Yesterday . . . . and Today : Will America Still Need the Beatles When They’re 64? 30 Years After Debut on TV, the Answer Is Probably Yes

It’s the sort of comment that, coming from a grown man, can make a middle-aged baby boomer suddenly feel old.

“The Beatles? Oh yeah, I was a big Beatles fan--when I was young. I used to borrow old Beatles records from my Mom.”

The speaker is Kevin Ratner, 26, of Venice, one of dozens of people interviewed Wednesday about the 30th anniversary of the Beatles’ appearance on the “Ed Sullivan Show” in 1964--an event that occurred years before Ratner and almost half the rest of the American population was even born.

Based on those interviews, several Beatles-related conclusions can be drawn:

Everyone has heard of the Beatles. Most people, regardless of age, say they like the Beatles. Almost everyone over the age of 35 can name the Beatles. Almost no one under the age of 35 knows who Ed Sullivan was.

And, finally, the interviews indicate that for Americans in their 40s, the Beatles’ first Ed Sullivan appearance was more than just a TV show. It was a landmark cultural event, a youthful snapshot rendered in grainy black and white, a silly, happy generational-shared experience from the days before the 1960s got too serious.

For the benefit of younger readers, a little background may be in order:

The Beatles--John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Ringo Starr--released their first album in America, “Meet the Beatles,” in January, 1964. By Feb. 1, the song “I Want to Hold Your Hand” hit No. 1 on the Billboard charts; two months later, Beatles songs occupied all five top slots on the Billboard singles chart.

On Feb. 7, 1964, the shockingly long-haired Beatles arrived in New York from their native England; two days later they made their first appearance on the “Ed Sullivan Show,” a hugely popular Sunday night variety program, in front of a studio audience largely composed of screaming, crying, semi-hysterical teen-age girls. The show garnered what was then the largest TV audience in history--57 million viewers.

“Absolutely I remember watching the show,” said Quince Buteau, a 42-year-old Hollywood Hills packaging designer, as he browsed through the CD racks at Tower Records in West Hollywood. “It was a super big deal. I remember my parents saying nobody will even know who they are six months from now. . . . I still have their records. Every now and then I take them out and spin ‘em.”

“I remember the show, I remember all the screaming,” says Terry Abrahamson, 42, a Chicago music composer in town to to work on a film. “I bought all their albums. Now I have three kids--7, 5 and 2--and they’re getting into it (Beatles music). ‘Rocky Raccoon,’ ‘Yellow Submarine.’ There’s something about it they respond to.”

For the most part, younger music lovers interviewed said they liked the Beatles--or at least they were polite enough to say they did when asked about them by a newspaper reporter who obviously dated back to the early Beatles era.

“I like most of their songs,” said Mirna Pontaza, 21, a pre-dentistry student at Los Angeles City College. “I think it’s pretty cool that they’ve been around for so long. My parents told me about them. They saw them at Dodger Stadium (in 1966).”

“I like ‘em OK,” said Eric Baugh, 17, as he and a friend walked outside Hollywood High School. “They’re sort of like acid music.”

For some, Beatles music still seems young--three decades later.

“Thirty years isn’t really that long,” said Steve Johnson, 38, a North Hollywood driver-courier. “A hundred years from now, they’ll still be listening to Beatles music.” Tammy Laub, 26, manager at Tower Records, says the Beatles are “an endless phenomenon.”

“There isn’t just one age group that buys them; everybody buys them,” she said. “Their music is something that, no matter what your age, is going to bring back memories for you. We’re selling about a box per title every week”--about 25 each of about a dozen different Beatles albums and song collections in the store.

Of course, they don’t actually sell Beatles records at Tower Records, or almost anyplace else, for that matter. It’s all compact discs and cassettes.

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It may or may not mean anything, but the Beatles CDs in Tower Records are situated right next to a CD called “The Beavis and Butt-head Experience.”

For the benefit of some older readers, Beavis and Butt-head are MTV animated teen-age characters who, many adult Americans believe, represent the beginning of the end of Western civilization as we know it, which is exactly what many adult Americans thought the Beatles represented in 1964.