Has it been 40 years????

[tommyd]

I imagine this got it started for many of us.........
From the "New York Times" online. Sign up, as it's a good read.
TommyD

They Came, They Sang, They Conquered
By ALLAN KOZINN

Published: February 6, 2004


From the distance of 40 years it seems almost silly, but on Sunday, Feb. 9, 1964, at 8 p.m., nearly 74 million Americans — just under half the country, according to the Nielsen ratings — plopped in front of their television sets to watch four English rock 'n' rollers in their early 20's introduce themselves to the country by playing five songs on "The Ed Sullivan Show" on CBS. The band was, of course, the Beatles, and their debut, which is being celebrated by the Museum of Television and Radio with a photography show starting today, drew the largest TV audience that had been measured up to that time.

Those viewers were not universally enthralled. Some had already declared themselves hostile to the Beatles because they found the group's pudding-bowl hairstyles, velvet-collared jackets and pointy boots silly; or the falsetto "woos" and head shaking that punctuated their songs gimmicky; or simply because anything that caused such a furor among teenage girls had to be objectionable. Others were simply curious what the fuss was about, and no doubt some tuned in out of habit to watch an almost universally beloved variety show that, on this Sunday, also included a semistaged excerpt from the Broadway hit "Oliver!," impressions by Frank Gorshin, Tessie O'Shea's somewhat rumpled British vaudeville and a few comedy and gymnastic acts.

All this attention the Beatles were getting was peculiar in the context of the time. Not least, it upended the balance of trade in popular music between Britain and America. This transaction had previously worked in only one direction: American stars were popular in Britain, but British singers and bands, who tended to produce either watered-down cover versions of American hits or derivative rock that was unexciting to American ears, found it impossible to crack the American market. The Beatles had a foot in that tradition: they opened and closed their concert sets with American rock standards — Chuck Berry's "Roll Over Beethoven," the Isley Brothers' "Twist and Shout" and Little Richard's "Long Tall Sally" — and their first two albums included covers of other American songs, too.

But it was their own music that grabbed listeners' attention, and the songs that had most thoroughly saturated the Top 40 airwaves at the start of 1964, "I Want to Hold Your Hand" and "She Loves You," were the work of the group's principal songwriters, John Lennon and Paul McCartney.

Cultural Transformation

In the Beatles' music a listener could identify the influences of American rhythm and blues, as well as show tunes and older pop forms and, for an exotic touch, the modal harmonies of British folk song. This amalgam quickly became a winning formula for the British Invasion bands that followed in the Beatles' wake.

In a huge reversal British music was transformed from box-office poison to solid gold, and American bands would soon be imitating it.

That first "Ed Sullivan Show" performance proved a cultural turning point, one of those moments when everything changed, or at least, a point to which one can trace changes in everything from style in its broadest sense (in music, art and fashion, for example) to the way rock 'n' roll was marketed and perceived. It was one of the few such moments in recent American history that did not involve an assassination or a surprise attack, although one school of thought holds that the explosion of Beatlemania across America in early 1964 was part of the country's way of healing itself after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

The ripples reached even into the classical music world, where rock was regarded as ephemera, the musical equivalent of, say, potato chips. Leonard Bernstein and Leopold Stokowski were among the first to declare the Beatles' music to be good stuff; Aaron Copland and Ned Rorem soon offered arguments in the group's defense, too, and it wasn't long before young composers who came of age during their reign began describing the Beatles' work as influential.

..........more here

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/06/ar...ic/06BEAT.html

[Jules]

Wow, there was an article in the sunday papers about the 2 weeks that 'broke the Beatles in America" detailing the events, must read it..it's still aoround somewhere

Cool aniversary!

I still prefer the Stones any day!

[Bob Olhsson]

Jules, if it'll make you feel any better, the fashion industry publicist who engineered the whole event was none other than Andrew Loog Oldham who earned himself the reputation to launch the Stones. I suspect Andrew is laughing himself silly at these newspaper articles if he didn't "social engineer" THEM into existence the same way he did the originals! I only know the tiniest part of REAL story from Andrew and a couple others but the whole thing is an utterly amazing epic of public relations combined with most unlikely combinations of people being thrown together at the right time and place.

[tommyd]

Jules, if there's an online link to that article somewhere I'd love to read it. "the two weeks that broke the Beatles in America". Had to have been an amazing publicity feat for the times. Bob, I'd love to hear some if the scoop if you're willing to share.
I was seven years old in 1964. After that first appearance on Ed Sullivan, my older sister was a nut case. I had "Beatle bangs" by summer. Had a band by the time I was 10. Haven't been right since.....................
TommyD