Performance and Popular Music

History, Place and Time

Ian Inglis

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9780754640578
• eBook ISBN: 9781351554732
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Music

Since the emergence of rock'n'roll in the early 1950s, there have been a number of live musical performances that were not only memorable in themselves, but became hugely influential in the way they shaped the subsequent trajectory and development of popular music. Each, in its own way, introduced new styles, confronted existing practices, shifted accepted definitions, and provided templates for others to follow. Performance and Popular Music explores these processes by focusing on some of the specific occasions when such transformations occurred. An international array of scholars reveal that it is through the (often disruptive) dynamics of performance - and the interaction between performer and audience - that patterns of musical change and innovation can best be recognised. Through multi-disciplinary analyses which consider the history, place and time of each event, the performances are located within their social and professional contexts, and their immediate and long-term musical consequences considered. From the Beatles and Bob Dylan to Michael Jackson and Madonna, from Woodstock and Monterey to Altamont and Live Aid, this book provides an indispensable assessment of the importance of live performance in the practice of popular music, and an essential guide to some of the key moments in its history.

Chapter 1

‘Ladies and gentlemen …’ The Beatles: The Ed Sullivan Show, CBS TV, February 9, 1964

Laurel Sercombe

The Beatles were most of all a moment. (Bangs 1987: 299)

The Beatles’ appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show on the evening of Sunday, February 9, 1964 marked the beginning of a new era in American popular music and culture as well as a new standard for its promotion and marketing. During 1963, the Beatles had gained extraordinary popularity throughout Britain; by the time they arrived in the United States, they had also performed in Sweden and France, sold millions of records, and had a huge, often frenzied, following whose behaviour had already been labelled ‘Beatlemania’ by the British press. With an intensively orchestrated publicity campaign in motion in the US, the Beatles flew to New York days after ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’ reached Number One in the singles charts. They were greeted at Kennedy International Airport on February 7 by 3000 fans and immediately won over reporters and photographers at their first press conference: ‘The Beatle wit was contagious … Photographers forgot about pictures they wanted to take. The show was on’ (Gardner 1964a). The Beatles performed in the United States for the first time, before a studio audience and millions of viewers, as the featured guests of Ed Sullivan, host of America’s most popular television variety show.¹

The evening provided impressive statistics: 50 000 requests for the 728 seats in the CBS studio theatre (filled once for rehearsal and once for the television broadcast) (Davies 1996: 194); a Nielsen rating of 44.6 (73 900 000 viewers), indicating the largest audience in television history (Bowles 1980: 187);² and a reported drop-off in teenage crime as between 60 and 70 per cent of the American television audience (over 25 million homes) tuned in (Castleman and Podrazik 1980: 167).

Media coverage of the Beatles’ visit was extensive. Popular news and entertainment magazines that had run stories on Beatlemania as a British phenomenon – including Time (November 15, 1963), Newsweek (November 18, 1963), the New York Times Magazine (December 1, 1963), New Yorker (December 28, 1963) and Vogue (January 1, 1964) – were now reporting on the American ‘invasion’. Life followed up its January 31, 1964 piece ‘Here Come Those Beatles’ with ‘Yeah-Yeah-Yeah! Beatlemania Becomes a Part of US History’ on February 21. Even Senior Scholastic reported on February 21, ‘Beatlemania Hits the US’. Popular music radio stations were dominated not only by Beatles’ recordings but also by Beatle news, interview clips, quizzes and contests, and tips on the purchase of Beatle paraphernalia. The Beatles were discussed on late-night talk shows; religious leaders worried; social scientists hypothesized; celebrities wore Beatle wigs. In the street, it was all Beatles all the time.

By the time the Beatles left the US to return to England on February 21, after three concert performances and two more appearances on the Sullivan show,³ most Americans living within range of television and radio had felt the impact of their visit. For millions of teenagers (this author included), life changed dramatically, permanently, as the Beatles became the central focus of existence, providing a source of joy and influencing not only musical taste but speech, fashion, romantic fantasies, friendships, books and magazines read, movies watched and overall world outlook. For the American generation entering its teens at the time of President Kennedy’s assassination in 1963, change was already in the air. The civil rights movement commanded national attention, the war in Vietnam was entering our consciousness, and social and political upheaval around the world all suggested that something major was happening. The effect of the Beatles at this point in time was such that ‘there is a tendency to think that the sixties, that is, the cultural era rather than the chronological decade, began in 1964, the year they [the Beatles] first hit the US pop charts’ (Garofalo 1997: 200).

In this chapter I look back on the evening of February 9, 1964 from a distance of 40 years. I have two aims: first, to describe the Beatles’ first live performance in North America on The Ed Sullivan Show. My description is based primarily on published footage of the show⁴ (I saw it myself in 1964 but remember only its emotional impact) and on the observations of people who were present in the television studio that night. My second objective is to further explore the impact of February 9, 1964 by looking at the Beatles in the larger context of their performance career. This includes consideration of Brian Epstein’s role – his discovery of the ‘wild’ Beatles in The Cavern and his invention and selling of the ‘tame’ Beatles – and the resulting tension between the two. I also address the phenomenon of Beatlemania and its exploitation by the Beatle ‘industry’, including broadcast and print journalists and critics, product manufacturers, and the psychologists and sociologists who explained it all to the American public at the time. More recent critiques of the role of gender in popular music performance and consumption suggest that while the Beatle industry capitalized on Beatlemania for its own ends, teenage fans may have been in the forefront of the movement for social change that developed in the late 1960s.

The Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show, February 9, 1964

The phrase ‘the British Invasion’ started to appear in the American media with the arrival of the Beatles in New York – ‘the Beatles invade, complete with long hair and screaming fans’ wrote Paul Gardner in the New York Times (1964a) – and accelerated as more English pop artists made their way onto the record charts in 1964 and 1965. In fact, British culture was becoming increasingly fashionable and influential in the United States before the Beatles arrived in early 1964. The New York Times reported that the British ‘have monopolized Broadway for two seasons’ (Gardner 1964b). The American version of the English political satire television show, That Was The Week That Was, debuted on NBC with a one-hour special in late 1963 and then ran as a series through the 1964–65 season. Meanwhile, James Bond had become the suave hero of movie spy thrillers in Dr No (Terence Young, 1962) and From Russia With Love (Terence Young, 1963). And the first young British pop entertainer to appear on The Ed Sullivan Show during the 1963–64 season was not the Beatles, but Cliff Richard, who had been popular in Britain for five years, but was never successful in the US (Castleman and Podrazik 1980: 167).

Once he signed the Beatles for two live appearances on his show in February 1964, Ed Sullivan fully intended to be the first to introduce them to the American viewing public. However, on the evening of Friday, January 3, Sullivan was upstaged when The Jack Paar Program included film footage that Paar had purchased from the BBC, showing screaming English fans and the Beatles performing two songs. In Paar’s introductory monologue he explained, ‘I’m interested in the Beatles as a psychological-sociological phenomenon’ (Spizer 2003: 88). Regarding the fans, he commented, ‘These guys have these crazy hairdos and when they wiggle their heads and the hair goes, the girls go out of their minds. Does it bother you to realize that in a few years these girls will vote, raise children and drive cars?’ Paar clearly had no interest in the Beatles as anything other than a joke, and by announcing their upcoming live appearance on the Sullivan show, he may have been commenting on the judgement of his old rival as much as the quality of the group (Spizer 2003: 89).

The promotion campaign set in motion by Capitol Records in early January 1964 has been described in detail elsewhere. Disc jockeys all over the country were caught up in the momentum, but in New York particularly the frenzy mounted as ‘The Beatles are Coming’ became the mantra of the day. By January 25, ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’/‘I Saw Her Standing There’ was Number One on the Cash Box Top 100, and two albums, Vee-Jay’s Introducing the Beatles (1963) and Capitol’s Meet the Beatles! (1964), were receiving extensive airplay.

The Beatles arrived in New York on February 7 to a tumultuous welcome and successfully faced the press for the first time. By the next day George Harrison was sick with tonsilitis and unable to attend the afternoon rehearsal at CBS-TV Studio 50 on Broadway and West 53rd Street. (Harrison was nursed by his sister Louise, who had flown in from her home in St Louis to see him). Neil Aspinall stood in for George during the walk-through (Beatles 2000: 119). Dezo Hoffmann, a photographer travelling with the Beatles, reported:

It was a happy occasion. Everyone was impressed and pleased with each other, the Beatles by the efficiency of the Sullivan people and the ingenuity of the original sets designed for them, and the CBS crew by the Beatles’ professionalism (1985: 31).

Ringo Starr recalled:

The main thing I was aware of when we did the first Ed Sullivan Show was that we rehearsed all afternoon. TV had such bad sound equipment … that we would tape our rehearsals and then go up and mess with the dials in the control booth. We got it all set with the engineer there, and then we went off for a break. The story has it that while we were out, the cleaner came in to clean the room and the console, thought, ‘What are all those chalk marks?’ and wiped them all off. So our plans just went out the window. We had a real hasty time trying to get the sound right. (Beatles 2000: 119)

On Sunday, February 9 all four Beatles were present in Studio 50 for the dress rehearsal that preceded the taping of songs for another Sullivan show and the live broadcast that night. Harrison, still running a high temperature, was pumped full of medication in order to get through the day (Hoffmann 1985: 31). Many of those attending the afternoon rehearsal and the evening show were the teenage daughters of CBS or Capitol executives (Bowles 1980: 184). Among them were CBS News commentator Walter Cronkite’s daughters Kathy and Nancy (Cameron 1964), Jack Paar’s daughter Randy (who received one of the dedications from Sullivan after the Beatles’ first set) and Randy Paar’s guest Julie Nixon (Spizer 2003: 155).

