TELEVISION IMPRESARIO ED Sullivan learned early on that a “new-fashioned” rock ’n’ roll sensation could pump up the ratings of his “old-fashioned” Sunday night variety show on CBS. It happened with Elvis. It happened with the Beatles. And as we’ve noted, it happened six times, from 1964 to 1969, with the Rolling Stones.
BILL WYMAN: Well, I think Ed Sullivan can be summed up really easily. Do you remember when the Supremes came on his show and it came time for him to make the announcement? He said, “Ahnd naow, ladies and gen’lmen, for your enjoyment, the . . . the . . . the . . .” and the curtains open and he says, “the Girls.” He had one line to say every ten minutes, but he couldn’t handle it. Every time we were on the show he had to do four re-takes of whatever he was saying. “Heeeeeere’s the Rolling Stones with their new record . . . er . . . uh . . .” He must have been all right at one time. Otherwise he never would have gotten the show, right?
As you might imagine, there was also headline-making controversy attached to some of these appearances. For every fresh-scrubbed, squeaky-clean performance by the Dave Clark Five, Herman’s Hermits, or Gerry and the Pacemakers, there were an equal number of eyebrow-raising moments involving a few of the biggest names in music. In his third appearance on the Sullivan show, in January of 1957, Elvis was shown from the waist up only because of the uproar caused by his first two hip-swiveling performances in 1956. Bob Dylan walked off the show in 1963 when he was prohibited from singing “Talkin’ John Birch Paranoid Blues.” (He never did appear on the broadcast in its remaining eight years on the air.) Another famous incident occurred in 1967 when the show booked the Doors for an appearance on September 17.
RAY MANZAREK: “Light My Fire” went to number one and a day later we got a call from Ed Sullivan saying, “You’re on the show in two weeks.” So we get to New York, get in the rehearsal situation, and right at the end of “Light My Fire,” some guy comes up to us, Ed Sullivan’s son-in-law, actually [Bob Precht], and says, “Very good boys, very good. There’s only one problem. You’re going to have to change the word ‘higher’ . . . You can’t say ‘high’ on nationwide TV.” We said, “Hey, that doesn’t have anything to do with drugs, or anything like that. That’s not a drug song, it’s a love song. We’re so in love, our love couldn’t get much higher.” “I don’t care what your rationale is boys. You can’t say ‘higher’ on nationwide TV. You can say ‘bite my wire’ for all I care, but change it or you’re not on!” We said, “Okay, okay, okay, okay, we’ll change it. Yes sir, yes sir.”
He left the room and we all looked at each other and said, “Let’s not change it.” It was only a five-second delay. It was virtually live. “They’re not going to be able to edit it. Nobody’s gonna even know. So it comes time to sing, man, and there we are: “Girl we couldn’t get much HIGHER!” and we did it for all we were worth. After the show, this guy comes up to us and starts screaming, “You promised! You promised you wouldn’t say ‘higher.’ Why did you do it?” And we said, “Hey, man, in the excitement of the moment—nationwide television—we just forgot. Our minds went blank. You know how musicians are, man. We’re kind of dumb.” And he said, “But you promised,” and walked out of the room, and we never did another Ed Sullivan Show again.
Two famous eyerolls: Mick on Sullivan in 1967; Dean Martin from back in 1964
The Stones handled a very similar situation in a very different way. For their January 15, 1967, live appearance during which they were scheduled to perform and promote the new single “Let’s Spend the Night Together” and “Ruby Tuesday,” the group was famously asked by Sullivan himself to alter the lyric of the former to “Let’s spend some time together.” In this instance, the group complied with Sullivan’s wishes, albeit with Jagger contemptuously rolling his eyes skyward at every opportunity during the song’s entire three minutes and twenty-nine seconds.
BILL WYMAN: If it was England we probably wouldn’t have bothered to go through with it. But the Sullivan show was quite important at the time, reached sixty million people or so, and it was our only shot since you had to agree not to do another big show one month before or after being on it.
Or, to put it another way, Mick Jagger didn’t attend the London School of Economics for nothing!
