"Ladies and gentlemen, The Beatles": Sixty years of The Beatles in America
Sunday, February 10, 1964. Sixty years ago tonight. If you're a member of the baby boomer generation, chances are you were sitting in front of your television that night. Seventy-three million other Americans joined you to watch something you had never seen before.
“Close your eyes and I'll kiss you. Tomorrow I'll miss you. Remember I’ll always be true.”
Those are the opening lyrics to the song “All My Loving”, sung by Paul McCartney. That's what we first heard when The Beatles made their first appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show.
That moment changed our lives. We found something that we believed belonged to our generation. Almost as important, our parents didn't like it. We were moving forward and never looked back.
America, at the time, was in an emotional depression. We were still trying to recover from the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, just a few months earlier. For many of us, he was our first president. His murder was a loss of our innocence. While The Beatles didn't change that, their sound and look gave us something to help us move forward. It gave us hope.
It's now six decades later. The Beatles broke up more than fifty years ago, but they have never stopped being a part of our lives. We still play their records and listen to their songs on our car radios. We've passed on their music to our children and even our grandchildren. Just recently, we were over the top excited when new technology helped to bring us a new Beatles song.
No one would have guessed back then that it would turn out like this. The chances were much better it would have been a fast-passing fad. But yet here we are, still talking about the greatest band of all time. And in another, sixty years, when we’ll be long gone, they’ll still be talking about them. That's greatness! As Ed Sullivan said, “Ladies and gentlemen, The Beatles!”
“All my loving, I will send to you. All my loving, darling, I'll be true.”