Editor's letter

It was 40 years ago next week that The Beatles first flew to America, and changed everything. The country they found was still in mourning for President Kennedy and pop culture was still in its infancy. John, Paul, George and Ringo didn't know what to expect when they stepped off Pan Am Flight 101 at the recently re-named JFK.

What they found was hysteria, and hysterical. Barely known in the States even two months earlier, now they performed on 'The Ed Sullivan Show' to a world record TV audience of 73 million.

In this month's OMM, the Moptops' two-week odyssey is told through their own words, together with previously unseen photographs taken from the group's private archive. The trip changed the boys' lives, as well as pop music and the culture that now would attend it - beginning, perhaps, with those haircuts.