Final due asap

Guralnick, Peter. Sweet 50111 Music: RIll/tllm and Billes and tile Southem Dream o( Freedolll.

New York: Harper & Row, 1986.
Hirshey, Gerri. Nml’11ere to RUI1: Tile Story 0(50111 Music. New York: Penguin Books, 1984.
Ward, Brian. JIlSt My Soul Respollding: RI1ytllm and Billes, Black Consciousness, and Race
Relations. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1998.
Wexler, Jerry, and David Ritz. Rhlltlml alld Billes: A Life in A11leriC17n Music. New York:
Alfred A. Knopf, 1993.
Discography
Atlantic RJlytlml E:” B111es 1947-1974. Atlantic, 1991.

Cooke, Sam. Tlte BeM of Sam Cooke, RCA Victor, 1962.

____. Port mit ora Legl’l1d 1951-1964. Abkco, 2003.

James, Etta. At Lasl! Chess, 1961.

___. Tlte Denilitive Collectioll. Geffen, 2006.

Wilson, Jackie. The Ultimate Jackie Wilson. Brunswick, 2006.

1:
f….’.•….•
“,1
‘
r

10.1
34. No Town Like Motown
As the term “soul music” began to enter mainstream usage, black popular
music increasingly cut its ties with 1950S rhythm and blues to establish a
distinctive 1960s soul genre. At the same time, differences began to
emerge between a down-home, “southern” soul style – identified with the
Stax and Atlantic recording companies and with studios based in Memphis
and Muscle Shoals, Alabama-and a “northern,” “smooth,” or “uptown”
soul style- identified primarily with Motown Records based in Detroit.
The story of Motown is so remarkable as to become the stuff of
myth. Aspiring songwriter Berry Gordy (b. 1929 and the writer of Jackie
Wilson’s biggest hit, “lonely Teardrops”) began the company on a family
loan of $700 in 1959. Gordy’s keen ear for catchy tunes and infectious
rhythms, along with his deft judgment of personnel and his business
sense, combined to establish Motown as both the most Successful inde­
pendent record company and the most successful black-owned business
in the United States by the mid- 1960s.
Initially, Motown’s musical style blended in with other developments in
R&B and pop with its successful recordings by girl groups (e.g., the
Marvellettes. “Please Mr. Postman,” 1961) and soulful ballads (e.g., the _
Miracles, “You Really Got a Hold on Me,” 1963). Gradually a distinctive style
began to form; “Heat Wave” (1963) by Martha and the Vandellas provided
a template: Written and produced by the songwriting team of Holland­
Dozier-Holland (the most successful of such teams at the company), the
recording features Martha Reeves’s gospel-influenced vocal over an irre­
sistably danceable groove and an instantly memorable melody. Between
1964 and 1972, Motown produced an extraordinary number of hits; its roster
of artists included many of the leading names of 1960s soul: (in addition to
those already noted) the Supremes, the FourTops, the Temptations, Marvin
Gaye, Mary Wells, Junior Walker and the All Stars, Smokey Robinson
(songwriter and leader of the Miracles), Stevie Wonder, the Isley Brothers,
and Gladys Knight and the Pips. The sound, while frequently stereotyped as
being only “sweet” and “pop,” actually ranged from the pop stylings of the
Supremes (“Where Did Our Love Go?” “Baby love,” “Come See About Me”­
all from 1964-6 5) to the downright fonkiness of Junior Walker and the All
Stars (“Shotgun,” 1965).’
1. For more nn the stylistic range of 1\1oto\\’I1, St-‘e Jon Fitzgerald, “Motown Crossover Hits
1963-196(-, and the Creative rruce.ss,” Pupular A1ll~ic, 14, no, 1 (January tq( 5): 1–12; for a less-than­
tlatt~ring account of the cOl1lpany, sec Nelson George, Where Did Ollr I~01’e Go? The Ri,e alld Fall ol
the MotowJI SOU lid (New York: St. M.l!, do t!1f jcrk rwI!’
I’ut Oil your high Ill’eI slioes
Wc’re Roin’ dD/1’1I here 1I(1Z!’ alld listen to ‘011 play tlic Bilies
Wc’re gomlll dig potil toes
WI”re g01l1l1l picA t(lllil/toes.
He broke every rule in the book, but I still loved it.
New people wert’ coming all the time and from everywhere. When I think of the two
young songwriters who came to us from New York around this time one word comes
to mind-TA LENTED! Nickolas Ashford and Valerie Simpson had joined our grow­
ing writing staff at ]obde ilfter an earlier hit they’d written for E.ay Charles, “Let’s Go
Get Stoned.” When I first saw them they both seemed warm aud ljuiet. While that
held true, 1 later found out Valerie was a pint-sized ball of dynamite, especially when
working in the studio.
One day Harvey Fuqua, in his quest for material for a duo he had put together­
Marvin Caye and Tammi Terrell-listened to a demo of their songs. Liking what he
heard, he and Johnny Bristol produced” Ain’t 1\0 Mountain High Enough” and
“Your Precious Love.” Both songs became big hits.
Sooner or later just about every songwriter, and some performers, want to pro­
duce their own records. But talent in one area doesn’t alwilYs mean you have it in an­
other. With Nick and Val it did. The success of their songs eClrned them a chance to
produce some of their own materiil1.
Their production of Nick’s lyrics with Valerie’s melodies and arrangements
added a new sophisticated element to our overall sound. When their production on
Marvin and Tammi was brought into the Friday morning meeting there was no de­
bilte. “Ain’t Nothing Like the Real Thing” was voted a smash and it was. When their
next record on the same duo, “Yuu’re Alii Need To Get By” was played it sounded so
great to me I didn’t bother to take a vote. No one complained. It is still one of my all­
time favorites.
No Town Like Motown 10:>
When selling records to the mainstream market I had learned long before that you
had to deal with people’s prejudices.
I had not forgotten the hurt I felt when my brother’s record, “Everyone Was
There,” had died when the public rf’illized that this white-sounding record was per­
formed by a blilck ilrtist.
That was why we released some of our early albums without showing the artists’
faces on them. The Marvelettes’ album Pleasl’ Mr.l’ostmnn had a picture of a mailbox un
it; Bye Byl’ Baby by Mary Wells, a love letter. We put a cartoon of an ape on the cover of
The Miracles’ Voirl!;; Mickey’s Monkey; and an Isley Brothers album had two white lovers
at the beach on its cover.
TI,is practice became less necessary as our music’s popularity started overcom­
ing the prejudices
But there were so many other color barriers to overcome. I remember one day sit­
ting in Barney’s [Barney Ales, head of the sales department at Motown] offic; in a
meeting when I noticed I was the only black person in the room. My own company’
After the meeting I talked to Barney and Phil [Jones, a member of the promotion
staff]. “How come there’s nothing but white folks in the Sales Department?”
“You just now noticed?” Barney asked.
I smiled. “I guess I never saw black and white, I only saw record sales.”
Of course, I knew the Sales Department was all white. Barney had built it with
experienced people he knew in the business. They were a powerful team. With their
know-how they not only dealt successfully with the distributors with one-stops and
a new sector of the market known as rackjobbcrs-the guys who sold records in large
quantities to supermarkets and drugstores.
“You always told me you wanted a general market company, and that’s what we
got here,” Barney said. “We want to sell our records across the board and when I put
my team togethel~ there were no black salesmen I knew out there that had ever done
that or that could do it the way we needed it done.”
“Have you tried to find any?”
“Well, no.”
“‘Nell I think you should. If black promotion men can get white stations to play
a record, why can’t blacks get white distributors to buy them as well?”
I could see Barney was surprised because he had never known me to challenge
him on the basis of race. I felt a little strange myself.
“Getting radio play is one thing, but selling records is another. The distributors
are going to give you a lot more resistance than any D),” he said. “It would be really
tough-especially in the South.”
“That may be. But I think we’re so strong now we can change things. It’s time.”
“He’s right,’ Phil jumped in. “I think we can.” It was rare for anv of Barney’s peo­
pie to side with me-in front of him.
But Barney was all for it. “Let’s get on it,” he told Phil,
“But we can’t hire just any black guy,” Phil said. “He’s got to be real special.
strong.”
They were lucky. They found Miller London. He was shortish and thinnish, with
a pleasant face and a great smile that he used a lot. My first impression was that he
might be too f1’ilgile. I was wrong.
Soon he was joined by otl1E’r black sales and promotion men-Chuck Young,
Eddie Gilreath, Ralph Thompson and Skip Miller.
Phil enjoyed telling about one of the first incidents when he sent Miller London
on a trip to the South.

186 The 1960s
As soon ilS Miller arrived for his first appointment at one of our major Southern
distrihutors, Phil got a hysterical call.
“Phil,” the distributor screamed, “you sent a nigger down here to sell white Pop
accounts? Are vou fuckin’ nuts?”
“How mu~h money do you make a year off Motown?” Phil responded.
“Oh, I don’t know. Quite a bit I guess.”
“Well, if you want to keep making that ‘quite a bit,’ you better get used to look­
ing in that nigger’s face.”
Miller had been waiting in an outer office. As soon as the distributor got off the
phone he rushed out smiling: “Miller, nice to see you, come on in, my friend.”
Miller was in. But it took about a year of insults, threats and narrow escapes
before he could breathe easily.
In the next excerpt, Berry recalls his first encounter with the Jackson Five
and the young star of the group, Michael Jackson.
When I look at it today I can still remember the intensity we all felt standing there
that July morning [in 1961\] watching those five young boys from Gary, Indiana, per­
form. Nine-year-old Michael, eleven-year-old Marion, fourteen-year-old Jermaine,
and fifteen- and seventeen-year-old Tito and Jackie meant business. All of them
moved, silng and played instruments like winners.
They tore into the Temptations’ “Ain’t Too Proud to Beg” all moving togetlwr
like little David Huffins, with a style all their own. When they sang “I Wish It Would
Rain” and “Tobacco Hoad,” they made the songs sound like they were written just for
them. They wound up with Michael doing James Brown’s “I Got The Feelin’.” His
dazzling footwork would have certainly made the Godfather proud.
This little kid had an incredible knowingness about him that really made me take
notice. He sang his songs with such feeling, inspiration and pain-as if he had expe­
rienced everything he was singing about. In he tween songs he kept his eyes on me
the whole time, as if he was studying me.
All the right clues were there-their professionalism, their discipline, their tal­
ent. And something else that Michael had, an unknown quality that I didn’t com­
pletely understand but I knew was special. Somehow even at that first meeting he let
me know of his hunger to learn, and how willing he was to work as hard as necessary
to be great, to go to the top. He let me know he believed I was the person who could
get him there.
Further Reading
Coffey, Dennis. Guitars, Bars, lind MOtUWl1 Superstars. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan
Press. 2004.
Earl~’, Gerald. 01/(‘ Nation Under a Groo/’e: Motou’n lind Americlln Culture. Ann Arbor: Uni­
versity of Michigan Press, 2004.
Cordy, Berry. 7″ Be L,med: The Music, the Magic, the MClllories of MotOll’n: An Autobiogra­
pill/. New York: Warner Books, 1994.
Neal, Mark Anthony. What the Music Said: Black Poplilar MII;:i( and Black i’opular Culture.
New York, Routledge, 1999.
Ward, Brian. n,is Is My Soul Respol/diug: Rhythlll aud Rille” Black Cou,ciouslU’SE’, aud Race
F.elations. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991\.
HHThe Godfather of Soul and the Beginnings of Funk
Warwick, Jacqueline. Girl Groups, Gil”! Culture: POf’ular Music and Identity it, the 1960s.
New York: Routledge, 2007.
Werner, Craig. A Clllwge Is GOilIla COllie: Music, Race ami the Soul of America. Ann Arbor:
University of Michigan Press, 2006.
Discography
The Four Tops. F.l’lIcll Oul. Motown, 1967.
Hitsville USA, Tile MotolUn Siugles Collection, 1959-1971. Motowll, 1992.

Martha and the Vandellas. Heatwave. Gordy, 1963.

The Marvelettes. Please Mr. POst17UlI1. Tamla, 1961.

The Supremes. Wlll’re Did Our Love Go. Motown, 1964.

The Temptations. TIl(‘ Tempta!ious Sing Smokey. Gordy, 1965.

Wonder, Stevie. The 12 Year Old Genius. Tanda, 1963.
4> The Godfather of Soul and the
Beginnings of Funk
James Brown (1933-2006) stands out as one of the most influential and
successful musicians in the history of R&B. While his innovations as a
singer, performer, composer. arranger, and bandleader virtually defined
the genre of funk and contributed mightily to the development of hip­
hop, his achievements cannot be measured only in terms of his musical
contributions: During the height of his popularity, he became a cultural
icon in the African American community, exploring the limits of economic
self-determination for a black performer and demonstrating how
crossover success could be achieved without forswearing the black ver­
nacular.
Born into extreme poverty in the rural South (in Barnwell, South
Carolina, near Augusta, Georgia), Brown began his career as a profes­
sional musician with the gospel-based Flames in the early 1950s. By 195 6 ,
the group had recorded the R&B hit, “Please, Please, Please” and
changed their name to “James Brown and the Famous Flames,” This early
recording established what was to become a stylistic trademark: insistent
repetition of a single phrase (in this case consisting of the song’s title)
resulting in a kind of ecstatic trance. This trademark and Brown’s charac­
teristic raspy vocal timbre and impassioned melismas display his debt to
the African American gospel tradition. His stage shows, dancing, and in­
spired call-and-response interactions with the audience also convey the
fervor of a sanctified preacher.

188 The 1960s
The subsequent highpoints of his career are numerous: the surprising
smash success of his 1962 recording, Live attheApollo; his development of
funk during the years 1964-65 with three successive hits, “Out of Sight,”
“Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag,” and “I Got You (I Feel Good)”; his continued
crossover success with a string of recordings-including “(old Sweat,”
“Say It Loud (I’m Black and I’m Proud),” “Superbad,” “Hot Pants”-that
further defined the funk genre during the years 1967-72. In recordings,
such as “(old Sweat,” verse-chorus structures were replaced by sections
of irregular length, defined by densely overlapping ostinati played by all
the instruments. Brown’s lyrics grew increasingly impressionistic, cele­
brating black vernacular speech (often creating slang in the process) and
emphasizing racial pride.’
In a book organized by decades, where does one place a musician who
was active and influential in three of them (the 1950s, 1960s, and
1970S) and who continued to perform and record until his death? While
funk will be discussed at greater length in Part 4, I placed Brown in
this chapter because it was during the 1960s that he developed the
innovations that were felt and continue to be felt across a broad musi­
cal spectrum.
The following excerpts come from Brown’s autobiography, The
Godfather of Soul, and detail his early experiences and eclectic influ­
ences, his indebtedness to gospel music and charismatic preaching
styles, the importance of audience-performer interaction (also learned in
church), his firsthand experience of the ring shout, and the somewhat
surprising link between minstrel shows (and professional wrestling!) and
the later development of his stage act. He also charts the development of
soul and funk, the circumstances of the famous Live at the Apollo album,
and his business philosophy and profiles several of the well-known
musicians who worked for him.
from THE GODFATHER OF SOUL
James Brown (with Bruce Tucker)
I liked gospel and pop songs best of all. I got all the Hit Parade books and learned all
the pop tunes-Bing Crosby’s “Buttermilk Sky,” Sinatra’s “Saturday Night Is the
Loneliest Night of the Week:’ “String of Pearls.” I also admired Count Basie’s “One
O’Clock Jump:’ but r couldn’t play piano good enough to do it.
I. For an essay exploring how Brown’s funk expressed an African American aesthetic in its
conjunction of music and lyrics, see David Brackett, “lames Brown’, ‘Superbad’ and the Double­
Voiced Utterance,” IJllcl’/m’tiIlS P”I’uIII/ Music (Berkeley: Univer,ity of California Press, [1′!95]
2(00), 108-56.
S”urce: lames Brown with Bruce Tucker, from Tile Codf”!her of SOil I, pp_ 17-19,23-24,106-07,120,
134-36,138–39, 157-51′,178-79,218-19,221-22,224,227,242-43. Reprinted with permission of
Snibner, an imprint of Simon and Schust,’r Adult Publishing Group. Copyright © 1986 by James
Brown and Bruce Tucker.
10:;1The Godfather of Soul and the Beginnings ot Funk
I heard a lot of church music, too, because I went to all the different churches
with a crippled man named Charlie Brown who lived in one of the shacks in
Helmuth Alley. He had to walk with two sticks or with somebody on each side
holding his arms. On Sundays when we weren’t shining shoes, Junior and I walked
Mr. Charlie tn one or another of the churches because they’d take up collections for
people like him.
At the churches there was a lot of singing and handclapping and usually an
organ and tambourines, and then the preacher would really get down. I liked that
even more than the music. I had been to a revival service and had seen a preacher
who really had a lot of fire. He was just screaming and yelling and stomping his
foot and then he dropped to his knees. The people got into it with him, answering
him and shouting and clapping time. After that, when I went to church with
Mr. Charlie, I watched the preachers real close. Then I’d go home and imitate them
because 1wanted to preach. I thought that was the answer to it.
Audience participation in church is something the darker race of people has
going because of a lot of trials and tribulations, because of things that we understand
about human nature. It’s something 1 can’t explain, but I can bring it out of people.
1’m not the only person who has the ability, but I work at it, and 1’m sure a lot of my
stage show came out of the church.
One thing 1 never saw in the churches was drums until I went to Bishop Grace’s
House of Prayer. Those folks were sanctified-they had the beat. See, you got sancti­
fied and you got holy. Sanctified people got more fire; holy people are I1’\Ore
secluded-sort of like Democrats versus Republicans. I’m holy myself, but I have a
lot of sanctified in me,
Bishop Grace was a big man, the richest and most powerful of that kind of
preacher in the country, bigger than Father Divine or any of ’em. He had houses
of prayer in more than thirty cities in the East and South, and he had these “Grace
Societies” that just took in the money. Every year when he came back to Augusta
there was a monstrous parade down Gwinnett Street for him, with decorated floats
and cars and brass bands. Everybody in the Terry2 turned out for it, and other
people came from as far away as Philadelphia to march in it. You could join in it
with your car or, if you had a musical instrument, you could fall in with onE’ of
the bands.
He was called “Daddy” Grace, and he was like a god on earth, He wore a cape
and sat on a throne on the biggest float, with people fanning him while he threw
candy and things to the children. He had long curly hair, and real long fingernails,
and suits made nut of money.
His House of Prayer on Wrightsboro Road in Augusta resembled a warehouse. A
sign over the door said: “Great joy! Come to the House of Prayer and forget your
troubles.” And everybody did come at one time or anothel~ even people who didn’t
believe in him, because he put on such a show. Inside there were plank benches, a dirt
floor covered with sawdust, and crepe paper streamers on the ceiling. At one end
there was a stage where Daddy Grace sat on a red throne.
He’d get to preaching and the people would get in a ring and they’d go round and
round and go right behind one another, just shouting. Sometimes they’d fall out right
there in the sawdust, shaking and jerking and having convulsions. The posts in the
place were padded so the people wouldn’t hurt themselves. There was a big old tin tub
sitting there, too, and every time they went by the tub, they threw something in it. See
who could give the most. Later on he had various big vases out there, like urns, Dne for
2. The name for the African American neighborhood where Brown lived.

lYU
The 19605
five-dollar bills, one for tens ilnd twenties, ilnd one for hundreds. It seemed like the
poorest people sacri ficed the most for him.
Daddy Grace had to be a prophet, but seeing him 1 knew I was an outsider
beciluse I couldn’t believe in him. I believed in God so that made me an outsider
right away.
The Lenox [Theater in Augusta] was where I first saw films of Louis Jordan perform­
ing. Louis Jordan and His Tympany Five. They played a kind ofjumping R&Band jazz
at the Sinne time, and they were something else. They did a lot of comedy, but they
could playa blues if they had to, or anything in between. The films were shorts of
Louis doing whatever his latest song was, and they showed them before the regular
picture. He played alto sax real good and sang pretty good. Louis Jordan was the man
in those days, though a lot of people have forgotten it. His stuff was popular with
blacks ol1d whites, and he usually had several hits at one time, a lot of ’em that sold a
million. “Choo Choo Ch’Boogie,” “Early in the Morning,” “Saturday Night Fish Fry,”
and”Ain’t Nobody Here but Us Chickens” were all his. When I first saw him I think
he had out “G. I. Jive” and “Is You Is, or Is You Ain’t (Ma’ Baby)?” but the one that
knocked me out Wgin­
ning of 1960. I was changing before that, but that’s when you can heaf it. ‘Tll Go
Crazy” came out in January; “Think” and “You’ve Got the Power” were released in
May. ”I’ll Go Crazy” is a blues, but it’s a different kind of blues, up-tempo, a kind of
jazz blues. “Think” is a combination of gospel and jazz-a rhythm hold is what we
used to call it. Sou I really started right there, or at least my kind did. See when peo­
ple talk about soul music they talk only about gospel and R & B coming together.
That’s accurate about a lot of soul, but if you’re going to talk about mine, you have to
remember the jazz in it. That’s what made my music so different and allowed it to
change and grow after soul was finished.
Once Mr. [Syd] Nathan [owner of King Records] saw I was going to go ahead with
the livE’ recording [from a performance at the Apollo in 1962], he started cooperating.
Mr. Neely took care of getting the equipment from A-I Sound in New York, the only
ones who had portable stuff-Magnacorders, I think. Matter of fact, Mr. Nathan
started cooperating too much. He sent word that he wanted us to use cue cards to
direct the audience participation. I said, “Now if y’all are going to pay for it, then I’11
do it the way y’all want to, but if l’m going to pay for it, then please leave it alone.
All I want y’aU to do is tape the stuff. ,,4 That was the end of it.
We had opened on the nineteenth and were building up to recording on the
twenty-fourth, a Wednesday, which meant amateur night. I wanted that wild
amateur-night crowd because I knew they’d do plenty of hollering. The plan was to
record all four shows that day so we’d have enough tape to work with. I think
Mr. Neely and Chuck Seitz, the engineers, had six or eight mikes, two crowd monitors
in front, one above the crowd, and then the mikes on me, the band, and the Flames.
The other acts on the bill were Olatunji, the Sensations, Curley Mays, and
Pigmeat Markham. Yvonne Fair had a solo spot, and so did Baby Lloyd. On the
twenty-fourth I was going around backstage telling the Flames and the band not to
get nervous, and I guess I was probably the most nervous of all. I wasn’t worried
4. Brown was paying for the recording because of Nathan’s initio! objections.

