Longer Ago Than I Care to Remember

I returned with my sister, brother, and brother-in-law from visiting friends in Butte Falls, Oregon, when later that night The Event happened. I was in third grade at the time, and had just turned 9 years old.

Anyway, here is the video of all three of their Ed Sullivan Show appearances, but you know as well as I do there will be a takedown notice leveled at the upload.



The Los Angeles Times has a roundup of some absolutely hilarious (in retrospect) critics' reviews of the Beatles circa 1964.

We don't want to forget Ed Sullivan, either.

I strongly suspect one of the major reasons the band took off so big in this country had to do with timing. Not that the Beatles wouldn't have hit the big time anyway (they were well on that path), but the Sullivan appearance was less than three months after the horror in Dallas, and the band was a welcome respite from all of the grief the country went through, especially for those of us in the Baby Boom generation. They helped the country move on although the country never really recovered from the assassination.