Legendary rock and roll songwriter Paul McCartney has debunked a myth about The Beatles‘ legendary appearances in the United States.
The Wings frontman would attend the US with John Lennon, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr for a series of shows. The Beatles would perform at Shea Stadium and on The Ed Sullivan Show during their tours across the pond. It’s the latter show that would prove to be the place of a huge myth surrounding the Fab Four. McCartney, writing in his book The Lyrics, went on to debunk the influence of the band’s performance on the show. While consequential for the group’s success in the US, McCartney says he does not believe the performance itself influenced so many all-time greats.
McCartney wrote: “Seventy-three million people watched us, and it became a cultural marker. So many people have come up to me through the years to tell me they watched it. People like Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty, Chrissie Hynde, Billy Joel – they’d all seen it. It’s probably not true, but the story goes that the crime rate went down too; even the robbers were tuning in. It was such a great way for us to be introduced to the US.”
Their introduction Stateside also revealed a poorly kept secret about Lennon to audiences all over the US. While Lennon’s marriage to Cynthia Lennon had been a poorly guarded secret for some years, fans were not in the loop on Lennon’s personal life.
That all changed during the band’s appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. McCartney confirmed as much when breaking down the lyrics to each of his songs, with a segment on All My Loving from his book, The Lyrics, sharing the detail which slipped through about Lennon’s marriage.
McCartney wrote: “During our second song, Till There Was You, they cut to shots of each of us and put our names up on the screen. When they got to John, they added, ‘Sorry girls, he’s married’ – which had been a badly kept secret up until that point.”
Despite this, The Beatles’ performance on The Ed Sullivan Show is regarded as one of the most important moments of their career, and McCartney believes critics of the time didn’t know what they had on their hands. Later on in his breakdown of All My Loving, McCartney suggested it was a selection of newspaper editors who did not like The Beatles’ work that were sent off to write hit pieces on the band.
McCartney wrote: “Some of the press the next day were a bit mean, though. The New York Herald Tribune – who, I might add, are no longer with us – wrote that The Beatles were ‘75% publicity, 20% haircut, and 5% lilting lament’. But then the mop top became a whole new trend in the way that teenage boys started to wear their hair. At that point, the fringe – or bangs, as they’re called in the US – wasn’t supposed to go anywhere near the eyebrows. That all changed. You could even buy Beatles wigs.”
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