l’;lL
The 1960s
about performing; [was worried about the recording coming off good. I had a lot rid­
ing on it, not just my own money but my reputation because here I was having to
prove myself to Mr. Nathan dnd them all ()ver again, just like when [ had to demo
“Try Me.” I was standing in the wings thinking about all this when Fats stepped up
to the microphone and did his intro:
“So now, ladies and gentlemen, it is startime. Are you ready for startime?” Yeah!
“Thank you and thank you very kindly. It is indeed a great pleasure to present to you
at this particular time, nationally and internationally known as the Hardest Working
Man in Show Business, the man that sings, ‘I’ll Go Crazy'” … afal1fnre from Ihr hand:
Taaaaa! “‘You’ve Got the Power'” Taaaaa’ “‘Think'” Taaaaa! “‘If You Want
l
Me'” . 7i1llaaa ”’j Don’t Mind'” … Taaaaa! ‘”Bewildered”’ … Taaaaa’ “million­
dollar seller ‘Lost Someone'” … Taaaaa l “the v<:'ry latest release, 'Night Train'" . Taaafla! "Let's everybody 'Shout and Shimmy'" " Tanaaal "Mr. Dynamite, the amaZing Mr. 'Please Please' himself, the star of the show ... Tames Brown and the Famous Flames." Then the band went into the chaser-the little up-tempo vamp we uS<:'d between songs-and I hit the stage. As soon as I was into ''I'll Go Crazy" I knew it was one of those good times. That's a hard feeling to describe-being on stage, performing, and knowing that you've really got it that night.1t feels like God is blessing you, and you give more and more. The audience was with me, screaming and hollering on all the songs, and I thought, "Man, this is really going to do it." [t's a funny thing, though. When I'm up on stage I'm very aware of everything that's going on around me-what the band and the backup singers are doing. how the audience is reacting, how the sound system's working, all that. When you work small clubs you watch the door, check out how rough the crowd looks, listen for lit­ tle pitch changes in your one little amplifier that tell you it's about to blowout. You can't just be thinking about the song or how pretty you look up there. You learn to be aware. As the show went along I started noticing little things and filing them away in my mind. Every now and then the band made a mistake or the Flames were a half tone off. Sometimes I hollered where I usually didn't in the song, and some of the au­ dience down front was too enthusiastic. A little old lady down front kept yelling, "Sing it motherf--r, sing it!" She looked like she must have been seventy-five years old. [ could hear her the whole time and knew the overhead crowd mike was right above her. Mr. Neely had strung it on a wire between the two side balconies. Most times none of those things would've mattered, but we were recording and I was thinking, "Oh, Lord, this take's ruined." During a quiet stretch of "Lost Someone" the woman let out a loud scream, and the audience laughed right in the middle of this serious song. I thought "Well, there goes that song, too." Then I thought I had better try to fix it some kind of way so [ started preaching: "You know we all make mistakes sometimes, and the only way we can correct our mistakes is we got to try one more time. So I gut to sing this song to you one more time." 1 stretched out the song, hoping we could get something we could use; then I went into "Please." Mr. Neely brought the tape into a back room between the first two shows and played it for us on a little tape recorder. As soon as \ve heard the little old lady, we all busted out laughing. He didn't understand. All he could hear was her high piercing voice, but he didn't really understand what she was saying even though it was clear as a bell. Finally, somebody told him. Then he understood. "Oh no," IlP said. "[ can't' have that. [ have to get it out of there and make sure she's not here for the other shows, too. This is terrible." The Godfather of Soul and the Beginnings ot ~unk l:;'.J He was getting all worked up, while all the cats were listening to it over and over, laughing, having a great time, and getting other cats to listen to it. After a while, watching everybody carryon, Mr. Neely settled himself down and said, "Hey, maybe we've got something here." HE' found the lady down front and told her he'd buv her candy and popcorn and giV<:' Iwr $10 if slw'd stay for the other three shows-he didn't lell her why. He moved the overhead mike so it wouldn't pick her up so strong. We were using two-track, which meant practically mixing as we went along. She stayed for the next three shows and hollered the same thing every time I did a spin or something she liked. It was like it was on cue. I think the shows got even better as the day went along. By the end of the last one we had four reels of tape. Mr. Neely was so excited he brought the master up to the dressing rooms and passed around the headphones for us to listen. None of us had ever heard ourselves live like that. It sounded fantilstic. We knew we really had something. By this time we had completely forgotten about the finale, where all the acts chilnge clothes and come out on stage together to close till' show. Everybody else had changed and was waiting backstage, but we were listE'ning to the tape over and over. Never did do that finale. A lot of people don't understand about the hollering I do. A man once came up to me in a hotel lobby and said, "So you're James Brown. You make a million dollars, and all you do is scream and holler." "Yes," I said, very quiet, "but I scream and holler on key." ] WilS branching out in a lot of directions. At the end of 1962 I formed mv own song publishing company, Jim Tam Music, and got King to give me my own label, Try Me. I had alreadv been producing on Federal and King and Dade and wanted to bring it all togPlher on Try Me. I wasn't content to be only a performer and be used by other people; [ wanted to be a complete show business person: artist, busi.ness­ man, entrepreneur. It was important to be because people of mv origin hadn't been allowed to get into the busi/lfsS end of show business before, just the show part. Bv this time Mr. Keely had finished editing the Live lit tlie Apollo tape. He had a good mix of the performance and the audience, and he had fixed all the cussing so it wasn't right up front. He figured it would become an underground thing for people who knew what the lady was screaming; he was right too. He worked on the tape a long time and did a fantilstic job of mixing it. When Mr. Nathan finilily heard the tape he hated it. "This is not coming out:' he said. "We have a certain standard, and we're going to stick with it." What he didn't like now was the way we went from one tUI,\(, to another without stopping. He just couldn't understand that. I gu<:'ss he was expecting exact copiE's of our earlier records, but with people politely applaUding in between. He had all kinds of theories about how records should be. He wanted the hook right up front because he knew that disc jockeys i\uditioned hundreds of records every week by putting the needle down and playing only the first fifteen or twenty seconds.lf that didn't grab them, thev went on to the next record. The same thing happened in record stores, where they usually let you 11E'ar fifte<:'n or twenty seconds on a player on the counter. A lot of my things were mor<:, like stage numbers, and he couldn't understand that. After more conversntil1n, he finall y agreed to put the album out. I think Mr. Neely was the one who final! y sold him On it. After all the editing and all the arguing it was January 1963 before L,I'/, 11t tile Apollo was finally released. Then discussion began about what singles to release oU it. Byrd thought "Think" should be spun off it, especially since the live version W. 1C9·-1O,
123-24.
Saurce: Phyl Garland, “Aretha Franklin-Sister Soul: Eclipsed Singer Gains New Heights,” FI'{)IIl/
(October 1967); 47-52. Reproduced by rerm;ssion of Ebmlll Milgazine. © 1%7 Johnson Publ;,11;ng
Company, Tnc. All rights reserved.

lU4
The 19605
full-bodied YOWl/) woman with a chocolate-brown face offset by ;1 pink brocade
gown came onto the stage to be greeted by a chorus of expectant shouts, cheer” and
applause that were soon tTansformed into frenZied hand-clapping and foot-tapping.
It was the sort of unbridled response that is accorded only a star, a favorite, an enter­
tainer possessing the uncommon ability to electrify an audience.
For the singel~ Aretha Franklin, the piano-plunking, earthy-sounding daughter
of a Detroit ministel~ it was a resounding “am<>n” to all the words and emotions she
has projected in a series of top-selling record hits that hdv€ added a new dimension
to her precocious but uneven career. Within less than a year, tIlt’ one-time gospel
singer hns returned from near obscurity to achieve a level of popularity where she is
regarded by many a fan as “sister soul herself.” Under a contract negotiated with
Atlantic Records in late ]966, she has released three conspcutive million-selling sin­
gles. Her first album on that labeL I Neuer Lm’ed iJ Mall the Way I Luve YOIl, is a certified
million-seller, with a second album, Arrtllll Arriues, nosing its way up on the charts.
Triumph in the recording world has, in turn, brought honors from the arbiters of pub­
lic taste-three awards from the National Association of Rad io Announcers for being
the top female vocalist who produced the top single record and top alhum for 1%7;
recognition from Hecord World, Billboard and Cashbox magaZines as a It’ading arlist.
However, her Success can be measured in more thnn monetary terms, for
Aretha’s version of the Otis Redding composition Respect stands, week after week, at
the head of JET magazine’s Soul Brothers Top 20 Tunes poll and is considered by fur
more than a few of those “brothers” to be “th(‘ n(‘w N(‘gro national anthem.” Due to
this magnetic appeal that exceeds simple entertainment, Dr. Martin Luther King’s
Southern Christian Leadership Conference presented her with a special citation at
the organization’s convention in Atlanta, Ga., this summer.
All this sudden ildulation might overWhelm some, but not Ardha, who endured
the experience of illmost making it once before, only to become a comet that appilr­
ently burnt out too soon. A reticent person whose basic shyness might be mistaken
for hostility or indifference, she is aware of where she has been and where she wants
to go. “I don’t feel very different,” she stiltes with a quiet simplenpss that belies her
ebullience in song. “People ilsk for my autograph now and that’s real nice, but I don’t
think it puts you up on any pedestal. You can’t get carried away with it.” She is quick
to acknowledge the ups and downs that came in t1w wake of her earlier success, in
] 96], when John Hammond, the man credited with disCllvering 13illie Holiday, said
she had “the best voice I’ve come acmss in 20 years,” and signed her to an exclusive
contrnct with Columbi failed to break into the top

money-making level of til<' big hits and, after a while, her public follOWing begim to fade. "Things wen' kinda hungry then," she savs of tl10 interim years, adding, "J might just be 25, but I'm an old woman in disgUise ... 25 goin' on 63." lf till' appeal of her music can be linked lolhe sum of her experiences ns a hUJ1lnn being, a significilnt portion of it lies in her early background. She WilS born ill Memphis, Tpnn., one of thn>e dilughters and two sons of a Baptist minister fathcr, the
Rev, C. L. Franklin, who went on to become a noted radio nnd recording artist. and
a lllusiGl1ly gifted mother who died when Aretha was a child. Though- the family
soon moved to Buffalo, N.Y, and filter Detroit, Mich., the South left nn imprint 0;1
her speech wilh its softened endings on words. When An.tha was “about eight or
nine,” she h.>gan trying to teach herself how to play the piano by listening to Eddie
Heywood records, “just bangill’, not playin’, but finding a little somethin’ here and
there.” Her fatlll’r noticed her efforts and hired a piano teacher whose approach was
Aretha ~ranKIJn l:arn~ “”~)J”Ll
scorned by the young Aretha. “When she’d come, I’d hide,” she recalls. “I tried for
maybe a week, but 1 just couldn’t take it. She had all those little baby books and 1
wanted to go directly to thp tunes.” This failure was overcome, shortly afterwards, by
the arrival of James Cleveland, the noted gospel singer, who came to live with the
family. “He showed me some rea] nice chords and I liked his deep, deep sound,”
Aretha remembers. There’s a whole lot of earthiness in the way he sings, and what he
was feelin’, I was feelin’, but I just didn’t know how to put it across. The more I
watched him, the more I got out of it.” Cleveland helped Aretha, her older sister
Erma and two otIwr girls form a gospel group that appeared at local churches hut
lasted only eight months because “we were too busy fuss in’ and fightin.'” But in this
group, Aretha got her first public experience as a singer and sometime pianist. An­
other gospel artist who left a deep impression on Ar<>tha was Clara Ward. “1 wasn’t
really that conscious of the gospel sound,” she explains, “but I liked all Miss Ward’s
records. I learned to play ’em because 1 thought one day she might decide she didn’t
want to play and I’d be ready.”
The Franklin household was a fertile one for the development of musical talent.
Because of her father’s prominence as an evangelist Aretha had an opportunity to
meet ilrtists of more than one genre. Mahalia Jackson, Arthur Pryscnck, B. B. King,
Dorothy Donegan and the late Dinah Washington were likely houseguests. She met
Lou Rawls when he was an unknown singer with the Pilgrim Travelers and became
a friend of the late Sam Cooke when he appeared at her father’s churcll with the Soul
Stirrers. She remembers Cooke as being “just beautiful, a sort of person who stood
out among many people.” Along with Sillll Cooke, .lames Cleveland ilnd Claril Ward,
one of the celebrities who impressed Aretha tremendously with “the way he could
just sit down and play” was the blind jazz piilnist Art Tatum. “I just cancelled that out
for me and knew lhat I could never do that, but he left a strong impreSSion on me as
a pianist and a person.” Above all others, Aretha credits her father with having the
greatest ill”tistic influence on her in his singing stvle and his more broadly acknowl­
edged fusion of rhythm and words in preaching. “Most of what 1 learned vocally
came from him,” she readily admits. “He gave me a sense of timing in music and tim­
ing is important in everything.”
Before entering her teens, Aretha had become a member of the youth choir at
New Bethel Baptist Church, which Rpv. Franklin pastors in the heart of Detroit’s
black ghetto. Occasionally she was soloist and during four important years of her
adolescence, she loured the country with her father’s evangelistic lroupe. During one
of those tours, she recorded her version of NellCJ” Grow Old and Precious l.ord, Take My
HiJlld, which are still regarded as classics in the gospel vpin and established her
reputation as a child singer. However, at the time, she had no dreams of becoming
a star or iln entertainer of any sort. Her primary ambition …vas to become “just a
housewife.”
Fate didn’t play it that way.
When Aretha wns 18, yet another friend, Major “Mule” Holly, bassist for the jazz
pianist Teddy Wilson, convinced her that she had il certain basic style that could be
commercially salable if applied to jazz or popular music. Though rumors persist that
the religiollsly oriented elder Franklin opposed his daughter’s pursuit of a secular
career, he actuilllv escorted her to New York Citv when she made her first demon­
striltion records t:J be presented to commercial fir~ms. His ()pinion has been that “onp
shpuld make his own life and take care of his own business. If she feels she can do
what she is doing as successfully as she does it, I have nDthing against it. I like most
kinds of music myself.” He observes that in his congregation there was “at first a
quiet and subdued rpsentment, but now they acclaim her in loud terms.”

207
I he 1960s
For Aretha, the experience of being thrust into a different milieu was, if not trau­
matic, somewhat difficult. As she attended classes in New York that were intended to
polish her as a performer and personality, she was confronted with the problems that
face most fledgling entertainers. She was ensnarled in hassles with booking agents
and managers that earned her a reputation for being difficult to handle. As the first
glimmer of success began to vanish, she retreated into silence, returning to Detroit
and a personal life that she secludes from the public. [n 1963, she did appear at the
Newport Jazz Festival and the Lower Ohio Jazz Festival, and in subsequent years
played Bermuda, the Bahamas and Puerto Rico. Yet the plum of a major success had
not come her way. There was some enthusiasm for a European tour, but her current
personal manager, Ted White, who is also her husband, contends that “Her earnings
wouldn’t have made it possible to take along the musicians who could back her up
and show off her talents in the best way. Even in this country, you have to work for
practically nothing if you don’t have a hit, so she just worked less.”
White, a native Detroiter whose experience in show business before his alliance
with Aretha was as “a sandlot” promoter not in the major leagues, contends that part
of his wife’s lag in her previous professional outing was due to the fact that her
Columbia recordings were not geared to the rhythm and blues or rock ‘n’ roll market
and, therefore, received limited jukebox and radio attention. A five-year contract
with a one-year option precluded any drastic change in approach. “We waited out
those years,” says White, “but when the time came to move, we were ready. We knew
we had something to offer.”
When the time did come for a change, Ted and Aretha got a helping hand from
Timmy Bishop, a Philadelphia deejay, and his wife, Louise, who had access to the in­
terested ear of Jerry Wexler, vice-president of Atlantic Records. A new contract re­
mItI’d and ever since that momentous day, Aretha has been waxing hit after hit. If
there is any key to her resurgence, Wexler believes that it is based in the magnitude
)f her talent as a singer, pianist and prolific song writer.
I’d say that she’s a musical genius comparable to that other great musical genius,
~ay Charles,” says the bearded recording executive who has specialized in “soul”
Irtists for 15 years, having been involved with Wilson Pickett, Solomon Burke, Ruth
3rown and Charles during his earlier efforts. He believes that many parallels can be
lrawn between Aretha and Ray Charles. “Both playa terrific gospel piano, which is
lIle of the greatest assets one can have today,” he states. “Since they have this broader
alent, they can bring to a recording session a total conception of the music and thus
ontribute much more than the average artist.” According to Wexler, Aretha’s record­
:1gs evolve out of “head arrangements.” She sets the tone for the whole session.
\fterwards, strings and other instrumental trappings can be built around her effort.
)n her first album, Aretha accompanies herself at the piano, though an arm injury
ustained during a tour with the Jackie Wilson show early this year prevented her
‘om following through on many of the tunes on her second album. Unknown to
llIch of the public, she was backed, on most of her hit records, through a process of
ver-dubbing, by a vocal group consisting of Aretha herself and her two sisters,
rma, a recording artist in her own right, and Carolyn, a singer-composer. On other
utings, the Sweet Inspirations shared the spotlight. The combination seems to work
ld the proof is in the success of the sound.
For some artists, the “soul” sound might be a mere artifice, but for Aretha
‘anklin, it is an element deeply imbedded in herself. She has never learned how to
‘pretentious enough to build a false image and deeply identifies with people on all
vels who hear her music. “Everybody who’s living has problems and desires just as
:lo,” she remarks. “When the fellow on the corner has somethin’ botherin’ him, he
Aretha Franklin Earns Respect
feels the same way [ do. When we cry, we all gonna cry tears, and when we laugh, we
all have to smile.” She is not eager to adopt any image of herself as a new queen of
the blues and asserts, “The queen of the blues was and still is Dinah Washington.”
Though her future engagements will include some of the nation’s top nightclubs,
one-nighters are more suited to her as a rather withdrawn personality. “I dig playin’
at night and leavin’ in the morning,”’ says Aretha.
Away from tile public, she shuns crowds, admitting, “When I’m not workin’, I
like to come in the house and sit down and be very quiet. Sometimes nobody even
knows I’m home. I don’t care too much about gain’ out. By the time I get home, 1’1’1′
had enough of nightclubs.”
Her essential tastes are for the same “soul” things she sings about, and she

makes no bones about the fact that chitterlings are her favorite food, “with maybe

some hot water cornbread and greens or ham.”

In the flush of a new affluence that might reap for her a gross income of $500,000
this year, she anticipates, more than anything, moving into a new house she and Ted
have purchased in a quiet, tree-shaded section of Detroit that is fast becoming a
haven for middle-class Negroes. “I just want a big, comfortable house,” she says,
“where we can lock the door and have a lot of family fun. There she hopes to pursue
a peaceful private life with her mate and her three sons.
While the lure of public acclaim is enticing and she wants to continue selling a
million on all her records, Aretha is, underneath it all, a homebody with interests that
she refuses to compromise in order to comply with public demands. During a previ­
ous phase of her career, she provoked controversy by appearing, in 1963, before an
audience in Philadelphia, though eight months pregnant. The shadows of scandal
that enshrouded her at the time were fanned by the fact that her secret marriage to
her manager, Ted White, had not yet been revealed.
To those who might question anything she does onstage or off, she supplies a sin
gIl’ answer: “J must do what is real in me all ways. It might bug some and offend oth­
ers, but this is what [ must live by, the truth, so long as it doesn’t impose on others.”
Further Reading
Awkward, Michael. SOIiI C01’ers: Rhl/thm and Blues Remakes tllld the Struggle for Artistic
Identity: Aretlla Franklill, Al Grem. Phoe!>e Snow. Durham, N.C.: Duke Univer~ity
Press,2007.
Dobkin, Matt. [ NeZ’er LoZ’ed a Man the Way I Love You: Aretlm Franklin, Respect, am! Ike
Making ofa Soul Music Masterpiece. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2004.
Franklin, Aretha (and David Ritz). Arl’tl1l1: From These Roots. New York: Villard, 1999.
Guralnick, Peter. Sweet Soul Music: Rlrythm and Blues and the Southern Dream of Freedom.
New York: Harper & Row, 1986.
Wexler, Jerry, and David Ritz. Rhythm and Blues: A Life ill American Mlisic. New York:
Alfred A. Knopf, 1993.
Discography
Franklin, Aretha. Aretha. Columbia, 1961.
____. Lady Soul. Atlantic, 1967.

