Did you scream when they came on like all the other girls? I was in second grade in 64...
I'm an expert because we had black and white TV.
#A The only music in my life back then was AM radio in my parents car. They listened to Perry Como, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, etc. The Ed Sullivan Show was my first exposure to rock and roll. I prefered the Stones to the Beatles at the time.
I did not scream. I was a dignified child.
However, there is a story.
We lived in a duplex apartment in Charlotte at the time. The other side of the duplex was occupied by a mother and daughter. Mother turned out to be a little off in the head. Daughter was maybe fourteen or fifteen at the time.
That same night that the Beatles were supposed to be on ES, we had been hearing "commotion" from the other side of the duplex for quite some time. Their front door slammed, then it got quiet except for tiny sounds coming from the porch. Parents were concerned, and eventually opened the door to find daughter sitting on the front steps in the cold, no coat or sweater, cold enough outside to see your own breath. They ushered her inside, and she sat down in the floor with me and we watched the Beatles together. Sure seemed as if she forgot all about her mom.
I did not scream, but I'll be damned if she didn't very nearly faint. I seriously thought she was going to faint. I could not have put it into the right words at the time, but looking back on it from age, I think hyperventilation is what was going on.
It was most definitely a cultural phenomenon, not sure we as a society have experienced anything else quite like it since. It's difficult to even describe it from this distance.