They came, they saw, they conquered!
I was about to be fifteen years old when the Beatles appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show just fifty years ago tonight! Like most of the country, I knew very little about this group from Liverpool, England. I had seen a documentary earlier in 1963 in which I first heard about them but they were far distant from us in space and time during that period before John F. Kennedy was assassinated in November.
We truly believe that the Kennedy assassination was and will always be intertwined with the Beatles and that February ninth appearance on Sullivan’s program. People have forgotten over the last fifty years what a mood that the nation was in after Kennedy’s death. The nation needed a lift and these four mop topped young gentlemen from England were just what the nation wanted at that time.
We needed a release and John, Paul, George, and Ringo gave it to us.
We must confess that we were not Beatles fans at that time and, in reality, we never really became enamored of them until we began to hear their music performed by groups like the Boston Pops Orchestra many years later when they entered the “elevator music” portion of their career long after they had broken up after a very short six year lifespan. We were, in point of fact, fans of American artists such as the Four Seasons but we were taken by British groups such as Gerry and the Pacemakers and their smash hit “Ferry Across the Mersey”.
We liked the British sound better than we ever liked the Beatles!
But, now that we look back on it with this fifty year perspective, the sound that lasted was the Beatles and their talent could not be denied. When the group broke up in 1970 we were kind of shocked and saddened by it as it seemed to us that it was the end of another era just as well. They had masked our loss over John Kennedy and we knew, when the “Beatles went away that it was time for us to move along just as well. It was a watershed in our life and we can measure things from before that time against everything that we have ever done or participated in since then.
It was just ten years later that the first Beatle died when John Lennon was gunned down outside of the Dakota apartment building in New York City. Lennon had never been our favorite Beatle but we were shocked and saddened to see him go and it reminded us of the saying that you should never fall for the seduction of safety anywhere, and especially in any large city. We would visit New York just two years after his death and we had no trouble recognizing the place where he had lived, baked bread with Yoko, and had lost his life. Since that time George Harrison has also died and we have come to cherish the two remaining members of the original band and we always enjoy any appearance that they make. It has been said that Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr are still very close. Time and fame will do that to you as the circle of close friends begins to narrow down to a precious few who can totally relate to what your life has truly been and meant to you.
Ed Sullivan had been an iconic television personality for many years before the Beatles appeared on his show but we don’t think that he ever had a bigger audience than he did that night in February when they appeared live. Although we don’t like to admit it, we did tune in along with the 73 million others to see this curiosity that had come to our shores. We were not particularly impressed at the time but the image has stuck with us through the years anyway. It is both interesting and funny how some of the things that a person does will be remembered by them for the rest of their days while so much else is discarded across the ravages of time. We had just become interesting in pop music as our fifteenth birthday approached and it was as if a button had been pushed for us that has stayed with us for the rest of our life. We no longer follow modern pop music but those old tunes from the sixties, seventies and eighties still resonate with us and we have become a lover of the fifties music that had preceded our interest of the mid sixties. The many music channels now available on the internet and through cable television have transported us back in time to a place that seemed, before Kennedy’s loss, to be a simpler and more pure period even though we now know that it had its faults and problems just as well.
IOVHO,
Regards,
Joe
To say that "God exists" is the greatest understatement ever made across space and time.
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