Although The Beatles appeared on British television first in 1962, singing ‘Love Me Do’ on Granada Television’s People & Places, their 1964 appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show remains their most famous televisual exposure. As the Fab Four’s first outing on screens across the US, the historical moment marked the beginning of the British Invasion of the American charts.
Technically speaking, however, The Ed Sullivan Show wasn’t The Beatles’ first appearance on US television. In September 1963, following the first flurries of Beatlemania, The Beatles took a short break; John Lennon took his first wife, Cynthia, to Paris, and Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr went on a short trip to Greece. Meanwhile, George Harrison became the first Beatle to enter the US as he flew across the Atlantic to visit their sister Louise in Illinois.
During Harrison’s visit, Louise took him to the WFRX-AM radio station in West Frankfort, requesting that the DJ play Harrison’s personal copy of the band’s latest hit single, ‘She Loves You’. The 17-year-old DJ Marcia Schafer agreed to play the song in a historically overlooked moment. Over subsequent weeks, Louise returned to the station, encouraging Schafer to play The Beatles’ latest singles.
Shortly after Harrison’s visit, on November 16th, 1963, The Beatles made their somewhat inconsequential debut on US television. Any US fans at the time were in their teens or early 20s and, hence, likely would have missed footage of the Fab Four pop-up briefly on the news magazine show The Huntley-Brinkley Report that evening.
According to The Trivia Book of The Beatles, reporter Edwin Newman documented Beatlemania’s concurrent, virulent spread across Britain and mainland Europe at the time. Newman notes the mainly female fans swarming in their masses to secure tickets. Describing a wild Beatles concert in Bournemouth, he adds: “Those who study such things say that, at last, the British juvenile has someone immediate to identify with, not some distant American rock and roll hero”.
By the time The Beatles disbanded in April 1970, they had secured a permanent position on the throne as the most successful rock band of all time. The colossal Lennon-McCartney catalogue was, and still is, familiar to fans worldwide, thanks to immense record sales that show no signs of abating half a century on.
For this reason, it may come as a surprise that, with the exception of the live TV appearances in the 1960s and a couple of theme tunes, no Beatles songs had been played during an episode of a TV series until 2012. According to director Matthew Weiner, his hit AMC drama series Mad Men was the first to feature a Beatles track within an episode.
As seen in the clip below, the character Don Draper puts a copy of 1966’s Revolver on the turntable to hear the experimental closing track ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’. According to a feature by The New York Times, the Mad Men creators paid $250,000 for the privilege.
“It was always my feeling that the show lacked a certain authenticity because we never could have an actual master recording of The Beatles performing,” Weiner told The New York Times in 2012. “Not just someone singing their song or a version of their song, but them doing a song in the show. It always felt to me like a flaw. Because they are the band, probably, of the 20th century.”
“It was hard because I had to, writing-wise, commit to the story that I thought was worthy of this incredible opportunity,” he continued. “The thing about that song in particular was The Beatles are, throughout their intense existence, constantly pushing the envelope, and I really wanted to show how far ahead of the culture they were. That song to me is revolutionary, as is that album.”
Addressing his desire to shock, Weiner concluded, “Even people who are not in the clearances and rights business were struck by the fact that that was actually The Beatles. You just get the satisfaction of knowing that was not an imitation, and it’s that recording.”
Watch the scene from Mad Men below.
