You’ve gotta love YouTube. You want to see an event captured on film or video? All you have to do is plug it into YouTube’s search bar. You’ll find not just contemporary material, but also footage from long before YouTube, some of it remastered and colorized, some of it raw.

Case in point: The 50th anniversary of the Beatles’ first U.S. tour. While the video of the band’s first live TV performance on this shore, their famous Ed Sullivan show special, was removed from YouTube in the past week, footage of their show at the Washington Coliseum 50 years ago today is still available. It’s much more raw than the Ed Sullivan segment and the sound’s not so great (hang in there, it does improve), but just soak up the energy.

If you want to see more, go to YouTube and type into the search bar. When you’re wondering which of the many search results to click on, pay attention to how many views each video has had and favor those with the most views. You’ll find the complete video of the Beatles’ film “A Hard Day’s Night” (use the filter below the search bar to search only for videos 20 minutes or longer) and you might come across this, made just three years after the band’s first U.S. appearance on February 10, 1967.

What a shift!

A Day In the Life

Share your thoughts!