____ .1 NfZ’fr Loped a Mall the Way 1 Love You. Atlantic, 1968.

____ . Arrtlw LiZ’e at Fillmore West. Atlantic, ] 971.

____. Tire Defillitive SOli I Collectioll. Atlantic/WEA, 1993.

209
38. The Beatles, the “British Invasion,”
and Cultural Respectability
The Beatles’ music emerged with such distinctiveness from the other
popular music of the time that the band’s popularity became a media
sensation, first in the United Kingdom during 1963, then in the United
States in 1964. In the United States, the novelty of a British pop group
contributed to their singularity and set them apart. The energy and en­
thusiasm conveyed by their recordings and performances, the variety of
repertoire, the musicality and skill of the singing and playing, all con­
veyed with an irreverence toward establishment figures- these qualities
created an effect of overWhelming charisma, especially for the white,
middle-class teenagers who made up the bulk of their early audience.
The Beatles consisted of four members: rhythm guitarist John
lennon (1940-80) and bass guitarist Paul McCartney (b. 1942) wrote most
of the songs and sang most of the lead vocals, while lead guitarist George
Harrison (1943-2001) occasionally contributed songs and sang, with
drummer Ringo Starr (Richard Starkey, b.1940) rounding out the group. In
combining the functions of songwriting, singing, and playing, the band
recalled some ofthe pioneers of rock ‘n’ roll, particularly Chuck Berry, with
the important innovation that they were a band whose recordings repro­
duced almost uncannily their sense of camaraderie (in this, they were
preceded to some extent by the girl groups and the Beach Boys). The pro­
ducer of all but one of their albums, George Martin, was also an unusually
sympathetic partner; he ensured that the recordings possessed remark­
able clarity, gave them a classically trained ear to help with arrangements,
and had a knack for recognizing and capturing peak performances.’
Martin also contributed much to the originality of the Beatles’ use of
orchestral instruments when they began to use them in 1965. Despite the
importance of his contribution, skeptics of the Beatles who assign all
credit for their Success to Martin are surely overstating their case.
In light of the Beatles’ impressive originality, it is easy to (ose sight
of where they came from. Somewhat in the manner of earlier interna­
tional, multimedia superstars, such as Bing Crosby and Elvis Presley, at
least Some of that originality resulted from the synthesis of preeXisting
strains of popular music that had been kept more or less separate.
From their start in “skiff/e” (a form of folk music performed in a highly
rhythmic manner borrowed from “trad” jazz, a British adaptation of New
I. C1os” hstening 10 th” Bealles’ Alilhologf! (Ihree double-CD albums filled wlth rilre recordings
and alternate tak”s) sets pnwokes few quibbles about whether the best take of a gil’en song was
included On the official ft’lc8.fiP.
208
The Beatles, the “British Invasion,” and Cultural Respectability
Orleans-style jazz), the Beatles’ early performing repertory in numerous
nightclub and dance performances consisted of liberal doses of 1950S’
rhythm and blues (especially Chuck Berry and Little Richard), rockabilly
(especially Elvis, Carl Perkins, and the Everly Brothers), Brill Building­
produced pop music (especially the songs and arrangements of the girl
groups), and the songs and performing style associated with Motown.
The Beatles also occasionally included “standards” from pre-rock ‘n’ roll
pop music, especially those that had been recently rerecorded by other
artists, and influences from British music hall, a style dating back to
the 19th-century, also occasionally appeared in their compositions. The
Beatles’ first two albums, Please Please Me and With the Beatles,
released in the United Kingdom in 1963, mixed cover tunes of their night­
club repertory with original compositions.
The significance of the Beatles extends far beyond their popularity or
their ability to create something fresh from a synthesis of previous
styles: The Beatles, along with Bob Dylan, did more than any other pop
musicians to shift the perception of popular music in the mainstream
media. 2 The early article presented here-originally printed unsigned
but later attributed to the London Times music critic William Mann­
shows how critics were taking the Beatles seriously even during the first
year of their popularity. Mann, with his musicological terminology, even
compares the Beatles’ musical processes to those used by Austrian com­
poser, Gustav Mahler (1860-1911). While some of their most dedicated
fans may dispute the appropriateness of this terminology for the Beatles’
music, the fact that a music critic for the london Times would deign to
analyze the music in this way (and approvingly at that) was significant
and a harbinger of things to come.
WHAT SONGS THE BEATlES SANG •• ,
William Mann
The outstanding English composf’rs oi 1963 must seem to have been John Lennon
and Paul McCartney, the talented young musicians from liverpool whose spngs
have been sweeping the country since last Christmas, whether perionned by their
own group, The BeatIE’S, or by the numerous other teams oi English troubadours that
they also supply with songs.
2. Bernard Gendron tern1E’d this phenolnellon “cultuwl accreditation. ‘.’ This ch€lpt(>r on the
Beatles is much indehted to the chapters in Gl’ndron’, book dealin~ with the band; sel’ From
Montmarlre to the Mudd Club: P0l’ular Music and Ihe A i’I1 II I Gmle (Chica~o: University of Chicago
Press, 2002), chaps. 8-9.
SOl/rce: From Our Music Critic [William Mann], “What Songs the Bf’Jt)es Sang. The Time.”
December 27, 1963. p. 4. © TI,c Ti111es, December 27,1963. Used by permission.

211 210 The 19605
I am not concerned here with the sociJI phenonwnol1 of Beatlemania, which
finds expression in handbags, balloons and other articles bearing the likenesses of the
loved ones, or in the hysterical screaming of young girls whenever the Beatie Quartet
performs in public, but with the musical phenomenon. Fot” several decades, in fact
since the decline of the music-hall, England has taken her popular songs from the
L’nited States, either directly or by mimicry. But the songs of Lennon and McCartney
are distinctly indigenous in character, the most imaginative and inventive examples
of a style that has been developing on Merseyside during the past few yt’ars. And
there is a nice, rather flattering irony in the news that The Beatles have now become
prime fa vouritt’s in America too.:< The strength of character in pop songs ,eems, and quite understandably, to be determined usually by the number of composers involved; when three or four peo­ ple are required to make the original tunesmith's work publicly presentable, it is un­ likely to retain much individuality or to wear very well. 111e \'irtue of The Beatles' repertory is that, apparently, they do it themselves; three of the four are composers, they are versatile instrumentalists, and when they do borrow a song from another repertory, their treatment is idiosyncratic-as whC:n Paul McCartney sings 'Till there was you' from The Music Man, a cool, easy, tasteful version of this ballad, quite with­ out artificial sentimentality. Their noisy items are the ones that arouse teenagers' excitement. Glutinous crooning is generally out of fashion these days, and even a song about "Misery" sounds fundamentally quite cheerful; the slow, sad song about "This boy," which fig­ ures prominently in BeatIe programmes, is expressively unusual for its lugubrious music, but h~rmonically it is one of their most intriguing, with its chains of pandia­ tonic clusters, and the sentiment is acceptable because voiced cleanly and crisply. But harmonic interest is typical of their quicker songs too, and one gets the impression that they think simultaneously of harmony and melody, so firmly are the major tonic sevenths and ninths built into their tunes, and the flat-submediant key-switches, so natural is the Aeolian cadence at the end of "Not a second time" (th"e chord pro­ gression which ends Mahler's SOllg of the Eartll). Those submediant switches from C major into A-flat major, and to a lesser extent mediant one, (e.g. the octave ascent in the famous "I want tel hold your hand") are a trademark of Lennon-McCartney songs-they do not figure much in other pop repertories, or in The Beatles' arrangements of borrowed material-and sllow signs of becoming a mannerism. The other trademark of their compositions is a firm and purposeful bass line with a musical life of its own; how Lennon and McCartney di­ vide their creative responsibilities I have yet to discover, but it is perhaps significant that Paul is the bass guitarist of the group. It may also be significant that George Har­ rison's song "Don't bother me" is harmonically a good deal nwre primitive, though it is nicely enough presented. I suppose it is the sheer loudness of the music that appeals to Beatles admirers (there is something to be heard even through the squeals), and many parents must have cursed the electric guitar's amplification this Christmas-how fresh and euphonious the ordinary guitars sound in The Beatles' version of "Till there was you"-but parents who are still managing to suryive the decibels ,md, after copious repetition over several months, still deriving some musical ple4.
The Beatles, the “British Invasion,” and Cultural Respectability
overhearing, do so because there is a good deal of variety-oh, so welcome in pop
music-about what they sing.
The autocratic but not by any means ungrammatical attitude to tonality (closer to,
say, Peter Maxwell Davies’s carols in 0 Magnum Mysifriu11I than to Gershwin or Loewe
or even Lionel Bart); the texhilarating and often quasi-instrumental vocal duetting,
sometimes in scat or in falsetto, behind the melodic line; the melismas with altered
vowels (“I saw her yesterday-ee-ay”) which have not quite become mannered, and the
discreet, sometimes subtle, varieties of instrumentation-a suspicion of piano or
organ, a few bars of mouth-organ obbligato, an excursion on the claves or maracas: the
translation of African blues or American Western idioms (in “Baby, it’s you,” the Mag­
yar 8/8 meter too) into tough, sensitive Merseyside.
These are some of the qualities that make one wonder with interest what The
Beatles, and particularly Lennon and McCartney, will do next, and if America will
spoil them or hold on to them, and if their next record will wear as well as the others.
They have brought a distinctive and exhilarating flavour into a genre of music that
was in danger of ceasing to be music at all.
The following article by Theodore Strongin (music critic for the New York
Times), published two months after Mann’s piece, demonstrates how
the intellectual apparatus of high culture could be marshaled against
pop music. Strongin’s article perpetuates a tradition that goes back to
dismissive academic descriptions of jazz and swing,4
MUSICOLOGICALLY •••
Theodore Strongin
“You can tell right away it’s the Beatles and not anyone else,” is the opinion of a 15­
year-old specialist on the subject who saw the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show last
night. The age of 15 or 16 or 14 or 13 is essential in a Beatles expert.
Taking the above axiom as gospel, this listener made an attempt to find out just
what is musically unique about the British visitors.
The Beatles are directly in the mainstream of Western tradition: that much may
be immediately ascertained. Their harmony is unmistakably diatonic. A learned
British colleague, writing L’n his home ground, has described it as pandiatonic, but I
disagree.
The Beatlt’s have a tendency to bnild phrases around unresolved, leading tones.
This precipitates the ear into a false modal frame that temporarily turns the fifth of
tile scale into a tonic, momentarily suggesting the Mixylydian [sic] mode. But every­
thing always ends as plain diatonic all the same.
Meanwhile, the result is the addition of a \’ery. very slight touch of British coun­
tryside nostalgia with a trace of Vaughan Williams to the familiar elements of the
4. For numerous t’x(lmp]es of such descripti0ns, S(‘P Walser, Keepins Time; Readinss in ffc:::,
History (New York and Oxford: Oxforn University Press, 19(9).
501lrce: Theodore Strongin, “Musicologically … ” Nell’ York Till1es, February 10, 1%4, p. 53.
Copyright © 1964 bv thl’ \jew York Times Co. Reprinted with permission.

212 The 19605
rock and roll prototype. “It’s just that English rock and roll is more sophisticated,” ex­
plained the 15-year-old authority.
As to instrumentation, three of the four Beatles (George Harrison, Paul
McCartney, and John Lennon) play different sizes of electronically amplified
plucked-stringed instruments. Ringo Starr (“He’s just like a little puppy, he’s so
cute,” said our specialist) plays the drums. The Beatles vocal quality can be described
as hoarsely incoherent, with the minimal enunciation necessary to communicate
schematic texts.
Two theories were offered in at least one household to explain the Beatles’ pop­
ularity. The’ specialist said “We haven’t had an idol in a few years. The Beatles are
different, and we have to get rid of our excess energy somehow.”
The other theory is that the longer parents object with such high dudgeon, the
longer children will squeal so hysterically.
Further Reading
The Beatles (John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr). The
Bentles Anthology. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2000.
Bromell, Nick. Tomorrow Never Knows: Rock and Psychedelics in tile 1960s. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 2000.
Davies, Hunter. The Beatles: The Authorized Biography. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1968.
Everett, Walter. The Beatles as Musicians: Revolver through the Anthology. New York:
Oxford University Press, 1999.
____. Tile Beatles as Musicians: The Qllilrry Mm Through l~ubber Soul. New York:
Oxford Univt’rsity Press, 2001.
Gendron, Bernard. Between Montmartre and the Mudd Club: Popular Music and the Avant­
Carde. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002.
Spitz, Bob. Tile Bealles: The Biogmphy. Boston: Little, Brown, 2005.
Thomson, Elizabeth and David Gutman, eds. The Lennon Companion: Twenty-Fipe Years of
COlllmrnl. New York: Schirmer Books, 1987.
Rorem, Ned. “The Music of the Beatles.” Music Edumtors Journal 55 (1968): 33-34, 77-83.
Wenner, Jann. LellllOll Remembers: The Rolling Stone Interviews. New York: Popular
Library, 1971.
Discography
The Beatles. Please Please Me. Parlnphone, 1963.

____. Witll Il7e Beatles. Parlophone, 1963.

____. A Hard Day’s Nigili. Parlophone, 1964.

___. Bt’atlesf<,,· Sale. I'arlophone, 1964. ____. licl!,1 f'arlophont" 1965. ____. ! Bosley Crowther, “The rour Bea tl~5
in’A Hard Day’s Night:” Neil’ York Tillles, August 12, 1964, 41.
50″rce: Andrew Sarris, “Br”vo Beatles!” Vilil/gc Voice, August 27,1964, p. 13.
______. Alltlw!o,'(lf 2. Capitol, 1996.
213I

215 214 The 19605
less of a false sabre-toothed, rattling wreck of an old man tagged with sickeningly
repetitious irony as a “clean” old man. The pop movie mannerisms of the inane
running joke about one of the boys’ managers being sensitively shorter than the
other might have been dispensed with at no great loss.
The foregoing are trifling reservations, however, about a movie that works
on every level for every kind of audience. The open-field helicopter-shot sequence
of The Beatles on a spree is one of the most exhilarating expressions of high spirits
I have seen on the screen 2 The razor-slashing wit of the dialogue must be heard
to be believed and appreciated. One as horribly addicted to alliteration as this
otherwise sensible scribE’ can hardly resist a line like “Ringo’s drums loom large in
his legmd.”
I must say I enjoyed even the music enormously, possibly because I have not yet
been traumatised by transistors into open rebellion against the “Top 40” and such.
(I just heard “Hello, Dolly” for the first time the other day, and the lyrics had been
changed to “Hello, Lyndon.”) Nevertheless I think there is a tendency to underrate
rock ‘n’ roll because the lyrics look so silly in cold print. I would make two points
here. First, it is unfair to compare R&R with Gershwin, Rodgers, Porter, Kern, et al.,
as if all pre-R&R music from Tin Pan Alley was an uninterrupted flow of melodious­
ness. This is the familiar fallacy of nostalgia. I remember too much brassy noise from
the big-band era to be stricken by the incursions of R&R. I like the songs The Beatles
sing despite the banality of the lyrics, but the words in R&R only mask the pound­
ingly ritualistic meaning of the beat. It is in the beat that the passion and togetherness
is most movingly expressed, and it is the beat that the kids in the audience pick up
with their shrieks as they drown out the words they have already heard a thousand
times. To watch The BeatIes in action with their constituents is to watch the kind of
direct theater that went out with Aristophanes, or perhaps even the Australian bush­
man. There is an empathy there that a million Lincoln Center Repertory companies
cannot duplicate. Toward the end of A Hard Day’s Night 1 began to understand the
mystique of The Beatles. Lester’s crane shot facing the audience from behind The
Beatles established the emotional unity of the performers and their audience. It is a
beautifully Bazinian deep-focus shot of hysteria to a slow beat punctuated by the
kind of zoom shots I have always deplored in theory but must now admire in prac­
tice. Let’s face it. My critical theories and preconceptions are all shook up, and I am
profoundly grateful to The Beatles for such a pleasurable softening of hardening
aesthetic arteries.
As to what the Beatles “mean,” I hesitate to speculate. The trouble with socio­
logical analysis is that it is unconcerned with aesthetic values. A Hard Day’s Night
could have been a complete stinker of a movie and still be reasonably “meaningful.”
I like The Beatles in this moment in film history not merely because they mean some­
thing but rather because they express effectively a great many aspects of modernity
that have converged inspiredly in their personalities. When I speak affectionately
of their depravity, I am not commenting on their private lives, about which I know
less than nothing. The wedding ring on Ringo’s finger startles a great many people
as a subtle Pirandellian switch from a character like Dopey of the Seven Dwarfs to a
performer who chooses to project an ambiguous identity. It hardly matters.
A Hard Day’s Night and Beatlemania
What interests me about The Beatles is not what they are but what they choose to
express. Their Ish Kabibble hairdos,’ for example, serve two functions. They be­
come unique as a group and interchangeable as individuals. Except for Ringo, the
favourite of the fans, the other three Beatles tend to get lost in the shuffle. And yet
each is a distinctly personable individual behind their collective fac;ade of androg­
ynous selflessness-a fa<;ade appropriate, incidentally, to the undifferentiated sex­ uality of their sub-adolescent fans. The Beatles are not merely objects, however. A frequent refrain of their middle-aged admirers is that The Beatles don't take them­ selves too seriously. They take themselves seriously enough, all right; it is their middle-aged admirers and detractors they don't take too seriously. The Beatles are a sly bunch of anti-Establishment anarchists, but they are too slick to tip their hand to the authorities. People who have watched them handle their fans and the press tell me that they make Sinatra and his clan look like a bunch of rubes at a county fair. Of course, they have been shrewdly promoted, and a great deal of the hyste­ ria surrounding them has been rigged with classic fakery and exaggeration. They may not be worth a paragraph in six months, but right now their entertaining mes­ sage seems to be that everyone is "people." Beatles and squealing sub-adolescents as much as Negroes and women and so-called senior citizens, and that however much alike "people" may look in a group or a mass or a stereotype, there is in each soul a unique and irreducible individuality. Previous articles on the Beatles mentioned the remarkable reaction of the audience to their performances; for the most part, these references are deprecatory-"hysterical screaming of young girls" (Mann), "squealing adolescents" (Sarris), and "children [who) squeal so hysteri­ cally" (Strongin) -and gendered (hysteria has had clear associations with femininity at least since Freud's earliest theories). In the next essay, Barbara Ehrenreich, Elizabeth Hess, and Gloria Jacobs note that this intensity had its precedents in the reaction of fans to Frank Sinatra (see chapter 4) and Elvis Presley, but they then explain what separates Beatlemania from these previous phenomena in terms of both the audi­ ence and the mass media response. 4 In brief, they contend that the "experts" were slow to recognize the sexual dimension of the fans' excitement because asserting an active, powerful sexuality was revolu­ tionary and because the received wisdom of the day dictated that the life of the middle-class, white American left nothing to be discontent about. Yet later in this essay (not reprinted here), the authors connect the intensity of Beatlemania to an emerging form of female awareness that began to rebel against the twin dangers of sexuality for middle­ class girls: that of being either too sexual or too puritanical. If "publicly advertis[ing] this hopeless love [represented by Beatlemania] was to protest the calculated, pragmatic sexual repression of teenage life," then it mattered that the Beatles were "while not exactly effeminate, at least not easily classifiable in the rigid gender distinctions of middle-class 2, This scenf', ac('otnpanied by "Can't Buy Me Love" on the soundtrack, was one of the clear­ est antE'cedents of post-MTV music video and of contemporary rock film scoring; see Jeff Smith, 3. Ish Kabibble was a trumpeter and novelty singer with Kay Kyser's swing band during 111~ Tile Sounds a/Coll1l11erce Marketing ro)'ular Filll1 Music (New York: Columbia University Press, 1930s and 1940s. Kabibble wore a distinctive "pudding basin"-style haircut. 1'1'18),15'1-60. 4. The title of this essay refers to Cyndi Lauper's 1983 recording of the same name. 217 216 The 1960S American life."s It is also surely significant that this androgynous image was a product of the gay sensibility of the Beatles' manager, Brian Epstein, providing yet another twist on the strict heterosexual dichotomies that ruled public perceptions of sexuality.6 In other, more general, terms, the Beatles represented the freedom the girls wished they could have, even as these girls celebrated their power in creating Beatlemania. BEATLEMANIA: GIRLS JUST WANT TO HAVE FUN Barbara Ehrenreich, Elizabeth Hess, and Gloria jacobs ... witness the birth of eve-she is rising she was sleeping she is fading in a naked field sweating the precious blood of nodding blooms ... in the eye of the arena she bends in half in service-the anarchy that exudes from the pores of her guitar are the cries of the people wailing in the rushes ... a riot of ray/dios ... -Patti Smith, "Notice," in Babel The news footilge shows police lines straining against crowds of hundreds of young women. The police look grim; the girls' faces are twisted with desperation or, in some cases, shining with what seems to be an inner light. TI1e air is dusty from a thousand run­ ning and scuffling feet. TI1ere are shouted orders to disperse, answered by a rising vol­ ume of cha nts and wild shrieks. The young women surge forth; the police line breaks ... Looking at the photos or watching the news dips today, anyone would guess that this was the sixties--a demonstration-or maybe the early seventies-the beginning of the women's liberation movement. Until you look closer and see that the girls are not wearing sixties-issue jeans and T-shirts but bermuda shorts, high-necked, preppie blouses, and disheveled but unmistakably bouffant hairdos. This is not] 968 but] 964, and the girls are chanting, as they surge agilinst the police line, "I love Ringo." Yet, if it WilS not the "movement," or a deilr-cut protest of any kind, Beatlemania was the first mass outburst of the sixties to feature women--in this case girls, who would not reilch full adulthl)()d until the seventies ilnd the emergence of a genuinely politicill movement for women's liberation. The screilming ten- to fourteen-year-old filns of 1964 did not riotfi1r anything, except the chance to remain in the proximity of ~. Barbara Ehrpnreich. Elizabeth Hpss, and Gloria Jacobs, "Beatlemania: Cirh; III'{ Wall! 10 Have FilII. from "c-makillg L(l["" TIIC FClIlilliza!iollofScx (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1987), 27,34. 6. A history "'mains to be written on the impact of gay style on British rock of the 1960s, wl",ther it be through managers, such as Brian Epstein and Andrew Loog Oldham, or the artists themselves, such as Ray Da\'ies of the Kinks (in" song like "See My Friends")' or, a little bit later, David Bowi,' and rlton John. So/Iree: BarhrHil Ehrenrpich, et (11. "Beatlpmania: Girls lllst \A/ant to f-1m. 1/, FUll, frol11 Rr~1IItlkillg Love: The Feminization or Sn by Barbara Ehrenreich, Elizabeth Hess, and Gloria Jacobs (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubled"y, 1YR7),1 \1-19. © IYRb by Barbara Ehrenreich, Elizabeth Hess, and Gloria Jacobs. Used by permission of D"ubleday, " division of Random House, Inc. A Hard Day's Night and Beatlemania their idob imd hence to remain screaming. But they did have plenty to riot against, or at least to overcome through tlw act of rioting: In a highly sexualized society (one sociologist found that the number of explicitly sexual references in the mass media had doubled between] 950 and 1960), teen and preteen girls were expected to be not only "good" and "pure" but to be the enforcers of purity within their teen society­ drawing the line for overeager boys and ostracizing girls who failed in this responsi­ bility. To ilbilndon control-to scream, faint, dash about in mobs-was, in form if not in conscious intent, to protest the sexual repressiveness, the rigid double standard of femille teen culture. It was the first and most dramatic uprising of 1/I0ll1e11'S sexual revolution. Beatlemania, in most accounts, stands isolated in history as a mere craze-­ quirky and hard to explain. There hild been hysteria over male stars before, but noth­ ing on this scale. In its peak years-]964 and 1965-Beatlemania struck with the force, if not the conviction, of il social movement. It began in England with a report that fans had Illobbed the popUlar but not yet immortal group after a concert at the London Pallildiulll on October 13, ]963. Whether there was in fact a mob or merely a scuffle involving no more than eight girls is not clear, but the report acted as a call to mayhem. Eleven days later a huge and excited crowd of girls greeted the Beatles (returning from a Svvedish tour) ilt Heilthrow Airport. In early November, 400 Carlisle girls fought the police for four hours while trying to get tickets for a Beaties concert; nine people were hospitalized after the crowd surged forwilrd and broke through shop windows. In London and Birmingham the police could not guarantee the Beatles silfe escort through the hordes of fans. In Dublin the police chief judged that the Beaties' first visit: was "all right until the milnia degenerated into bar­ barism.'" And on the eve of the group's first US tour, Life reported, "A BeatIe who ventures out unguarded into the streets runs the very real peril of being dismem­ bered or crushed to death by his fans."t When the BeiltJes arrived in the United States, which was still ostensibly sobered by the assassination of President Kennedy two months before, the fans knew wh~t to d~. Television had spread the word fro~ England: The ilpproach of the Beatles is a license to riot. At least 4,000 girls (some estimates run as high as 10,000) greeted them at Kennedy Airport, and hundreds more laid siege to the Plaza Hotel, keeping the stars virtual prisoners, A record 73 million Americans watched the Beatles on "The Ed Sullivan Show" on February 9, ] 964, the night "when there wasn't a hubcap stolen anywhere in America." American Beatlemania soon reached the proportions of reli­ gious idolatry. During the Beiltles' twenty-three-city tour that August, local promot­ ers were required to provide a minimum of lOO security guards to hold back the crowds. Some cities tried to ban BeatIe-bearing craft from their runways; otherwise it took heavy deployments of local police to protect the Beaties from their fans and the fans from the crush. In one city, someone got hold of the holel pillowcases th~t had purportedly been used by the Beatles, cut them into ]60,000 tiny squares, mounted them on certifiCiltcs, ilnd sold them for $1 apiece. The group packed Carnegie Hilll, Washington's Coliseum and, a year later, New York's 55,600-seat Shea Stildiunl, and in no setting, at any time, was their music audible above the frenzied screams of the audience. Tn ] 966, just under three years after the stilrt of Beatlemania, the Beatles 'Frederick Lewis, "Britons Succumb to 'Beatlemania:" NC1i' York Tillles Magazine, D"celnl>“r ],
1963, p. 124.
jTimothy Cre”n, “They Crown Their Country with a Bowl-Shaped Hairdo,” Lit;’, January 3 L
1964, p. 30.

