February 25, 2006
"IWant to Hold Your Hand” was playing in the background at a favorite college “hangout” when a young woman asked me a question that “gave me pause.”
Brianna asked incredulously, “Did girls really swoon over the Beatles back in the 60’s?”
So, what would any self-respecting Beatles’ fan do but sing a reply, “Oh yeah, I’ll tell you something, I think you’ll understand.”
To my surprise, some of the college kids knew a few words from that Beatles classic and joined in the chorus:
“Yea, you’ve got that something, I think you’ll understand. When I’ll say that something, I want to hold your hand, I want to hold your hand, I want to hold your hand.”
I return to Brianna’s question: did girls really faint, “fall over dead”, blackout, lose consciousness, collapse when the Beatles appeared on stage or television?
My answer--of course, they did.
I was one of them.
Well, Ok, I did not exactly faint; maybe, just drooped a bit.
Come Feb. 9, 1964, though, I was parked “front and center” and as close as I could get, to our state-of-the-art, black and white RCA box television.
A room full of high school friends, mostly girls, waited with me, frenzied with excitement.
Amused eyewitnesses said later that, indeed, we were hysterical.
Girls were shaking, some were short of breath, and their hearts were racing.
Most of the boys in the room were frowning, and my Dad, watching from the dining room, thought we were all out of our minds.
He had only recently “come to grips” with the likes of Elvis’s gyrating hips.
Now, The Beatles were invading America.
Reluctantly, my Dad watched this horde of silly girls shriek and swoon over those long-haired, skinny English boys who sported outrageous, identical haircuts and matching black suits.
Not a pretty sight. The girls, I mean.
Through my frenzied stupor, I do seem to recall that my Dad was chuckling quite a bit at the sight of us, despite his obvious displeasure.
Even though my Dad humored us, The Beatles were not popular in some circles.
A few folks thought The Beatles personified the devil himself, just as they had when Elvis sang his way to fame in the 50’s with “Blue Suede Shoes”. A small amount of radio disc jockeys refused to play any music from England, saying they only gave airtime to American artists. Some of those very same American recording artists did not like the Beatles either. Even Frank Sinatra was not impressed with The Beatles’s music, saying it was crude and that they were not very good musicians.
The naysayers were no match, though, for the throngs of teen-age girls, and eventually guys, who joined in the adoration.
When Ed Sullivan, introduced The Beatles on that special night in February, the cameras panned the crowd, showing girl after girl keeling over backwards into the pack.
No one, dear college friends, is making any of this up.
As America watched, through the miracle of television, viewers agreed that never had there been such a phenomenon as those worshipful Beatle fans.
The fans were as much a part of this rare spectacle as The Beatles themselves.
In fact, just days before The Ed Sullivan Show, The Beatles had been met at the JFK Airport in New York by a massive crowd of devotees. The Beatles’ arrival at the airport caused near chaos and was the beginning of “Beatlemania” in the United States.
Approximately, forty per cent of the U.S. population at the time, 73 million people, watched in awe when The Beatles performed their magic on The Ed Sullivan Show. Today, those numbers remain as one of the largest viewing audiences ever recorded in the history of the country.
The Beatles were so popular that Ed Sullivan had them back for two more weeks in February of 1964 on his “really big shoow!”
Three weeks of this mania just about drove my Dad and many other parents to the end of what little patience they had left.
They had no idea, however, that we were only just beginning our obsession with The Beatles.
It was not long after that, my sister Pat, two friends, Sue and Priscilla, and I thought it would be great fun to impersonate The Beatles at school talent performances and dances. We found Beatle wigs, wore black suits, and lip-synched their songs, long before most anyone had ever even used the term ‘lip-synching’.
I cannot imagine what my Dad must of thought, but he never reprimanded us once. He was probably having too much fun laughing.
In no time at all, the entire world, not just our little corner, was won over by The Beatles. Their army of silly girl fans soon gave way to legions of devoted followers.
To my young college friends, I must add this very important fact--Beatle lyrics never leave the soul of a true Beatle fan:
“Love, love me do. You know I love you, I’ll always be true, so please, love me do.”
And, we still do.
