60 years ago today

Where they surprised that so many Americans were circumcised?

I saw them in concert that year.

R1 Were they surprised how stupid Americans were.

Have they really only been in America 60 years? I’m glad no one squashed them!!!

I only know this song from Paul McCartney. Was Jesse McCartney his son?

R2, I am jealous. I'm a millennial but I love The Beatles. I have only been to one or two live shows in my life (I just don't care for them) but I would gladly wait a few hours to see The Beatles perform.

I remember the hoopla and watching them on Ed Sullivan three weeks in a row. Hard to believe it was 60 years ago. 60 years before that was 1904, the year one of my grandmothers was born. I'm much older now than she was in 1964. I still love the Beatles.

It’s hard to believe I’m older than Ed Sullivan was (62+) 60 years ago.

Exciting times, glad I was around.

My cousin saw them at Shea Stadium. My sister could’ve gone but my mother refused. She was 14 and the boy who asked her was 17. The boy worked with my mother, was Austrian on a work visa in the US dependent on his being employed by my mother’s boss. His direct supervisor told my mother, “He’s a good kid. I’d kill him if he ever did anything wrong and he knows it. It’s not like he’s going to hurt your daughter, he’s not that kind of kid. And we’d report him to authorities if he did and his ass would be booted out of the country. Let him take her to see the Beatles. He’s trustworthy.

Nope

My mother was convinced sex, drugs and rock and roll would claim her catholic school daughter and make the 17 year old boy an instant sex maniac.

From these humble beginnings at least Paul was able to go on to greater things

I remembered as a 7-year old being in the car when my father drove my 13-year old sister & some friends to see the Beatles on tour in '64. When I last saw my sister, on her deathbed almost 10 years ago to the day, we reminisced about the then-50 year anniversary of the Beatles landing. She dismissed my childhood memory, categorically rejecting any notion that I was also in the car. I accepted that judgment, chalking it up to a faulty childhood memory. Years passed, & I happened to mention this story to another sister, who was 10 in '64. But she said my memory was correct ... & she, too, was in the very crowded car!

Were they overrated right from the start, or did that emerge later?

R13, watch the state of popular culture personified by the Ed Sullivan show from that era, including the ones featuring Fab Four, & you'll see with your own eyes how revolutionary they were.

It's was 60 years ago today

Beatles landed in the USA

They've been going in and out of style

And Paul's solo acts are really vile

So let me introduce to you!!!

The act that will assault your ears!

Surging Peephole's Only Farts-love Band!

Rodgers and Hammerstein have nothing on R15.

Point taken, r11. But Paul is still so damn cute in that video and the song is still kinda catchy, so I don't even care.

Some Boomers/Genxers are so committed to the "McCartney is lame" boilerplate that they can't hear. The song at R10 is great (and the early electronica album it comes from is both insane and highly influential). John "Jealous Guy" Lennon was obsessed with the track, and it motivated him to kick heroin and paranoia-- oops, I mean to reluctantly give up his contented life as a househusband -- and make his MOR "comeback" album, Double Fantasy. Then he got killed. I blame Ed Sullivan.

One of my first vivid childhood memories was seeing them on Ed Sullivan and thinking because they were on three weeks in a row they were going to be on every week.

It was fun to be alive in those days. My group of 4, 5, and 6 year olds were all Beatlemaniacs and carried their albums around to each others houses.

mom saw them at the Cavern club and forgot about it until her old friend reminded her she was there. She still doesn’t remember going to see them. I think she was a party animal back in the day. She doesn’t let out a peep about her teen years.

Watching old tapes of What's My Line, I've bee struck by how the panelists reviled The Beatles and all of rock 'n roll. The fuddy-duddies constantly made fun of their music, haircuts, and popularity. They clearly were afraid of the oncoming cultural tide.

[quote]They clearly were afraid of the oncoming cultural tide.

They were not afraid at all.

No adult could see an oncoming cultural tide. The Beatles were considered to be a fad, and they had seen fads come and go.

Here today, gone tomorrow. Few adults took the Beatles seriously in 1964.

How could you with songs like "I Want to Hold Your Hand" and "She Loves You", their two initial mega hits.