219 218 The 1960s
gave their last concert-the first musical celebrities to be driven from the stage by
their own fans.
In its intensity, as well as its scale, Beatlemania surpassed all previous outbreaks
of star-centered hysteriil. Ypung women had swooned over Frank Sinatra in the for­
ties and screamed for Elvis Presley in the immediate pre-BeatIe years, but the Fab
Four inspired an extremity of feeling usually reserved for football games or natural
d.isilsters. These baby bpomers far outnumbered the generation that, thanks to the
censors, had only been ilble to see [Jresley’s upper torso on “The Ed Sullivan Show.”
Seeing (whole) Beatl,,’s on Sullivan was exciting, but not enough. Watching the band
on television was il thrill-particularly the close-ups-but the real goal was to leave
home and meet the Beatles. The appropriate reaction to contact with them-such as
occupying the same auditorium or city block-was to sob uncontrollably while
screaming, ‘Tm gonna die, I’m gonna die,” or, more optimistically, the name of a fa­
vorite Beatie, until the onset of either unconsciousness or laryngitis. Girls peed in
their pants, fainted, or simply col1apsed from the emotional strain. When not in the
vicinity of the Beatles-ancl only a small proportion of fans ever got within shrieking
distance of their idols-girls exchanged Beatie magazines or cards, and gathered to
speculate obsessi\’e\y on the details and nuances of BeatIe life. One woman, who now
administers il Washington, D.C.-based public interest group, recalls long discussions
with other thirteen-year-111ds in Orlando, Maine:
I especially liked talking about the Beatles with other girls. Someone would
say, “What do you think Paul had for breakfast?” “Do you think he sleeps with
a different girl every night?” Or, “Is John really the leader?” “Is George really
more sensitive?” And like that for hours.
This fan reached the zenith of junior high school popularity after becoming the only
girl in town tp travel to a BeatIes’ concert in Boston: “My mother had made a new
dress for me to wear [to the concert] and when I got back, the other girls wanted to
cut it up and auction off the pieces.”
To adults, Beatlemania was an affliction, an “epidemic,” and the Beatles them­
selves were only the carriers, or even “foreign germs.” At risk were all ten- to
fourteen-year-nld girls, or at least all white girls; blacks were disdainful of the
Beatles’ initially derivative and unpolished sound. There appeared to be no cure
except for age, and the media pundits were fond of reassuring adults that the girls
who had screamed for Frank Sinatra had grown up to be responsible, settled house­
wives. H therp was a shortcut to recovery, it certainly wasn’t easy. A group of Los
Angeles girls organizPd a detox effort called “Beatlesaniacs, Ltd.,” offering “group
therapy for those living near active chapters, and withdrawal literature for those
going it alone ilt far-flung nutposts.” Among the rules for recovery were: “Do not
mention the word Beatles (or beetles),” “Do not mention the word England,” “Do
nol sppak with an English accent,” and “Do not speak English.'” In other words,
Beatlemania was as inevitable as acne and gum-chewing, and adults would just
havp to wpather it out.
But why was it happening? And why in particular to an America that prided
itself on its post-McCarthy m,ltmity, its prosperity, and its clear position as the num­
ber one world power? True, there were sncial problems that not even Reader’s Digest
”’How to Kick the Beatie Habit,” Life, AllgU,t 28, 1964, p. 66.
A Hard Day’s Night and Beatlemania
could afford to be smug about-racial segregation, for example, and the newly
discovered poverty of “the other America.” But these were things that an energetic
President could easily handle-or so most people believed at the time-and if “the
Negro problem,” as it was called, generated overt unrest, it was seen as having a cor­
rective function and limited duration. Notwithstanding an attempted revival by
presidential candidate Barry Goldwater, “extremism” was out of style in any area of
expression. In colleges, “coolness” implied a detached and rational appreciation of
the status quo, and it was de rigueur among all but the avant-garde who joined the
Freedom Rides or signed up for the Peace Corps. No pne, not even Marxist philoso­
pher Herbert Marcuse, could imagine a reason for Widespread discontent among the
middle class or for strivings that could not be satisfied with a department store
charge account-much less for “mania.”
In the media, adult experts fairly stumbled over each other to offer the most re­
assuring explanations. The New York Times Magazine offered a “psychological, an­
thropological,” half tongue-in-cheek account, titled “Why the Girls Scream, Weep,
Flip.” Drawing on the work of the German sociologist Theodor Adorno, Times writer
David Dempsey argued that the girls weren’t really out of line at all; they were
merely “conforming.” Adorno had diagnosed the 1940s jitterbug fans RS “rhythmic
obedients,” who were “expressing their desire to obey.” They needed to subsume
themselves into the mass, “to become transformed into an insect.” Hence, “jitterlmg,”
and as Dempsey triumphantly added: “Beatles, too, are a type of bug … and to
‘beatle: as to jitter, is to lose one’s identity in an automatized, insectlike activity, in
other words, to obey.” If Beatlemania was more frenzied than the outbursts of obedi­
ence inspired by Sinatra or Fabian, it was simply because the music was “more fran­
tic,” and in some animal way, more compelling. It is generally admitted “that jungle
rhythms influence the ‘beat’ of much contemporary dance activity,” he wrote,
blithely endorsing the stock racist response to rock ‘n’ roll. Atavistic, “aboriginal” in­
stincts impelled the girls to scream, weep, and flip, whether they liked it or not: “It is
probably no coincidence that the Beatles, who provoke the most violent response
among teen-agel’s, resemble in manner the witch doctors who put their spells on
hundreds of shuffling and stamping natives.'”
Not everyone saw the resemblance between Beatlemanic girls and “natives” in
a reassuring light however. Variety speculated that Beatlemania might be “a
phenomenon closely linked to the current wave of racial rioting.”t It was hard to
miss the element of defiance in Beatlemania. If Beatlemania was conformity, if was
conformity to an imperative that overruled adult mores and even adult jaws. In
the mass experience of Beatlemania, as fpr example at a concert or an airport, a girl
who might never have contemplated shoplifting could assault a policpman with her
fists, squirm under police barricades, and othenvise invite a disorderly conduct
charge. Shy, subdued girls could go berserk. “Perky,” pony tailed girls of the type
favored by early sixties sitcoms could dissolve in histrionics. In quieter cnntemp la­
tion of their idols, girls could see defiance in the Beatles or project it onto them.
Nen’slPcck quoted Pat Hagan, “il pretty, 14-year-old Girl Scout, nurse’s aide,
and daughter of a Chicago lawyer … who pre\’iously dug ‘West Side Story,’ Emily
Dickinson, Robert Frost, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning: ‘They’re tough: she said
‘Dal’id Dempsey, “Why the Girls Scrpam, Weep, Flip,” New York Times M(/snz;I1<', Februarv 23,1964, p. 15. 'Quoted in Nicholas Schaffner. The Brntlrs Forn',,,, (New York: McCraw-Hili, 19 77), p. j f>.

of the Beatles. ‘Tough is like when you don’t conform…. You’re tumultuous when
you’re young, and each generation has to have its idols.”‘* America’s favorite
sociologist, David Riesman, concurred, describing Beatlemania as “a form of protest
against the adult world.”t
There was another element of Beatlemania that was hard to miss but not always
easy for adults to acknowledge. As any casual student of Freud would have noted,
at least part of the fans’ energy was sexual. Freud’s initial breakthrough had been
the insight that the epidemic female “hysteria” of the late nineteenth century­
which took the form of fits, convulsions, tics, and what we would now call
neuroses-was the product of sexual repression. In 1964, though, confronted with
massed thousands of “hysterics,” psychologists approached this diagnosis warily.
After all, despite everything Freud had had to say about childhood sexuality, most
Americans did not like to believe that twelve-year-old girls had any sexual feelings
to repress. And no normal girl-or full-grown woman, for that matter-was sup­
posed to have the libidinal voltage required for three hours of screaming, sobbing,
incontinent, acute-phase Beatlemania. In an article in Scimce News Letter titled
“Beatles Reaction Puzzles Even Psychologists,” one unidentified psychologist
offered a carefully phrased, hygienic explanation: Adolescents are “going through a
strenuous period of emotional and physical growth,” which leads to a “need for
expressiveness, especially in girls.” Boys have sports as an outlet; girls have only the
screaming and swooning afforded by Beatlemania, which could be seen as “a release
of sexual energy.” j
For the girls who participated in Beatlemania, sex was an obvious part of the
excitement. One of the most common responses to reporters’ queries on the sources
of Beatlemania was, “Because they’re sexy.” And this explanation was in itself a small
act of defiance. It was rebellious (especially for the very young fans) to lay claim to
sexual feelings. It was even more rebellious to lay claim to the active, desiring side of
a sexual attraction: The Beatles were the objects; the girls were their pursuers. The
Beatles were sexy; the girls were the ones who perceived them as sexy and acknowl­
edged the force of an ungovernable, if somewhat disembodied, lust. To assert an
active, powerful sexuality by the tens of thousands and to do so in a way calculated
to attract maximum attention was more than rebellious. It was, in its own unformu­
lated, dizzy way, revolutionary.
Further Reading
See chapter 38.
Discography
See chapter 38.
”’George, I’aul, Ringo and John,” Newsweek, February 24, J964, p. ,’14.
”’Wh”t the Be”lIes Prove About Tepn,agers,” U.S. Nm’s « World Rc!’tlrl, Febru”ry 24,1964,
p.88.
j “Ikatlps Re”ction [‘uzzlps EVe’n Psychologists,” SeiCllec News Letter, Februmy 29, 1964, p. 141.
40. England Swings, and the Beatles
Evolve on Revolver and Sgt. Pepper
The album A Hard Day’s Night, along with the two that followed­
Beatles for Sale (1964) and Help! (1965, also the title of their second
movie)-featured a steady expansion of musical and technological
resources. The Beatles had begun to use four-track recording on A Hard
Day’s Night, which increased the possibilities of overdubbing (j.e.,layer­
ing vocal and instrumental parts in succession, rather than recording
everything at once). The expansion of instrumentation was modest on
these albums but nonetheless significant as more songs featured
acoustic guitars, additional percussion instruments, and piano and
organ, as well as unusual instrumental effects, such as the guitar feed­
back that opens ‘” Feel Fine” (1964, from Beatles for Sale). One song from
Help!, “Yesterday,” was the first Beatles’ song to feature orchestral
instruments. Compared to the thick texture found in most pop recordings
employing orchestral instruments, the chamber ensemble texture of
the string quartet on “Yesterday” produced a novel and relatively trans­
parent sound.
The modest sense of evolution found in the Beatles’ early albums.
regardless of its novelty for a rock ‘n’ roll group, did little to prepare the
public for what was to happen next. On Rubber Soul, released late in
196 5, the combination of subtle instrumentation with introspection of
lyric content and an “artsy” cover photo was novel within the pop music
context of the time.’ The U.s. version of the album enhanced the effect
of seriousness by deleting several of the songs with clearer ties to rock
‘n’ roll and by adding some quieter acoustic tracks that had been left off
the U.S. release of Help.’ Many listeners shared Brian Wilson’s reaction
to Rubber Soul (described earlier in the excerpt from Wilson’s autobiog,
raphy; see chapter 29). On the eve of the explosion of media attention
to the counterculture and psychedelia, Rubber Soul and its successor
Revolver (1966), along with the concurrent albums of Bob Dylan, con,
vinced many that rock could be the music of adults, even those with
intellectual inclinations. While Dylan had primarily brought notions of
artistic sincerity with him from the folk music movement, where such
1. One rpcent artid” described the envpr of Rubber Soul as “the first suggestion of p,;ychedeli, “.
with its hallucinatory photo of the band and distorted Art Nouveau-derived lettering”). Spe Steve
Jones and Martin Sorger, “Covering Music: A Brief Historv and Analysis of Album Cover
Design,” 101/71111/ of Popular Music Studies, 11-12 (1999-2000): 68-102.
2. British albums typically contained 14 songs, rather than 12 in thp United State,;, rpsulting i]l
differpnt versions of albums rplpased on both sidps of the Atlantic.
221

222 The 1960s
notions were connected to creating a sense of community between per­
former and audience, the Beatles achieved their sense of authenticity
through their allusions to high art. Sarris’s review, in chapter 39, de­
scribed how A Hard Day’s Night helped accomplish this cultural accred­
itation, but many of the songs released in 1965-66 achieved a sense
of artiness musically via format complexity, textural variety, and lyrical
introspection.
With Richard Goldstein’s review of Revolver, we enter the realm of a new
form of criticism that arises from a sensibility and milieu similar to that
of the music it describes. While earlier critics. such as Robert Shelton,
Nat Hentoff, and Ralph ). Gleason, had written sympathetically about
popular music, their critical sensibilities were honed in the 1940S and
1950S on jazz and folk music. Goldstein was among the first of a new
breed of critic who had come of age with “rock music” (now distinct
from the earlier “rock ‘n’ roll”) and who were trying to articulate an
alternative aesthetic that might correspond with the new music.
Goldstein asserts his belief in the validity of aesthetic contemplation for
rock when he writes “we will view this album in retrospect as a key
work in the development of rock ‘n’ roll into an artistic pursuit.” That
Goldstein (and other early rock critics) devoted a lot of space to the
Beatles was not fortuitous: he wrote in a later piece (on Sgt. Pepper)
that “Without [the Beatles] there could be no such discipline as ‘rock
criticism.’ The new music is their thing.'”
POP EVE: ON “REVOLVER”
Richard Goldstein
SWINGING LONDON, August 17-As though displaying unswerving loyalty to its
idols, British youth has flipped completely over the new Beatles album “Revolver.”
The single chosen from these songs-“Yellow Submarine b/w Eleanor Rigby”­
came on the charts one week ago at number four. Today it is number one. The entire
Ollbum is in the top twenty. Large record stores and tiny street stalls feature mass dis­
plays of the art-nouveau-ish album jacket. The sound of “Revolver” blrlres from win­
dow after window. John harmonizes with Paul in greengrocers and boutiques.
~eorge plays his sitar from cars stalled in traffic. Ringo ricochets from the dome of
3t. Paul’s. The Beatles are harder to avoid than even the Americans.
But there is more than mere adulation behind the sudden conquest of Britain
Jy this particular LI’. “Revolver” is a revolutionary record, as important to the
~xpansion of pop territory as was “Rubber Soul.” It was apparent last year that the
3. Richard Goldstein. “Pop EyE’: ] Blew My Cool Through the New York Times,” Village Voice.
uly 20, 1967: 14,25-26.
,Ollrce: Richard Goldstpin, “[’01’ Eye: On ‘Revo]wr,'” Village Voice, August 25, ] 966, Pl” 23,25.

Reprintpd with permission by the author.

