When the Beatles first appeared on Ed Sullivan’s show in February 1964, I was glued to the TV set. I never missed the Ed Sullivan show! I remember thinking that these guys were pretty good. But I wasn’t fully impressed with them until August 1964 when I first heard THIS song. To this day, I cannot shut this song off in the middle! Amazingly, it only peaked at 53 on the Billboard charts. It made it to #1 on 1050 CHUM in Toronto, and #6 in Germany, where it didn’t even hit the charts until October.

One of my friends raised a great question about this video. Did they use timecode back in ’63-64? Another friend wondered why John is seen standing in the middle of the group. Usually, he was always seen on the right. My guess is that the BITC was added when this film was transferred to video tape. I don’t think SMPTE or Viz-Code came along until the late 1960’s. Still it’s a mystery!

It’s true that George was usually seen on the left when the Beatles performed live, with John standing on the right. This BBC video is a bit strange. The audio was probably dubbed in later, since I doubt a hand-held film camera could have captured studio-quality stereo audio. Maybe they were arranged in a different way because this really wasn’t a live public performance, but a recording session for a radio broadcast.

[June 2018 Note: The original YouTube video I posted here has disappeared, perhaps due to copyright issues. Sorry.]