Sixty Years Ago – This February 9th, 2024 – a British group called The Beatles made their first North American appearance before a record-breaking television audience and made musical history
A Remembrance by Niagara At Large reporter/publisher and life-long Beatles fan Doug Draper
Posted February 9th, 2024 on Niagara At Large
The first Beatles album released by Capitol Records Canada in early 1964
In the last weeks of January, 1964, the first song by a foursome from Liverpool, England – where the group had already created a frenzy in their homeland – reached Number One on the Billboard charts in North America and young people across Canada and the United States were getting hungry for more.
The song was ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’ which had reached the top of top of the British charts a month after it was recorded in October of 1963 and the group was The Beatles which imported “the mania” it had set off back home with its first North American TV appearance before what was then a record breaking audience of more than 70 million on (for anyone who remembers it) the very popular, star-making Ed Sullivan Show.
The first single by The Beatles to hit number one in North America
Indeed, for those who were old at the time and I was just 12 and just ripe for a musical revolution, it is hard to forget where we were and who was in the room with us when on February 9th, 1964, we watched Ed Sullivan (a guy you would never call hip) introduce The Beatles in a study packed with screaming teenagers.
I watched that that performance in the living room of my childhood home Welland, Ontario with my parents looking on, like so many other parents did, and shaking their heads at these four guys with what seem, at the time, long hair as they played music was a world away from ‘How Much Is That Doggie In The Window?’ and all of the swing bands and crooners they grew up with.
In the middle of it all, I still remember my father saying; “In a few months, no one will remember them,” to which my younger brother and I responded with a; “Sush, we are trying to listen.”
And listen we did, along with countless millions of others and within a matter of a few days, if not hours, one radio radio station after another began airing Beatle songs that had already made the charts in England – songs like ‘She Loves You’, ‘From Me To You’, ‘Please, Please Me’, ‘All My Loving’ and their first one with drummer Ringo, ‘Love Me Do’ – every couple of minutes.
The Beatles first North American appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show – February 9th 1964. From left to right, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Ringo Starr and John Lennon
Radio DJs even dusted off a 1962 recording that The Beatles made with fellow Brit Tony Sheridan called ‘My Bonnie’ – the song that brought them to the attention of fellow Liverpudian entrepreneur Brian Epstein who became their manager and helped steer them to the top..
Through February and March, 1964, it wasn’t unusual to see seven or eight Beatle songs at or near the top of the Toronto-based CHUM radio top 50 charts at the same time.
‘Beatlemania’ had arrived in North America and with it came an ‘Invasion’ of other British groups like The Dave Clark Five, Gerry and the Pacemakers, Herman’s Hermits,The Hollies, The Kinks, The Yardbirds, The Rolling Stones, The Animals, and the list (that also included singers like Petula Clark and Dusty Springfield) goes on and on.
Some musicologists still call it a “golden age” in popular music and contrary to what my dear dad said on that Sunday evening of February 2024, records by The Beatles and solo albums by the group’s members continue to be listened to by generation after generation.
I went in a record store just recently and their was a full rack of Beatles albums in vinyl selling for about $50 or $60 each. “Who is buying these for that price in 2024?” I asked the clerk behind the counter. “You’d be surprised,” she said, adding that many of the buyers are in their teens and 20s.
Wow, I thought. That would be like me going out when I was in my teens and buying records by Glen Miller and Bing Crosby – artists my parents listened to when they were kids. I couldn’t image doing it.
But here that group that first exploded on the North American scene 60 years ago still are.
This Beatles fan could continue.
I could go on about the huge impact that first, February 9th night with The Beatles had on youth culture which could fill books.
Former Beatle Paul McCartney, left, on stage not so long ago with one of the many a rock legends The Beatles inspired, Bruce Springsteen
I could talk about all those who were watching that night who decided they were going to do that , like Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty, and four guys from Winnipeg, Canada that became one of Canada’s biggest bands, The Guess Who.
but I think I will stop now and put on ‘Revolver’ or ‘Rubber Soul’ and few other of my favourite Beatle albums which still leave me ‘feeling fine’.
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Doug Draper, Niagara At Large
- To watch one of the songs The Beatles performed on The Ed Sullivan Show in Februay of 1964, click on the screen immediately below. And yes, compared to today, the sound systems for rock groups were not as good –
- You can also click on the mini-documentary on The Beatles’ 1964 arrival in America below –
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