“Ed Sullivan will be around as long as someone else has talent.”
- Fred Allen
On this day in 1964, 60% of American television sets were tuned into the Ed Sullivan Show awaiting the U.S. debut of that group from Liverpool, England, the Beatles.
Paul McCartney counted off to All My Lovin' and seven minutes later, with the last chord of She Loves You, it was over, and the world was forever changed. A seismic shockwave was sent across the nation. Of course, Elvis Presley's initial appearance on Sullivan's show in 1956 was a phenomena, but he was one guy with meteoric charisma. What kid could pull that off? But the Beatles, they were something different.
Tom Petty: “I had been a big fan of Elvis. But I really saw in the Beatles that here's something I could do. I knew I could do it. It wasn't long before groups were springing up in garages all over the place."
A generation of young Americans felt that way - an urge to make their own music. Prior to the Beatles appearance, much of musical instruction for young people had been confined to piano and band instruments, with formal and staid instruction. Guitar sales were a minor niche market. But after the Fab Four's first TV performance, guitar sales in America exploded. As Petty said, millions of kids wound up in their parents' garages with an irrepressible need to make their own noise.
I've read countless biographies and memoirs of and by the significant musicians of the baby boom generation, those that would have been young teens in 1964. I can't think of one that doesn't site the Beatles first appearance on Sullivan as a before and after moment for them.
Here is a sampling:
Billy Joel: “That one performance changed my life…I'd never considered playing rock as a career…I said, ‘I know these guys, I can relate to these guys, I am these guys.’ This is what I'm going to do — play in a rock band.”
Nancy Wilson/Heart: "The lightning bolt came out of the heavens and struck Ann and me when we saw the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show…There'd been so much anticipation and hype about the Beatles that it was a huge event, like the lunar landing: That was the moment Ann and I heard the call to become rock musicians. I was seven or eight at the time…Right away we started doing air guitar shows in the living room."
Gene Simmons/KISS: “There's no way I'd be doing what I do now if it wasn't for the Beatles. I was watching The Sullivan Show and I saw them. It blew me away that these four boys from the middle of nowhere could make that music.”
Joe Perry/Aerosmith: "The night the Beatles first played The Sullivan Show, boy, that was something. Seeing them on TV was akin to a national holiday. Talk about an event. It changed me completely. I knew something was different in the world that night."
Chrissie Hynde/The Pretenders: "I remember exactly where I was sitting. It was amazing. It was like the axis shifted."
Bruce Springsteen: “This was different, shifted the lay of the land. Four guys, playing and singing, writing their own material…Rock and roll came to my house where there seemed to be no way out…and opened up a whole world of possibilities.”
Doug Clifford/Creedence Clearwater: "A big influence was seeing the Beatles on Ed Sullivan. They were a quartet and we said, wow, we can do that. If these guys from England can come out and play rock ‘n’ roll, we can do it."
Elliot Easton/The Cars: “I was 10 years old when the Beatles played The Ed Sullivan Show and I was already playing a little guitar. To have that guy there, standing to the side, looking down at his guitar while he played his licks like that, I knew, right then, that was what I wanted to do with my life.”
Gary Rossington/Lynyrd Skynyrd: We saw the Beatles on Ed Sullivan like everybody else in our generation, and freaked out and wanted to start a rock ‘n’ roll band."
Steve Lukather/Toto: “When the Beatles were on Ed Sullivan, life went from black and white to color like in The Wizard of Oz — and the irony I'm in the band Toto is not lost on me.”
Inarguably to me, without the appearance of those four kids that night in February, 62 years ago, we would have no, Refugee or Learning to Fly, no Barracuda or Magic Man, no Brass in Pocket or Back on the Chain Gang, no Fortunate Son or Green River, no Dream On or Walk This Way, no Rock and Roll All Night or Beth, no Only the Good Die Young or Scenes From an Italian Restaurant, no Just What I Needed or My Best Friend's Girl, no Africa or 99, no Born to Run and no Free Bird…and who would want to live in a world like that?