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It couldn’t have been a better time for the country to meet the Beatles. Just three months before their introduction to North America, the world was jolted by the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Kennedy represented hope and a new beginning for the baby boom generation.

When JFK died so violently it shocked the world. Canada was no exception. I remember sitting in my classroom in school when an emergency announcement came on from the principal that President Kennedy had been shot and school was cancelled. I left class that day and watched teachers and random people on the street weeping for themselves and the fate of the world. I came home to my devastated mother and aunt. It was as though the world had come to an end. For the burgeoning television generation that I was part of, the coverage of Kennedy’s assassination and its aftermath was overwhelming. That heavy cloud was the backdrop to Ed Sullivan’s gift to North America that February night. It has been said so many times before, but the Beatles really were what the Western world was waiting for. Everyone, particularly my generation, needed a reason to believe that the world was a good place, that our lives had meaning, and that our future held promise.

Exposure to pop culture was limited in the early ’60s. There was no MTV or VH1—only television variety shows, movies, radio, and print. That meant that if you wanted to know what was happening in the music scene you had to listen to your favorite pop radio station, catch the hottest TV show, and speak to your friends to keep up. My brother, Steve, and sister, Myrna, were older and more in tune with what was happening and I went along for the ride. They had the turntable and the records. I had the comics.

Before the Beatles, the pop charts were filled with bouncy pop tunes like crooner Steve Lawrence’s “Go Away Little Girl,” the Four Seasons’ “Walk Like a Man,” “He’s So Fine” by the Chiffons, and “Blue Velvet” by Bobby Vinton. These were sweet, nonthreatening songs that the whole family could love. One-hit wonders sung by finely groomed white teenagers filled the airwaves. It was a far cry from the hip-shaking, lip-snarling “Jailhouse Rock” of Elvis Presley just a few years before.

Elvis had been drafted into the army in 1958, sent to Germany, and rock and roll had taken a turn for the worse. During his absence the charts were littered with fluff like “Venus,” “Alley-Oop,” “The Chipmunk Song,” and “Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polkadot Bikini.” When Elvis and his particularly “deviant” music left the scene, the moguls of the recording industry—with some prodding from parent groups and congressmen—encouraged a cleaner, whiter diet of all-American pop.

Some musical gems managed to sneak through, however, and many of these reached the Beatles when the Atlantic ships docked in the port of Liverpool bringing goods from America, including records like “Kansas City,” “Will You Love Me Tomorrow,” “Mack the Knife,” “Hit the Road Jack,” and “Please Mr. Postman.” It was these songs plus those by Buddy Holly, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, and of course, pre-Army Elvis that had the greatest influence on the Beatles.

The day Elvis was inducted into the Army, March 24, 1958, John Lennon was seventeen years old and Paul McCartney just fifteen. The world’s greatest songwriting team had met less than a year earlier, on July 6, 1957. That day, Paul McCartney impressed John with his ability to sing all the lyrics to Eddie Cochrane’s “Twenty Flight Rock.” Within a day, he was invited to join Lennon’s group, then called the Quarrymen after John’s high school, Quarry Bank. Within weeks, Paul’s younger mate George Harrison came on board. A few years later, the ill-fated Pete Best was dumped to make room for Ringo Starr, and the Fab Four as we know it was created. Within five years they would be on the cusp of history-making stardom with the release of “Love Me Do” in the UK on October 5, 1962.

Right around the Sullivan broadcast I remember working on a school project on the Guttenberg Bible one Sunday with a classmate