Do Your Remember the British Invasion (Pt. 2)

The night was Sunday, October 25, 1964. The time slot was 8:00 PM to 9:00 PM. The network was CBS. The show was the one which had launched Beatlemania in America almost ten months before, the Ed Sullivan Show.

Sullivan's show was a true variety show, in which the host, who was a converted newspaper columnist, stood before a stage curtain and introduced one act after another to the studio and TV audiences. When we impatient teenagers tuned in to see the hottest British band since the Beatles — the name was, I believe, the Rolling Stones — we first had to watch:

• Ed's welcome
• A commercial for Lipton Tea
• Crooner Jack Jones singing "Gotta Travel On"
• Comedy team Stiller and Meara doing a parody of European commercials
• Another commercial for Lipton Tea
• Actor Lawrence Harvey reading from Tennyson's poem "Charge of the Light Brigade," then presenting the original 1854 bugle to a Major Barryman (while a bugler played)
• Youthful comedian London Lee talking in defense of teenagers
• A commercial for Anacin pain reliever

(See this rundown on the TV.com website.)

Then, finally, came this:



The song was "Around and Around," as performed by Mick Jagger on lead vocal, Keith Richards on solo guitar, Brian Jones also on guitar, Bill Wyman on bass, and Charlie Watts on drums.

Then we had to wait again while:

• Charlie Drake, pantomime comedian, played "The Little Picture Hanger," a character who created chaos while trying a hang a picture
• Kent cigarettes presented a commercial
  
• The Kim Sisters performed "Joshua"
• Jim Hammerstein, son of Oscar Hammerstein of Rodgers and Hammerstein fame, made a cameo appearance
  
• The Kim Sisters returned to perform a traditional bagpipe song with a Scottish bagpipe band
• The Berosini Family did acrobatics
• Commercials advertised Pillsbury Crescent Dinner Rolls and Pillsbury Chocolate Chip Cookie Mix.
• Jack Jones returned to sing "Bewitched"

Just as we were beginning to worry that the show had run long and the Rolling Stones would not reappear after all, our patience was rewarded:



(Just ignore the unwelcome "What are you people, on dope?" spliced into the beginning ... that did not — repeat, did not — occur on the actual Sullivan broadcast.)

"Time Is on My Side" was to become one of the early hits for a band that went on to become a veritable rock legend!