<b><span style="font-size: large;">Who Covered The Beatles BEFORE “Sullivan.” 

(And Who Didn't.)</span>

By Paul Iorio</b>

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<i>From Life magazine, January 31, 1964.</i>

Who saw it coming? 

Sure, everyone now agrees -- fifty years after the fact -- that

The Beatles’ first performance on “The Ed Sullivan Show” was

a landmark event in pop culture history. 

But who anticipated that reality before the night of

February 9, 1964? 

Not everyone.  In fact, not many U.S. publications even carried

advance word about the Sullivan appearance. 

Pre-Sullivan coverage -– in American print publications -- of

the band was limited to a few major magazines, most notably

Time (which ran an article on November 15, 1963), The New Yorker

and The New York Times Magazine, which covered the Beatles

the following month.  Life magazine, too, had a big feature

on them, in January ’64.  (There was also coverage in trade

publications and on the evening news programs of NBC and

CBS, but this piece is about coverage in consumer

publications.)

It's important to remember that, by the time of the TV

appearances,  The Beatles had already made the trip

from the underground to the overground at warp speed

in the U.K.  No less than the Queen of England was a fan

for whom they performed in November of ‘63. 

So it wouldn't have been much of a stretch for the American

media to embrace them -- despite the flop of their first songs

in the U.S., singles that would later be hits when Capitol

Records released them months later.

But few in the States covered the band in that fall

season of '63 – even though it wasn't exactly outré

or avant garde for anyone to have taken notice of what

the British royal family had already championed.

Yet there were major hold-outs who were shocked by the

haircuts, which seemed to eclipse all else in published

reports.

“Haystack hairdos,” wrote The San Jose Mercury News. 

“Dish mop haircuts,” said The New Yorker.  “Mushroom

haircuts,” said Time.  “Great pudding bowls of hair,”

said Newsweek.

Newsweek even ran a letter to the editor with a picture

showing the haircuts’ resemblance to comedian Ish Kabibble. 

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<i>From a letter to the editor published in Newsweek,
March 9, 1964.</i> 

Life ran a photo spread of Dean Rusk, the Secretary of

State at the time, and his employees -- with Beatles

haircuts drawn on them.

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<i>From Life magazine, 1964.</i>

Of course, just because there was early coverage

doesn’t mean it was prescient, knowing  or favorable. 

Many missed the point completely and trashed the music. 

“Musically, they are a near-disaster, guitars and drums

slamming out a merciless beat that does away with

secondary rhythms, harmony, and melody.  Their lyrics

(punctuated with nutty shouts of ‘yeah, yeah, yeah’)

are a catastrophe,” wrote Newsweek in February 1964. 

Time agreed.  “Their songs consist mainly of ‘Yeh’ to

the accompaniment of three guitars and a thunderous drum.” 

Then there was this cutting letter to the editor to Newsweek. 

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<i>From Newsweek, March 9, 1964.</i> 

And there was a cartoon in The New York Times Magazine,

published on December 1, 1963, in which a teenager is

saying to her father: "But naturally they make you want

to scream, daddy-o; that's the whole idea of the Beatles'

sound."

Pre-Sullivan coverage in America sort of portrayed

the Beatles as a comedy act, as if they were four

guys with Three Stooges haircuts cutting up onstage. 

“The audience is pretty funny, too,” said Time

in its first story on the band.  “Goofy looking,” said

Life.  They look “spectacularly demented,” wrote The

New York Times.

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<i>Ringo, and the other band members, posed sort of Three-Stooges-ish
for Life's January 31, 1964, issue.</i>  

And almost all publications said it was a transitory fad. 

Like “gold fish gobbling,” said Life.  “They are a craze,”

said The New York Times.  “A craze,” said The New Yorker. 

In their TV listings, many publications did not even note

the Sullivan appearance as one of the notable programs

of that particular Sunday night. 

Time magazine seemed to list every program but Sullivan’s. 

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<i>Time magazine omits the Sullivan show in its list of notable
programs of Feb. 9, 1964.</i>

The Washington Post, Life magazine, The New York Times,

The San Francisco Chronicle, The San Jose Mercury News

and others did note the Sullivan show in advance,

outside of their listings of all scheduled programs.  

(The Mercury News even ran a now-iconic AP wire photo

of Sullivan rehearsing with the band.) 

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<i>The St. Louis Post Dispatch didn’t note the Fab Four's upcoming
appearance, but in its listing of all programs, the paper did
rename the band “The Beatles of London.”</i> <i>(From The St. Louis
Post Dispatch, Feb. 9, 1964.)
</i>

And so many seemed so sure The Beatles wouldn’t last.  

“The odds are that they will fade away, as most adults

confidently predict,” said Newsweek (while allowing

that the opposite might also turn out to be true). 

Fifty years later, the band’s music seems poised to last,

perhaps, for centuries.