Beatlemania arrived in America thanks, in part, to Ed Sullivan
U.S. television variety show host Ed Sullivan and his wife were on their way home from a European talent scouting trip, changing planes at London’s Heathrow Airport. The Beatles – who had three chart-topping U.K. singles earlier in the year: “Please Please Me,” “From Me to You” and “She Loves You” – were arriving back from a tour of Sweden. They were greeted by hundreds of screaming teenage girls and a crowd of journalists. Sullivan saw the commotion.
His talent coordinator Jack Babb had already seen The Beatles perform when the show’s London talent scout Peter Pritchard had taken him to see the band in concert the previous summer. But since no English musical groups had broken through in America, they weren’t considered for a booking. Beatles manager Brian Epstein had been trying to get Capitol Records, the U.S. arm of the band’s British label EMI, to release their music in the States, but to no avail for much the same reason.
April 4, 1964 Billboard Top 5
When Epstein flew to New York City in early November primarily to try to get bookings for another client, Billy J. Kramer, Pritchard offered to set up a meeting with Sullivan. Epstein was able to negotiate a series of appearances for The Beatles on Sullivan’s top-rated Sunday night CBS-TV show, starting on February 9, 1964. As Sullivan said later, “I made up my mind that this was the same sort of mass hit hysteria that had characterized the Elvis Presley days.”
Related: The Beatles’ first U.S. visit and appearance on Sullivan
The Sullivan booking enabled Epstein to get Capitol Records to release “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” which was #1 on the Billboard chart by the time the Beatles appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show in February. By the first week of April, the Beatles had 12 songs on the U.S. singles chart and occupied all of the top five slots. Beatlemania had arrived in America, no doubt in part thanks to Ed Sullivan.
Little known fact: The Beatles first performance on U.S. TV was on The Jack Parr Program on January 3, 1964. The show had taped an English performance by the band the previous fall.
An eight-LP box set, coming in November 2024, titled The Beatles: 1964 U.S. Albums In Mono, is available for pre-order in the U.S. here and in the U.K. here.
Sullivan died on October 13, 1974 at age 73. His YouTube channel surpassed 886,000 subscribers in Oct. 2024, up over 210K in one year. Sullivan Show DVDs are available here.
5 Comments so far
Jump into a conversationLittle known fact: The Beatles first appearance on U.S. television was actually on the CBS Evening News November 29, 1963. That’s when a girl in Washington, D.C. saw that clip and asked a local DJ to get their record from England. Capitol Records originally decided to release their record in January, but had to move it up to December, because of the demand. By the time Parr showed his clip, “I Want to Hold Your Hand” was already being played across the country.
Better late to the party, than never.
America thinks it is the only nation that matters. Beatlemania had already occurred in the UK where the band are from before you forget an the rest of Europe also. While you lot in the Colonies were still listening to 50’s crooners we in the Rest Of The World were rockin’ to Beat Groups.
Little Richard. Chuck Berry. Larry Williams. Big Mama Thornton. Ray Charles. Isley Brothers.
While Cliff Richard was crooning about a “Summer Holiday”, and the Yodeling Cowboy was remembering Judy Garland, these architects were laying the foundation for the “Beat of the Sixties”.
But I will give our English cousins this: no American group has surpassed the brilliance of “The Dog’s Breakfast”. Or, have they?
The thing is hardly any white audiences were watching/listening to the US acts you’ve named. However us kids in the UK were listening to them. Cliff Richard? No kids in the UK were listening to that creep, like I said we were listening to beat groups who were influenced by the US acts you named. In fact it was UK kids who first cottoned on to the many US Blues Greats before you lot in the colonies did.
For the longest time the story was circulated (I think from Sullivan himself) that he first encountered the Beatles when his plane was delayed by the crowd welcoming the Beatles back from Sweden.