The Beatles on Ed Sullivan 50 years on

It's 50 years ago this weekend since The Beatles walked on to the Ed Sullivan Show (9 Feb 1964) in America and changed musical history. It was the culmination of five years hard slog.

After numerous knockbacks by other record labels, in the autumn of 1962, The Beatles manager Brian Epstein had persuaded George Martin, the head of a small EMI imprint Parlophone, to give them a listen. They were rough but had charm. Martin took a risk and signed them and the rest is history.

They returned to Abbey Road in September to make their first release, the single Love Me Do, with a new drummer, Ringo Starr. Love Me Do makes the Top 20, and Please Please Me makes it to No. 2 in the charts.

Three years of continuous gigs in Liverpool and later Hamburg had toughened them up. They hung out with kids who were into existentialism, drugs and sex. In Hamburg, these were the children of the SS and the Wehrmacht soldiers. Lennon and McCartney started writing their own songs in dingy hotel rooms. There were no reality TV shows in post war Germany or England. There was too much reality as it was.

The 1950s may have been relatively snug for the generation that endured the Second World War, but their teenage children saw the period as a stifling drag against which they kicked with rock and roll.

The Beatles had freshness and a defiantly working-class charm opposed to the bland vanilla bands of the time. Beneath the suits and haircuts, they were Teddy Boys. Lennon could speak with his fists as well as his guitar.

They conquered Britain but their big break was the appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. Some 73 million Americans tuned in that night, the largest viewership in the history of television to that point.

They opened with "All My Loving" to hysterical screams from teenaged girls in the audience. The Beatles then followed with "Till There Was You," before wrapping up the first set with "She Loves You." They closed the show with "I Saw Her Standing There" and "I Want to Hold Your Hand." Beatlemania was born.

President John F Kennedy had been killed just 77 days prior. Young Americans were looking for new dreams; new heroes with new visions. They found John, Paul, George and Ringo.

It would be wrong to say that four lads out of Liverpool had any idea where they were going or what they were doing. There was no set manifesto. According to Ian Macdonald in Revolution in the Head, they defined themselves by what they were for and against.

"They were against soul-numbing materialism; they were for imagination, self expression, Zen. They were against society's approved depressives (alcohol, barbiturates) and for stimulants life marijuana, amphetamines and mescaline. They were against rationalism, repression and racism and for poetry, sex and jazz." It was a heady brew.

They were masters of the glib throwaway line and put-down. "As usual, there is a great woman behind every idiot," John Lennon said. Reporter: "Who writes the music?" John Lennon: "What music?" Before the Ed Sullivan Show appearance, Ringo Starr was asked what he thought of Beethoven. "I love him, especially his poems."

Why were the Beatles so great? They were in the right time at the right place. But they worked very hard. By the time the Beatles had reached the US in 1964, they had played more than 1200 gigs. They could play three hours straight and pack a punch like a Muhammad Ali upper cut. They were masters of melody and wrote song hooks that grabbed you for 40 years.

The Beatles great subject was childhood gone by, and what to make of the austere, rationed, ordered and secure English world they had grown up in. They were chroniclers of their time but also of childhood time, which like a Charlie Chaplin movie, reconnects us with innocence.

As the decade developed, they continued to pull off striking variations in song, timing and lyric writing. This put Lennon and McCartney up there with Rogers and Hammerstein and Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, as one of the great songwriting duos of the 20^th century. Many followers believed the group was personally guiding them through the turbulent 60s. Many believed The Beatles were the 60s.

Artistically, 1965-67 were The Beatles best years. They produced three masterpiece albums: Rubber Soul, Revolver and Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Their most outstanding single, the double A-side Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields Forever, is an aural testament to pop writing genius.

They recorded 211 songs on their official first-release albums, EPs and singles. Of these tracks, 186 were originals and 25 were covers, recorded between September 1962 and April 1970. The last time they worked as a quartet was in August 1969, as they recorded the Abbey Road album medley. It was over in seven years, from the naive simplicity of Love Me Do to the exquisite Something.

Few of the Beatles inner circle are left. Lennon, Harrison and Epstein are dead. Starr's first wife, Maureen, and McCartney's first spouse, Linda, are gone. Only McCartney, Starr and George Martin are still around. McCartney turned 70 last year.

The American writer Kurt Vonnegut once said "an artist's mission is to make people appreciate being alive. If asked if I know of any artists who pulled that off, I reply, 'The Beatles did'."