Posted on May 12, 2019
Back in the 1950s and 1960s, The Ed Sullivan Show was one of the most-watched shows in America. It showcased everyone from actors performing dramatic monologues to circus acts, from ballet dancers to rock stars, from short plays to plate spinners to classical musicians to ventriloquists. Even though it's been off the air for more than 70 years, it's still listed one of the best TV shows of all time!
The Ed Sullivan Show was thought of as a bit of star-maker. That show is how multitudes first learned about Elvis Presley, The Beatles, The Supremes, The Beach Boys, The Jackson 5, Stevie Wonder, Janis Joplin, The Rolling Stones, The Muppets, and The Doors. Even Itzhak Perlman, the violinist, got his star-making shot on the show - when he was just 13 years old!
It may also be how millions learned about Bob Dylan - but not because he appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show.
Instead, Dylan famously did NOT appear on the show.
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| Dylan rehearsing on set of The Ed Sullivan Show. |
On this date in 1963, Bob Dylan was supposed to appear on The Ed Sullivan Show. He had already auditioned with the song he was supposed to perform, "Talkin' John Birch Paranoid Blues," and apparently nobody at the show had a problem with the song - which was super satirical, supposedly written by a member of the ultra-right-wing John Birch Society. But during dress rehearsal, a CBS executive decided that the song was too controversial. Dylan was told to either sing another song or change the lyrics.
Dylan didn't like either of those choices, so he walked off set instead.
"No, this is what I want to do," Dylan apparently said. "If I can't play my song, I'd rather not appear on the show."
Unfortunately, CBS owned the record label that Dylan worked with, so that song ended up getting pulled from his album, too! Still, Dylan got lots of press for his principled non-appearance, and he earned lots of respect especially from young people and the "counterculture."
TV has plenty of censorship - and used to have far, far more censorship, in the past - and to a great extent, most of it is a sort of self-censorship, as each channel (or broadcast station) makes its own rules about profanity, explicit sex, and violence / cruelty / gore.
The censorship practiced on The Ed Sullivan Show seems hyper-controlling now.
For example...
...Sullivan asked The Rolling Stones to change "Let's Spend the Night Together" to "Let's Spend Some Time Together," even though that changed not only the lyrics, but even the title of the song! The Rolling Stones agreed to the change.
Sullivan asked Jim Morrison of The Doors to change the words of their big hit from "Girl, we couldn't get much higher" to "Girl we couldn't get much better." Morrison agreed to the change but then went ahead and sang "higher." Sullivan banned the band from any further shows. I talk about the Doors defying Ed Sullivan in more detail here. |
| Ed Sullivan was reportedly furious that Morrison had defied him! |
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