England Swings, and the Beatles Evolve on Revolver and Sgt. Pepper 223
12 songs in “Rubber Soul” represented an important advance. “Revolver” is the great
leap forward. Hear it once and you know it’s important. Hear it twice, it makes sense.
Third time around, it’s fun. Fourth time, it’s subtle. On the fifth hearing, “Revolver”
becomes profound.
If “Rubber Soul” opened up areas of baroque progression and Oriental instru­
mentation to pop commercialization, “Revolver” does the same for electronic music.
Much of the sound in this new LP is atonal, and a good deal of the vocal is dissonant.
Instead of drowning poor voices in echo-chamber acoustics, “Revolver” presents the
mechanics of pop music openly, as an integral part of musical composition. Instead
of sugar and sex, what we get from the control knobs here is a bent and pulverized
sound. John Cage move over, the Beatles are now reaching a super-receptive audi­
ence with electronic sound.
Resemble Mantra
The key number on the album is that last track, “Tomorrow Never Knows.” No one
can say what actually inspired the song, but its place in the pantheon of psychedelic
music is assured. The lyrics resemble a mantra in form and message:
Turn off your milld
Relax and float downstream
This is 1I0t dying
This is 1I0t dying
Lay dowlI all thought
Sli rrender to the void
It is shillillg
It is shilling
That you l11aI! see
tlze mealling of wi liz ill
It is being
It is being
Love is all
and love is everyolle
It is knowing
It is kllowing .
While not unprecedented, the combination of acid-Buddhist imagery and rock beat
had never before been attempted with such complexity. At first, the orchestration
sounds like Custer’s last stand. Foghorn-like organ chords and the sound of bird·like
screeching overshadows the vocal. But the overall effect of this hodge-podge is a very
effective suspension of musical reality. John’s vocal sounds distant and God-like.
What he is saying transcends almost everything in what was once called pop music.
The boundaries will now have to be re-negotiated.
“Revolver” also represents a fulfillment of the raga-Beatie sound. A George
Harrison composition, “Love You To,” is a functioning raga, with a natural beat and
an engaging vocal advising: “Make love all day long/Make love singing songs.”
“Eleanor Rigby” is an orchestrated ballad about the agony of loneliness. Its char­
acters, Eleanor herself and Father McKenzie, represent sterility. Eleanor “died in the
church and was buried along with her name.” The good father writes “words to the

