome with style, invention and the occasional third party.) Emma and Caroline begin their career as a supernatural crime fighting team in the British Museum by saving a faun from two freelance angels, aided by the Egyptian crocodile shaped god Sobekh, and their adventures only go wilder from there. It's wit, banter and resolute non-impressedness versus a variety of overlord wannabes and the occasional mad zombie, and bit by bit a pattern starts to get revealed to both readers and characters.

The other plot thread sends us through human history, not in chronological order, and its pov character is Mara the Huntress. (Who saves Emma at the start of the novel from getting killed like Caroline but otherwise has no contact with Our Heroines, though its heavily hinted this will at some point in the future change.) Mara is her own myth, a woman who made it her business to put an end to any gods thriving on blood sacrifices. And to protect the weak, but note she's not called Protector, she's called Huntress. As this book's universe is one where all the gods from all religions ever really do exist (or did, until they met Mara), you can imagine this is quite a task. It also allows our author to put her own spin on several story tropes, myths and historical events. (The way Mara becomes immortal, for example, reminds me both of various Indian fairy tales and the Henry Rider Haggard novel She, with the added twist that Mara is telling this story in first person to Alistair Crowley, and, as she tells him and the readers, has no intention of giving him an actual recipe on how to become immortal, so of course she lied - or did she?) If the Emma and Caroline sections are sharp suburban black comedy (though not always - the showdown at the end of the novel is as epic as you could wish, and takes place, appropriately enough, in Hollywood), the Mara sections are a tragic-mythic fresco painting you watch, as Aristoteles demands, in awe/fear and pity. And a lot of suspense, which you'd think is hard to pull off with a first person immortal narrator but which Roz Kaveney manages splendidly.

If there is one cause of frustration, it's that this is only the first volume of a work in progress, and there are two more to come which aren't published yet. But given this author's writing pace, I don't doubt they will be soon, so if you want something fantastical (in both senses of the word) to enthrall you instead of, say, glaring into G.R.R. Martin's direction while drumming your fingers for a few years: grab this volume as fast as you can. And even if you have already a large reading pile, read this first. It's that good.