Great idea for a thread, and I cannot believe that nobody else has taken the opportunity to post here yet.
Obviously, I didn't see The Beatles perform on the Ed Sullivan Show; we don't have US TV in western Europe, and, while I do have some Beatles' numbers imprinted on my soul, maybe not quite that far back.
But yes, all of that music - and not only the Beatles' - formed a backdrop, and soundtrack, to my childhood, and I do recall what seemed to be a climate of bizarre optimism, people really thought things could be and could get, better, and were more open, and positive than maybe was later the case.
As a teenager, looking back, I loved the energy and rhythm of the early Beatles' stuff - including 'A Hard Day's Night', and much else from 1964 and 1965. Now, I find I much prefer their more mature stuff - say, much of what they did from 'Revolver' onwards (though some of the music from 'Rubber Soul' would also make the cut). These days, my favourite Beatles' albums are the 'White' album, and 'Abbey Road', with 'Revolver' and 'Sgt Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band' next.
Re culture (which also, inevitably, means politics), I read a fascinating article recently in The Guardian. This argued that recent educational 'reforms' in the UK (reforms which have served to increase the cost of education, and therefore, ensure that access to education is made a lot more difficult and - in essence - unaffordable for those from less well off backgrounds, which is the clear intent of those in power) will have an effect not simply on enabling - or rather, preventing - working class kids to get to college, but will also have an effect on culture and the arts.
Here, the argument is that bright or creative kids from troubled or financially stressed backgrounds -who don't wish to attend university, used to be able to find a voice via art school training, or other such outlets, outlets which are now having their state funding slashed.
The Beatles' were very much the product of this sort of background, alienated bright kids who found their voice through art college (at least John Lennon and Stuart Sutcliffe did) and eventually migrated to other creative forms.
The Guardian piece argued that by depriving bright and creative kids from dysfunctional and poor (or poorer) backgrounds from access to such forms of higher education, especially alternative forms of education (such as art college) such policies, firstly, snuff out potential routes for kids from such backgrounds to find their voice, and vocation; secondly, it makes what passes for artistic, (acting, art, music) activity and endeavour to have much less strength in depth, and much less vibrancy, and indeed, authenticity, because thirdly, the only people - nowadays - who can afford to make a career in the arts are those who have come from relatively privileged backgrounds.
The Beatles' were a product of, not just postwar cultural & musical influences from across the Atlantic, (such as angry music, and a welcome and overdue dropping of the old habits of deference to the wealthy and powerful), but were also a product of the reforms, in education, society, the economy and politics which were enacted by the reforming Labour Government of Clement Attlee from 1945, with legislation such as the earlier (Labour influenced) Education Act of 1944.
Without such reforms, which allowed kids from dysfunctional backgrounds a chance at higher education, and thus, the voice, the vocabulary and the means to change their own lives and the lives of those their music & art in turn, influenced, the cultural revolution of the 1960s in the UK would not, and could not, have happened.
