BY ROBERT LLOYD© 2014, Los Angeles Times

ifty years ago Sunday, onFeb. 9, 1964, via “The Ed Sul-livan Show,” America metthe Beatles.

It was not the group’sfirst appearance on Ameri-can television. CBS Newshad reported, dismissively,on British “Beatlemania,”

and Jack Paar had aired on his talk show aclip of the band playing in England. Theirmusic was in the charts, finally: After a yearof outright refusal, Capitol Records (anAmerican arm of EMI, the Beatles’ Britishlabel) was finally releasing and promotingtheir records. In “I Want to Hold Your Hand,”the band had its first U.S. No. 1 About 3,000fans greeted the Fab Four at the airport whenthey arrived in New York two days earlier.

But the Sullivan show was different. TheTV version of vaudeville’s “playing thePalace,” it conferred a seal of approval, evenof importance, on the acts that appearedthere. On the air since the dawn of themedium and watched regularly by many mil-lions, it was a national institution, a familytradition. (“Hymn for a Sunday Evening,”from the 1960 musical “Bye Bye, Birdie,” is ameditation on his very name.)

The Beatles would have happened herewhether they played “The Ed Sullivan Show”or not. Indeed, for many the only reason theshow is remembered is that the Beatles wereon it, but they might not have happened soexplosively, so definitively, so fast. Their firstappearance on the show, which they bothopened and closed, was estimated to havebeen seen by a record-breaking 73 millionviewers, or one in three Americans, and theyappeared the next week as well, remote fromMiami Beach, and the week after that, onvideotape.

Not everyone who watched was con-verted, of course. If they were relativelyfriendly revolutionaries, with their pressedsuits and bemused grins and professional po-litesse and their malt-shop lyrics, they wererevolutionaries nonetheless. Their energywas fearsome, their wit sharp and their hair,by local standards, was for some confusinglylong.

Now that everything is at our fingertips, aswipe or click away at any moment any-where, it is hard to conceive of the effectthey once had. The revolution had actuallybeen televised then. In a media world that re-quires a surfeit of “news,” appearances bymusicians are still talked about, especially ifin some ways outrageous. (What Will MileyDo?) But the world does not changeovernight, as it seemed to in February 1964,when, legend has it, legions of kids ran outand bought Rickenbacker guitars and Cuban-heeled boots, grew their hair and startedwriting songs.

The importance of that moment to thegroup’s American fortunes was underscoredby Capitol using images from the “Sullivan”show on the covers of “The Beatles’ SecondAlbum,” released in April, and “SomethingNew,” which came out in July. But televisionappearances, from teen-pop shows to More-cambe and Wise’s popular British comedy-variety series, had already played animportant part in their career, building themthrough 1963 into household names inBritain, where they were regarded as lovablelads and invited to play for the queen.

It’s no accident that their first film, “AHard Day’s Night,” which began shootingsoon after the group’s return from the U.S.and is a kind of edited, enhanced version ofthe life they were living, largely concerns atelevision appearance. (That film, and its za-nier follow-up, “Help!,” also gave birth beforelong to “The Monkees,” which was both aproduct of a traditional TV network and astep into the avant-garde: Producer BertSchneider and Bob Rafelson would, betweenthem, have a hand in “Easy Rider,” “Five Easy

Pieces” and the surrealist post-series Mon-kees movie, “Head,” written by Rafelson andJack Nicholson.)

After the Beatles quit touring in 1966, tele-vision was their main instrument of publicappearance. There was “All You Need IsLove,” performed as part of a worldwidesatellite tele-cast in 1967.There werepromotionalfilms — pre-cursors to thevideo clip, andinstructions, ina way, on howto read thesongs — forthe singlesides “Rain,” “Strawberry Fields Forever,”“Penny Lane,” “Hey Jude,” “Revolution” and“Let It Be.” They came to New York in 1968and went on “The Tonight Show” (guest-hosted by Joe Garagiola) to announce theformation of Apple.

“Magical Mystery Tour” was a BBC Christ-mas special before it became a film in theU.S. Each of these appearances, live or filmedbut often shown only once, constituted anunmissable event, made more valuable bythe scarcity of such events.

They are, to be sure, an institution nowthemselves. Though still working, enviablyvigorous and recognizably themselves, thesurviving Beatles are in their 70s now. One ofthem lets himself be called “Sir Paul.”

Feb. 9, on the anniversary of the band’s“Ed Sullivan” bow, CBS will air “The NightThat Changed America: A Grammy Salute tothe Beatles.” Many of the acts had also per-formed at the Grammy Awards ceremony,which took place the night before the specialwas recorded, and at which Paul McCartneyand Ringo Starr accepted a Lifetime Achieve-ment Award. I was present at the salute,some of which was inspired and some moreof which merely proved the excellence of theoriginal versions, though one can say at leastthat the current program is no less the endthan the first was the absolute beginning.

When the Beatles made their “Ed Sulli-van” debut, show business, like much else inthe world then, was at a point of change, achange the Beatles both reflected and helpedbring about. Rock ‘n’ roll had a history withtelevision as had other types of teen pop;

Dick Clark had been hosting “AmericanBandstand” since 1956.

The Beatles were not the first of theirkind to appear on “The Ed Sullivan Show”:Elvis Presley had made his own repeatedsplashes there, and in one famous instancewas shot from the waist up for the benefit of

more conser-vative sensi-bilities. Butthe assump-tion was thatthey wereonly fadspassingthrough,something toexploit for awhile, who

would grow out of their youthful otherness,as Elvis did, or who would simply disappear,leaving the same figures in power and thepower structure unaltered.

Self-contained and self-directed —notwithstanding the guidance of managerBrian Epstein and producer George Martin —the Beatles were something new and in nohurry to leave or conform. Other new thingsfollowed through doors they helped open.For better or worse, for a while, the worldgrew young.

There has been no “Beatles,” of course,since 1970, when the group broke up, and nopossibility of a reunion since 1980, when

John Lennon was murdered — and, since thedeath of George Harrison, no possibility evenof the virtual reunion that produced “Free Asa Bird” and “Real Love,” Lennon demo tracksfinished by his former bandmates on the oc-casion of their 1995 retrospective “Anthol-ogy” project.

On the other hand, none of that seems tomatter much. Beatles music still sells well inall available formats. The music has enteredinto the ether; it is something we live in; ithas achieved something of the quality of folkmusic, a thing we know from childhood, andour children and their children will know aswell. It isn’t nostalgia that colors thesesongs; they are simply everpresent.

It’s easy to overstate the influence of apop band on history, and yet it is hard to un-derstate the importance of this one. Theyweren’t necessarily the best band at allthings. But no other group mixed talent andambition, curiosity and opportunity, ele-gance and approachability, ease and urgency,to such a degree, or so attractively. As a unit,they contained all the tensions that would ul-timately break them apart; but while theyheld together, the mix was powerful.

Paul and Ringo sang together last week asold bandmates and permanent Beatles. Itwas lovely and moving. And if it didn’tchange the world, well, they had done thatalready.

———Robert Lloyd: robert.lloyd@latimes.com

PAGE 12B PRESS & DAKOTAN n FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 7, 2014

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When Ed Met The Beatles Ed Sullivan Rocked America 50 Year Ago With The Fab Four

MCT ILLUSTRATION

F

Self-contained and self-directed ... theBeatles were something new and in nohurry to leave or conform. Other newthings followed through doors they

helped open. For better or worse, for awhile, the world grew young.