Cover Story: Forty Years of Beatlemania

Shortly after 8 p.m. on Sunday, February 9th, 1964, a short, stiff man with rubbery bloodhound features — Ed Sullivan, the host of the highest-rated variety hour on American television — addressed his New York studio audience and the folks tuned in at home over the CBS network.

"Yesterday and today, our theater's been jammed with newspapermen and hundreds of photographers from all over the nation," Sullivan said in a nasally chuckling voice. "And these veterans agreed with me that the city never has witnessed the excitement stirred by these youngsters from Liverpool." He droned on for a few more seconds. Then the sixty-two-year-old Sullivan uttered the nine most important words in the history of rock & roll TV:

"Ladies and gentlemen, the Beatles! Let's bring them on!"

No one in Studio 50, the 728-seat home of The Ed Sullivan Show, at 53rd Street and Broadway, heard anything else for the next eight minutes, except a monsoon of teenage-female screaming. The Beatles — guitarist John Lennon, 23; bass guitarist Paul McCartney, 21; drummer Ringo Starr, 23; and lead guitarist George Harrison, two weeks shy of twenty-one — opened their U.S. debut performance with a machine-gun bouquet of twin-guitar clang and jubilant vocal harmonies: "All My Loving," "Till There Was You" and "She Loves You." Forty minutes later — after songs and routines by Frank Gorshin, British music-hall star Tessie O'Shea and the Broadway cast of Oliver! — the Beatles returned to tear through both sides of their first U.S. Number One single, "I Saw Her Standing There" and "I Want to Hold Your Hand."