It was 60 years ago today, Ed Sullivan introduced the band to play.
Six decades had passed since The Beatles performed on the classic TV program The Ed Sullivan Show, watched by over 73 million viewers in the United States, then a record. It was the ninth of February in New York, 1964 – hailed as the year of The Beatles, primarily because of that spectacle that impacted not just the music scene, but the culture of an era. The world will never be the same.
Many future rock superstars would recall where they were when The Beatles first appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show.
If that moment in pop history had not happened, had The Beatles decided not to go to America because British acts prior to them weren’t making it big in the land of Uncle Sam, rock ‘n roll wouldn’t have gotten to where it is now. Guitar groups may have faded as Dick Rowe, the executive of Decca Records who turned down the four young men – John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr – from Liverpool, England, confidently declared.
It was mainstream exposure being utilized in its full strength, spearheaded by the group’s manager Brian Epstein who was right in predicting that the children of 2000 would still listen to the music of his boys.
Beatlemania was already in full swing in Britain by 1963. But outside of their homeland, the popularity of The Beatles sounded like a mere rumor that something was happening in that part of Europe.
The Ed Sullivan Show presented Beatlemania in full gear: Four good-looking gentlemen in their early 20s dressed and hair combed the same. They got a number one song, “I Want To Hold Your Hand,” and their music was driving the teens, especially the girls, into delirium.
Apart from their breakthrough hit in America, they sang four other songs that night: “All My Loving,” “Till There Was You,” “She Loves You,” “and “I Saw Her Standing There.”
The Beatles did appear on the said show multiple times, including one broadcast a week after which attracted as nearly as many viewers. But they only needed that February 9 performance to open the gates for a British invasion through music, fashion, and philosophy.
After The Ed Sullivan Show gig, The Beatles were a certified global phenomenon. Credit to them that they proved not to be a flash in the pan. They would produce some of the greatest albums in pop history, along with a string of hit singles. They scored 20 number 1 songs on the Billboard Hot 100, the most by any artist.
Three years after the ground-breaking appearance on American TV, The Beatles performed on Our World, the first live global television link, to be watched by more than 400 million in 25 countries. They were no longer just hoping to hold some hands. They were already telling everyone that “All You Need Is Love,” the song they sang and which became the anthem of the counterculture they led by virtue of star power and immense pure talent.
The Beatles broke up in 1970. They released a couple of reunion songs in the mid-90s, without Lennon who was gunned down in 1980, and with the help of digital technology. And then last year, 22 years after Harrison passed away, they released “Now and Then,” dubbed “the last Beatles song” which became their 35th Top Ten single on Billboard Hot 100. It also debuted at number one on the Billboard Digital Song Sales.
It all began that February day in America, 1964.