the Beatles

I missed the broadcast on the Beatles tonight, but there was noise on Facebook about their February 9, 1964 appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. I do remember that night. I'd been in a children's Mardi Gras pageant earlier - a princess in long, pale green tulle and a sparkling tiara. There was a party that followed. The other kids went to a different school than I did and I didn't really know them, so I stopped for a moment to look at what all the screaming was coming from a little black and white TV and there were The Beatles, lean young men in dark suits, walking to their instruments on stage.

The Beatles have been covered and analyzed, head to toe, over and over across the subsequent decades. But I'm no expert on the Beatles, and as a kid, didn't get it until we saw the movie 'Help!' and spent a whole afternoon watching it run, over and over, at the picture show, the charismatic Beatles skiing in the snow.

I love the music that erupted from them, and that there have been discoveries for me - songs I missed until I was in my forties or later. (I'd never had their albums - I was only familiar with their 'top ten' songs, the ones with lots of air time on the radio.) 'Blackbird' and 'On the Wings of a Nightingale' both have tugged at me these past few years. (Was the latter a later Paul McCartney song?)

But the screaming. The kids, especially the teenaged girls, screamed as The Beatles approached the stage, and screamed through their entire performance, sometimes weeping and tearing their hair. For the next few years, they screamed at Paul Revere and the Raiders and The Turtles and The Monkees. What was that all about?