Yeah Yeah Yeah

Another fiftieth anniversary has come and gone. In case you've been living in a cave, you no doubt know that exactly fifty years ago yesterday, the Beatles made their first American appearance. Over seventy million people watched that performance live on the Ed Sullivan Show, making it the most viewed American television program at the time. This past Super Bowl set a new record of 111 million viewers, but when you consider the population in 1964 was about sixty percent of what it is today, a slightly greater percentage of Americans watched the Fab Four on the telly that Sunday evening than watched last week's Super Bowl.

Like the 50th anniversary of JFK's assassination, I managed to stay clear of much of the hoopla, not because I'm not interested, but because as anyone who knows me well can tell you, I've simply spent way too much of my life devoted to the subject. I was five in February of 1964 and since I didn't have older siblings, the greatest influence in my life at the time was my father. He thought the Beatles and the whole fuss surrounding them were silly, and naturally at the time, so did I.

Years later as I moved away from my father's strong sphere of influence, I more than made up for lost time and became obsessed with the Beatles. As a pre-teen and teen, I barely listened to anything else. I can honestly say that I know way more about John Paul George and Ringo than anybody outside their family and small circle of friends has business to, and wish that at least some of my brain cells devoted them were trained upon something else.

That's precisely why I avoided the TV special devoted to them that aired on the same network at the exact time as the original. The other reason is that my two favorite Beatles were not likely to appear live on the show, which is beside the point.

Well it so happened that I spent a ridiculous amount of time in the car yesterday, and I did listen to a local radio show devoted to the Beatles and the anniversary. The radio host spent not a small amount of time sharing his opinion that nothing in our world today would be as it is without the Beatles. Even this long time Beatles fan(atic) had to take exception.

I argued in my post written on the anniversary of JFK's assassination last November that we have perhaps over-stated that event's importance regarding subsequent history, (beyond of course the human tragedy). I suppose the same question can be asked of the Beatles' influence. The fact is, the world in 1963 and 1964 was already on the verge of tremendous change, even revolution. The two coincidental events that took place just a little more than two months apart, the assassination of the president and the introduction of the Beatles, just happened to take place at a pivotal moment in history.

The big difference is that the assassination was a unique event, far from inevitable. On the other hand, had it not been for John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr, other people would have no doubt stepped in to fill the void. Eventually men would have still grown their hair long, women still would have cut their hair short, burned their bras, and demanded their rightful place in society. There still would have been dissatisfaction with the establishment, its rules and restrictions. Teenagers would still have become the majority consumers of popular culture and pop-culture would still have become overwhelmingly centered around the young. Our cities would have still burned because of the inequality and injustice in our society, and the war in Vietnam would have still become a quagmire.

And people still would have longed for more love in the world and made the plea to give peace a chance.

The only difference I believe is that without the Beatles, we wouldn't have had nearly as much fun along the way.