ladies and gentlemen, for the first time on the air in the united states, here are the beatles singing i want to hold your hand. oh, yeah, i tell you something i think you ll understand that song really started to take off. it was impossible to anticipate how much that momentum would continue. hi, everybody. all over america, this is the wwbc party go, go. i want to hold your hand that song was absolutely contagious. i think the teenager found a voice. here s what s happening, baby. the beatles! there was a moment where you just heard, this is our music now. it was like hearing the future. i want to hold your hand i have to ask how you first found out about them.
we first heard about the beatles in the london airport. there was an enormous crowd of kids gathered around. and we asked what was going on? we didn t each know who the beatles were, we never heard of them. that night i booked ringo starr, paul mccartney, george harrison and john lennon for three shows for $10,000. for four white guys that were british, to come out of nowhere and be everywhere was quite unbelievable. the beatles are a butch of guys from liverpool. i mean, people in london would have looked down at liverpool back then. but liverpool was a port town and port towns become places where all sorts of contraband gets exchanged. one of them at that point was great music. a lot of the sailors coming back to america were bringing back these records. some were pop records. some were race records because they were by black artists.
it s crucial that it should progress as art. the british invasion changed pretty much everything. it was not just a sound or a band or a phenomena. but it was the beginning of the most powerful decade in popular music. rock n roll music was very important in the growth of the society. we were able to speak our minds. we did shake up the world. there s no desire in any of our heads to sort of take over the world. there is, however, a desire to get power in order to use it for good.
together and help each other. the who is like four different creatures who weren t even noticing each other. everyone in the who was like the lead player in the who. all these great bands created this thirst in music. but the ones who had the true talent have really stood the test of time. five singing boys from england who sold a lot of albums. they re called the rolling stops. i ve been rolled while i was stoned myself. i don t know what they re singing about, but here they are. [ applause ] i don t want to work all day i just want to make love to
there were f.m. radio stations that did nothing but play sergeant peppers band over and over because that s the only thing people wanted to listen to. sergeant peppers became the thing. you drop the needle on it and you would hear a crackle and be taken away on this journey. sergeant pepper was our opera. it sounded unlike anything we were used to. the 60s, lyrics are generally infantile and it s noise, not music. but the sergeant pepper album was brilliant, signifying a break from the old ways of being entertained. it really caught the moment. this music is crucial to today s art, and it s crucial that it should remain art, and