The Beatles were on Ed Sullivan for the first time fifty years ago. It blows my mind. I gave them three months and I was a fan before they appeared. My first exposure was on a news show. I could not make out the music or the lads. The British girls seemed to have so much fun in between their tears. I had to do my bit as an American. I was eleven. It seemed to take forever to learn which one was which. I joined the original Fan Club. All the girls had this instant bond. You had to show your devotion to your particular Beatle. Some girl wrote "George Harrison" five thousand times. His mom acknowledged her effort. We took over the theater to see their films. It was fun to screech at full level.
My father and JWs, in general, saw them as Satan. They were filthy and disgusting. Those couture suits and well cut hair were too much. All I knew and know to this day is the music was fun. Their fan club was very special. You were Beatles family. The more I heard how they were proof that Satan ruled the earth, the more I loved them.
Meetings annoyed me b/c I could be home playing Beatle songs. Looking back, I wonder why I did not just stand up and walk to Greenwich Village, where a large Beatle poster welcomed you to town. I could not afford a single album. When I finally worked part-time, I purchased them. I felt that all four of them were on my side. My posters, fan club stuff, and albums were confiscated often. Once my father carried on about John and Yoko and the WT. I most definitely was not a Yoko fan. I began to think of all the fame John had amassed. Classical music criticis were writing how brilliant the Beatles were as musicians. The thought of my local KH, and my father vs. John Lennon made me belly laugh right in my father's voice. I needed an angel to live.
We girls noticed how Ed Sullivan always had them perform last. Why sit through some Jewish comic, Laurence Olivier, or the mouse puppet? We missed the Beatles. I know a lot of people admired the Stones and the WHO. The Beatles were very heady for a JW girl. Once the Beatles appeared fifty years ago, I no longer cared about Armageddon, the Great Whore, or any other JW thought. I would sit in the meetings, dragged by my father who would publlicly pinch and kick me. I may have been in the KH but my mind played the Beatles soundtrack.