Day #5 of 100 Days of Ukulele and Blog

She Loves You is the fourth song played on the February 9, 1964 Ed Sullivan Show. It’s the defining song that made my mom and I lifelong Beatles fans. I was only six years old, but I remember it as if it was yesterday.

I still remember watching the Beatles for the very first time on our black and white TV in our Den in San Francisco. We lived in a “railroad flat” that was built in 1908. Dad sat in the basket wicker chair, and my brother and sister and I, all in our pajamas sat cross-legged style on the white shag carpet in the middle of the den. We all watched the Ed Sullivan Show together every Sunday night. Mom was too excited to sit down. She paced and forth smoking a cigarette as usual.

She made sweeping, dramatic comments such as, “Music as we know it will never be the same!”

It wasn’t until Ed Sullivan introduced the Beatles and they began to play that I understood. I got caught up in the excitement, felt nothing but happiness and joy as I watched them sing and play and shake their heads. They had weird, bowl-like haircuts I’d never seen before, and I loved it.

“Ahhh, it’s them!” Mom shouted. “The Beatles!” I jumped up and danced around the room and watched them, mesmerized, as if under a happy spell. Mom didn’t dance like I did, but she clasped her hands together and then put them up to her face.

“See what I mean?”

Dad and my little brother and sister, Michael and Jennifer, looked both of us as if we had lost our minds, and then back at the TV wondering what the hoopla was all about. I have no idea to this day how they felt about the Beatles that night, and I didn’t care.

After they played All My Loving and a more subdued song, “’Til there Was you,” Ed Sullivan said they’d be back for more songs. ‘Til There Was You made everyone swoon in the audience because of Paul McCartney. In fact, all the people I the audience were excited just like we were, only more so. The girls screamed. I had never seen anything like it before. Mom would tell me later that girls did that for Frank Sinatra at one time, but it was hard for me to fathom.

We watched the cast of Oliver! Sing a couple of songs from the Broadway hit, and I knew the songs because I’d heard the record a few times. What I didn’t know then is that Davy Jones played the Artful Dodger in the Broadway show, and he was on the Ed Sullivan Show that iconic night, pretty much right after the Beatles showed up. He was only 14 years old at the time, and he was so cute singing, “I’d do anything for you dear, anything for you..” my favorite song from Oliver! NO one knew that he would eventually become a member of the Monkees. But they didn’t exist yet in 1964.

I don’t remember who performed after that. I only remember that the Beatles returned with their third song, “I Saw Her Standing There.” And again, I got up and danced and became excited just as my mom did. Finally, mom and I had something in common, something just she and I shared that no one else in my family understood. It was the first time I remember having anything in common with my mother, and I loved that. Mom was the smartest and most well read person I knew. I was almost seven and still struggled to learn to read with a vision impairment and dyslexia. I thought I was a disappointment to her because my younger could already read, and Mom was all about that. But this – the Beatles, the music, the joy, this belonged to only us.

Then it happened. They sang, “She Loves You,” and we just went nuts. We listened to “I Want to Hold Your Hand” after that and then we hugged each other and yelled, “She loves you yeah, yeah, yeah!” over and over again while my dad and brother and sister watched us with their mouths dropped open in shock. They hadn’t moved or said a word while we went crazy over the Beatles.

My kids and grandkids know Beatles songs. The first song my oldest grandson Jeremiah learned was, “She Loves you,” and the first song my daughter Megan sang was “Hello Good-Bye.” Beatles Fan for Life!