Copyright 1994 The Chronicle Publishing Co.    
The San Francisco Chronicle
FEBRUARY 6, 1994, SUNDAY, SUNDAY EDITION
SECTION: SUNDAY DATEBOOK; Pg. 30
LENGTH: 2444 words
HEADLINE: It Was 30 Years Ago This Week 
Beatles' Ed Sullivan appearance triggered lasting phenomenon
BYLINE: MICHAEL SNYDER, CHRONICLE STAFF WRITER
BODY:

     ON SUNDAY, February 9, 1964, an entire country -- give or take
a few hermits -- sat down to watch four young men from Liverpool,
England, make their live American television debut on the popular
CBS variety program, ''The Ed Sullivan Show.''
     The quartet's first single on the Capitol label, ''I Saw Her
Standing There,'' had reached the No. 1 spot on the Billboard
singles chart the previous week. Full-tilt Beatlemania was about to
be unleashed.
     The British rock band with the pudding bowl haircuts,
collarless jackets and international buzz brought Sullivan the
highest ratings his show had ever attained -- 73 million Americans
watched that night. The Fab Four -- John Lennon, Paul McCartney,
Georg
e Harrison and Ringo Starr -- would go on to become the most
significant, if not the greatest, rock band ever.
     It's 30 years later. Despite an acrimonious break-up in 1970
and a series of legal battles over rights to the Beatles' empire
and music, the band is still with us. Rumours continue to surface
that the remaining three members of the group will reunite to 
create music for ''The Beatles Anthology'' -- a 10- to 15-hour
video history of the band due in 1995.
     Although the death of Lennon (he was shot by a demented fan in
1980) precludes any true reunion of the group, the Beatles legacy
will not disappear. 
     Regardless of any music that results from a congress of the
three survivors, ''The Beatles Anthology'' should spawn a companion
set of four to six compact disks of rare and classic material, as
well as a blitz of publicity about the band.
     The Beatles' impact on pop music in specific and on society in
general was immense and far-reaching. Otherwise, why would anyone
today care about three middle-aged men puttering around in a
recording studio?
     Boomer nostalgia aside, bootleg albums of live concert
performances and TV appearances by the band, song demos, studio
out-takes, alternate versions of their hits and unreleased tracks
have circulated for years. With all of the merchandising that
resulte
d from Beatlemania, there is now a small industry devoted to
collectible Beatles memorabilia.
     Capitol Records recently issued two volumes of Beatles hits
for the first time on CD. The company reports that the albums
already have sold in excess of 1 1/2 million units. ''There is an
insatiable appetite for the Beatles on CD,'' said Lou Mann, senior
 vice-president of sales at Capitol.
     ''Backbeat,'' a forthcoming feature film, deals with the
Beatles' star-crossed original member Stu Sutcliffe and the period
from 1960-61 when the band played rock clubs and strip joints in
Hamburg, Germany. The ''Backbeat'' sound track album is a set of 
vintage rock and roll songs that were part of the band's
repertoire, interpreted by such modern rockers as Dave Pirner (Soul
Asylum), Mike Mills (R.E.M.), and Thurston Moore (Sonic Youth).
     You may want to blame the Beatles for the creation of the
Monkees, a U.S. television doppelganger inspired by the Beatles'
feature films ''A Hard Day's Night'' and ''Help''; or the hubris of
the late '70s power-pop Band the Knack, which aped the cover of
 ''Meet the Beatles'' on the ''Meet the Knack'' album; or the
banality of ''Beatlemania,'' the stage show.  But the Beatles
remains the single most influential rock band ever.
     Robin Wilson is the vocalist with the Gin Blossoms -- the
incredibly successful guitar-pop band from Tempe, Arizona, with the
platinum debut album, ''New Miserable Experience.'' On the side,
he's also in a cover band ''that does a lot of new wave and ear
ly Beatles songs.
     ''I've watched the movie, 'The Complete Beatles,' dozens of
times,'' said Wilson. ''It's such a stirring story. They were four
kids, so damn young and so incredibly prolific at such an early
age.  I was born in '65. I'm as old as (their album) 'Rubber So
ul.' They were 5 or 6 years younger than I am now when they made
'Help.' As a musician and songwriter, their vocal style and
melodies really affected me.''
     Besides earning the rabid adoration of a legion of teenage
girls and the envy and respect of many male rock fans, the Beatles
created the vision of an ideal life through team work. Their
camaraderie, along with their humor and talent, seemed integral to 
their success. This band of young men that scaled the pop charts
repeatedly had attained an unprecedented level of idolatry and, a
rarity in the pop music scene of that time, the Beatles had done it
as a self-contained unit.