224 The 1960s
sermon that no one will hear. No one comes near.” As a commentary on the state of
modern religion, this song will hardly be appreciated by those who see John Lennon
as an anti-Christ” But “Eleanor Rigby” is really about the unloved and un-cared for.
When Eleanor makes up, the narrator asks: “Who is it for?” While the father darns his
socks, the question is: “What does he care?”
More Next Door
“Yellow Submarine” is as whimsical and child-like as its Hip side is metaphysical. Its
subject is an undersea utopia where “our friends are all aboard/many more of them
live next door,” and where “we live a life of ease/Everyone of us has all he needs.”
“For No One” is one of the most poignant songs on the record. Its structure ap­
proaches madrigal form-with an effective horn-solo counterpoint. Its lyrics are in
an evocative Aznavour bag.
“Tax1llan” is the album’s example of political cheek, in which George enumer­
ates Britain’s current economic woes. At one point, the group joins in to identify the
villains. “Tilxman-Mr. Wilson … Taxman-Mr. Heath.” They lay it right on the non­
partisan line.
Therp is some mediocre material on this album. But the mystique forming
around “Revolver” is based on more than one or two choice tracks-it encompasses
the record as a whole.
It is a bit difficult to gauge the importance of “Revolver” from this city, where it
has become gospel and where other beat groups are turning out cover copies like
Guttenberg Bibles. But it seems now that we will view this album in retrospect as a
key work in the development of rock ‘n’ roll into an artistic pursuit.
If nothing else, “Revolver” must reduce the number of cynics where the future of
pop music is concerned–even on the violent side of the Atlantic.
The Beatles’ critical acceptance reached new heights with the release of
their next album, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967). The
album was a loosely organized “concept” album, simulating a concert
given by the Beatles’ alter egos-the namesake of the album. The album
made extensive use of the recording studio, incorporating numerous
sound effects, tape collages, orchestral instruments, and sound process­
ing. The brief article that follows appeared in Newsweek and documents
how Sgt. Pepper won over even those middlebrow publications that had
maintained a condescending stance toward popular music until that
point, although the author cannot completely relinquish the patronizing
tone of yore adopted by such publications. While the album won new ad­
mirers for the Beatles’ music, and most rock fans and critics were daz­
zled, not all agreed. One of the disenchanted, Richard Goldstein, pub­
lished a review of the album and a defense of the review; in both cases,
he argued that innovations in instrumentation and recording techniques
were leading formal innovations in songwriting, rather than the other
4. This is probably a reference to Lpnnnn’s remarks, published in March 1966, that the Bealles
were “more populor than Jesus,” a comment that when rep”ated in the United States caused a
furor on tl1<' eve of their 1966 tour. England Swings, and the Beatles Evolve on Revolver and 5gt. Pepper 225 way around, much to the detriment of the Beatles' music. s The release of Sgt. Pepper coincided with the Beatles' withdrawal from "live" perfor­ mance, a coincidence that suggested to Goldstein that performance has the potential to rein in excesses that result from the pursuit of dazzling effects in the recording studio. IT'S GETTING BETTER ... Jack Kroll The problem of choosing Britain's new Poet Laureate is easy. The obvious choice is the BeatIes. They would be the first laureates to be really popular sine" Tennvson­ their extraordinary new LP, "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Balld," has been out for two weeks and has already sold 1.5 million copies in the U.S. alone. And the BeatIes' recent LP's "Rubber Sou!," "Revolver," and now "Sgt. Pepper" are really volumes of aural poetry in the McLuhan ag"." Indeed, "Sgt. Pepper" is such an organic work (it took four months to make) that it is like a pop "Fa<;ade," the suite of poems by Edith Sitwell musicalized by William Walton. Like "Fa<;ade," "Sgt. Pepper" is a rollicking, probing language-and-sound vaudeville, which grafts skin from all three brows-high, middle, and low-into a pulsating collage about mid-century manners and madness. 111e vaudeville starts immediately on the first track, in which the Beatles, adding several horn players, create the "persona" of the album-Sgt. Pepper's band, oompahing madly away with the elephant-footed rhythm, evoking the good old days when music spoke straight to the people with tongues of brass, while dubbed in crowds cheer and applaud as the BeatIes make raucous fun of their own colossal popularity. After this euphoric, ironic, nostalgic fanfare, the Beatles leave Sgt. Pepper polishing his coronet in the wings and go on with the show, creating little lyrics, dramas, and satires on homely virtues, homely disasters, homely people and a II the ambiguities of home. "She's leaving home," sing John and Paul, as a harp flutters, a string group makes genteel aspidistra sounds and a lugubrious cello wraps the soggy English weather around the listener's ears. The song is a flabby family fiasco in miniature, spiking the horrors of the British hearth like a stripped down Osborne play. "Me used to be an angry young man," sings Paul in "Getting Better," and adds "it's getting better all the time," as the group sarcasticallv repeats "get-ting bet-teT, get-ting bet-ter" in those Liverpudlian accents. Vision Getting better? Well, there's John's vision of a vinyl Arcadia, with it's Sitwellian im­ ages: "Cellophane flowers of yellow and green ... Plasticine porters with looking-glass 5. Richard Goldstein, "We Still Need the Beatles, hut .. ," Ntll' )'Jrk Times. June 18,1%7, sec. II, p. 24; and idem., "Pop Eye: I Blew My Cool Through the New York Times," Village Voice, July 20, 1967: 14, 2,"-26. 6. This reference to Marshall McLuhan echoes remarks made by Richard Goldstein in an arti­ cle reprinted in chapter 48; see "Pnp Eye: Evaluating Media," ViI/age Voice, July 14, 1966,6·-7. Source: Jack Kroll, "It's Getting Better ... ," Ncu',moeek, June 26,1967, p. 70. © 1967 Newsweek, Inc All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission. 226 The 1960s ties" which turns Wordsworth's idealized Lucy into a mod goddess, "Lucy in the sky with diamonds." And then there's Paul announcing ''I'm painting my room in the col­ orful way / And when my mind is wandering/There I will go/ And it really doesn't matter if I'm wrong I'm right/Where I belong I'm right." But even this manifestation of psychedelic individualism is undercut as George's sitar boings one note relentlessly like a giant mocking frog. "Within You Without You" is George Harrison's beautiful new cuddle-up with Mother India. Backed by three cellos, eight violins, three tambouras, a dilruba, a tabla, and a table-harp, George plays the sitar as he chants Vedantic verities such as "The time will come when you see we're all one, and life flows on within you and without you." These Himalayan homilies are given powerful effect by the wailing, undulating cascade of sound which turns the curved, infinite universe of Indian music into a perfect tonal setting for the new pantheism of the young. But even here, the Beatles, like Chaplin, deflate their own seriousness as the song ends-to be fol­ lowed by a crowd laughing. Some critics have already berated the Beatles far the supersophisticated elec­ tronic technology on this record. But it is useless ta lament the simple old days of the MersE'Y sound. The Beatles have lost their innocence, certainly, but loss of innocence is, increasingly, their theme and the theme of a more "serious" new art from the sto­ ries of Donald Barthelme to the plays of Harold Pinter. The new Beatles are justified by the marvelous last number alone: "A Day in the Life," which was foolishly banned by the BBC because of its refrain ''I'd love to turn you on." But this line means many things, coming as it does after a series of beauti­ fully sorrowful stanzas in which John confronts the world's incessant bad news sigh­ ing "Oh boy" with a perfect blend of innocence and spiritual exhaustion. Evoking the catatonic metropolitan crown (like Eliot's living dead flowing across London Bridge), John's wish to "turn you on" is a desire to start the bogged-down juices of life itself. This point is underscored by an over-whelming musical effect, using a 41-piece orchestra-a growling, bone-grinding crescendo that drones up like a giant crippled turbine struggling to spin new power into a foundered civilization. This number is the Beatles' "Waste Land," a superb achievement of their brilliant and startlingly effective popular art. Further Reading See chapter 38. Discography See chapter 38. 41. The British Art School Blues The Beatles hailed from Liverpool, a seaport on England's northwest coast. Liverpool had long had access to the latest releases from the United States, and, consequently, other bands (in addition to the Beaties) developed a blend of rockabilly, pop, and R&B for playing in local dance halls and nightclubs, resulting in a style dubbed "Merseybeat" by the British music press. In the wake of the Beatles, other Merseybeat artists, such as Gerry and the Pacemakers, Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas, and Peter and Gordon (not from Liverpool but with a song written by Lennon and McCartney) had hits in the United States, thus inspiring the media to coin the term "British Invasion" to describe the phenomenon. It had been rare for any British artists to penetrate the American pop market until that time, and this sudden success set off a fad for all things British. Concurrent with the pop-oriented Merseybeat artists, a more blues­ oriented music scene was thriving down in London, fueled by record en­ thusiasts and collectors, along with refugees from British art schools. The role of art schools cannot be underestimated in the development of a distinctive form of British rock 'n' roll: With no real equivalent in the United States, art schools in Britain filled a gap somewhere between university (which during the 1950S and 1960s was still a fairly exclusive affair) and technical or trade schools. Better-than-average students with some vague artistic inclination were often sent to art school, where they would presumably learn a trade, such as graphic design. These schools became hotbeds for aspiring pop musicians, some of whom even absorbed some fashionable theories about art along the way.' The Rolling Stones' lead guitarist, Keith Richards (b. 1942), memorably described his experience: I mean in England, if you're lucky, you can get into art school. It's somewhere they put you if they can't put you anywhere else. If you can't saw wood straight or file metal. It's where they put me to learn graphic design because I happened to be good at drawing apples or something. Fifteen ... I was there for three years and meanwhile I learned how to play guitar. latta guitar players in art school. A lot of terrible artists too. It's funny.' Several groups from the London blues and British art school scenes achieved commercial success during this period, most notably the Kinks, the Who, the Yardbirds, and the Rolling Stones. The Kinks scored three 1. For an extensive study of the impact of British art school on the development of British rock, see Simon Frith and Howard Horne, A,-f il1to Pop (London: Methuen, 1987). 2. Robert Greenfield, "Keith Richard: Gotto Keep it Growing:' in Th/' [,,,lIing Sf0111' iI,ten'i"",. Vol. 2 (New York: Straight Arrow, 1973, 218; first published in Rollil1g Sfonr in August 1971). 227 229 228 The 1960s hits in a row in the United States in late 1964-early 1965 with "You Really Got Me," "All Day and All of the Night," and "Tired of Waiting." The first two of these songs were proto-heavy metal, constructed around primal riffs played on a highly distorted electric guitar. Subsequent Kinks' recordings saw them developing a style based on British music hall influences and ironic, detached personae ("Well Respected Man," "Sunny Afternoon"), presenting an interesting antithesis to the "authen­ tic" ethos so prevalent during the era. Many have viewed this self­ consciousness and the nonblues sound of their later music as peculiarly representative of a British-identified pop, with main songwriter Ray Davies (b. 1944) seen as particularly responsible for this sensibility. The Yardbirds, on the other hand, came out of the same London blues scene as the Rolling Stones and recorded numerous covers of American blues recordings, especially songs associated with the Chicago blues. Their American hits included both bluesy songs, such as "I'm a Man," and the more pop-oriented "For Your Love." The Yardbirds are also notable for having featured a succession of guitarists who eventually became famous on their own or as leaders of other groups: Eric Clapton (b. 1945), Jeff Beck (b. 1944), and Jimmy Page (b. 1944)· The Who had a main songwriter, Pete Townshend (b. 1945), who did time in art school. The band was associated with the Mods, a London subculture of the mid-1960s that worshipped American R&B and had a particular fondness for motor scooters, smart clothes, and ampheta­ mines. The Who's music included blues influences at times, along with generous dollops of ironic self-consciousness. Master manipulators of mass cultural symbols, the band began wearing clothing redolent of "old England" years before Sgt. Pepper. They were also practitioners of performance art-their stage act featured a kind of highly theatricalized violence, which for a time included the destruction of their equipment. Pete Townshend became one of the more articulate spokespeople for understanding 1960s rock through the prism of modernist theories about art. The Who's music presented two somewhat opposed tendencies: an emphasis on performance and the enduring values of early rock 'n' roll and the blues, and an exploration of extended forms associated with art music, which reached its apogee in the "rock opera," Tommy.3 The Rolling Stones were the most famous band to emerge from the early 1960s London blues scene, and they had roots in art school as well. The Stones were quickly pegged in the press as a scruffy foil to the Beatles' bohemian charm. The following article is one of the earliest in the British music press to seize upon the rebellious image of the Stones, an image that seemed to flaunt its artificiality. The music press did little to hide its complicity in the production of this image: An article appearing a month later, in March 1964, featured a headline screaming, "Would You Let Your 3. For Pele Townshend's witty appraisal of the Who's career from 1965 to 1971, see Peter Townshend, Re\'i,'w of "The Who: MeatII, Bealll, 13iS, lllld BOllI/Cli," R"I/illg StOlle, December 7, 1971. The British Art School Blues Sister Go with a Rolling Stone?"; the headline, however, had little to do with the content of the article, which was little more than a profile of "life on the road" with the band. 4 The article reprinted here appeared in Melody Maker, one of the two leading British popular music magazines, along with the New Musical Express. At a time when no real equivalents existed in the United States, these magazines mixed informative profiles with tabloid-style sensationalism. The author, Ray Coleman, who later went on to write respectable biographies of pop musicians, seems to be writing with tongue firmly placed in cheek. REBELS WITH A BEAT Ray Coleman "Wasn't that the Rolling Stones you just left?" asked the taxi driver as I left a restaurant in London's Mayfair. "Yes. What do you think of them?" "A bunch of right 'erberts!" he replied with the cutting pertinence so typical of the London cabbie. '''Ere, aren't they the boys they say are trying to knock the Beatles off the top?" While cab drivers are often noted for their lack of tact, some have rare percep­ tion. Had [ been an agent or a record chief, I would probably have signed that taxi driver immediately as my trends adviser. The Rolling Stones might have had other ideas, like punching him on the nose. Because they deeply resent any suggestion that they are attempting to overtake the Beatles. Yet if the BeatIes are to be knocked from their perch in the future, by a British group, the popular notion is that the Rolling Stones could easily be their successors. Why? Their image is perfect ... five disheveled rebels who have already made a firm imprint on the hit parade, who have gained a huge following among young people, who never wear stage uniforms, and who JUST DON'T CARE. There are even rumblings inside show business of a swing against the BeatJes in favor of the Rolling Stones. Many observers endorse the view of an alert writer to Melody Maker's Mailbag. She asserted that young pop fans instinctively turn against an idol whom their par­ ents endorse, like the Beatles. Fans actually enjoy hearing their elders spurning their worship of their heroes. That way, there is an outlet for their emotional involvement. Horrors That taxi driver we met earlier was aged 42. He loathed the Rolling Stones. Like cer­ tain others he considers them downright scruffy, hairy horrors who need a severe talking-to from Lord Montgomery. 4. Ray Coleman, "Would You Let Your Sister Go with a Rolling Stone?" Melody Milker, March 14, 1964,8. Note that this article was written by the same author as, and appeared in the same maga­ zine a mere montl1later than, the article reprinted in this anthology. SOllrce: Ray Coleman, "Rebels with a Beat." Melody Milker, February 8, 1964, p. 11. © Ray Coleman/Melody Maker/IPC Syndication. Used by permission. 231 230 The 19605 I have no psychiatric or sociological qualifications, but I think I can confirm that the Rolling Stones are 100 percent human beings, acutely aware of what is going on. They have no leader, but Mick Jagger. 19-year-old ex-economics student (lead singel~ harmonica) and Keith Richard (19, ex-art student, guitarist) do most of the talking. The others are Brian Jones, aged 2lJ (harmonica, guitar), whom the rest describe as an ex-Iayabout; Bill Wyman (22, bass guitarist, fonner electronics man); and 22-year-old drummer Charlie Watts, a man of few words who claims to have been a brilliant advertising executive before turning to music. They all come from Southern England, and have a close association with Rich­ mond, where they played a seven-month residency when started under their present title 18 months ago. "Yes!" replied Jagger when I asked if they were jealous of the Beatles' success. "Nol" said the others. With that formality over, we switched to talk of images and money, untidiness and fans. Jagger spoke: "Yeah, we know about the image. 1 think most groups need one. You see, you can get so far without an image in people's minds, but as soon as you make a not-so-hot record, you feel it. "If you've got an image, you sell the records on the image, if you see what I mean, and you can always rely on a following whatever you do. Strange "But we didn't all sit down and say 'right, let's be untidy and let's not have uniforms and let's grow our hair long like the Beatles' or anything like that'." Wyman said: "The image was a thing that just happened. We always carried on like this. People thought, when we started, that we were so strange to look at. Now we're lumbered with the image." The difference [between the Stones and the Beatles] is that Keith and Mick do not write their own material, but work on orders for songs from other groups and solo artists. Visually, the Rolling Stones are not the prettiest quintet in the land. Although they dpny it, the truth is that they are angry young rebels who scorn conformity. Groan "We're not deliberiltely untidy," says Keith. "We think il lot of this 'rebel' thing has been brought up by people thinking too much about it. People like you come up to us and say 'are you rebels?' The answer's no." To which one could reply that they are either rebels or blatant exhibitionists. Said Charlie Watts: "We like it this way-we like to please ourselves what we do. Wl' don't like this 'big star' bit. We get treated by the fans as just ordinary blokes, and that's good. There's none of this 'fab gear' and all that." I asked how much they parned today and how much they earned when they started. At once, their publicist and co-manager, 20-year-old Andrew Oldham, joined the conversation. "It's abuut 20 times more than we got when we started," Mick Jagger stated. "Abuul £1 ,500 a week for personal appearances, that's between them, and exclud­ ing record rOyillties," said Andrew, who now sports a Rolling Stone-type hair style. The British Art School Blues And what about that hair style? There was a groan of horror at the mere sugges­ tion that it had been described as BeatIe-ish. "Look," said Keith, "These hair styles had been quite common down in London long before the Beatles and the rest of the country caught on. At art school and years ago, ours had always been the same." "Look at Jimmy Savill'," urged Jagger. "He had his like it is long before others started that style. It's the samp with us." "And Adam Faith," added Bill Wyman. "He had hair like the Beatles years ago, didn't he?" "I dunno," Richard said to Wyman. "J reckon your style came direct from the Three Stooges." They talked about extravagancies now they had money, and disclosed that they had few. "I\obody's gone really mad with money," said Keith, "except that Charlie's bought a blue suede coat." "I spend a lot of money on records," said \Vyman "Six new LPs a week." "You can't," declared Keith. "There aren't six good LPs issued a week." "Well, I do, and that's where the money goes," said Bill. "Charlie likes jazz," said Jagger. "He's the only one in the group who does, really." Wyman said he preferred R&B from Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, "and Fats Waller." "I go for singers like Ben E. King" said Jagger. "So do L," said Keith. "And Muddy Waters." Mates Do the Stones call themselves an R&B group? "We claim to be R&B as much as ill1Y­ one," Richard said. "We were playing R&B material long before this beat craze got going. "You know, the beat craze that's going on at the mnment will last longer than a lot of people think. Kids realize that having four or five stars, like a group, is better than having one star, and groups are improving tremendously all the time. "The Searchers' 'Needle and Pins' is the best record thev ever made." Was there any prejudice from promoters because of their dress habits? "Some­ times," said Keith. "They used to have this attitude of 'that scruffy lot from London who don't turn up on time and are nasty to look at." "But once we appear, we always get re-booked." "TIley just think we're layabouts," addf'd Wyman. "Well, they can lump it," announced Keith. "They callus the ugliest pop group in the country," admitted Wym~n. "We could name a few uglier people in the business," said Jagger, whose face creases jnto a mammoth smile at the slightest provocation. "Yes, guite a few more. "Do you know," said Wyman, "some places we go, they bill us as London's an­ swer to the Beatles. TI1ey don't like it when we say we don't do 'Twist and shout.'" "Yes," said Jagger. "And whatever you do, don't write that article saying we're knocking the Beatles. They're good mates of ours. We like 'em and they've done so much good for the whole scene see?" "The cancer business doesn't scare me," said Wyman, lighting up. They all smoke about 20 a day and drink moderately. "We not boozers." said Richard, "but we enjoy a drink and fags like anybody else." "No, it doesn't scare me at all," affirmed Wyman. "Let's face it, if you have got to go, you have got to go." 233 LJL The 1960s ''I'll probably die of electric shock," said Keith, the guitarist. He jit up. They trailed out of the restaurant. People eating lunch looked up, aghast at such a sight. Unkempt the Stones may bp, but their music has Vitality and they are mentally sharp. AND COMMERCIAL. further Reading Booth, Stanley. The Tme Ad"el1ll1fes ofthc Rolling Siolles. Chicago: Chicago Review 200D. Prith, Simon, and Howard Horne. Art ililo Pop. London: Methuen, 1987. Groom, Bob. Thc Blues Revival. London: Studio Vista, ]971. Jagger, Mick, Keith Richards, Charlie Walts, and ROImie Wood (Dora Loewenstein Philip Dodd. f'ds.). AecordillS 10 the Rolli/zg StOIlI'S. Sail Francisco: Chronicle Books. 20m. Kitts, Thomas. Ray Davit's: Not Like El'eryvody Else. New York: Routledge, 2007. Marsh, Dave. BCfj)rr I Gel Old: The Siory of tlze Wizo. Npw York St. Martin's Press, 1983. Marten, Neville. and Jeff Hudson. The Khlks. London: Bobcat Books, 2007. Discography The Kinks. The Kinks. Pye,19M. ----. Tllc SillsleO' Colleeliol1. Sanctuary UK, 2004. The Rolling Stones. Hoi Nocks, 7964-1971. Abkco, 20021]972). - ---' MOI'1' !lol Rocks: Big Hits c"Y Fllzed Cookies. Abkco, 2002 [J972j. The Who. My Gelleration. Brunswick, 1965. ---' Tim/my. Polydor, 1<169. -~---' Thirlt,1 Yi'lIrs ot'Ala.l'irulllll R&B. MeA, 199,1. The Vnrdbirds. Havillg 11 Rave Up with Ihe YindlJirds. Epic,I96S. ~. The l'cmfbinls - Greatcst Hil~, Vol. 1: 1964-1966. Rhino/WEA, 1990. 42. The Stones versus the Beatles The preceding chapter described SOme of the ways in which the Rolling Stones, especially lead singer Mick Jagger (0. 1942), projected an ironic detachment, arrogance, and aggressive sexuality that made them seem as if they were the opposite of the cuter, more polite public image of the Seatles. The rawer, blues-based Sound of the Stones also seems at odds with the polished, more conventiona{(y melodic, pop of the Beatles. The Stones versus the Beatles This apparent difference masked many similarities: Both bands were influenced by the rock 'n' roll of the 1950S (the Stones more by Chicago blues, the Beatles more by rockabilly), and by the soul music of the early 1960s (the Stones more by "down-home" singers, such as Solomon Burke, and the Beatles more by Motown). As the Stones began writing their own material, the Beatles' influence became clearer. Although they tended to retain a less polished sound, the Stones followed the Beattes ctoselyin the use of strings ("As Tears Go By," late 1965, after "Yesterday"), the sitar ("Paint It Black," 1966, after "Norwegian Wood"), and psychedelia (Their Satanic Majesties Request, late 1967, after Sgt. Pepper). Following Satanic Majesties, the Stones began developing their own brand of hard rock; "Iumpin' Jack Flash" (1968) stands as both the inaugural and arche­ typal song in this style, with its hypnotic syncopated riff based on a fragment of the blues scale. The following article by Ellen Willis dates from 1969 and explicitty com­ pares what were then the two latest releases of the Stones and Beatles, Beggars Banquet and The Beatles (aka, "The White Album"). Willis captures welt the Stones' appeal and uniqueness within the pop context. She also refers to debates about the Stones' imitations of the Beatles that were rampant at that point and discusses the connection between rock and politics, another hot topic among critics, fans, and musicians. Both bands had produced songs that had brought political involvement into the foreground-the Stones with "Street Fighting Man," the Beatles with "Revolution"-during 1968, the year when the relationship between the counterculture and politics began to become more pressing and contentious. The sources of this shift were numerous: the growth of the antiwar movement, riots at the Democratic convention in Chicago, and the assassinations of Dr. Martin Luther King, Ir. and Robert Kennedy all played a role. A curious aspect of this article, in retrospect, is Willis's failure to mention the Stones' misogyny, something she was to comment upon later. Willis was one of the first female rock critics, and the lack of con­ sciousness on this subject was symptomatic of the lack of feminism within the counterCUlture at this time. The paradox becomes more palpa­ ble in that Willis subsequently became better known as a writer about cultural politics and feminism than as a rock critic.' 1. Curiously, this issue had been debated in a series of articles on the Stones in the l\1arxist jouma!, Tile New LeFi Repinl'. See Alan Beckett I Richard Merton, "Stones/Comment," in Jonath ..n Eisen, ed., The Axe or Rock: Sound- or tlte Ame,·tcall Cultllml Re1'''!lIti''ll (New York: Random House, 1969),109-17; and Michael Parsons, "Rollinp; Stones," in Eisen, cd., The Age "f Rock, 118-20. These articles originally appeared in the Ncll' Lell Review in 1%8. issues 47 and 48. For more of Willis's wIitings, see BeS{II1Jillg hi Sec 01(' Light: Sex, Hopc, find ]\OCk-011l.f-RofJ (Hano\.'erl N.H.: Wesleyan University Press and L:niversity Press of New England, 1992). 235 RECORDS: ROCK, ETC.-THE BIG ONES Ellen Willis t's my theory that rock and roll happens between fans and stars, rather then be­ ween listeners and musicians-that you have to be a screaming teen-ager, at least in 'our heart, to know what's going on. Yet J must admit I was never much of a scream­ ng teen-ager myself. I loved rock and roll, but I felt no emotional identification with he performers. Elvis Presley was my favorite singer, and I bought all his records; ust tbe same, he was a stupid, slicked-up billbilly, a bit too fat and soft to be really ;ood-looking, and] was a middle-class adolescent snob. Jerry Lee Lewis? More re­ 'olting than Elvis. Buddy Holly? I didn't even know what he looked like. Fats )omino? He was cOlllic-and black. When I went to rock shows, I screamed, all 'ight, but only so] wouldn't be conspicuous. Actually, I grooved much more easily -vith records than with concerts, which forced me to recognize the social chasm sep­ lrating me from the performers (and, for that matter, from much of the audience). rhe social-distance factor became more acute as I got older; that was one reason I iefected to folk lllusic. By the time the Beatles came on the scene, I wasn't paying l1UCh attention to rock. Naturally, I was aware of them, but I didn't have the slight­ 'st inkling of their importance. Their kookiness had the same effect on kids that Cilvis's dirtiness had had; as far as I was concerned, the twe> phenomena were iden­
:ical, and neither had much to do with me. I didn’t realize that Elvis was to the
Beatles as a Campbell Soup can is to an Andy Warhol replica. (Of course, the Beatles
probably didn’t realize it, either.) At first, I reacted to the Stones with equal incom­
prehension. Mick Jagger had his gimmick: he was a hood. The j.-d. [juvenile delin­
quent] image WilS il filmi]im one, though Mick played the role with more than the
usuill elan. He was so aggressively illiterate, his sexual come-on was so exaggerilted
ilnd tasteless thilt it never occurred to me he might be smilrt. (l didn’t know then thilt
he’d gone to the London Schoo] of Economics.) But his songs, which had all the
energetic virtues of rock ilnd roll, also displayed the honesty and clear-headedness I
expected only from blues. I loved both rock and blues, but in each case my response
was incomplete: rock was too superficial, blues too alien. The Stones’ music was the
perfect blend. And, I came to realize, so was Mick’s personillity; he was an outcast,
but he was also thoroughly indigenous to mass society. Because he was so unequiv­
oCillly native, he touched a part of me thilt the blilck bluesmen and alienated folk
singer could never reach. And because I couldn’t condescend to bim-his “vulgar­
ity” represented a set of social and aesthetic ilttitudes as sophisticated ilS mine, if not
more so-he shook me in a way Elvis had not. I became a true Stones fan-i.e., an
inward screamer-ilnd T’Vt~ been one ever since.
As il fan, I feel ilmbivillent about “Beggars Banquet.” It’s a good album-the
Stones hilve never put out il bild one-but something of an anti-climax. This is the
first Stones L.P. in il yt’ar, and tht’re have been no miljor performances since 1966.
When stars have as little contilct with their public as this, everyone’s fant<,sies get so baroque that the eventual reality rarely satisfies. (Bob Dylan hilS got away with this sort of thing twice; if he tries it again, he'll be pressing his luck.) Besides, "Beggars Banquet" had an unusually long gestiltion-the rumors of its imminent appearance began back in August. Through the fall, I followed the Stones' hassle with (British) Decca over thilt men's-room-with-graffiti-album cover. I took it for granted they'd S""rc<': Elkn Willis, "Records: l\"ck, Ftc.-the Big Ones," Tile N,'1I' Yorker, 44, 11(1. 5(1, February 1, 1464, Pl'. 55-65. R"printed bv permission of the Charlotte Sheedy Agency. ., ':II. The Stones versus the Beatles win. The cover was really pretty innocent, and, anyway, what mere record company could thwart the Rolling Stones? But they lost. For the first time, I had to think of the Stones as losers. So even before I heard the record the reality-that black and white jacket designed to look like an engraved invitation-was a letdown from the fantasy. There's another reason, ill so having to do with contact, that "Beggar's Banquet" doesn't quite make it: ] have the feeling- that Jagger is responding more to the Beatles than to the world, ilnd that the album gets to us only after bouncing off John Lennon. In a very general way, the Stones' sensibility has always been-at least in part-a revision of and a reaction to the Beatles. But the symbiosis-or, rather, the competition-has become more pronounced and specific since "Sergeant Pepper" forced them to respond with "Their Satanic Majesties Request." I'm not putting down "Siltanic Majesties" as a mere imitation, or pilrody, or comment. There was nothing mere about that illbum. The Stones showed they could do the studio thing; they did it with just the right amount of extravagance ilnd wit, ilnd with beautiful songs. Anyway, they could scarcely have ignored an event of "Sergeant Pepper's" magni­ tude. But "Satanic Majesties" was a special record for a special time. In practice it was good, in principle very dangerous. While "Satanic Majesties" was still in the works, the Beatles released" All You Need Is Love," and the Stones countered with "We Love You," a better-conceived and more powerful song. Now the bt'st track on "Beggilrs Bilnquet" is "Street Fighting Man," which is infinitely more intelligent thiln "Revolu­ tion." I sense an unvvorthy effort to expose John ilS callow. (Cilliowness is part of his chilrm anyway.) It may be that anything the Beatles do, the Stones can do better, but it never pays to work on someone else's terms. In this case, there is a special risk. What has made the Stones the Stones, more than anything else, is il passionilte, thrusting ego. The Beatles' identity is collective, but the Stones are Mick Jagger. The Beatles' magic inheres in their glittering surface, the Stones' in Jagger's genius for vis­ ceral communication. Yet in this album, as in "Satanic Miljesties," Mick is-the only word for it is "leashed." "Parachute Woman" ilnd "Stray Cat Blues" do show traces of the old self-assertion, but in both of them bad production has made the lyrics nearly impossible to catch. In the other songs thilt have an ''I'' at all, it is weak, even pilssive--"Take me to the station,/ And put me on a train./I've got no expecta­ tions/To pass through here again," or "But what can a poor boy do/'Cept to sing for a TOck-and-roll bilnd? /Guess in sleepy London town there's just no place for a street fighting man "-or else, as in "Sympathy for the Devil," it belongs to a stock charac­ ter. Most of the songs are impersonal artifacts. The "Factory Girl" is just described, not loved or sneered at. "Salt of the Earth" is positively alienating, in the Brechtian sense. What Ciln it mean for Mick Jagger to toast the workers? ]s he being sarcastic? Is the song just il musical exercise? Or is he making a sincere, if rather simple-minded, political statement? Like the Beatles, the Stones play with forms: "Prodigal 50n," flawless folk blues (another political statement?); "Dear Doctor," a rather overdone parody of country music; "Jig-Saw Puzzle," proof that Jagger (or Richard) can write lyrics exactly like Dylan'S. My response to these songs is purely cerebrill. "Street Fighting Man" is my filvorite, because it really gets down to the ambiguous relation of rock and roll to rebellion. It does with politics what early rock did with sex. (Are they deliberately using the tradition, or unconsciously re-creating it?) The lyrics of the old songs had to be bland enough to be played on the radio, but the beat and ilrrangements that emphasized a phrase out of context here, a double-entendre there got th'e message across. Taken together, the words of "Street Fighting Man" are in­ nocuous. But somehow the only line that comes though loud and cleM' is "Sumnwr's here, and the time is rigbt for fighting in the streets." Then, there's the heavy beat and all that chaotic noise in the background. So Mick leaves no doubt where his instin~ts The Stones versus the Beatles 237236 The 19605 are. (And he didn't fool the censors, either; the single of "Street Fighting Man" was virtually boycotted by AM stations, though "Revolution" was played constantly.) But what can a poor boy do--if he wants to make some bread-'cept to sing for a rock and roll band? There it is. Rock is a socially acceptable, lucrative substitute for anar­ chy; being a rock and roll star is a way of beating the system, of being free in the midst of unfreedom. And I know Jagger understands the ironies involved and has no illusions about himself. (Which isn't to say he's cynical-I suspect that his famous cynicism has always been more metaphor than fact.) Still, there was a time when he applied equal energy to having no illusions about other people. It's the direct link between subject and object that I miss. Apparently, the Stones, too, are worried that all is not right; I hear they're plan­ ning an American tour in the spring. Whether that decision stems from a desire for artistic renewal or from nervousness about declining sales doesn't matter. It's won­ derful news. The Stones were never meant to be studio recluses. They need to get out and face the people. The Beatles have also found it necessary to define themselves politically. But unlike the Stones, they have little insight into their situation. Instead, they have taken refuge in self-righteousness, facile optimism, and status mongering (revolution isn't hip, you'll scare away the chicks). Not that I believe the Beatles have any obligation to be political activists, or even political sophisticates. There are many ways to serve mankind, and one is to give pleasure. Who among the Beatles' detractors has so en­ riched the lives of millions of kids? No, all I ask of the Beatles is a little taste. When Bob Dylan renounced politics, he also renounced preaching. "Revolution," in con­ trast, reminds me of the man who refuses a panhandler and then can't resist lectur­ ing him on the error of his ways. It takes a lot of chutzpah for a millionaire to assure the rest of us, "You know it's gonna be alright." And Lennon's "Change your head" line is just an up-to-date version of "Let them eat cake"; anyone in a position to fol­ low such advice doesn't need it. We may as well facE' it. Deep within John Lennon, there's a fusty old Tory strug­ gling to get out. Yet I think "Revolution" protests too much. It had been obvious for a while-ever since all the Beatles grew beards and/or mustaches and George announced "WE"re tired of that kiddie image"-that they're suffering growing pains from the who-am-I-ilnd-where-ilm-I-going-and-how-do-my-money-and-my­ fame-fit-in vilriety. When they were four silly kids jumping around on a stage, making tons of money was a rebellious act-they were thumbing their noses at the Protestant ethic. But once Leonard Bernstein had certified them as bona-fide artists they began in the eyes of society to deser"e all that money. They could no longer accept it as part of the lark. It's no accident that the Maharishi was not only a be­ liever in transcendental meditation but a believer in the virtue of material things. And would John hilve needed to write "Revolution" if on some level he hildn't felt a little defensive? He can see that all those student revolutionnries ilre sufficiently well-off to do more or less what he's done, if on a less spectacular scale-that is, to find a personal solution within the system-yet, they've chosen a far less comfort­ able route. 1 notice thilt in the album version of "Revolution" he has put the ambivalence right into the song: "Don't you know that you can count me out-in?" And he admitted to a Rolling Stone reporter thilt if he were black, he might not be so "meek and mild." Good. Everybody hilS to grow up, but few people have done it as lilte and publicly as Lennon. Though Dylan also went through a protracted ildolescence in front of a mass audience, he at least battled the media for every scrap of his private life. John takes us through illl the changes-LSD, religion, politics, broken marriage, love affilir. 2 In the context of this openness, the nude pictures of him and Yoko ilre very touching. I'm sure he didn't analyze what he was doing-isn't everyone undressing these days?­ But he certainly gets my most-inspired-whim-of-the-vear-award. What makes the pictures beilutiful is that the bodies aren't beautiful; by choosing to reveal them, John is telling his fans that celebrities aren't gods, that people shouldn't be ashamed of their bodies just because they're imperfect, that e\'en a BeatIe can love a woman who isn't a pinup. When I think of both of them looking so vulnerable, I don't resent "Rev­ olution" so much. How can I expect someone to be right all the time? About the new album. To get it over with, here's what I don't like: 1. Calling the album "The Beatles" and pilckaging it in a white cover. Everyone's going back to the basics, and it's getting boring. The right cover should have been John ilnd Yoko, clothed. 2. The slowed-dmvn version of "Revolution." Aside from the lyrics, the song was fine: good, heavy hard rock. You could even dance to it. Why do it at half the speed? So that we can hear the words better? . 3. "Revolution 9." Though I know nothing about electronic music, it sounds to me like the worst kind of pretentious nonsense. Friends who are more knowl­ edgeable than I am concur. 4. The album is just a bit too in-groupy. It pilrodies Bob Dylan, Tiny Tim, the Beach Boys, fifties gospel, rock, blues, and music-hall songs; a whole song is devoted to discussing the Beatles' previous work; and one of the songs on the record alludes to another. But it's all done so well that this is a minor criticism. Otherwise, this album is very satisfying. The Beatles have always blended senti­ mentality with irreverence. Lately, the sentimentality has become fantasy and the ir­ reverence a whimsical disregard of linguistic conventions. Whether or not it has any­ thing to do with their politics, "The Beatles," even more than "Magical Mystery Tour," belongs to a private world. And what doesn't work in life works fine as art. By "private" 1 don't meiln exclusive; the BeatIes' world is one anybody can get into. "The Beatles" is a terrific children's album-much better than Donovan's "For the Little Ones"-yet there is nothing prohibitively childish about it. The songs are funny (es­ pecially "Piggies" ilnd "Why Don't We Do It in the Road?"), moving ("l'm So Tired" and "Julia"), clever ("Rocky Raccoon"), singable ("Ob-Ia-di, Ob-Ia-dil" and "Back in the U.s.s.R."). For sheer fun with language, none of the lyrics quite come up to "lAm the Walrus," but the general level is high. A special treat is Ringo Starr's first song, "Don't Pass Me By." It's beautiful, especially the verse that goes, ''I'm sorry thilt I doubted you,!l was so unfair./You were in a car crash,! And you lost your hair." Ringo, you keep us all Silne. The Beatles might still be with the giggling guru if you hadn't turned up your nose at the curry. "Don't Pass Me By" makes up for all George 2. Lennon discussed these topics at great length in a famous interview published in Rolli!lg Stolle following the Beatles' breakup. See lann Wenner. LCII11011 Rl'lllel1lbers: The Rollillg Stow [Ilter!';"",s (New York: Popular Library, ]Q71). This interview is also important in that Lennon goes to great lengths to debunk what he already saw as the dominant myth of the sixties as " period dominated b\ an ethos of "peace and love." For another contemporary debunking (albeit an allegorical one), see the "fictional review" by J. R. Young reprinted in chapter 49. 239 238 The 1960s Harrison's Indian songs, plus "The Fool on the HilL" The screaming teenager in me wants to know how your Beatie museum is coming along, and sends her love to Maureen and the kids-and to you. Further Reading Eisen, Jonathan, ed. Tire Age of Rock: Sounds or tire American Cultural Rel'o{utio/l. New York: RandoJll House, 1969. MacPhail, Jessica Holman Whitehead. Yesterday's Papers: The Rolling Stones in Print, 1963-1984. Ann Arbor, Mich.: Pierian Press, 1986. See also chapters 38 and 41. Discography The Beatles. 1'171' 8mtles. Apple, 1968. The Rolling Stones. A(temzntlr. Decca, 1966. ____. Tlreir Sat/mic Mn;esties Request. Decca, 1967. ____. Beggars Banqllt'f. Decca, 1968. 43 .. If You're Goin' to San Francisco ... Psychedelic rock provided rock critics with more evidence (in addition to the work of Dylan and the Beatles) for their belief that rock music had become a form of "art" Taking its cue from a hodgepodge of elements derived from early 20th-century modernism, psychedelic rock was particularly enamored of notions of the unconscious derived from Freud. Symbolist poetry of Rimbaud and Baudelaire, filtered through Beat writers, such as Jack Keroauc and Allen Ginsburg; "stream of conscious­ ness" writing as practiced by James Joyce and Virginia Woolf; existential­ ist philosophy as espoused by Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus; visual imagery drawn from surrealism and expressionism; and Eastern philoso­ phy: all were cultural threads that the counterculture and psychedelic music drew upon. The first flowering of psychedelic rock occurred in San Francisco, also one of the geographic centers for the Beat movement, and where liberal politics and the lack of a "blue-blood" social hierarchy con­ joined to encourage artistic experimentation. The lyric style of psychedelic rock, while drawing on the literary in­ fluences just noted, was filtered most directly through Dylan's work of If You're Goin' to San Francisco ... 1965-66. In musical terms, psychedelic rock drew from many sources, most notably from the emphasis on improvisation found in blues, jazz, and South Asian classical music, particularly that of the North Indian, or Hindustani, tradition. The earliest songs recognized as psychedelic, such as the Byrds' "Eight Miles High" or the Beatles "Tomorrow Never Knows" (both recorded early in 1966), combined surrealistic lyrics with drones and modal improvisation influenced by Indian classical music. "Tomorrow Never Knows" used musique concrete (recorded sounds manipulated with a tape recorder), a technique borrowed from avant-garde art music, to create an "otherworldly" effect, a technique soon adapted by many other bands! Dissonance and atonality were other musical elements derived from avant-garde jazz and classical music that came to connote the "psychedelic" within the rock music context Psychedelic rock, as it developed in the San Francisco Bay Area, London, Los Angeles, and elsewhere, was connected to local hippy sub­ cultures through large outdoor concerts and other, more experimental, performance practices. These performances incorporated multimedia approaches from the avant-garde and included light shows, projections, and film. In San Francisco, many of these events were connected to mass "dosings" of LSD. in which much of the audience ingested the hallucino­ gen. Author Ken Kesey (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest) and his gang of cohorts, the Merry Pranksters, were important organizers of many of these events, dubbed the "Acid Tests."2 The "Human Be-In," a public concert held in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park in January 1967, brought these happenings into public awareness. The three-day-Iong Monterey Pop Festival (held in June 1967)3 demonstrated some of the commercial potential of such gatherings and impressed even the "straight" press with how peaceful the participants were. The San Francisco psychedelic rock scene was one of the first popular music movements ever to receive attention by the mass media before many people had heard the music or before much of it had even been recorded. The first group to record, the Jefferson Airplane, was also the first to achieve commercial success; after an initial album, The Jefferson Airplane Takes Off (1966) failed to attract many buyers, the second. Surrealistic Pillow (1967) sold several million copies and, much to the surprise of the group and its followers, generated two Top 10 singles, "Somebody to Love" and "White Rabbit." The Airplane. with their backgrounds in folk music and blues; their modal harmonies and dissonant. contrapuntal textures; and their charis­ matic female vocalist, Grace Slick, were only the most public face of 1. The f\.1others of Invention were probably the pioneers in the lise of mlls;quc Ct1llcrcte in popular music. sine" their Frrnk O"t' was released prior to Rrl'oh'cr (the BeatIe'S' album containing "Tomorrow Ne"er Knows"). Despite this, it is sate to say that the Beatles did the most !<) expOSE' the public (and other pop musicians) to this practice. See Richard Goldstein's review of ReI'ole'e,., reprinted in chapter 41J. 2. This scene was memorably recorded by Tom Wolfe in his Electric Kool-Aid Acid 7;,,1. 3. And commemorated in a documentary by D. A. Pennebaker, MOllterey Pop. 241 240 The 1960s the San Francisco scene. The colorful names of other San Francisco bands caught the fancy of the national media: the Grateful Dead, the Quicksilver Messenger Service, Moby Grape, Country Joe and the Fish, Big Brother and the Holding Company. Of these, the Grateful Dead enjoyed the most sustained success and influence, surviving as primarily a concertizing unit until leader Jerry Garcia's death in 1995. The entry on psychedelic rock that follows is an article by Ralph J. Gleason. Gleason was the jazz and pop music critic for the San Francisco Chronicle from the 1940S through the 1960S and one of the first established critics to write about rock music with the seriousness previously accorded jazz. Gleason became an advocate of the San Francisco bands and cofounded Rolling Stone with Jann Wenner in 1967. Gleason's essay portrays the Grateful Dead circa 1967 and reflects on the development of their style and the San Francisco psychedelic scene in general. DEAD LIKE LIVE THUNDER Ralph}. Gleason San Francisco has become the Liverpool of America in recent months, a giant pool of talent for the new music world of rock. The number of recording company executives casing the scene at the Fillmore and the Avalon is equaled only by the number of anthropologists and sociologists studying the Haight-Ashbury hippy culture. Nowhere else in the country hasa whole community of rock music developed to the degree it has here. At dances at the Fillmore and the Avalon and the other, more occasional affairs, thousands upon thousands of people support several dozen rock 'n' roll bands that play all over the area for dancing each week. Nothing like it has occurred since the heyday of Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman, and Tommy Dorsey. It is a new dancing age. 1he local band with the greatest underground reputation (now that the Jefferson Airplane has gone national via two LP's and several single records) is a group of young minstrels with the vivid name, The Grateful Dead. A Celebration Their lead guitar player, a former folk musician from Palo Alto named Jerry Garcia and their organist, harmonica player and blues singer Pig Pen (Ron McKernan) have SOl/rer: Ralloh J. Gleason, "Dead Like Live Thunder," SnIl Francisco Chroniclc, March 19,1967. San Francisco Chronicle (1H65- ) [Staff produc"d copy onlyl by Ralph]. GI"ason. Copvright © 1967 by San Francisco Chronicle. Reproduced with permission ot San Francisco Chronicle in the format Textbook via Copyright Clearancp Cpnter. If You're Gain' to San Francisco ... been pictured in national magazines and TV documentaries. Richard Goldstein in the Village V"ice has referred to the band as the )\lost exciting group in the Bay Area and comments, "Together, the Grateful Dead sound like live thunder." Tomorrow The Grateful Dead celebrate the release of their first album on the Warner Brothers label. It's called simply "The Grateful Dead" and the group is throwing a record promotion party for press and radio at Fugazi Hall. The Deild's illbum release comes on the first day as their first single release, two sides from the album-"Golden Road" and "Cream Puff War." The Dead, ilS their filns cilll them, got their exotic name when guitilrist Garcia, a learned and highly articulate man, was browsing through a dictionary. "It just popped out ilt me. The phrase-'The Grateful Dead.' We were looking for a name at the time and I knew that was it." The Grateful Dead later discovered the name was from an Egyptian prilyer: "We grateful dead praise you, Osiris.... " Garcia, who is a self-taught guitarist ("my first instrument was an electrical gui­ tar; then I went into folk music and played a flat-top gUllar, a regular guitar. But Chuck Berrv was my influence l ") is at a loss to dl.'scribe the band's music, despite his expressiveness. The Gratl.'ful Dead draws from at least five idioms, Garcia said, including Negro blues, country and western, popular music, even classical. (Phil Lesh, the bass player, is a composer who has spent several years working with serial and electronic music.) "He doesn't play bass like anybody else; he doesn't listen to other bass players, he listl.'ns to his head:' Garcia said. Pig Pen, the blues vocillist, "has a style that is the sum of several styles," Garcia pointl.'d out, including that of country blues singers such as Lightnin' Hopkins, as well as the more modern, urban blues men. "When we give him a song to sing, it doesn't sound like someone else, it comes out Pig Pen's way." Pig Pen's father, by the way, is Phil McKernan, who for years had the rhythm and blues show on KRE, the predecessor of KPAT in Berkeley. Bill Sommers Iusually known as Bill KreutzmannJ, the drummer, is a former jazz and rhythm and blues drummer. "He worked at the same music store I did in Palo Alto. T was teaching guitar and he was teaching drums," Garcia said. He is especially good at laying rhythms under a solo line played by the guitars. Bob Weir, the rhythm guitarist, "doesn't play that much slraight rhythm," Garcia said, "he thinks of all these lovely, pretty things to do." The Dead (thev were originillly known as the Warlocks) have been playing to­ gether for ll\'er two years now. They spend at least five or six hours a day rehearsing or playing or "just fooling around," Garcia continued. "We're working with dynamics now. 'loVe'\'(' spent two years with loud, i1nd we've spent six months with deafening' I think we're moving out of our loud stage. We've learned after these past two years, that what's really important is that the music be groovy, and if it's groovy enough and it's well played enough, it doesn't have to be too loud." Dance Band The Dead's material comes from all the strains in American music. "We'll taKe an idea and develop it; we're interesIPd in form. We still feel that our function is i1S a dance band and that's what we like to do; we like to play for dancers. We're trying to do new things of course, but not arrange our material to death. I'd say we've stolen freely from eVE'rywhere, and we have no qualms about mixing our idioms. 242 The 1960s Vou might hear some traditional style classical counterpoint cropping up in the middle of some rowdy thing, you know!" The eclectic electric music has won the Dead its Warner Brothers contract, of­ fers of work in films, a dedicated group of fans who follow them faithfully and the prospect of national tours, engagements in New York and elsewhere. But Garcia, who is universally loved by the rock musicians and fans, is characteristically calm about it all. ''I'm just a student guitar player," he concluded, "I'm trying to get bet­ ter and learn how to play. We're all novices." Further Reading Dodd, David G., and Diana Spaulding. The Grate/ill Dead Reader. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. Gleason, Ralph J. The Jeffersoll Airplalle and the Sail FrallCisco SOl/ud. New York: Ballantine Books, 1969. Lesh, Phil. Searching for the Sound: My Life with the Grateful Dead. New York: Back Bay Books, 2006. Meriwether, Nicholas G., ed. All Graceful Illstruments: The C011lexts of the Grateful Dead Phenomenon. Newcastle, Engbnd: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2007. O'Oair. Barbct,
but the rock bands there didn’t start becausE’ they wanted to make it. They dug get­
ting stoned and playing for people dancing. Here they want to MAKE it. What we”ve
had to do is learn to control success, put it in perspectivE’ and not lose tl1(‘ essence of
what we’re doing-the music. Well, we played a gig in Philadelphia recently, and the
minute we walked offstage after the first set, it all fell back into place. We all looked

