Beatles ’64
The future seemed limitless. The day The Beatles first appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show was also my parents’ 10th wedding anniversary, and all was right with the world. I was eight- and-a-half-years-old and newly alive to the power of music, having just acquired my aqua transistor radio for Christmas. The radio dial was mine. My precious copy of Meet the Beatles was as yet unscratched from countless plays on the cheap portable turntable. And my parents were still happily married. They went out to dinner on their 10th anniversary and left a 15-year-old babysitter named Susan in charge of us kids. And Susan wanted to see The Beatles on Ed Sullivan. That was okay with me.
“Who’s your favorite Beatle?” Susan asked me as I did my homework, just making conversation. I thought it was very cool of her to ask. Not many high-school sophomores at the time would have swapped musical notes with a 3rd-grader. But it was a question that had been much on my mind of late, and even in 3rd grade the battle lines were being drawn. Weeks before The Beatles arrived in the U.S., the radio airwaves were filled with Beatles music, and my classmates and I debated the relative merits of The Greatest Beatle. Ringo was an early frontrunner, probably because of his name, but others thought he just looked goofy, and that it wasn’t that hard to be a drummer anyway. Most of the girls in my class wore “I Love Paul” buttons on their St. Matthew Elementary School uniforms. I wasn’t altogether sure what role Paul played in the band, but he had a nice smile and he seemed like a good bet at the time. But ever the non-conformist, I spent my allowance on a big “I Love George” button at the Super Duper supermarket and proudly wore it to school the week before The Beatles touched down in New York.
So I showed Susan my “I Love George” button, and it turned out that she loved George, too. The evening was going swimmingly. We anxiously waited for eight o’clock to roll around. I couldn’t tell you exactly what songs The Beatles played, although I remember that they played four or five. “She Loves You” and “I Want to Hold Your Hand” were undoubtedly two of them. I remember hordes of screaming young women on TV. I thought for a while that the lovely Susan might join them in our living room. I made a mental note that Paul was definitely the guy who elicited the most screams, and briefly considered the merits of purchasing an “I Love Paul” button to augment my earlier choice.