Screaming: Ed Sullivan, The Beatles, and Glimpses of Desire

Part of a book of essays discussing various cultural concepts and trends.

Or: I Lost Everything in the British Invasion

It’s impossible to remember the exact weather conditions on that important night in February, 1964, but - according to the childhood memories that linger in my mind - I probably could have gone outside to relieve myself and watched my piss freeze in mid-air. A tiny arc of golden hailstones dropping to the ground in a town remarkable for being unremarkable, in a quiet corner of Nebraska.

Inside the house, though, we would have been quite cozy, despite the cold. Nine of us in the living room - several of us sitting on the floor - as we watched Ed Sullivan introduce the next act.

We were a religious family: not the least bit sophisticated. But even we understood the running joke of such a stiff and uncomfortable man being host of one of the most popular shows on network television. The heavy hitter of Sunday night. To this day, my brother does an impersonation of Sullivan that's right on the money.

(Keeping in mind that, for his impersonation to really work, he needs an audience of a certain age - Ed Sullivan’s “shew” was a loooong time agoooo).

Moving in his restless way, Sullivan had arrived onstage to introduce the latest “sensations” from England. We couldn’t see the colors of the stage set the show had put together for the Fab Four. Our TV only had black-and-white. Nor were we getting the greatest sound (just the one speaker).

But all of that hardly mattered.

Having just turned twelve, the month before, I was as prepared to be impressionable, then, as I am prepared to be analytical now. That young self was like a machine for measuring the weight of snow - while my strict Calvinist training reminded me (every day) that the worst thing I could ever do would be to show how I really felt.

So … a paradox. As I witnessed the beginning of the end of Calvinism - along with my own “great awakening” - it was impossible for me (under the eyes of my parents) to bounce, or dance, or sing. I couldn’t react in any way: other than to comment, to no one in particular, about the screaming.

Along with everything else I heard on that occasion, there was the screaming: starting the moment that Sullivan stepped onstage.

It was a mystery to me then - the screaming. But a symbol to me, now.

A scream is the expression of a desire so profound that there are no words to express it. Screaming is a sacrament of desire, and - as human desire is boundless - it’s no surprise that eventually the Beatles were forced to stop playing live performances when the screaming from the audience became so emphatic that the band couldn’t even hear the sounds coming out of their own instruments. Of course, that was later: after the dam had broken.

In 1964, it was the present tense: the dam breaking. The beginning of the end of part of the Calvinist dogma that had held our culture motionless during the ultra-prosperous 1950s.

For hundreds of years, Protestant thought had dismissed sex as an unpleasant necessity. It was required to create children, but - on the whole - life was better spent laboring, scheming, and denying oneself for the sake of accumulating the great possible amount of money.

“The righteous are rich - and the rich, by virtue of their riches, must therefore be righteous”. Calvinism taught us to believe this. That power, possessions, and wealth (none of which Jesus had) were the best measure of how a man stood before Almighty God.

If all this sounds familiar, that’s because much of this point of view is still woven into our culture. The Calvinist worship of money endures - and dominates. 

But, beginning in 1964, the disgusted dismissal of Sex started to be shouted down.

Even if Calvin, himself, had been barking prophecies of damnation in Ed Sullivan’s audience, no one would have been able to hear him.



As for me, sitting next to my father’s recliner in my Nebraska living room, (and not screaming) I was puzzled as much as I was entranced. Remembering my first look: it strikes me that it wasn’t so much what the Fab Four “were” … as what they “were not”.

Money was always scarce around my house. We weren’t able to afford many records, so we depended a lot on the radio (“radio” still exists, by the way, for those of you who might be wondering). Local radio was a continuous presence in our house, and my mother’s satisfaction was most evident when the crooners came on.

Pat Boone. Johnny Mathis. Andy Williams. And, especially, Nat King Cole. The musical equivalent of comfort food. Pancakes and syrup. Macaroni and cheese. Peas and meatloaf.

Never mind that the re-assuring mood they were trying to set might be just the thing for someone wanting to reach around, discreetly, and unhook a bra. The music my mother loved (my father has no use for any of this) came on soft. Wheedling: “Baby/it’s cold outside….” And mildly Victorian: “I get misty/Just holding your hand….”

That was our domestic problem with Elvis. He was just too vehement. We didn’t like to be pushed around like that.

Then along came the boys from Liverpool, and their sound - their voice - their look - seemed exactly right. Not manic. But urgent. Ironic. But not distant. 

The exact rhythms, and melodies, and lyrics I had been waiting for. Without even knowing what I had been waiting for.

That particular night, the lyrics had an imperative tone: “Shake it up, baby!”; “I wanna hold your hand!”; “Please, please me!/The way I please you!” (it would be ages before I fully understood the sexual dimension of that simple lyric).

Yet the demeanor of the four men on stage didn’t suggest that they were heavily invested in the event.

The Beatle on the right - he would enter into our iconography as “John” - who had his feet planted on either side of the microphone stand, as though resisting a high wind, wasn’t crooning at all. He was growling (“Shake it up, baby!”): while looking around with a visible air of bemusement: Thanks for coming … but who the hell are you people?

On the other side of the stage, at least one of the guitar players was left-handed (like me): which would always dispose me to like him better than the others. I didn’t know it at the time, but the big-nosed guy on the drums was also left-handed. Compared with the population as a whole, the Beatles were a festival of southpaws.

Reinforcing John’s air of detachment, the guys on the left didn’t seem to be taking the situation too seriously, either. Although they had to be aware that they were being watched by millions of people.

Those two guitarists were sharing a microphone: occasionally doing a bobblehead kind of move that never failed to draw screams of what sounded like agony from the unseen girls in the unseen audience.

In reaction to this: the guys on the left just smiled each other, as though sharing some sort of secret joke.

The music was compelling. I’ve never heard anything before - or since - that sounded so much like something I wanted to hear again and again. Their first album (in the U.S.) was the first album I bought with my own money: listening to it again and again and again.

There was that album. And all the albums after that. According to the often-used cliché, that began the soundtrack of my life.

But they also gave me - and many others - another way to be “cool”. Not Elvis-cool: since not many of us could replicate that sullen look, the molasses drawl, the sweaty animal drive. It was also not given to many of us to whisper in the footsteps of Nat King Cole: “Unforgettable/That’s what you are….”

But John, Paul, George, and Ringo? That look of airy dismissal. That willingness to find humor in just about anything?

As an earnest little baby boomer - filled up with Bible verses - I thought I could replicate that. Let my hair grow out and face the future with a smile and a shrug. The Beatles-type irony that I would spend years of my life perfecting: That’s right … we wrote this song ourselves … kind of catchy, isn’t it? … no need to scream though….

Like millions of others, I had been waiting for these Liverpool boys: without knowing when, or where, they would show up. I didn’t find them. They found me, as the sharp winds of February brushed through our small town in the middle of nowhere.