The Beatles’ performance of “I Want to Hold Your Hand” on the Ed Sullivan Show. 1964.

 

The Beatles’ performance of “I Want to Hold Your Hand” featured the entire group—John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr. The performance features three guitars, two of which are electric, a drum set, and the vocals of Lennon and McCartney. Seemingly basic on the exterior, the song is fraught with musical sophistication and surprise (MacDonald, 2013). The song does not sustain a constant melody throughout, and thus can be classified as surprising. To further suggest the unpredictability of the song, the “…colloquial opening, to blues turnaround, through a meditative interim that explodes in an outrageous, soaring exclamation – “I can’t hide! I can’t hide!” expresses The Beatles’ unique style, and their style’s unpredictability is perhaps an explanation for the song’s popularity (Gillmore 2000, 101).  More specifically, Lennon and McCartney’s use of falsetto at the end of each verse is likely both for the notion of surprise and emphasis (MacDonald, 2013). Classically, when vocalists implement falsetto, which is characterized by singing higher notes than one’s normal range, they are attempting to place emphasis on a specific phrase, which, in this case would be ‘I want to hold your hand.’

Furthermore, the song displays the band’s implementation of “…melodic sophistication of the best Brill Building compositions, a rhythm perfectly suited to the new dances, and the loose energy of the surf bands—one reviewer tagged it ‘Surf on the Thames,’” explaining the popularity of the song, as it effectively built off of previous and current ‘surf bands’ that specialized in rock n’ roll, like The Beach Boys and The Trashmen (Wald 2009, 231). The Beatles’ performance of “I Want to Hold Your Hand” was “…a summation of all the trends of the previous few years wrapped in a particularly attractive package,” meaning that “…readers didn’t have to choose between buying records by Elvis, Ricky, Frankie, or one of the various Bobbys, because all tastes could be accommodated in one group” (Wald 2009, 231). The Beatles heard the rock n’ roll sounds that took America by storm in the previous decades, and were able to effectively mesh these sounds into a unique style (Ward 1979, E7). In fact, The Beatles “…did not invent a style but simply drew attention to sounds and styles that were current in the United States” (Gillett 321). The band’s ability to combine previous interpretations of rock n’ roll enabled them to present a unique musical style, effectively changing the course of rock n’ roll by introducing a new genre: rock.

While the television was instrumental in delivering The Beatles’ genre-altering performance to millions of individuals through the screen, the enthusiastic shouts and screams from the audience audibly expressed the popularity of the band. Despite the shouts and cheers of the audience not being part of the actual song, listeners and viewers were bombarded with the sounds of screaming girls in the background of the performance (Hess 1992, 87). Individuals viewing The Beatles’ performance at home were also viewing the camera shots of the crowd and could hear the screams of the audience—only creating a sense of obsession and awe for more viewers.