     They wrote most of their songs -- frighteningly catchy pop
tunes that intertwined American rock and roll, soul music and the
rollicking sounds of the English music hall -- and they played
their own instruments. Starting out as a conventional rock quartet
, they went on to experiment with Eastern scales and
instrumentation, string quartets and musique concrete. They had it
all, money, love and respect, and kids throughout the Western world
wanted to be like them. 
     The San Francisco band Jellyfish, featuring Andy Sturmer and
Roger Manning, has had chart success, particularly in England, with
a gleaming pop sound that revolves around gorgeous vocal harmonies
in the tradition of the Beatles and other ensembles that a
re indebted to the Lennon- McCartney songwriting tandem.
     Born in 1966, Sturmer wasn't around for the band's debut with
Sullivan. ''By the time I was aware of them, the Beatles had
permeated society,'' Sturmer explained. ''I was really influenced
by the Beatles movies. You could see the romance of being in a ba
nd in 'A Hard Day's Night.' '' Two years ago, Sturmer and Manning
actually worked with Starr in Los Angeles, writing a song for him
and singing on his last solo album. They even did a video with him.
     ''I met Ringo in the studio,'' recalled Sturmer. ''I was
looking at these old drums and old cymbals and I heard this voice
say, 'Got them for the Sullivan show.' ''I tried to pry some
stories out of him, but he doesn't do much talking about the past.
Fro
m the few things he alluded to, I think they all prefer to remember
the good times.
     ''They were more than the sum of the individual parts.
Something clicked together. Whenever I need to be pumped up or
recall why I'm in a band, I listen to the Beatles.''
     Sturmer is not alone. Over the past decade, there have been
many other musicians who have found voices by adapting some aspect
of the Beatles' sound -- XTC, Tears for Fears, Crowded House,
Marshall Crenshaw (an ex-''Beatlemania'' star), The La's, World P
arty, Redd Kross, Teenage Fanclub, and the Posies (whose ''Golden
Blunders'' was covered by Starr on his last concert tour).
     Beginning in the '60s, the Fab Four had a profound influence
on their peers in the music business and the rock musicians that
followed them. They blazed a trail for other British bands to
appear on Sullivan and, hence, reach the American TV audience, and
 they served as outright inspiration.
     The Rolling Stones, the Kinks, the Dave Clark 5 and Liverpool
pals Gerry & the Pacemakers were but a few of the groups that
crossed the Atlantic in the Beatles' wake. The Move -- a Manchester
band led by Roy Wood, who would go on to co-found the Beatle-s
tyled Electric Light Orchestra with Jeff Lynne -- had a Top 10 hit
in England with ''Blackberry Way,'' seemingly a rewrite of the
Lennon-McCartney smash ''Penny Lane.'' ''Lies'' by the
Knickerbockers was a 1966 hit single by a New Jersey quartet that
soun
ded so much like the Beatles that many listeners really believed
the band was the Beatles under another name.
     ROGER McGuinn of the Byrds was a folk musician who decided to
go electric after the rise of the Beatles. Bob Dylan has gone on
record as a Beatles fan who picked up an electric guitar after
hearing their string of hit records. ''Smile'' -- Brian Wilson's
 aborted attempt at a grandiose Beach Boys concept album -- was a
reaction to the Beatles' ''Sgt. Pepper,'' as were The Who's
''Tommy,'' The Kinks' ''Victoria,'' the Small Faces' ''Ogden's Nut-
Gone Flake'' and numerous baroque-rock experiments that follo
wed.
     In the '70s, McCartney's discovery, Badfinger, carried the
torch as Beatles clones, breaking through with a hit version of
McCartney's ''Come and Get It.'' The Raspberries, Cheap Trick, Big
Star and E.L.O. adapted different elements of the Beatles' eclec
tic sound.  Chris Difford and Glen Tillbrook of Squeeze were lauded
as the Lennon and McCartney of new wave rock and have a vocal blend
that apes their heroes'. Todd Rundgren scored a Beatle-derived hit,
''I Saw The Light,'' and, later in his career, reco
rded a one-man studio reproduction of ''Strawberry Fields Forever''
as a tribute.
     San Francisco's own Flamin' Groovies used the Beatles'
guitar-driven sound and vocal harmony blend as a jumping-off point
for such rock numbers as ''You Tore Me Down.'' They were so
enamored of their heroes that the Groovies even wore suits made by
the B
eatles' personal Savile Row tailors.
     Other local musicians, from the '60s to the present day, owe
the Beatles a great debt. Jerry Garcia has noted that the Beatles
inspired him and his buddies in the Warlocks, the earliest version
of the Grateful Dead, to play electric rock. Backstage befor
e a show, Chris Isaak and his band sometimes warm up by playing
Beatles songs.
