severalpieces wrote:Then "I Want to Hold Your Hand" came on and I was tranfixed and never the same since!
That was the prevalent experience for most "youngsters" that were there then. For some of us it was something that happened even before that. For me, it want back a couple of months more.
When I was in the eighth grade, I worked for one period each day (4th I think) in the Junior High library. I have always loved books and I loved that job. One day as I was straigtening out the magazines in the magazine rack I notice the cover of Life magazine. It was about an english group that was driving english teenagers wild. I loved books and stories, but I had always loved music too. I read the article about this group called the Beatles. I was intrigued and read the article. Anyone who has ever watched the Anthology knows that all of the Beatles records before "I Want To Hold Your Hand" flopped. That does not mean, however, that they were never played. Being, at that point, attenuated to the name, when I heard their name on the radio, I recognized it and listened very carefully. I think the first song I heard was "She Loves You". Could there be a better first song? There were other songs too. I said to myself, I like this.
When "I Want To Hold Your Hand" came out and everyone started coming around, I was like, where have you been.
There is a large misconception, that alot of people watched the Ed Sullivan Show that night because it was the "Ed Sullivan Show". For many, maybe that was true, but it wasn't true for many of us here. We knew who was going to be on and that's why we were there.
I mean, my family's TV was broken, for JC's sake. I had to arrange for our family to watch the show at the next door neighbors house (I really didn't care about the rest of the family at the time, I just had to see that show). No other moment will ever achieve that level of importance.
BTW, for those of us who saw it, that was the first time we ever heard Claudia's voice. It was lost in the cocophony, but it was there.