{"id":687030,"date":"2026-05-22T19:56:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-22T19:56:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/687030\/"},"modified":"2026-05-22T19:56:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-22T19:56:09","slug":"americas-where-all-the-music-we-loved-came-from-rock-n-roll-the-blues-and-the-whole-thing-paul-mccartney-remembers-the-beatles-first-us-tv-appearance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/687030\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cAmerica\u2019s where all the music we loved came from – rock \u2018n\u2019 roll, the blues and the whole thing\u201d: Paul McCartney remembers The Beatles’ first US TV appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show as he closes the final Late Show With Stephen Colbert"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Late Show With Stephen Colbert came to an end last night (21 May) with a very special surprise guest \u2013 literally – switching off the lights: Paul McCartney<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Macca\u2019s presence was significant since the show is, well, was filmed at the Ed Sullivan Theater in New York, famous, of course, for being the site of the Beatles<\/a> record-breaking appearance on Sullivan\u2019s TV show in February 1964, seen by a mind-boggling 73 million Americans.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The 83-year-old Beatle, who releases his The Boys Of Dungeon Lane album next week<\/a>, spoke about his memories of that first US TV appearance: \u201cWe were a little bit nervous, but we\u2019re young kids and we\u2019re sort of full of ourselves. It was very exciting. America\u2019s where all the music we loved came from – rock \u2018n\u2019 roll, the blues and the whole thing, even going back to Fred Astaire. The land of the free; the greatest democracy,\u201d he recalled, before adding, perhaps pointedly: \u201cThat was what it was, and still is, hopefully.\u201d<\/p>\n

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And it was McCartney who played the show out with The Beatles’ Hello Goodbye, which featured another of the last show\u2019s guests, Elvis Costello, Jon Batiste, Louis Cato and Colbert himself on backing vocals. At the song\u2019s Hawaiian-style coda, other guests from the show came on stage, then crew members, before the scene cut to Colbert and McCartney in the theatre\u2019s basement, debating who should be the one to cut the power on the show.<\/p>\n

Earlier on, Colbert had got to fulfil a long-time wish by performing Jump Up, a somewhat obscure Elvis Costello song, with its composer.<\/p>\n

Back in 2012, in an interview with NPR Live, he spoke about his admiration: \u201cI love the song because it\u2019s sort of a satirical song\u2026 I\u2019ve always loved that line \u2018it\u2019s a two-horse race, and he changes bets like it was another brand of cigarettes.\u2019 And back, long before I did political satire, I thought, yeah, isn\u2019t that interesting.\u201d<\/p>\n

And so departs one of the mainstays of late night TV, for it\u2019s not just Colbert that\u2019s leaving but The Late Show itself \u2013 CBS announced it was cancelling it last year, with the network claiming the decision was financial and nothing at all to do with Colbert\u2019s criticism of Trump.<\/p>\n

Want all the hottest music and gear news, reviews, deals, features and more, direct to your inbox? Sign up here. <\/p>\n

Music has always been a key part of the show\u2019s format and its termination means there\u2019s one less nightly slot for live music on network TV. Whatever your shade of politics, that has to be a crying shame.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Late Show With Stephen Colbert came to an end last night (21 May) with a very special…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":687031,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[49,48,75,341],"class_list":["post-687030","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/687030","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=687030"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/687030\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/687031"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=687030"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=687030"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=687030"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}