Flashback: The Beatles on Ed Sullivan

It was 42 years ago this week (February 9th), that the Beatles made their American debut on The Ed Sullivan Show. The show, which was seen by over 73 million viewers, has gone on to become - much like Neil Armstrong's 1969 walk on the Moon - one of TV's most iconic moments. The Beatles performed twice, both opening and closing the show. Here's Ed Sullivan's legendary introduction from that night's show: "Now yesterday and today, our theater's been jammed with newspapermen and hundreds of photographers from all over the nation, and these veterans agreed with me that the city never has witnessed the excitement stirred by these youngsters from Liverpool who call themselves the Beatles. Now tonight, you're gonna twice be entertained by them - right now, and again in the second half of our show. Ladies and gentlemen - the Beatles! (screams)"

The group performed a total of five songs that night: "All My Loving," "Till There Was You," "She Loves You," "I Saw Her Standing There," and their then-current Number One hit, "I Want To Hold Your Hand." One of the more memorable parts of the show was during "Till There Was You," when the screen dimmed as each Beatle was highlighted with his name appearing on the screen. Unbeknownst to John Lennon at the time, an additional line saying, "Sorry Girls -- He's Married" was added under his name.

In 2003, a 2-DVD set titled The Ed Sullivan Show Featuring The Beatls was released. The discs featured the full uncut episodes from February 9th, 16th, and 23rd,1964 along with their final appearance on September 12th, 1965.

What many people don't know is that their legendary Sullivan appearance was actually their second of the day. Prior to the live February 9th broadcast, the Beatles taped a future segment for Sullivan's February 23rd show. After that, the audience was cleared for the live broadcast.

Up until the group's breakup in 1970, they continued to send promo clips of their latest singles to be aired on the Sullivan Show - including "Paperback Writer," "Strawberry Fields Forever," "Hello, Goodbye," and "Let It Be."

Ringo Starr recalled that the group was sweating over getting the sound right for the show - right up to the last minute: "The main thing I was aware of when we did the first Ed Sulivan Show was that we rehearsed all afternoon. You know, TV was such bad sound, so we would have 'em, like, tape our rehearsals, and we'd go up and we'd mess with the dials, you know, that they had in the control booth. So we'd sort of got it all set with the engineer there, and we went off for a break, and -- the story has it, 'cause we didn't see it -- but the cleaner came in (laughs) while we were out, and she came to clean the room and the console, and thought, 'What are all these chalk marks?', and wiped them all off. So then we had a real hasty time trying to get some sound."

George Harrison said the Beatles' appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show even kept the streets safe for the hour that the show was on: "Later, they said that there was the least reported, or there was no reported crime. Even the criminals had a rest for, like, ten minutes, while we were on."

Paul McCartney said that after all these years, the Beatles' Sullivan Show appearance is usually the first thing fans bring up: "I still get people talking to me about it now. You know, it's like, 'Where were you when Kennedy was shot?' Saying, 'Oh, yeah man, I remember - Sunday night. We didn't know what had hit us.'"

Incidentally, eight years to the day after the Beatles debut in America, McCartney -- along with his new band Wings - performed his first solo show at Britain's Nottingham University.

Although McCartney refused to include any Beatles numbers in the band's set, he couldn't resist performing the group's longtime set-closer, a cover of Little Richard's "Long Tall Sally."
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