The Beatles  … they came in through the bathroom window!

We very recently passed the 50^th anniversary of the Beatles’ debut on the Ed Sullivan show in February 1964.  Is there anyone alive today who has not at least heard of these legends?  If so, there is something wrong there.  VERY young people can be forgiven some ignorance.  In the 1980s, Sharon, a friend of mind, was thumbing through records at a record shop.  In horror, she listened to this statement made by one teeny-bopper to another, both shopping within a few feet of her ….

“Did you know that Paul McCartney was with another group before Wings????”

She was aghast.

It had been almost 20 years before when the Beatles made their debut in the United States.  They were already well known in Great Britain and Europe.  They had been honing their craft and perfecting their style there for almost five years, beginning in 1960.  They had become a phenomenon in their home country and were now ready to invade the United States and the world.

In February of 1964, the advertising blitz began.  If you were one of the few mainstream Americans who had not learned that the Beatles were appearing on the Ed Sullivan show that coming Sunday night, you lived on another planet.  The advertising went on for weeks, and was especially heavy on the Saturday before Ed’s Sunday night show.  You simply couldn’t miss it unless you were Amish and had no television coverage.  The media flashed pictures of the lads as well.

Their hairstyles were rather unusual, but looking back on it all, they were not really that outrageous.  However, they did not fit the American standard of proper male grooming and appearance of the day, and thereby began the problems with our esteemed parents, the “older” generation.

Both my mother and father grumbled throughout the weekend, up to the show, “They LOOK like a bunch of beetles!” 

It was not meant as a compliment.  They were already programmed to dislike them.  They, like many other parents, felt their comfortable and conventional world to be threatened.  They started calling the Beatles “those long hairs.”

At 7:00 p.m., Ed Sullivan broadcasted and the Beatles stepped into history.  These were early Beatles, and only a façade of what they would become later as they evolved.  What we saw was four young men in matching suits with stovepipe legs and longish hair that flopped into their eyes .   They were actually nice-looking young men.  Their music was catchy, but a bit on the frivolous side.  It was “pop”, pure and simple.

They had no appeal for me and I promptly forgot all about them.  But no one could miss all the screaming girls, about to faint and fall over the railings of the theatre.  And then there were those shots of policemen carrying girls away after they had attempted to storm the barricades outside the Ed Sullivan theatre or at the airport.  What was going on?

My father began grumbling again:  “It was that Frank Sinatra that started all of this screaming and fainting nonsense!”

I thought it was Elvis started all that.  Frank Sinatra?  That balding puffy faced middle aged singer who took swings at news photographers and made death threats to his biographers?

School the next day was abuzz with the Beatles.  Did you see them?  Weren’t they just wonderful????  How many of their records do you have????   What’s your favorite Beatles song??  Little girls played Beatles on the playground, and you could not visit anyone’s home without being dragged before their record player and listening to a 45 of their latest hit, repeatedly.

Their frothy little hits continued on until they began to morph into the TRUE Beatles, hatching out of their pop cocoons around 1965 with their real music which was melodic, unique and haunting.  They recorded “Hey, Jude” and “Eleanor Rigby”, a far cry from “I wanna hold your haaannnddd!!!!!! “  We had never heard anything like it.  Their appearance changed radically as well.  Gone were the clean-cut eager working class English boys.  They were replaced with more and more facial hair, long stringy locks, and exotic clothing.  The boys were also getting heavy into pot and other controlled substances.  I hate to say this, but the music they created under the influence was the best they ever did.  When you heard it, it drew you in.  There was a depth and soul to mid 60s beatle music that could not be resisted.  By the time we reached Mac, we were hard core groupies, just as our parents had feared!!!

The issue of the LSD drenched Sgt. Pepper album was the pinnacle.  There had never been anything like it and there never would be again.   It was during the Sgt. Pepper era that rumors started racing that Paul was in fact dead.  It was getting bizarre.

At one point, our parents banded together after the John’s unfortunate  and ill-timed “we are more popular than Jesus Christ” comment.  The Beatles would be the ruination of our young people!  We would grow our hair long and tune out!  Their songs were full of subliminal messages about drugs:  Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds was an anthem to LSD!  Poor little Julian Lennon’s innocent school picture became a hail storm of controversy.  For my part, I believe that John Lennon took one look at that picture, immediately saw the connection and took advantage of it, probably snickering to himself the whole time.  Or maybe poor little Julian, a chip off the old block, already knew all about LSD and he was just expressing himself.  And of course it did not help when they released the Lucy psychedelic video which was a great recreation of an acid trip, almost as good as the acid trip scene from Dumbo which got through the censors. 

Things began sliding downhill soon after.  There was disagreement, dissension, and financial squabbling.  Paul was still the ebullient cutie, but John was getting weirder and weirder with bizarre utterances and love-ins.  At one point, he and Yoko held a press conference while they were both inside huge bags.  He was beginning to resemble Jesus and was becoming physically and mentally estranged from the group when he and Paul were not scrambling for creative control.  George, talented in his own right as a composer and song writer had been shoved completely to the side as John and Paul locked up and grappled.  George then entered another dimension, chanting mantras with his yogi when he was not smoking pot and playing his sitar. 

Then they broke up!  Damn it!  Just when they were really getting good!  All we could hope for now was a reunion and reassembling of the group, but it was a dream which never came to be.  Paul, under the influence of a good stabilizing woman, wife Linda Eastman, went on to form a far more commercial group:  Wings.  John and George continued on their own, producing a number of hits, both of their lives spiraling slowly downwards in a fog of drugs and marital discord.  George’s wife ran off with Eric Clapton.  John’s end in front of the Dakota in Manhattan was an unmentionable tragedy.  George succumbed to cancer.  Paul became Sir Paul, but then made a disastrous second marriage and was taken to the cleaners.  Ringo just carried on, not really getting into trouble or making waves of any sort.

In a recent televised PBS tribute to the Beatles, Ringo and Paul performed together again:   Ringo pounding his drums and Paul cavorting around the stage, singing and jamming with the other guitarists.  It was great but really not the same.  Paul was looking pretty winded, and his voice was thin.  What can you expect from a guy in his 70s?????

We still loved them, though.  That will never change.