The Beatles - Meet the Beatles!

Meet the Beatles! was the album that introduced America to the Fab Four in 1964, and it still crackles with the thrill of that moment.

Capitol's first Beatles release in the United States drew on the UK album With the Beatles, dropping five of its tracks and adding the smash single I Want to Hold Your Hand. Produced by George Martin and fronted by Robert Freeman's moody, half-lit portrait of the band, it topped the Billboard album chart for eleven weeks as Beatlemania swept the country.

I Want to Hold Your Hand bursts out of the speakers with handclaps and harmonies, and I Saw Her Standing There counts in one of rock and roll's great openings. All My Loving races along on Lennon's rapid-fire rhythm guitar, while Don't Bother Me marks George Harrison's first song on a Beatles album.

Twelve songs in under half an hour, it is packed with tight harmonies, ringing guitars and the kind of youthful energy that still feels electric today. The band's love of American rock and roll and Motown shines through, sent back across the Atlantic with a Liverpool accent.

For collectors, this is a vital piece of Beatles history: the record that helped turn a British sensation into a worldwide phenomenon.