Ed Sullivan Changed My Life

Photo of John Varvatos by Danny Clinch

One Sunday night in 1967 when I was nine years old, my father, sister and I tuned in to The Ed Sullivan Show and saw the Rolling Stones play “Let’s Spend the Night Together.”

For me, everything changed. Their clothes, hair, and most of all their attitude got me hooked. From that night on, I would lay in bed every night with my transistor radio, hoping to hear another Stones song. This was the beginning of my addiction. Music seemed to take me someplace. I listened constantly, hoping for that next new discovery. I desperately wanted my own record player and records.

This was tough because I grew up in a very humble household. I took on a paper route, cleaned a neighbor’s pool, raked leaves, shoveled snow, cut lawns and did anything that could earn a little money. I finally had enough to buy my first record player. My obsession with collecting vinyl records began. My goal in life became earning enough money to buy an album a week.

I used to sit on the floor of Sam’s Jams, a local record shop in Detroit, to flip through issues of Creem magazine. Growing up there, I was lucky enough to experience the birth, and at times the demise, of some of the greatest artists of all time: Iggy Pop and the Stooges, the MC5, Alice Cooper, Bob Seger, Grand Funk, Ted Nugent. There was also Motown, with Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, Smokey Robinson, Diana Ross, and the Temptations. Many groups passed through town and I made it my business to see as many of these bands as possible. I loved The New York Dolls, Kraftwerk, Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, the Who, Roxy Music, the Replacements, Mott the Hoople, the Clash — the list goes on and on. There was so much great music hitting the airwaves and my record collection was really starting to take shape.

I will never forget purchasing Led Zeppelin I. The sound that came through the needle on my record player was like nothing I had ever experienced before. It was powerful, electric, and energized in a way that was mesmerizing. It was 1968 and I would hide out in my bedroom, completely blown away and transported to another world. I didn’t think things could get any better. That was, of course, until I saw them live at Cobo Hall in Detroit. It was my first real rock ’n’ roll concert and the ticket cost around $4. To say that it was mind-blowing or monumental or even epic doesn’t begin to touch what I felt that night.

That concert began a journey that has taken me to thousands of live shows. It’s now 41 years later. I have a record collection with over 30,000 vinyls. I’ve had lunch with Jimmy Page. I go to concerts the way other people go to the gym. Who’d have guessed it — Ed Sullivan changed my life.

Menswear designer John Varvatos is rock-and-roll to the core; music influences everything he does, from his collaboration with Converse, updating the brand’s iconic Chuck Taylors, to the location of his new Manhattan boutique, which occupies the same Bowery address that was once home to the legendary rock club CBGB. Like many rock fans of his generation, Mr. Varvatos caught the rock bug at an early age, thanks to a historic piece of live prime-time television.