Christopher Porterfield, covering the show for Time, recalled the event: ‘To the reporters who were there … the noise was what seemed new. Surely these kids were louder, more frenzied, than Frank Sinatra’s fans had ever been, or even Elvis Presley’s. Sullivan made a pact with them before the show: Keep it down while other acts are on: otherwise you can do what you like’ (2003). Shortly before the performance, Brian Epstein asked Sullivan, ‘I would like to know the exact wording of your introduction.’ Sullivan reportedly replied, ‘I would like you to get lost’ (Brown and Gaines 1983: 122).

The group’s performance on The Ed Sullivan Show was actually a set of nested performances interrelated in a variety of ways. First was the musical performance of five songs before a live audience, in the context of a television broadcast whose cast included, in addition to the Beatles and the audience, the announcer George Fenniman, the host Ed Sullivan, the other performers on the show, the commercials and even Elvis Presley (in the form of a telegram).

The second was the performance by the studio audience, whose actions and reactions to what was happening both onstage and on the television monitors ran parallel to the stage performance. One (un-named) reviewer present in the studio for the rehearsal noted:

the kids weren’t actually looking at the Beatles themselves but at TV pictures of the Beatles that appeared on the nine or ten monitors scattered around the studio. I noticed this because the kids also began screaming louder every time a different Beatle appeared on the TV screen. The ones they screamed loudest for were Ringo, the drummer, and Paul, who was doing most of the singing. (New Yorker, February 22, 1964: 22)

The television cameras frequently cut to this parallel performance, and it was the subject of much of the media coverage of the event. Castleman and Podrazik observed:

Besides seeing and hearing the group perform, viewers were also exposed to their first direct dose of Beatlemania as the studio cameras focused on hundreds of teenage girls in the audience weeping, screaming, and even fainting (1980: 167).

The third performance layer was that of the television audience in the United States and Canada, who participated that night in what might be called a continent-wide communal ritual experience; we watched the show, mainly in family groups, and responded (depending, in part, on our age and gender) with excitement, joy, amusement, annoyance and/or revulsion.

Parents didn’t know whether to laugh at the group and the screaming fans or condemn them, but kids across the country drank it all in. In that one night, as television once again allowed millions to share an experience as one, the medium created a musical and cultural supergroup. (Castleman and Podrazik 1980: 167)

A performance log

February 9, 1964, 8.00 p.m.

The Ed Sullivan Show (broadcast in black and white) begins with the curtain rising on an empty stage and Ray Bloch’s orchestral fanfare. The unseen announcer, George Fenniman, begins: ‘Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Tonight, live from New York, the Ed Sullivan Show!’ Fenniman announced the evening’s commercial sponsors, Anacin and Pillsbury. Then, a drum roll and Fenniman’s ‘And now, here he is, ED SULLIVAN!’ (camera cuts to Sullivan at side of stage … applause, whistles, a few screams). Sullivan’s opening:

‘Thank you (very much). You know, something very nice happened, and the Beatles got a great kick out of it. Just received a wire, they did, from Elvis Presley and Colonel Tom Parker, wishing them a tremendous success in our country, and I think that was very very nice’ (audience applause … in fact, according to Brown and Gaines, the telegram was sent by Colonel Parker without Presley’s knowledge (1983: 122).

(Sullivan describes highlights of the season thus far) ‘Now tonight the whole country is waiting to hear England’s Beatles [a few screams] and you’re gonna hear them, and they’re tremendous ambassadors of goodwill, after this commercial’ (commercial break).

‘Now, yesterday and today our theatre’s been jammed with newsp...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Notes on contributors
• General Editor’s preface
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction History, place and time: the possibility of the unexpected
• 1 ‘Ladies and gentlemen …’. The Beatles: The Ed Sullivan Show, CBS TV, February 9, 1964
• 2 Bob Dylan: Newport Folk Festival, July 25, 1965
• 3 When deep soul met the love crowd. Otis Redding: Monterey Pop Festival, June 17, 1967
• 4 The road not taken. Elvis Presley: Comeback Special, NBC TV Studios, Hollywood, December 3, 1968
• 5 Land of the free. Jimi Hendrix: Woodstock Festival, August 18, 1969
• 6 If anything, blame Woodstock. The Rolling Stones: Altamont, December 6, 1969
• 7 Watch that man. David Bowie: Hammersmith Odeon, London, July 3, 1973
• 8 Patti Smith: The Old Grey Whistle Test, BBC-2 TV, May 11, 1976
• 9 Print the truth, not the legend. The Sex Pistols: Lesser Free Trade Hall, Manchester, June 4, 1976
• 10 ‘I need contact’ – rock’n’roll and ritual. Peter Gabriel: Security tour, 1982–83
• 11 Michael Jackson: Motown 25, Pasadena Civic Auditorium March 25, 1983
• 12 Live on tape. Madonna: MTV Video Music Awards, Radio City Music Hall, New York, September 14, 1984
• 13 Popular music performance and cultural memory. Queen: Live Aid, Wembley Stadium, London, July 13, 1985
• 14 Nirvana: University of Washington, Seattle, January 6, 1990
• 15 The booing of Sinéad O’Connor. Bob Dylan 30th Anniversary Concert, Madison Square Garden, New York, October 16, 1992
• Bibliography
• Index