The author of Ticket to Ride and the only American reporter to travel with the Beatles on every stop of their 1964 and 1965 U.S. tours, Philadelphia television news anchor Larry Kane here chronicles the Beatles' rise to fame in exciting, you-are-there detail, focusing on the seven years from the time the lads met as teenagers in Liverpool to their momentous 1964 appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. Kane includes an eyewitness account of that first meeting between John Lennon and Paul McCartney, the inside story of how Ringo Starr replaced Pete Best, an exploration of the brilliant but troubled soul of manager Brian Epstein, and the real scoop on the Beatles' disastrous first visit to Germany.