247
246 The 19605
at each other, like ‘T{emember me?’ We all remembered what it was all about. We’re
learning how to handle New York.”
San Francisco had been a saving place for her. “In Texas, I was a beatnik, a weirdo,
and since Twasn’t making it the way I am now, my parents thought I was a goner.
Now my mother writes and asks what kinds of clothes a 1968 blues singer wears.
That’s kind of groovy, since we’ve been on opposite sides since I was 14. Texas is O.K.
if you want to settle down and do your own thing quietly, but it’s not for outrageous
people, and I was always outrageous. I got treated very badly in Texas.” She smiled
grimly. “1l1ey don’t treat beatniks too good in Texas.”
Janis Joplin didn’t get into music until she was 17, when hard, basic blues
changed her from being a painter. “It was Leadbelly first. I knew what it was all
about from the very front. I was right into the blues.” She moved into a bluegrass
band in Austin, dug Bob Dylan and Woody Guthrie, but the blues were always her
base. She went to San Francisco to stay in 1962, and sang in folk clubs and bars until
she joined the Holding Company.
I told her that she was the first white blues singer (female) I’d heard since Teddy
Grace who sang the blues out of black influences but had developed her own sound
and phrasing. She’d never heard of Teddy Grace, also a Southern girl, but she
beamed. “God, I’m glad you think that. I keep trying to tell people that whites have
soul too. There’s no patent on soul. It’s just feeling things. I sure loved Otis Redding,
and Bessie Smith before him, but I don’t think I copy anybody much. I’ve got coun­
try in my music too, but what changed things was singing with an electric band. All
that power behind you-that pulsating power. I had to react to what was behind me,
and my style got different. You can’t sing a Bessie Smith vocal with a rock band, so I
had to make up my own way of doing it.”
Do you categorize yourself at all? I asked. Would you call yourself a jazz singer?
“No, I don’t feel quite free enough with my phrasing to say I’m a jazz singer. I sing
with a more demanding beat, a steady rather than a lilting beat. I don’t riff over the
band; I try to punctuate the rhythm with my voice. That’s why Otis Redding is so
great. You can’t get away from him; he pounds on you; you can’t help butfeel him. He
was a man! Still is! Categories? I regard myself as a blues singer but then I regard my­
self as a rock singer. Actually, I don’t feel there’s any separation now. I’m a chick
singer, that’s what I am.”
We had another drink. “You know how that whole myth of black soul came up?
That only they have soul?” She wasn’t asking, she was telling. “Because white people
don’t allow themselves to feel things. Housewives in Nebraska have pain and joy;
they’ve got soul if they’d give in to it. It’s hard. And it isn’t all a ball when you do. Me,
I never seemed to be able to control my feelings, to keep them down. When I was
young, my mother would try to get me to be like everybody else. ‘Think before you
speak.’ ‘Learn how to behave yourself.’ And I never would. But before getting into
this band, it tore my life apart. When you feel that much, you have superhorrible
downs. I was always victim to myself. I’d do wrong things, run away, freak out, go
crazy. Now, though, I’ve made feeling work for me, through music, instead of de­
stroying me. It’s superfortunate. Man, if it hadn’t been for the music, I probably
would have done myself in.”
She looked tired, not so much from present feeling as from an all-night record session
the night before. Being made for Columbia, the album, due this spring, will be the
first to fully reflect-she hopes-what Big Brother and the Holding Company are all
about. (A previous, poorly recorded set, made much earlier, was issued despite the
group’s vehement protests.) “Making this record hasn’t been easy,” she said. “We’re
limi HendriX and the Electronic Guitar
not the best technicians around. We’re not the kind of dispassionate professionals
who can go into a studio and produce something quick and polished. We’re passion­
ate; that’s all we are. And what we’re trying to get on record is what we’re good at-
insisting, getting people out of their chairs.”
“What also makes it hard for John Simon, who’s producing the album, is that
we’re kinda sloppy at the same time as we’re happy. Last night he was trying to get
something done and said ‘Come on, who’s the head of this band?’ There was a pause
because, well, no one is. We vote on things. We’re democratic. But I think we’re get­
ting what we want into the recording.” She sighed. “We’ve got complete control over
this one, and if it’s no good, it’s our fault.”
Janis leaned back, smiled again. “Like I said, it’s hard to be free, but when it
works, it’s sure worth it.”
Further Reading
Dalton, David. Piece of My Heart: A Portmit llf Janis Joplin. New York: Oa Capo Press,
1991.
Echols, Alice. Scars (1f Sweet Paradise: The Life alld Times of Tallis J(1plill. New York: Holt
Paperbacks, 2000.

Joplin, Laura. Love, Jallis. New York: Villard, 1992.

Reynolds, Simon. The Sex Revolts: Gellder, Rebellion, ,md Rock’n’roll. Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 1995.
Willis, Ellen. “Janis Joplin,” in Begilming to See the Light: Sex, Hope, and Rock-alld-RolI,
61–67. Hanover, N.H.: University Press, of New England, 1992.
Discography
Big Brother and the Holding Company. Clzeap Thills. Columbia, 1968.

___. Li,’eat Winterlalld ’68. Columbia Legacy, 1991\.

aplin, Janis. I Got Dem 01′ Kozmic Blues Agaill Mama! Columbia, 1969.

___. Pearl. Columbia, 1971.

____. Rax of Pearls. Sony Legacy, 1999.

45. Jimi HendriX and the Electronic Guitar
Like janis joplin, Jimi Hendrix (1942-7 0 ) first achieved prominence
through a form of highly amplified blues merged with psychedelic rock.
Hendrix’s path to that point, however, followed a very different trajectory
from Joplin’s: An African American raised in Seattle, Hendrix toured as a
sideman for R&B artists, such as Wilson Pickett and Little Richard, before
he moved to London, where he launched his solo career. While clearly

249 248 The 1960s
steeped in the blues, Hendrix made the most significant contribution of
any guitarist of his generation toward conceiving of the electric guitar as
an electronic instrument, rather than merely an amplified guitar. Distor­
tion no longer occurred as a by-product of turning up an amplifier:
Hendrix made sustain and feedback an integral part of his technique, and
he pioneered the use of electronic devices, such as fuzztones and wah­
wah pedals (he may not have been the first to use these, but he was the
first to incorporate them fully as more than gimmicks).
Again, like Joplin, Hendrix first came to the attention of American au­
diences during the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival. Early commentaries (in­
cluding those about this festival) all center on his highly theatrical stage
performance, which involved playing the guitar behind his head and with
his teeth, licking it (all techniques used by earlier blues and R&B musi­
cians, such as T-Bone Walker), lighting it on fire, and finally destroying it
(in a gesture perhaps adapted from the Who’s Peter Townshend). The
highly sexualized performance of a black man in front of a white band
and (mostly) white audience also attracted attention and evoked some
uncomfortable contradictions within the counterculture, which (as I dis­
cussed earlier) was almost entirely white despite a professed ethos of
inclusion.’
Hendrix’s compositions drew on blues and R&B, but also on psy­
chedelic innovations in sound and recording, as well as on Dylan’s ap­
proach to lyrics; as such, he was an innovator and synthesizer with few
previous peers among rock musicians.’ Hendrix freely acknowledged his
indebtedness to Dylan, both in interviews and by recording Dylan’s
“Like a Rolling Stone” (at Monterey Pop) and “All Along the Watch­
tower” (which Dylan later said he preferred to his own version). His per­
formance of the “Star Spangled Banner” was a highlight of the Wood­
stock festival; Hendrix used his guitar wizardry to simulate exploding
bombs and sky-diving aircraft, turning the U.s. national anthem into an
antiwar protest song. Some of his comments to interviewers and his
abandonment of the Jimi Hendrix Experience (which was two-thirds
white) toward the end of his career revealed that Hendrix was wrestling
with the relationship of his music to his identity as an African American. 3
He died in September 1970 in his sleep from an accidental overdose of
barbituates.
1. For a fuller discw;sion of these issues, see Steve Waksman, l11,tnlll1ellts of Desire: Tlie Electric
Gllitnr (/11.1 tlie Shnping oflvll/sienl Experience (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999),
167-206.
2. See Greg Tate’s comments in his interview with George Clinton (rtybolf il1 thc R//ttcnnilk:
bsays on Ctmtelllpornry Alllerica [New York: Fireside/Simon and Schuster, 1992), 39-40, 92-93).
3. Again, see Waksman, l11str1111lCllts oj Desire. for a discussion of Hendrix in thc context of thc
black arts movement; and Samucl A. Floyd, The Power of Black lvI//sic: Interpreting /Is Hfstoryli·(llll
Ali-fca to tlie United States (New York: Oxford University PrpS’, 1995), for a discussion that includes
Hpndrix within a broader, theoretically informed conception of “black music.”
Jimi Hendrix and the Electronic Guitar
The critical response to Jimi Hendrix during his life featured much debate
about whether the highly theatrical performances early in his career were
a “gimmick” or not. Also common in the press were comparisons to Eric
Clapton and Cream, who achieved prominence at roughly the same time
with the same trio format and who also featured long, blues-based im­
provisations. While all writers conceded the quality of Hendrix’s guitar
playing, many criticized his singing and his ability as a lyricist. The
English music press viewed him as part of the London scene (as indeed
he was for several years), and this article from the British music maga­
zine, Melody Maker, provides a good example of that perspective, The
article also shows Hendrix in transition from the flashy theatrics of his
trio and reveals his awareness of earlier criticisms. Like so many articles
from this period (and after), this article raises the opposition of art to
mass culture. Because the author accepts the terms of this opposition,
“showmanship” of the kind associated with Hendrix must result from an
artistic compromise-appealing to teenyboppers-rather than from
continuity with previous African American approaches to performance.
SECOND DIMENSION: JIMI HENDRIX IN ACTION
Bob Dawbarn
Jimi Hendrix-like Eric C1apton, the Nice, the Pink Floyd and many others-is faced
with one major problem.
He is trying to produce music with claims to permanent value, yet the outlets for
that music are the mass media which, as yet, seem unable to distinguish between a
Jimi Hendrix or a Donald Peers.
This means that a Hendrix must continually compromise in order to conform to
the patterns demanded by his means of communication.
To stay in business he must make singles, he finds he is forced into acts of show­
manship to get his music across, he must make use of publicity machines geared to
the needs of teenyboppers.
Before his Albert Hall concert last Tuesday he told me: “1 just hope the concert
turns out all right. We haven’t played in a long time and we concentrate on the music
now.
“As long as people come to listen rather than to see us, then everything will be
all right. It’s when they come to expect to see you doing certain things on stage that
you can get hung up.”
Jimi dislikes miming on TV. “If you play live, nobody can stop you or dictate
what you play beyond setting a time limit.”
A good example was his recent appearance on the Lulu show when he surprised
everybody in the studio by suddenly shifting from “Hey Joe” into “Sunshine Of Your
Love” as a tribute to Cream.
“It was the same old thing,” explained Jimi, “with people telling us what to do.
They wanted to make us play ‘Hey Joe.’ I was uptight about it, so I caught Noel’s and
Mitch’s attention and we went into the other thing.
SOlll’CC: Bob Dawbarn, “Second Dimension: Jimi Hendrix in Action,” Melodylvlnker, March 1, 1969,
pp.14-15

