Chuck Quinzio's book "Life Behind The Camera" features some really compelling stories about covering the news on the streets of Chicago, but it also has a few selected memories from Chuck's childhood. Quinzio has a colorful way of telling those stories, including this one about the Beatles performing on the Ed Sullivan Show. In honor of the 50th anniversary of that iconic event, we're publishing this excerpt from Chapter One of Chuck's book...
President Kennedy had just been assassinated when the Beatles invaded America with their music and sense of fashion. I was one of God’s soldiers. The Beatles or anyone like them were considered devils on earth to the nuns in my Catholic School, yet The Ed Sullivan Show brought them into our living rooms on a Sunday night. After I witnessed their first American performance on our black and white Philco television set, I was blown away.
Evidently, the nuns watched the same thing that night in their nun lair because the next afternoon the class was ordered by our Christian overseers never to watch the Beatles again. They sent letters to all of our parents and ordered them to ban The Ed Sullivan Show from our homes. The most exciting thing I’d seen since I was old enough to realize I was condemned to this small town was being taken away!
According to the nuns, rock and roll music brought the evils of drugs and sex into the world. As I look back at it now, I find it ironic that a group of forty and fifty-year-old women preached so strongly against two things they never experienced. But then one Friday, a miracle happened. The principal, the oldest and nastiest nun of all of them, got on the school’s public address system and announced that she was sending home a letter to our parents asking them to watch The Ed Sullivan Show with us on the upcoming Sunday night. According to her, the Beatles were making a return per- formance, and Sister wanted our parents to be proactive and explain first-hand how negative these young men from England were.
My classmates and I were elated. We cheered in our little Catholic hearts and minds, until she pissed on our parade with a final scary closing announcement. “God’s judgment is swift and final on those who sin or follow those who sin,” she said.
Sunday night came, and my family and I huddled around the television as we were instructed to do. My parents looked nervous and unsure. Ed Sullivan opened the show, and you could have heard a pin drop in my house. But the head nun had gotten the wrong information. The musical guests were from England, but they weren’t the Beatles.
Before we knew it, Ed introduced the Rolling Stones, and my living room quickly went from apprehension to sheer fear as Mick Jagger lunged to- ward the camera and sang an up-tempo version of “Let’s Spend The Night Together.” The Stones were thugs, and they were singing about banging chicks on national television. I kept one eye focused on my parents, while the other watched Jagger’s spastic movements. He was shaking his hips and strutting around the stage. The women were going wild in the audience.
I remember one shot of Ed Sullivan wringing his hands and smiling off-stage. I glanced at my mother who was sitting in a dimly lit corner. She was obviously being consumed by fear. When the Stones ended their song, it was like a tornado had blown through my house. The television was shut off and not a word was spoken.
That’s the night I realized there was an entire world out there. A world had been dropped right into my lap by television, showing me the awesome potential of the medium.
I also came to another conclusion. If the nuns were insinuating that listening to rock music would send me straight to hell, then those nuns could take their beliefs and kiss my grade school ass.
Photo: the young impressionable Mr. Quinzio
