Fans England

Andrew Roachford, the lean lead singer and keyboards player for the British band Roachford, was sitting in a nearly empty poolside restaurant of his West Hollywood hotel one afternoon, sniping at today's soul music and American soul singers. "I get bored with soul," said the 24-year-old black Englishman, guzzling hot chocolate, trying to stay warm on a gray, chilly afternoon that wasn't really ideal for sitting by a pool. This anti-soul diatribe surfaced while Roachford--who was very chatty and often brash--was singing the blues about being pigeonholed as a soul artist.

Imagine it's 8 p.m. on a Sunday 40 years ago and you're tuning in to "The Ed Sullivan Show" to see the Beatles' U.S. TV debut. After the curtain rises on the Feb. 9 show, Sullivan, the former newspaper columnist who was so stiff on camera that he was the butt of countless comedic impressions, steps on stage to face what was, to date, the largest U.S. TV audience ever. "You know, something very nice happened and the Beatles got a kick out of it," the host of the weekly variety show says.

Who, what and where is the Los Angeles football fan? Is the Los Angeles football fan someone who roots for the Anaheim team that used to play in Los Angeles? Is the Los Angeles football fan someone who roots for the former Oakland team that currently plays in Los Angeles? Did the Rams, who from 1937-45 played in Cleveland, take their L.A. football fans with them in 1980 when they moved to Orange County?

Forget Gene Kelly. The new American in Paris is Bruce Springsteen. It's hard to go more than a few hours without hearing--or at least seeing an album cover of--Springsteen's "Born in the U.S.A." After years of rock stardom in America, Springsteen has finally become the rage in Europe too.

It was 40 years ago next week that the Beatles taught their fans to shriek -- here in the United States, that is. In a watershed moment in cultural history, 73 million viewers tuned in to CBS' "The Ed Sullivan Show" on Feb. 9, 1964 to meet John, Paul, George and Ringo. Fans in England and much of Europe had been bonkers for the group for more than a year, but U.S. record executives were dubious that the new British bands would catch on here.

Instead of embracing him for attracting attention to the sport, as the swimmers have Mark Spitz, some gymnasts hope Kurt Thomas falls on his Tsukahara. Thomas is perhaps the best male gymnast the United States has ever produced, but he was denied a chance to compete in the 1980 Summer Olympics because of the boycott. Now, at 35, he is attempting a comeback. On May 18-19, he will compete in a regional qualifying meet at Madison, Wis.

World Cup security officials have long identified some fans of England and the Netherlands as the most high-profile threats to peace during next summer's World Cup. But those teams, their tradition of soccer success notwithstanding, are in danger of failing to qualify for the final. Indeed, the most pressing security threat may lie not in Europe, but in the Asian qualifying zone.

IT'S opening night of the Arctic Monkeys' first formal U.S. tour and 20-year-old Alex Turner leans into the microphone to spit out the opening line to a song about how too much anticipation has a way of setting you up for disappointment. Turner wrote that line months ago, one of the many wry observations about the dreams and disappointments of coming of age in gritty northern England that has made the Monkeys' raw, guitar-driven album one of the most celebrated British debuts in years.

If all the connections worked, I figured I could make it by bus Tuesday afternoon from the FlyAway depot in Van Nuys to LAX for the overnight flight to London's Heathrow Airport, where I could race through customs to the Tube (stick with the Piccadilly Line, much cheaper than the express line), then on to King's Cross train station for a late afternoon ride to Leeds.