     Left to their own devices after the Beatles broke up, each
member pursued a solo career with varying degrees of success. Upon
Lennon's demise, McCartney became the most visible ex-Beatle, with
two decades of solo albums and highly publicized collaboratio
ns with Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder and Elvis Costello. On his
last world concert tour, McCartney came to grips with his past and
performed a considerable number of classics from the Beatles'
songbook for the first time since the band dissolved. Harris
on received some attention with his ''supergroup'' the Traveling
Wilburys, featuring Tom Petty, Electric Light Orchestra's Jeff
Lynne, Bob Dylan and the late Roy Orbison. Yet the Beatles legend
is stronger than ever.
     It all goes back to the Sullivan show and a more innocent
time. In February of 1964, the nation needed the boost that
Beatlemania provided. Two months prior, the JFK assassination had
thrust the populace into a deep depression. The Beatles might have
pol
arized people, particularly across generational lines, and they
were a fashion litmus test, but their Sullivan date was also a kind
of pep pill for Americans.
     ON their first guest shot with Sullivan, the Beatles performed
five songs over two segments -- ''All My Loving,'' ''Til There Was
You,'' ''She Loves You,'' ''I Saw Her Standing There'' and ''I Want
to Hold Your Hand.'' The band would be back, live, with 
Sullivan the following week and a number of other times in the
'60s, but nothing would ever match the Beatles' first appearance.
It was truly a watershed event.
     From that point on, the band was a lightning rod for changes
that gripped society. Their music was progressively more inventive. 
Their lives were splashed across the press because of mega-stardom,
and their lifestyles embraced experimentation with drugs
 and transcendental meditation. But no one could have guessed the
longevity of the quartet's impact.
     ''I'm grateful because they did what nobody did before,'' said
Sturmer. ''They were given freedom because of their early success. 
They could have repeated themselves, but they tried to grow. They
freed bands and musicians to inject any kind of influence
: jazz into rap, salsa into pop. They turned pop music from radio
fodder into a genuine art form.''

SOME THINK BEATLES SHOULD LET IT BE
     This month, the three surviving Beatles will get together to
record ''incidental music'' for an extensive video documentary on
the band, said Paul McCartney in New York at the recent Rock and
Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony, where his old songwritin
g partner John Lennon was posthumously honored.
     It remains to be seen if anything beyond the ''incidental''
comes out of the sessions, but some observers are not so sure that
a reunion is a good idea.
     The three musicians are each under contract to different
labels.  Because of contractual considerations alone, any new
material that would result from this collaboration would likely
come out under a name other than the Beatles. 
     One thing is certain. George Harrison himself said it a few
years ago: There can be no true Beatles reunion ''as long as John
Lennon remains dead.''
     The synergy of the four together is gone forever. On later
albums, individual Beatles presided over Beatles tracks without
input from other band members, but the others were lurking about to
heap praise or abuse. It might be nice to hear a collaboration 
that went beyond the nostal gia of Harrison's ''When We Was Fab''
solo track, but, at this late date, is it worth damaging the legend
with a substandard reunion?
     It was one of a very few bands of great renown to maintain the
same line-up from first success to break-up. To date, the image of
the Beatles remains pure. While the Stones, Kinks, Who, Byrds, and
Beach Boys all changed personnel because of death or the 
proverbial ''musical differences,'' the Beatles were always an
inviolable ideal.
     Andy Sturmer of Jellyfish, who has recorded with Ringo Starr,
says that he was ''really kind of bummed that they're getting back
together. If they're doing this, I sure don't think anybody should
replace John Lennon. Even if Lennon was alive, I'd be agai
nst it. I think they're doing it for all the wrong reasons, like
money. I don't hear them saying how much they love one another's
solo work.''
     Gin Blossoms vocalist Robin Wilson says, ''The first thing I
thought about a reunion was, 'No. Absolutely not.' I hold the
Beatles in such reverence. Maybe it would be great for the three
guys. But as a fan, I wouldn't want to see them reunite even if Le
nnon was alive. I expect to see the Stones in Vegas 15 years from
now, but the thought of the Beatles' doing something like that
disturbs my very soul.''
     British post-punk folk singer John Wesley Harding has written
a song, ''When the Beatles Hit America,'' wherein the band members
get back together but are whisked into space to a place where
reunions are not expected of them.  Harding says, ''It might ru
in the legacy they've left behind, but they should be allowed to do
whatever they want. As far as finding someone to replace Lennon,
I'd say anyone but Elvis Costello or Jeff Lynne. Maybe (their
producer) George Martin is the best choice.''

GRAPHIC: PHOTO (3),(1) The Beatles with Ed Sullivan during a
rehearsal for their landmark big show, The Fab Four sang five
songs, (2) The Beatles arriving in New York from London on February
7, 1964, (3) Lennon, Not the Beatles without him.