It was Sunday evening. My parents and I had spent the day visiting friends in Pittsfield, Maine, and were preparing to drive home to Portland. My friend, Dean Homstead, and I had other ideas; we knew that the group we had been waiting to see was going to perform on the Ed Sullivan Show that night, so we asked my parents to stay long enough for us to watch the show together. They agreed, and we watched the Beatles perform live on Ed Sullivan for the first time.
To say that this was a significant moment in my life is a huge understatement. Our Country had just gone through the tragedy of our beloved President Kennedy being killed just eleven weeks earlier, and most of us were in a somber and somewhat depressed state of mind. Being a thirteen-year-old girl, I was looking for a Rainbow after an incomprehensible Storm. As the opening words of “All My Loving” came out of a very nervous 21-year-old James Paul McCartney’s mouth, everything changed. I was deeply, irrevocably in LOVE!
The fact that these remarkable young Brits had already written dozens of songs perfectly tuned into the hearts and minds of young people was lost on the besotted. I, like most of my friends, became a Beatlemanic that night. From that unusual a capella three-note opening of “All My Loving”, to the last song of their 5-song set, “I Want To Hold Your Hand”, we (and I mean all 73 Million of us watching) were enthralled. It was the Beginning.
From that moment, my life became focused on The Beatles, anything or anyone British, all the Beatles’ songs released in the United States, and several radio shows (we listened on transistor radios back then!) that the Faithful listened to day and night. Those of us who loved to write, wrote romantic stories, featuring ourselves as the leading ladies, and whichever Beatle we dreamed about as the leading Man. We hoped for any news of the Fab Four, and any details relating to their records, concerts, movies, and lives. It was major obsession, and they called it “Beatlemania”.
We bought teen magazines and plastered our walls and bulletin boards with their photographs; we made frequent visits to our local record stores and asked hundreds of questions JUST IN CASE it might lead to NEW INFORMATION! Our parents were perplexed, but very tolerant of our strange behaviors. Eventually my Mom took me and a friend to a Beatles Concert at Suffolk Downs in Boston, August, 1966, during their last tour. Thanks, Mom. It was incredible and unforgettable.
So much has already been written about “The British Invasion” and the counter-culture that sprang from it: from the Hippie Movement, the Anti-Vietnam War Movement, and Mop-Top Hairstyles, to Carnaby Street clothes, Eastern Religions and practices, and the general change of attitudes toward moral and political issues like the Civil Rights Movement. The timing of the Liverpool Lads was uncanny; they seemed to usher in the Change in many ways. For me, the impact that the Beatles had was significant because of the enormous influence they had on my perceptions of, not only Music and fashion, but of life, philosophy, humor, love, and world peace. It is inexplicable to a new generation of Americans; you really had to be there.
As I reflect on all of it now, as the baby-boomer Geezer that I have become, I can say that The Beatles have been, and continue to be, a presence in my life like no other. I still love Paul McCartney, unabashedly….and I always will. I believe that my friends who went through this with me would agree: we would not give up our love or our memories for anything. And please remember….All You Need is Love.
BarbaraBeardsley.com 