In tomorrow's Citizen, we'll be running a story about the recollections of Prince George residents who saw The Beatles perform on the Ed Sullivan Show, 50 years ago this Sunday.
Looking back, February 1964 was an extraordinary month and not just because that's when Sarah Palin was born.
The arrival of the Beatles - their plane landed in New York on Feb. 7, 1964, and the mop top lads were greeted by a swarm of media and a storm of screaming young ladies - didn't just mark the beginning of the British Invasion and changing sensibilities in popular music. The Beatles changed hair styles, fashion and were the vanguards of the changes the Baby Boom generation would bring to all aspects of society.
But it started with the music.
I Want To Hold Your Hand was number one on the Billboard Hot 100 for seven weeks through February and March of 1964. Contrast that song with the song that was number one for four weeks during January 1964 - There! I've Said It Again by Bobby Vinton, a song as 1950s and dull and old and safe and boring as The Beatles were not.
Vinton actually crept back to number one in December 1964 for one week with Mr. Lonely but the year on the charts belonged to The Beatles. With six songs, the Beatles were number one for an incredible 18 weeks in 1964, including an impressive 14 consecutive weeks, from February 1 to May 2, when I Want to Hold Your Hand was replaced by She Loves You, which was followed by Can't Buy Me Love.
And it wasn't just the Beatles.
For every appearance by Vinton, Louis Armstrong, Dean Martin and Lorne Greene (remember Ringo? No, not the Beatles drummer!) at number one in 1964, the new generation was staking their claim on popular culture. Motown owned the charts for lengthy parts of the year, led by the Supremes, with three number ones in 1964, including Baby Love for four weeks in November. The Beach Boys, Roy Orbison and Manfred Mann also topped the charts at various points of the year, as did The Animals with the classic House of the Rising Sun.
After their appearance on Ed Sullivan, the Beatles toured America, including a memorable stop on February 18 in Miami, where they hammed it up for the cameras in the training gym of a 22-year-old unheralded fighter named Cassius Clay, who was scheduled to fight Sonny Liston a week later.
Cultural historians love to point out that Clay barely knew who the Beatles were and the Beatles had no idea who he was when they met but the cameras were there so they hammed it up.
After he beat Liston in a surprise upset (Liston didn't stand up to start the seventh round), the world knew who Cassius Clay was, especially when he changed his name to Muhammad Ali the following week to align himself with the growing Black Muslim movement in the United States.
Ali went on to beat Liston with a true knockout a year later, captured in the most famous sports photograph of the 20th century. Liston is sprawled on his back, his arms on the canvas above his head, old and defeated, while Ali stands above him, magnificently young and powerful, taunting the former champ.
It wasn't just the young who were out to change America and the world in February 1964. After announcing his candidacy for the Republican nomination for president the month before, an Arizona senator named Barry Goldwater hit the campaign trail. Goldwater went on to win the nomination but he was crushed by Lyndon Johnson in the fall election, yet his story didn't end there. One of Goldwater's most passionate supporters in 1964 was Ronald Reagan, who was elected president 16 years later, and Goldwater conservatism dominates conservative thought and the Republican Party to this day.
Many historians like to say that the 1950s ended with the assassination of John Kennedy in November 1963.
It's also true to say the 1960s didn't start until the following February when the Beatles and Cassius Clay arrived as powerful lightning rods for a young and affluent generation hellbent on change.
