[1] In early November 1963, Meggs met with Beatles manager Brian Epstein, who played him a demo copy of the single, "I Want to Hold Your Hand", recorded a few weeks earlier in London.

[12] Meanwhile, Beatles contract holder EMI had been insisting to Capitol head Alan W. Livingston that he accept the band's next song.

[13] With this pressure in mind, Meggs listened to the intentional American gospel elements of "I Want to Hold Your Hand" and predicted mass appeal; he immediately signed the Beatles to a major distribution deal.

Capitol was faced with a new problem on December 17: a British copy of the single had been flown over the Atlantic to deejay Carroll James of WWDC in Maryland (serving Washington D.C.) who started broadcasting the song, stimulating demand.

Capitol scrambled to advance the song's release date from January 13 to December 26, and to change the planned pressing from 200,000 to one million.

"[14] Meggs and Fred Martin arranged the Beatles' transportation, lodging, security and schedule in February 1964 during their first visit to New York City and Miami.

[19] On the way to John F. Kennedy International Airport to greet the band, Meggs studied the cover of the recently released album Meet the Beatles!

He began the project in March 1964, announcing the fan club formation, and in October 1964 the first issue of The Teen Set magazine was provided as a free insert to the live album Beach Boys Concert.

[2] Helping Meggs get the right mix was veteran teen magazine journalist and photographer Earl Leaf, serving as guest editor.

Meggs told Billboard magazine that it was "the largest teen-oriented advertising-merchandising campaign in the history of CRDC [Capitol Records Distribution Company].

By November 1965, Meggs had replaced himself as editor with 25-year-old Judith Sims, who understood her readership and took TeenSet into new territory, forming it into one of the best teen magazines of the 1960s.

[24][25] Capitol promoted Meggs to vice president of CRDC in 1964, in charge of merchandising, advertising and public relations, returning to the Hollywood offices, where he started on August 1.

Seraphim remastered and re-issued classic recordings by famous artists of EMI such as composer-conductor Paul Hindemith and pianist Myra Hess.

[29] Seraphim also drew from unsold stock of other labels, primarily Angel Records, to give the titles another chance at a lower price.

"[30] In 1967, Meggs hired graphic artist John Van Hamersveld on the strength of his artwork for the surfer film poster The Endless Summer.

Meggs' account appeared in the book Omnibus of Speed; a collection of short biographical pieces on race car drivers.

[11] Meggs' 1974 book Saturday Games was nominated for the Edgar Allan Poe Awards in the category of Best First Novel, which was won in 1975 by Gregory Mcdonald for Fletch.

Saturday Games was a crime mystery: its plot had three bachelor playboys implicated in the death of a free-spirited woman they had all known, and a police detective trying to find the truth.

Meggs had first submitted the book to mystery editor Barbara Norville of Bobbs-Merrill Company, but she returned the manuscript with suggestions for improvement.

In 1964, he obtained a rare French horn from master builder Herbert Fritz Knopf, instrument maker in Markneukirchen, Saxony, East Germany.

Though Knopf was behind the Iron Curtain, Meggs' contacts with Melodiya helped convey the four-valve, B-flat instrument out from under Soviet Union control.

[22] Meggs first lived with his wife in Pasadena, then Detroit, returning to Greater Los Angeles, then New York City in 1962, moving to La Cañada, California, in July 1964.

[11] By 1976, the Meggs were back in Pasadena in the hills west of the Rose Bowl Stadium, in a home designed by and for architect Roland Logan Russell in 1961.

[1] Their singer-songwriter son, Brook, lived in California, New York and Texas, but after his father died, he moved to Sudbury, Massachusetts, where his mother had been raised.

Much of the historic Meachen family property, 36.5 acres (14.8 ha) of farmland known as the Meachen-Meggs parcel, was sold to the city in 1999 for $3.5 million to be held in public trust for conservation purposes.