( CNN ) -- Fifty years ago this weekend , a four-piece guitar band from Liverpool touched down at Kennedy airport in New York and changed the course of popular culture in the twentieth century . That much we can be sure of , and since the days of Beatlemania that guitar band has been credited with changing music , fashion , culture and everything else that really counted in the sixties . The trans-Atlantic entertainment industry is gearing up for an avalanche of tributes and events to commemorate this anniversary . The dyspeptic rock critic Lester Bangs once railed against the never-ending re-release of the Beatles catalog by asking : `` I 'd like to know what I have missed by not missing the Beatles . '' The answer over the next few weeks is plenty : concerts , exhibits , panel discussions , documentaries , conferences and a pre-recorded Grammy tribute featuring a `` reunion '' of Paul and Ringo . For that generation lucky enough to be swept along by Beatlemania , it was a unique event , a turning point for some . There are still plenty of Americans of a certain age who can tell you exactly what happened when they first saw the Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show that chilly February night : `` I was two inches from the screen , screaming . '' The run-up to this anniversary feels a little like the preparations for the Beatles arrival in 1964 , when there was a continual stream of tidbits , teasers and promotions which announced `` The Beatles are Coming ! '' But instead of radio bulletins , high-school gossip , and those flyers that Capitol records distributed to record stores nationwide , this time the news comes to us on mobile phones and lap tops , in web casts and posts on the internet . If you miss the rebroadcast of the Ed Sullivan show this weekend you can easily retrieve it from numerous sites on the world wide web , but back in 1964 you had to wait a whole week for the next Ed Sullivan Show . This of course added to the tension and increased the expectation of another television event which could not be missed . If a note of self-congratulation enters into the celebrations , you can hardly blame the record and television companies for waxing nostalgic for a time when Americans were locked into watching three channels and still buying records . In the fractured and endlessly expanding digital world , nobody will be able to recreate the excitement of Beatlemania because it is no longer possible to completely command the media as the Beatles did back in 1964 . The triumph of Beatlemania was essentially a triumph of the record -- the seven inch vinyl disc -- and a demonstration of its potency in diffusing culture and creating value . Beatlemania 's anniversary might be the time to mark an end of that era , when records were something you treasured . In the digital world sound recordings are cheap and disposable ; you wo n't be able to relive the giddy excitement of returning home with that priceless copy of `` I Want to Hold Your Hand '' with an MP3 download . The anniversary of Beatlemania will doubtless see more praise heaped on the musicians and their timeless music . But who were the architects of Beatlemania ? Brian Epstein planned the campaign , perfected the look and made the deals ( some strokes of genius , others not ) . Above all he saw the American market as the pinnacle of success : `` We knew that America would make us or break us as world stars ... In fact , she made us . '' How ironic that what began as an exercise in American exceptionalism ended in a `` British Invasion '' of imported music , fashion and design that swept all before it and made the sixties look and sound like the sixties . Beatlemania marked the ascendancy of British-based television producers who created a new type of music program -- live , frenetic , engaging -- and made the Beatles its most able practitioners . Beatlemania was powered by radio : not crystal-clear broadcasts from corporate headquarters but crackling , crummy AM , with crazed disc jockeys like Murray the K providing a running commentary of Beatlemania and whipping the fans into a frenzy . Those tiny transistor radios that the girls carried with them connected them to a larger community of Beatle lovers , a radio family who dressed alike , thought alike and shared the same obsession . Fifty years on that community sees Beatlemania as a special moment in time . There was an air of expectation in the crowd awaiting the Beatles at Kennedy : `` At the airport you could really feel that something was happening ... you felt like this was the beginning of the earthquake . '' And it was . The Beatles touched teenagers like no other band before or after , lifting their fans ' gaze above the buying and selling of a commodity to an aura of hope and a state of transcendence . In 1964 music could change your life . The Beatles proved it . Read more : The Beatles of myth , the Beatles of reality . Read more : Did Beatles push black music aside ? Read more : I was a Beatlemaniac . The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Andre Millard .
Historian Andre Millard says nobody will be able to recreate the excitement of Beatlemania . The fractured digital world makes it impossible to completely command the media as the Beatles did back in 1964 . Beatlemania 's anniversary might be the time to mark an end of the era , when records were something you treasure , he says .