Thursday, February 09, 2023

More The Beatles on Ed Sullivan

It blows me away more and more that The Beatles opened their first Ed Sullivan Show appearance with All My Loving:

1) it wasn't the single, you'd think they'd open with I Want to Hold Your Hand which was burning down the country at the time

2) at the time it was just an album track, not even the album opener

3) it's an incredibly difficult song to play live, with Lennon's tricky rhythm part needing to be perfect for like 2 minutes, and then a bunch of stops/starts while hundreds of people are shrieking like banshees

4) it's a hard song to start perfectly in unison, with the singing starting first and everybody having to hit the music perfectly 

All that, combined with the nerves that comes with knowing almost 75 million people are watching to see whether your entire career is made or not, and they pulled it off not just well enough but perfectly. 

No comments: