The Beatles meet America on Ed Sullivan
On this day · 9 February 1964
On a Sunday night in 1964, four young men from Liverpool walked onstage and roughly 73 million Americans never quite recovered.
On the evening of February 9, 1964, John, Paul, George and Ringo stepped onto the stage of CBS’s The Ed Sullivan Show and played for the largest television audience the country had yet seen. An estimated 73 million viewers tuned in, more than 60 percent of everyone watching TV that night.
Most of those viewers knew little about the band when the broadcast began. By the time it ended, Beatlemania had crossed the Atlantic, and the so-called British Invasion of American pop was underway. The performance, five songs in all, became one of the most replayed moments in both television and music history.
The 73 million figure stood as a U.S. television record until the finale of The Fugitive three years later.
The appearance is often credited with steering a generation of young Americans toward picking up guitars. Few single broadcasts have done as much to reshape a nation’s cultural soundtrack in a single hour.
Sources & references
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