IN THE CLASSROOM:Rock ‘n’ roll retrospective

On Feb. 9, 1964, four young Englishmen in matching suits played the Ed Sullivan Show for the first time. Teenage girls screamed in the audience and tugged their hair. More than 70 million viewers tuned in — and according to some reports, the crime rate across America plummeted for an hour.

Beatlemania had struck, and the Western world changed overnight.

On Thursday, the guitars, drums and screams sounded in the Robert B. Moore Theatre at Orange Coast College, but this time students sat quietly in the audience and watched bemused. Young women filled the auditorium, but rather than scream or faint, they scribbled notes in their binders.

It was the fourth week in Joe Poshek’s History of Rock Music class, where the revolution of half a century ago becomes the museum piece of today.

“That performance, for those who saw it on the television — me included — is one of those moments that have left an indelible mark on your mind,” said Poshek, introducing the Sullivan footage to students whose parents may not have been born yet in 1964.

Poshek, a trained musician, did witness much of pop history growing up — and he combines it into a course that tracks the music from its origins until the present day. In the first few classes this fall, he and his students listened to jazz, the Delta blues and other forms that gave birth to rock ‘n’ roll, then dove into the explosion of the music from the 1950s.

“It’s pretty great, because you get where rock ‘n’ roll comes from, not just where it started,” said student Spencer Hannemann, 18, of Irvine.

By Thursday, Poshek had guided his students to a shaky moment in rock history. In the early 1960s, much of the initial luster had worn off the music, and mainstream pop had grown blander.

Across the Atlantic, however, a new movement was brewing — thanks in part to a stagnant English economy and sailors who carried rock records to the docks of Liverpool.

The Beatles, Poshek reminded the class, not only revived rock ‘n’ roll, but exploded it, bringing in world music, children’s songs and even punk. At one point, he posted a lengthy list on the screen of all the styles the group covered, playing sound clips of “Yellow Submarine,” “You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away” and other classics.

Students who attended the class — many of them wearing T-shirts of The Who and other favorite bands — said learning the history of rock music made listening to it a different experience.

“Actually, it made me like rock even better,” said Eric Erickson, 18, of Fountain Valley. “It gave me more insight into the effect it had on society.”