The change in attitude toward them happened as their music matured.

The WML panelists, R22, had nothing on IGaS’s Henry Morgan.

I'm glad they stayed together long enough to give us side two of Abbey Road.

They most certainly were afraid. They loathed all modern music, especially rock n roll. The Beatles were just the latest incarnation of the youth movement.

R28 "Afraid" is the wrong word. Afraid of what?

Look, I was there. You weren't.

In 1964 adults looked on them with an amused distain. Screaming girls and goofy songs.

I love the Beatles and the Stones and Hair. But I like their world of Gershwin, Cole Porter, Rodgers and Hart, Irving Berlin, Jule Style, Leonard Bernstein, Rodgers and Hammerstein, their movies and Broadway musicals better. They had a better popular culture.

Yes, R28, there was a pre-Beatles time when popular culture took its cues from Broadway.

Broadway was still having an influence on popular culture through the 1960s.

In 1964 the year-end top selling recordings: #1 "I Want to Hold Your Hand", #2 "She Loves You", #3 "Hello, Dolly!"

R10 - Your mother must have had one hell decade.

Yes, R30, but the rock & roll revolution launched by the Beatles precipitated the end of Broadway’s influence.

They really weren’t that cute. Paul was cute only in comparison.

With the splendid Pan Am logo in the background.

If they had arrived a few months earlier, they would have flown into Idlewild.

[quote]Yes, [R30], but the rock & roll revolution launched by the Beatles precipitated the end of Broadway’s influence.

Times were certainly changing, but the fact is, there were still so many popular songs throughout the 1960s that came from Broadway (and from movie themes as well). The decade even ended with a Broadway song at #2 for the year 1969.

Also: the many TV variety shows of the 1960s kept that genre of music alive. Even if "Hey Big Spender" or "If He Came Into My Life" or "It Only takes A Moment" or "Feeling Good" or "My Favorite Things" or "I'll Never Fall In Love Again" or "Promises, Promises" or "My Cup Runneth Over" or "Do I Hear a Waltz?" or "People" or "Sunrise Sunset", or "The Impossible Dream" or "On a Clear Day You Can See Forever " etc. might not have made the Billboard charts, they were songs the country was very familiar with. We heard them constantly.

Sinatra, Jack Jones, Tony Bennett, Nancy Wilson, Peggy Lee etc. and etc. were all very present and they sure weren't singing rock.

Come to t think of it, clearly the DDTs show not even Lucy liked the Beatles.

They were all cute. And so much alike, bushy brown hair and eyes, stockbroker suits, 3 guitars and a set of drums. Little kids like me loved Ringo because he was the identifiable one on drums. TV was so blurry then. Later as we studied their pictures we picked Paul as the cutest. I went thru crushes on all of them as I got to “know” them. John was edgy, a challenge, always an undertone of menace; now I realize he was the classic bully and no one ever called him on it. He was also the only middle class Beatle with the most comfortable living situation. That he appeared as the angriest was kind of self centered. George got more interesting when his self effacing humor became known. He was also charming and devilish attractive behind scenes. I think he was the most likeable and easy with other great musicians evidenced by his collaboration with them (and no ego). He really had the humor and legend of his Beatle background perfectly addressed. Paul has had a weight heavy on his shoulders all these years. I think he loved the Beatles best of all and the break up was devastating. I get that, so he had a lot to prove in his own mind. John didn’t really care at that point. Ringo, he just Is, bless him. The Beatles impact on the world for five years is undeniable for those of us who lived thru it. Everyone and everything referenced them. Every week, if not every day, newspapers had a story on what they were doing, where they were going, where they had been, who they were dating or marrying, what they thought. I don’t think any American sitcom didn’t do a show referencing them or making fun of them in some way. Every other rock n roll group came After and Because of The Beatles. They were huge and their influence is immeasurable. They didn’t even call it Pop Culture then. They created it.

And I didn’t even mention the music^^!!

By the time they appeared on Sullivan, the Lennon-McCartney collaboration was already halfway over.

In early 1964, Johnny Carson was anticipating the arrival of Beatles. "Best of luck to them."