50 years later, Beatles appearance still has a hold on Sullivan viewer

Sandy Hankin

is a writer in King of Prussia

Fifty years ago, our world changed. For the better.

As I sat with my parents on our bright-blue, silk-covered couch in the living room of our Northeast twin, my 16-year-old heart leapt for joy at the sight and sound on our black-and-white TV. It was the Beatles' first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show.

I fell in love. And nothing would be the same again.

Right after the show I called my best friend, Marlene, and she too was smitten. We would become true Beatlemaniacs, attracted like a magnet to others in our 11th-grade class who loved them too. Soon we were five. Marlene loved George; Marsha loved Ringo; and Franny, Bobbi, and I all fell for the Cute One, Paul. Everything in the world became secondary to the Fab Four for us.

We bought the album Meet the Beatles! that week and listened to it over and over and over. I kept picking up the needle on my parents' stereo to replay "All My Loving," endlessly. We bought Beatles magazines, which suddenly proliferated. Soon there were bubble-gum cards too. We listened to our transistor radios, waiting breathlessly for a Beatles song. And we started plotting how we would see them in person, meet them, and marry them.

Such youth and innocence. Those were different times, as Lou Reed was to put it so poignantly a few years later. For suburban, white baby boomers, the innocence of childhood lasted longer then. Ours had been shattered just a few months earlier, when our beloved President John F. Kennedy was killed. Now, however, the Beatles had come along and helped us forget the sorrow.

That first Ed Sullivan appearance was seismic. But not just for us Beatlemaniacs - for the culture, too. The changes between 1964, when we would see our first Beatles concert, at Convention Hall, and 1966, when we would see them at JFK Stadium, were enormous. There were pot, LSD, war protests, hippies, Shindig!, and Hullabaloo. We chanted, "Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?"

Every generation has its growing-up rituals and fads; its beloved athletes, movies, and music; its historic moments and cultural touchstones. But the Beatles truly ushered in a riotous, twirling, phantasmagoric bump up in our culture and society, the likes of which, for better or worse, come along only rarely.

To think it all started on Feb. 9, 1964. If you had told me then that there would be a 50th anniversary of that monumental TV appearance, I would have looked at you in sheer disbelief. Fifty years? Older than our parents were then? Retired? Collecting Social Security? Wearing sensible shoes? (Well, the sensible shoes didn't really come to pass.) Paul would sing about being 64 a few years later, and that sounded ancient. Now I'm 66. (The Cute One and Ringo were just on the Grammys, and they're 71 and 73, respectively.) It's hard to fathom that 50 years have passed. When you're 16, the world, and life, stretches endlessly.

And endlessly was how we loved the Beatles. In the weeks after Feb. 9, they appeared twice more on Ed Sullivan. Every appearance was met with shrieks and drowning-out screams from the studio audience. For me, watching them was utterly urgent and utterly exciting. We girls (boys wouldn't come to love the Beatles until a bit later) were full of giggles, smiles, full-hearted love. We lived for the next album, the next song on the radio. Before, we loved listening to Hyski on WIBG and the "Geator with the Heater" as they spun Little Richard, Pat Boone, Elvis, and Connie Francis. All great. But after Feb. 9, the Beatles, and the British Invasion they begot, were just so many degrees of excitement and joy higher. My daughter had New Kids on the Block and Boyz II Men, and her daughters will have their idols, but nothing will match the Beatles.

In March, we went to far-off, exotic Logan to see them in a closed-circuit showing of their Washington concert. We ran into the bathroom and hid so we could stay for the second showing. Everyone in the movie theater screamed, just as the girls in the film audience did. We walked up and down Broad Street buying magazines and "I Love the Beatles" buttons for our trench coats. In April, we walked across the Tacony-Palmyra Bridge to buy The Beatles' Second Album at the Cherry Hill Mall, because we heard that was the first place it was available. (Marlene's parents were smart enough to follow us along in their Chevy, and picked us up on the Jersey side to take us the rest of the way.)

Then we heard there would be a movie! A Hard Day's Night tickets went on sale months in advance, and we left our little neighborhood again to venture to Mayfair for the August showing. In September, the holy grail: seeing them in person at the Convention Hall (ticket price: $5.50). It was a surreal experience, with the highest decibels coming not from electric guitars and amps, but from thousands of hormonal teenagers. Singles, albums, movies, TV appearances, and more would continue to bring me happiness and love for many years to come.

So, 50 years later, a gracious tip of the hat to the late Ed Sullivan for bringing the joy to America. A lot has happened since then, but the music plays on.