The Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show

February 9, 1964 - Love at first sight and sound

Rock ’n’ Roll with Me is a daily email newsletter (except Sunday) presenting one or more of my favorite danceable rock ’n’ roll songs, from the sixties onwards, along with some fun facts and memories.

If you’re going to dance (at your own risk, dude!), the twist is a great one for early Beatles.

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Our Fab Four songs of the day

The Beatles are where it all began for me. I’m talking about my life-long affair with rock ‘n’ roll, still going hot and heavy to this day.

They made their first appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show on February 9, 1964. I was seven years old and glued to the TV as usual. Who can forget that amazing Sunday evening lineup of Lassie, Walt Disney, Ed Sullivan, and Bonanza? (Although some watched My Favorite Martian instead of Disney. Hard choice.)

I found myself mesmerized by the so-called “mop tops” from England, wherever that was. My favorite song was “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” which my friend and I sang over and over again on our Verna Drive sidewalk in the days following the show:

Ed introduced the Beatles by telling the audience that they had received a telegram before the show from Elvis Presley and Colonel Tom Parker, Elvis’ manager, wishing them tremendous success in the US. (You can watch all the Beatles parts of Ed’s show here.) The Beatles then launched into “All My Loving,” another one of their hits:

Ed Sullivan’s show was usually one variety act after another, and often had a bizarre and eclectic mixture of singing, juggling, skits, ventriloquists — you name it. You never knew what you were going to get. But that night the Beatles performed an unprecedented five tunes. My other big favorite was “I Saw Her Standing There”:

What seven-year-old wouldn’t be thrilled with the claps and high-pitched “woo’s” in that song?

The band also performed “Till There Was You” and “She Loves You.” (Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!) It’s fascinating watching the audience reaction, something we had never seen before except for Elvis and maybe Sinatra. I wouldn’t fall in love with the Beatles as I did with the Monkees several years later, but I remember I did choose Paul when we discussed who was our favorite Beatle. Now that I know so much about each Beatle and their immense talent, I could never choose just one. They’re all over-the-top fab, alone and together. (OK, lately I have a thing for George. Three of his songs are my top faves — “While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” “Something,” and “Here Comes the Sun.”)

Really, there is no other word for them except legendary. But we had no clue about the immense treasures to come in early 1964.

Some fun facts

1. By the time the Beatles performed on Ed Sullivan, they had already been performing in clubs in Liverpool (England) and Hamburg (Germany) for several years. As Scottish musician Sandy Buglass notes, they played up to six hours a night in Hamburg (even sometimes eight hours, Paul recently revealed in the McCartney: Now and Then documentary) and challenged themselves to build up a repertoire of covers so vast that they never had to repeat a song. Blimey! With that level of knowledge and practice, no wonder they mastered the DNA of song-writing, and no wonder they became such consummate performers.

2. Ringo didn’t join the Beatles until August 1962, but he knew them from Hamburg, where the higher-billed and higher-paid band he was in, Rory Storm and the Hurricanes, was playing at the same time and where he did some stand-in work for the Beatles.

3. Paul says that eroticism was the driving force behind a lot of his love songs, including “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” although he didn’t realize it at the time and would have guffawed at the use of that particular word. (Lyrics, vol.1, p.335)

4. When Paul met standup comedian and Seinfeld star Jerry Seinfeld at the White House, Jerry said to him, “‘Paul, you know, I’ve been looking at that “She was just seventeen / You know what I mean”; I’m not sure we do know what you mean, Paul!’” (Lyrics, vol.1, p.325)

5. “I Saw Her Standing There” is considered by Paul to be among his best work.

6. Paul wrote “All My Loving” when the Beatles were touring music halls in the UK with Roy Orbison in May-June 1963. He wrote it as a country-and-western song, but believes that John’s guitar part —playing chords as triplets, which sound like wheels on a highway — was that “little magic thing” that transformed it.

7. Ed Sullivan was always a class act. He ended the show by thanking the police department for dealing with the thousands of fans who gathered at Broadway and 53rd Street “to greet the Beatles,” and also congratulated the fans. “You’ve been a fine audience despite severe provocation,” he said with a smirk.

8. For a wonderful 60th-year celebration of the Beatles’ first appearance on the Ed Sullivan show, including the history behind it, little-seen videos, and reminiscences by famous musicians (e.g., Springsteen, Nancy Wilson, Billy Joel), check out Brad Kyle’s Front Row & Backstage post here.

As we continue with the sixties, don’t worry, we will encounter the Beatles again, and I will share more memories from Paul’s Lyrics and other sources.

Questions for discussion in the comments

1. What did you watch on Sunday evenings in 1964?

2. Wouldn’t “All My Loving” be better as a country-and-western song as Paul originally wrote it? (Or another genre?)

3. Have you ever played chords as triplets? Did they sound like wheels on a highway — or something else?

4. Do you get dizzy when you look at the Please Please Me album cover?

5. If you could be a Beatle for just one day of his life, which Beatle would you be, on which day, and why?

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