Written by Denny Freidenrich
Former President Barack Obama was too young to remember this watershed event, but if you ask Joe Biden, Donald Trump, George Bush or Bill Clinton, they’ll tell you that the Beatles were the first to do so 60 years ago. The Ed Sullivan Show.
This is not to discount other historical events of the 1960s, such as the Kennedy assassination, the Vietnam War, and the moon landing. But just as everything changed for me when John, Paul, George, and Ringo belted out their song for the first time on American soil, that night, a dozen Electoral College members decided everything about their future. There is no doubt that the vote for the president changed everything.
On Sunday night, February 9, 1964, an estimated 73 million people (an astonishing 40 percent of the available audience, equivalent to about 125 million viewers today) watched four British We watched how young people are carving the history of music into our lives. The Beatles arrived, and with them came joy and relief: “Yes, yes, yes.” Just 10 weeks ago, we were mourning the death of JFK.
Before the Beatles invaded, teenage boys wore close-cropped hair. Our favorite bands included the Everly Brothers and the Beach Boys, but we were still new to Lyndon Johnson.
Suddenly, it didn’t matter.
By Monday morning, changes were in the air. Many of us headed to school that day deciding to grow our hair long. “I Want to Hold You” rocked the charts, but few people paid attention to the new president. Sociologists said the phenomenon would subside within a few months. Wow, were they wrong.
Within a year, the sideburns were bushy, Beatle paraphernalia flooded the market, and the war between a few heroes was quietly underway. By the time I graduated from high school in 1966, I was a self-proclaimed Beatles know-it-all (“What’s the real meaning behind the sleeves of banned records?”) and a troubled follower in Vietnam. With the release of “Eleanor Rigby”, social commentary began to play an increasingly important role in their music.
My four years at the University of Southern California were challenging, but also disillusioning. As the horrors of Indochina were simulcast into our homes on the nightly news, the Beatles introduced a magical mystery tour. Soon, sideburns were replaced by beards and socks were replaced by campus riots. Songs like “Give Peace a Chance” and “Hey Jude” weren’t just mega-hits. They were America’s new national anthem. Like Bill C., George W., Donald and Joe, I avoided fighting in Vietnam (despite being selected first in the 1969 draft lottery).
These were changes that anyone who was in their 20s at the time spent much of their time absorbing or avoiding. It is unclear which option the current and former presidents have accepted. All I know is that that change was real for me and my generation.
Initially, John, Paul, George, and Ringo represented the bright hopes of the baby boomer generation. The Beatles bridged the gap between black and white, young and old. Through them, Suburbia discovered drugs and the Boston Pops discovered rock and roll. Toward the end of the run, the idyllic image turned nightmarish, just as “Michelle” gave way to “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.”
Some music experts argue that the Beatles expanded the intellectual boundaries of rock, making it a more flexible and acceptable art form. I’m not smart enough to know if this is true. But I know how music has changed and you can hear it in almost every song released today.
No one can turn back the clock, so trying to “go back to where we were” is futile.
The late, great PJ O’Rourke once wrote: time magazine“The vast majority of Americans alive today were not yet born in the 1960s. But at a certain age (the age where they hold the levers of power, pull the purse strings, and have the biggest mouths)” We can’t stop reliving each moment.
“In part, it’s the painful events of the past decade. It started out so well: a handsome young couple in the White House, recovery from the 1960 recession, the Pill, movies like “101 Dalmatians” and “Spartacus.” Upbeat message movies, Hugh Hefner’s enlightening “Playboy Philosophy” and handsome Kingston Trio singing – big, wide, playful striped sleeve shirts.
“Then it went very wrong. There was shooting and killing, not just in Watts and Detroit, but all over Khe Sanh, South Vietnam, with troops in combat fatigues. As far as the men knew, one Feminists in the division were suddenly furious about feminine causes. You had to maintain a C average to avoid the draft. It turned out that taking LSD could prevent you from flying. There was a war on poverty. . We lost. And it rained at Woodstock.”
All true, PJ, but change in ourselves and our world is what we have in common. They were what the Beatles represented to me, to future presidents, and to all of us.
Denny Frydenrich, a longtime Laguna resident, was 15 years old when the Beatles arrived in America.