Is it fare to compare Beatles Ed Sullivan to MJ on Motown 25th?

But adults were talking about Michael as well. And in a way "nothing was the same" after Michael's moonwalk (I'll agree to a lesser extent). I remember my dad asking me about Michael Jackson and what I though of him and for him to show any interest or curiosity whatsoever in pop music was very odd (knowing my dad). I would think if you were a teen or preteen when the Beatles appeared on Ed Sullivan that would have naturally been a more impressionable moment than Michael on Motown 20 years later.

 

Well said, Dennis..well said. As well as there's really no reason too.

I saw both as they happened those nights and l liked them both but The Beatles had never been seen before in this country.

Michael was well known, it's just that he had a new grown up look and act as well as sound going for him.

That's about the easiest way it can be explained. So if you weren't there for The Beatles as it happened there would be no fair way to try and dispute anything between the artists. Except to say whether you liked/loved them or not.

But to compare The Beatles Sullivan performance against Michael's Motown 25th Anniversary performance. There's just no way to make it rational IMHO.

 

Sorry...double post.

 

I think it's a fair comparison. The volume of worth is subjective. Some folks can't take any comparisons to the Beatles. Not that it's a huge deal on any level.

 

I was probably in 9th grade, and went to an entirely white school as well, and never even heard of the 25th Anniversary show at the time, or, to be honest, for decades after the fact.

Not saying I didn't know Michael or his music and the moonwalk, but even with MTV, I have no recollections of that concert.

 

Here's an MJ style "Moonwalk" from 1982.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ImkBve8OW8

Funny story from the Motown 25:

My whole family watched the Billie Jean performance and the Moonwalk. While my sister & I went "Wow", my dad said "that's nothing new". He got up, took off his shoes and did the stationary "Moonwalk" a la Ronnie Hawkins.
He then thought about it for a couple of seconds and quickly worked out a true "Moonwalk" in about 2 minutes.

After we looked on in amazement and begged him to "do it again", he sat back down on the couch and said "You'll have to pay me $10,000.00 like Michael Jackson first". He never did the dance move for us again.

I felt the "Thriller" video a few months later was the apex as opposed to the Billie Jean from Motown 25.

 

No, maybe he felt that buying the Beatle catalogue was the closest he would ever get to being as classy as the Fab's!

 

It's similar also to some moves that David Bowie did during the early 70's particularly during the "Young Americans" tour IIRC.

 

Um yeah, that lasting impact sure stuck like flies on a pile of...

...versus the positive impact of people of all ages actually going out to buy a real instrument, practice and play music themselves (and sing live) to various degrees of success, personal growth and enjoyment.

The magnitude of the difference is being forgotten over time because the world has changed so much in those passing years. Had the full extent of everything that happened in 1964 (and beyond) been instantly transmitted and documented around the world--and easily accessible to everyone on their cable & satellite TVs, computers and cell phones--then it would be clear to the people who didn't live through that time how laughable any more modern comparison really is.

 

Wow! Finally, visual proof of a "MJ style Moonwalk" pre-Motown 25. That is why I love this forum! Thanks for providing this.

 

Michael Jackson & Jeffrey Daniel:The story of the Moonwalk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FuAp4p2_PHE&feature=related

 

Both were historically and culturally significant in their respective eras, at least in America.
I am delighted to have seen both. Comparing them serves no purpose for me.

 

That guy must be pretty pissed off that history seems to have completely ignored him...

 

No, not live. It was shown quite a few times in different TV shows. So it was something that had international repercussion, even though it had more to do with the telecommunication technology of the time than, for instance, Michael Jackson having more impact than the Beatles. The Beatles were as popular in Brazil as anywhere else, but nobody knew about the Ed Sullivan Show in Brazil in the 60's. On the other hand, Michael Jackson's performance on the Motown special was widely shown. But not live.

 

In the clip I linked to he was very generous in his praise.

 

To the OP: Yes. (Fair, not Fare)

 

Wow, I don't think anybody else noticed that...

 

There is a message on his web site.

http://jeffreydaniel.com/

 

Just as big if not bigger, I remember working at a photo studio north of Boston and the next morning MJ was all the buzz during our morning coffee break. The next day someone brought a video of it in and we all (about 15 of us) went up to the break room and watched it.

Ya gotta remember people had cable then so there was other TV options and this was a Motown special not like the most popular show on TV like Ed Sullivan!,when the Beatles were on Sullivan they were playing to a captive audience.

 

It had the same cultural impact certainly.

 

When the Beatles appeared on Ed Sullivan, "I Want To Hold Your Hand" had been #1 one week. All any Americans had seen of the Beatles playing music before that night were a few seconds shown here & there on the news.[/QUOTE]

I am nowhere the Beatle freak that many here are,but remember that Jack Parr gave significant time to the Beatles five weeks prior,Jan.3. While even Parr only had a partial performance of "She Loves You"(on film),there is enough there to see what the fuss was all about. And this was shown on Friday at 10PM EST when there were only three networks and some areas didn't even have three stations in their viewing area. And,yes,even then Fridays at 10PM was somewhat a graveyard for TV(NBC would bury "Star Trek"in that same slot a few years later),but for most of the US,if you wanted to watch TV at that time,there wasn't much choice. Parr did OK and probably still made money for NBC. I did see the Parr show first time around. Coming just a few weeks after JFK's assassination(a subject dear to Parr)this kind of light fare(Parr plays the film for laughs,much as he did on many of his tour films) was not unlike Letterman asking permission to tell jokes after 9/11.
My recollection of the Sullivan show is hazy. I know our family watched the followup shows,but I can't recall actually seeing the first one live. Sullivan was never the show of preference in our house;too much variety sometimes satisfies no one and the TV was ruled by four boys ranging from 8 to 17. Wikipedia shows that the second half of both Disney and "Wagon Train",a western,were oppposite Sullivan. We usually opted to watch "My Favorite Martian",a half-hour sitcom which preceeded Sullivan on CBS,but if Disney was showing cartoons,that might have been where we went at 8PM. But let me tell you,as a 12 year old,I remember the Beatles in every news report before,during and after that show. Front page of the newspaper. Newsreels in the movie theatre(our local second-run house still had a newsreel).I have an unscoped taped hour from an MOR radio station in Philly and the Beatles arrival in NYC was maybe the third story. Sinatra at the Paramount,Elvis in and out of the Army-I suspect even the Beatles topped these as real news stories about pop music events. Huge!

 

:[/QUOTE
It was a touchstone moment because it started Beatlemania and essentially the 60's, but any version of "I Want To Hold Your Hand" is not revelatory

Well if you listen to the big boys of classic rock you will here them say it was such a big deal that it's hard to explain. It made them get into music.

 

Touche!

 

This is a perfect example of just how much American culture has changed. It was big news back then that the Beatles were the third biggest story on "serious" newscasts. Nowadays they would have been almost the only news that day, even on "serious" news broadcasts. Just like with Jackson last week...