When The Beatles Arrived in the U.S.

by Greg Masters

Already a rocking band,
they’d let their hair grow
a bit longer than we Yanks
were used to at the time.
The girls in the studio
audience at The Ed Sullivan
Show on February 9, 1964,
were near hysteria recognizing
that a new breed of male was
before them on stage.
The lads’ longer hair,
I postulate, was a
signal that these four
musicians—armed with
electric guitars and the
means to pound joyous rhythm—
were accepting the feminine
aspect of their being,
a welcome option from
the predominant model
here stateside of
young men going off
to Vietnam bearing firearms
to kill strangers they’d been
brainwashed into
believing were a threat to
the American way of life.
We attentive young guys
were more reserved than
our sisters but we too knew
something was up in the
harmonies, the highest form
of agreement, an alternative
to the prescribed edicts
to which we were expected
to surrender.
How many young Americans
assembled in garages
and basements to
emulate this new model
of devotion to expression
rather than aggression?