251
L~U The 19605
“I dream about having our own show where we would have all contemporary
artists as guest stars. Everybody seems to be busy showing what polished perform­
ers they are and that means nothing these days-it’s how you feel about what you
are doing that matters.
“r just cross off people who are just in it for their own ego scene instead of trying
to show off another style of music.”
Jimi “dmits that he feels a little restricted by the Trio format.
“It restricts everybody-Noel and Mitch, too,” he said. “Now and then]’d like to
break away and do a bit of classic blues. Mitch wants to get into a jazz thing and Noel
has this thing with Fat mattress and wants to go on an English rock thing-how
about Anglo Rock. A patriotic blues-rock music.”
As a performer, Hendrix seems to be going through a period of change at the mo­
ment leaning towards extended performances.
Personally, I find his playing has great impact when disciplined by a four minute
track. The longer things on the “Electric Ladyland” album don’t always come off, his
ideas seem to get diffused. But this is no doubt a time of transition.
Nobody is better at conveying an atmosphere in a few phrases-there was the
menace of “Purple Haze,” the raw, immensely masculine “Hey Joe,” the blues influ­
ence of “Foxy Lady.” And listen to the way guitar and voice complement each other
on something like “51st Anniversary.” Or the way he shows blues can be utterly con­
temporarv on “Voodoo Chile.”
“You have to make people identify with the music,” explains Jimi. “You make a
record in the hope that the public may want to buy it, so you have to make it pre­
sentable in some way. They have to have an identification mark.
“The trouble is that a single has to be under six minutes-it used to be under
three, which was a real hang-up. It’s like you used to be able to give them just one
page of a book, now you can give them two or three pages-but never the whole book.
‘T11e music is what matters. If an audience are really digging you on a show, then
naturally you get excited and it helps. But a bad audience really doesn’t bother me
that much because then it is a practice session, a chance to get things together.
“I always enjoy playing, whether it’s before ten people or 10,000. And I don’t
even care if they boo, as long as it isn’t out of key.
“I don’t try to move an audience-it’s up to them what they get from the music.
If they have paid to see us then we are going to do our thing.
“If we add a bit of the trampoline side of entertainment then that is a fringe ben­
efit but we are there to play music. If we stand up there all night and play our best
and they don’t dig it, then they just don’t dig us and that’s all there is to it.”
Jimi is rather underrated as a songwriter-the imagery of the lyric of “The Wind
Cries Mary,” for example, could not have been written by anyone else.
”I’ve not written too many heavy things recently,” he told me. “Most of what I
have done will come out on the next LP in the late summer. [don’t trY tll make a thing
about my songs when I put them on record. I try to make them honest and there
doesn’t seem too much point in talking about them.
“The people who listen to them are the ones who will know whether they are
successful or not.”
One of the things Jimi seems to be cutting out of his personal appearances is
playing guitar with his teeth.
“The idea of doing that came to me in a town in Tennessee,” he recalled. “Down
there you have to play with your teeth or else you get shot. There’s a trail of broken
teeth aJl over the stage.
)imi Hendrix and the Electronic Guitar
“It was another way of letting out things and you have to know what you are
doing or you might hurt yourself. The trouble was audiences took it as something
they must see or they don’t enjoy the show. So 1 don’t do it much any more. We don’t
do too much of anything any more, except play music.”
Jimi says it is usually the lyrics that attract him to a song.
“Maybe a lyric has only five wordS and the music takes care of the rest,” he said.
“1 don’t mean my lyrics to be clever. What I want is for people to listen to the music
and words together, as one thing. Sometimes you get wrapped up in the words and
forget the music-in that case I don’t think the song can be completely successful.
“Generally, 1 don’t do other people’s songs unless they really say something to
me.”
Jimi laughed when I said I thought I could detect church music influences in
some of his things.
“Spiritual music, maybe,” he said. “But if you say you are playing electric church
music people go ‘gasp, gasp’ or ‘exclaim, exclaim.”’
“The word church is too identified with religion and n1.usic is my religion. Jesus
shouldn’t have died so early and then he could have got twice as much across.
“They killed him and then twisted SO many of the best things he said. Human
hands started messing it all up and now so much of religion is hogswash.
“So much of it is negative-Thou Shalt Not. Look at sex. It’s been screwed
around so much I’m surprised babies are still being born.
“Don’t get me wrong. I’m not trying to stop people going to church. Hut as long
as I’m not hurting anybody else I don’t see why they should tell me how to live and
what to do.”
Further Reading
Chenoweth, Lawrence. “The Rhetoric of Hope and Despair: A Study of the Jimi HendriX
Experience and the Jefferson Airplane.” American Quarterly 23 (1971): 25-45.
Cross, Charles R. Room Full of Mirrors: A HioSl”aphy of jimi Hmdrix. New York: Hyperion,
2005.
Murray, Charles Shaar. Crosstown Traffic: Ji1l1i Hendrix and The post-War Rock ‘N’ Roll
Revolution. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1991,
Waksman, Steve. Instruments of Desin’: Thc Electric Guitar and tile Shaping or Musical
Experience. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999.
Zak III, Albin J. “Bob Dylan and )imi Hendrix: Juxtaposition and Transformation ‘All
along the Watchtower.”’ joumal of the Americall Musicolo:;;ical Society 57 (2004):
599-644.
Discography
The Jimi Hendrix Experience. Are You E:qJerienced. Track Records, 1967.

___ . Axis: Bo/d as Love. Track Records, 1967.

___. Electric Lady/and. Reprise, 1968.

___. Band of Gypsies. Capitol, 1970.

253
46. Rock Meets the Avant-Garde
Frank Zappa
Frank Zappa’s (1940-93) persona presents an imposing conundrum: im­
mensely talented and witty to his fans, unbearably obnoxious to his de­
tractors. After an involvement in a diverse range of musical activities and
genres, Zappa formed the Mothers of Invention, signed a recording con­
tract with Verve Records (known primarily as a jazz label), and recorded
Freak Out! (released in August 1966), one of the first, if not the first,
album to be organized around a concept, rather than simply presenting
an assemblage of songs (the other contender for this distinction is the
Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds, released in May 1966). Freak Out! was also one
of the first rock albums to feature classical avant-garde approaches to
composition, electronics, and sound – in fact, even describing the album
as “rock” demonstrates the breadth of that generic label. Other artists,
primarily the Beatles, received more attention for their incorporation of
such techniques, primarily because their music was heard by a larger au­
dience, but none pursued the use of such experimentation within a rock
context as zealously as Zappa.
Zappa’s use of parody also stands out in the context of the time: He
seemed simultaneously to belong to the counterculture and to mock it.
Although it is doubtful that a figure like Zappa could have emerged at any
other time and found an audience even as large as the one he had (mean­
ing that he owed something to the social context of the time, and, hence,
to the counterculture), the parodic aspects of his music and his separa­
tion from the counterculture became more obvious with the release of
successive albums. His incorporation of an avant-garde classical perfor­
mance approach also became more aggressive over time, as did his
guitar pyrotechnics. While not really part of the (mostly British) progres­
sive- or art-rock genre per se, Zappa’s concern with integrating art music
approaches to rock overlaps to some extent with that of such progressive
rock bands as King Crimson and Yes.
This 1968 article captures Frank Zappa’s role in his band, the Mothers of
Invention, as analogous to that of a conductor of a classical music en­
semble and comments upon and provides examples of Zappa’s ironic ver­
bal style. The description of Zappa as a modernist is apt, particularly with
regard to his disdain of the audience; his attitude seems to personify the
modernist credo-“if it’s popular, it must be bad.” Nevertheless, the tone
of general approval in the article reveals the increasing acceptance of
such high-art notions within the public discourse of rock music. At this
252
Rock Meets the Avant-Garde
moment, the rock audience, writ large, was understood to have room for
highly intellectualized parodies of itself.
ZAPPA AND THE MOTHERS: UGLY CAN BE BEAUTIFUL
Sally Kempton
It is 1 A.M. on a Friday night and the Mothers of Invention are recording part of the
soundtrack for their forthcoming movie. Ian is playing the harpsichord and Bunk is
playing the flute. They huddle together in a cluster of microphones, Bunk leaning
over Ian’s shoulder to read the music propped up on the harpsichord stand. Bunk
wears a goatee and a matching moustache, and his long thick hair is gray (in the stu­
dio light it looks like a powered [sic] wig). Resembling a figure in an old etching, he
bends closer to Ian, his flute poised, and Ian straightens his back and places his fin­
gers on the harpsichord keys. Poised like musicians at a nineteenth-century musicale,
they wait for a signal to begin. One feels they are waiting to playa Mozart sonata.
Inside the control booth Frank Zappa, wearing a T-shirt bearing the legend
“Herzl Camp, Garner, Wisconsin,” is fiddling with knobs on the control board.
“You’re going to have to do the parody notes more staccato, Ian,” he says through the
intercom.
“You want a little bebop vibrato on that too?” calls Ian.
“Yeah, a little bebop a go go,” says Frank. Dick Cunk, the engineer, flips the
“record” switch.
“OK, for fame and stardom,” says Frank. “You ready?”
Ian and Bunk begin to play a series of dissonant, rhythmic, oddly beautiful
chords. The people in the control booth listen intently.
“This is going to be a nice soundtrack,” someone says.
Frank Zappa is bent over a music sheet, writing out the next piece. “Yeah,” he
says. “This is one the folks can enjoy listening to at home.”
Frank Zappa is an ironist. He is also a serious composer, a social satirist, a pro­
moter, a recording genius, but his most striking characteristic is his irony. Irony per­
meates his music, which is riddled with parodies of Charles Ives and Guy Lombardo,
of Bartok and the Penguins and Bo Diddly and Ravel and Archie Shepp and Stravin­
sky and a whole army of obscure fifties rhythm and blues singers. [t permeates his
lyrics, which are filled with outlandish sexual metaphors and evocations of the
culture of the American high school and the American hippie.
Irony is the basis of his public image. In pursuit of absurdity he has had hlmself
photographed sitting naked on the toilet. His latest album is titled We’re Only ill It
for the Money. And he has appeared on television speaking in well-rounded
periods about music and society and The Scene, all the while emanating a kind of
inspired freakishness. Zappa’s is the sort of irony which arises from an immense
self-consciousness, a distrust of one’s own seriousness. It is the most modernist of
defense mechanisms, and Zappa is an almost prototypically modernist figure; there
are moments when he seems to be living out a parody of the contemporary sensibility.
And now he and his group are teenage idols, or anti-idols, and Zappa’s irony,
which, because it is so often expressed through contemporary cliches, is the most
Source: Sally Kempton, “Zappa and the Mothers: Ugly Can Be Beautiful,” Village Voice, January ll,
1968, pp. 1, 10.

255 254 The 19605
ilccessible pnrt of his musicill idiom, turns on audiences and milkes the Mothers, in
addition tLl everything else, a splendid comedy act. Until recently Zappa’s voice,
the paradigm California voice, could be heard on the radio doing “greasy teen-age
commercials” for Hagstrom Guitars. During the Mothers’ live appearances he sits
on a stool, his expression deadpan above his bandillero moustache, and occasion­
ally he will lean over and spit on the floor under the bilndstand, saying to the
audience: “Pigs!”
“Actually, we don’t turn on audiences,” he said the other day. “Not in the sense
that other groups do, anyway. I think of that sort of thing as the strobes going and
everybody dancing and love-rock-at-the-Fillmore bullshit-if anybody felt like that
about us it’d be for the wrong reasons. Last week we were playing in Philadelphia and
we got seven requests, so we played them all at once. It was fantastic. Sherwood was
playing the sax part to one song: the whole thing, even the rests. It was really great.
But nobody knew what we were playing. They couldn’t even tell the songs apart. Half
the time, when we’re really doing something, the audience doesn’t know what it is.
Sometimes the guys in the band don’t know.”
But the Mothers’ first album sold a quarter of a million copies and the second has
done almost as well. And when they played a long stretch at the Garrick last summer
they were beset by loyal groupies. Perhaps the groupies sensed the presence of a gov­
erning intelligence, perhaps they simply dug perversity. In any case, the Mothers
have an audience.
Frank Zappa is twenty-seven years old. He was born in Baltimore and began
playing drums in a rock-and-roll band in Sacramento when he was fifteen.
“It’s almost impossible to convey what the rand b scene was like in Sacramento,”
he says. “There were gangs there, and every gang was loyal to a particular band. They
weren’t called groups, they were called bands. They were mostly Negro and Mexican,
and they tried to get the baddest sound they could. It was very important not to sound
like jazz. And there was a real oral tradition of music. Everybody played the same
songs, with the same arrangements, and they tried to playas close as possible to the
original record. But the thing was that half the time the guys in the band had never
heard the record-somebody’s older brother would own the record, and the kid would
memorize it and teach it to everybody else. At one point all the bands in Sacramento
were playing the same arrangement of ‘Okey Dokey Stomp’ by Clarence Gatemouth
Brown. The amazing thing was that it sounded almost note for note like the record.”
Zappa was lying in bed, eating breakfast and playing with his three-month-old
baby. He lives with his wife, Gait and the baby, in a long basement apartment in the West
Village. The apartment has a garden and its walls are papered with posters and music
sheets and clippings from magazines; there is a full-length poster of Frank in the hall and
a rocking chair in the living room with a crocheted cover that says “Why, what pigs?”
Frank was in bed because he had been up all night before, recording. “The reason
1 can stand New York is because Tspend all my time here or at the studio,” he said.
“Mostly at the studio,” said his wife, smiling.
“Let’s see, my life,” he said. “Well, when I was sixteen my father moved us to a
little town out in the country. That was terrible, Thated it. 1 was used to Sacramento,
yOLl see. 1 was the strangest thing that ever hit that high school They were so anxious
to get rid of me they even gave me a couple of awards when! graduated. After that
my father wanted me to go to college. I said no, I was interested in music, I didn’t
want to go to college. So I hung out at home for awhile, but there was nobody to talk
to, everybody else being at college, so I finally decided I should go too. That was very
ugly. I stayed for a year. In the meantime I had shacked up with this girl and married
Rock Meets the Avant-Garde
her. We stayed married for five years during which time I held a number of jobs” (he
listed the jobs). “Then in 1963 we were living in Cucamonga and there was a record­
ing studio there which I bought for $1000, also assuming the former owner’s debts.
He had hundreds of tapes, among them such big hits as” (he named three or four ob­
scure songs) “and 1 took the tapes and the equipment and began fooling around.
About that time I got divorced and moved into the studio. I spent all my time exper­
imenting; a lot of stuff the Mothers do was worked out there.”
A year later the studio was torn down to make room for a widened road, but by
that time he had gotten the Mothers together. “We were playing at local beer joints for
like six dollars a night. T finally decided this would not do, so I began calling LIp all
the clubs in the area. This was in 1965, and to get work you had to sound like the
Beatles or the Rolling Stones. You also had to have long hair and due to an unfortu­
nate circumstance all my hair had been cut off. I used to tell club managers that we
sounded exactly like the Rolling Stones. Anyway we finally got a booking in a club in
Pomona, and were something of a hit. It was more because of our act than because of
our music. People used to go away and tell their friends that here was this group that
insulted the audience.
“Then M-G-M sent someone around to sign us to a contract. Their guy came into
the club during a set of ‘Brain Police’ and he said, ‘Aha, a protest rhythm and blues
group: so they paid us accordingly. The fee we got for signing was incredibly smaIl,
particularly considering the number of guys in the group.”
Nowadays, of course, Zappa runs something of an empire. He has an advertis­
ing agency (“mostly to push our own products, at least so far”), and a movie coming
out which someone else shot but for which they are going to do the soundtrack The
movie is a surrealistic documentary called “Uncle Meat”; it is shot in a style Zappa
refers to as “hand-held Pennebaker bullshit,” and it will be edited to fit the music.
“Then we’re going to do a monster movie in Japan-Japan is where they do the
best monster work. And we’re starting our own record company. We’ll record our
own stuff and also some obscure new groups.”
It was time for him to go to the studio. The Mothers have rented Apostolic Stu­
dios on Tenth Street for the entire month of January. “One hundred and eighty
hours-not as much time as the Beatles use, of course, we can’t afford that”-and
that is where Zappa spends most of his time. He puts on a brown leather greatcoat,
pulls a red knitted cap over his ears, and sets out, talking about his music as he walks.
“Stockhausen isn’t really an influence:’ he says. “That is, I have some at his
records but I don’t play them much. Cage is a big influence. We’ve done a thing with
voices, with talking that is very like one of his pieces, except that of course in our
piece the guys are talking about working in an airplane factory, or their cars.
“It was very tough getting the group together in the beginning. A lot of guys
didn’t want to submit to our packaging. They didn’t like making themselves ugly,
but they especially didn’t like playing ugly. It’s hard getting a musician to play ugly,
it contradicts all his training. It’s hard to make them understand that all that ugliness
taken together can come out sounding quite beautiful.”
The studio, when he arrived, was nearly deserted, except for Mother Don
Preston, who sat at the organ wearing earphones and playing a piece audible only to
himself. “Can you run a playback on the violins?” he asked when Frank came ill.
“Sure:’ said Frank. “We recorded this thing last night. I found some violins in a
closet and I gave them to three of the guys. None of them had ever played a Violin
before. They were making all these weird sounds on them, and then in the middle I
got them to add some farts. It’s a concerto for farts and violins.”

257 256 The 1960s
But instead of playing back the violin thing, Dick put on a tape of “Lumpy Gravy,”
one of the Mothers’ new records, an instrumental piece, framed at the beginning and
end with cocktail music, and interspersed with quiet, hollow, surreal voices talking
behind a continuous hum of resonating piano strings. The music has overtones of
Bartok and Ives, but by some stylistic alchemy it ends by sounding like nothing but
Zappa. It is an impressive record. Three or four people had drifted into the control
room while it was playing, and after it was over someone said, “I love that piece.”
“Yeah, but will the kids go for it,” said Frank.

“It’s good to have it out,” said Don, “so people will know what you can do.”

“No, no,” Frank said. “It’s good to have it out so I can take it home and listen to it.”

Further Reading
Ashby, Arved. “Frank Zappa and the Anti-Fetishist Orchestra.” The Musical Quarterly 83
(1999): 557-606.
Koste!anetz, Richard. The Frank Zappa Companion: Four Decades of COl1ll/lelltary. New
York: Schirmer Books, 1997. ”
Lowe, Kelly Fisher. The Words alld Music of Frank Zappa. Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2006.
Watson, Ben. Frank Zappa: The Negative Dialectics of Poodle Play. New York: St. Martin’s
Press, 1995.
Wragg, David. “‘Or Any Art at All?’ Frank Zappa Meets Critical Theory.” PopUlar Music
20 (2001): 205-22.
Discography
The Mothers of Invention. Freak Ollt’ Verve, 1966.

Zappa, Frank. and the Mothers of Invention. Lumpy Gravy. Verve, 1967.

____. We’re Only in Ufor the Malley. Verve, 1968.

____. Weasels Ripped My Flesh. Bizarre Records, 1973.

47. Pop/Bubblegum/Monkees
Although the emergence of rock criticism during 1966-67 led to an
unprecedented amount of writing about popular music, this writing fo­
cused on only a portion of the popular music circulating at the time.
Omitted from rock criticism was “pop”: music that continued the
tradition of teen idols, of schlock-rock, of “middle-of-the-road,” “easy
listening” pop, resembling nothing so much as the popular music that
antedated rock ‘n’ roll. While rock music and the counterculture were
attracting ever-increasing amounts of media attention, it is important to
Pop/Bubblegum/Monkees
remember that Frank Sinatra (“Strangers in the Night”l, Nancy Sinatra
(“These Boots Are Made forWalkin”’l, Frank and Nancy Sinatra (“Some­
thin’ Stupid”l, and Sgt. Barry Sadler (“The Ballad of the Green Berets”)
all had Number One pop hits during the years (1966-67) in which rock
criticism emerged.
Among acts catering to young consumers, the Monkees were by far
the most successful. A made-for-TV group, the Monkees were modeled
on the Beatles, and their television series, which began broadcasting in
1966, adapted aspects of the humor and cinematic style of the Beatles’
early movies. The Monkees’ music represented (at least initially) an at­
tempt by some of the best professional songwriters (many of them
holdovers from the Brill Building) to write in the style of the “new rock.'”
Robert Christgau is probably best known to readers as the primary pop
music critic and editor for the Village Voice, a position he held from the
early 1970S until 2006. Christgau was one of the few “new rock” critics
to grapple with the phenomenon of the Monkees or, for that matter, with
unabashedly commercial music in general. Christgau is concerned, in
these essays and others written around the same time, that rock be a
“popular art.” When he states, as he does here, that “good rock is
largely a matter of production and publicity,” or when he compares the
Monkees’ latest single release favorably to the Beatles’ because of its
superior commercial performance, he is implicitly confronting the grow­
ing critical orthodoxy that artistry in rock music must be opposed to
commercialism. 2
from ANY OLD WAY You CHOOSE IT: ROCK AND OTHER
POP MUSIC, 1967-1973
Robert Christgau
June, 1967. The Monkees are four young men who star in an adolescent TV comedy
of the same name and make records that rise to the top of the charts like jellyfish.
They were chosen (from a hirsute field of 437) not for musical ability but for
1. For an attempt to view the Monkees as a representation of the counterculture, rather than
its antithesis, see Aniko Bodroghkozy. Gma1’c Tube: Sixties Telc1′;,;on Rnd the YiJuth RelJclliol1
(Durham, N.C: Duke University Press, 2001), 66-75. For a contemporary mainstream account,see
“Romp! Romp’:’ Newsweek, October 24,1966,102.
2. A particularly good example of Christgau’s ecumenical approach may be found in his
“Rock Lyrics Are Poetry (Maybe):’ in Ti,e Age of Rock: Sounds of the American Cultural ReI’oll/liDI1,
ed. Jonathan Eisen (New York: Random House, 1969),230–43 (first published in Cheelah in
December 1967), in which he discusses the work of Dylan and other “heavy rock” artists “Jon!’;’
side the more overtly commercial work of Simon and Garfunkel and the Mamas and the P”pas.
Source: Robert Christgau, A/11{ Old WOlf You Choose It: Rock and Othrr Po!, Music, 1967-197.1
(New York: Cooper Square Press, 2(00), pp. 38–39, 47–41′. Originally published in June 1967
and December 1967 in Esquire. Reprinted by permission of Robert Christgau.

258 The 19605
exuberance and irreverence, qualities salient in the chaps who were in those very suc­
cessful Richard Lester movies. You remember.
You’d better, because the Monkees, conceived as a haircut on A Hard Day’s Night
and Help’, find themselves sole inheritors of the great Beatie tradition. The originals
have abdicated, withdrawing from teeny idolatry into their music, which is popular
but personal and exotic. Young fans, confused, miss those nice noppy Englishmen
they fell for three years ago, and the Monkees provide a wholesome American sub­
stitute (with an Englishman added for remembrance). They’re not too handsome, not
too pretentious, and every week tbey do silly things for thirty minutes, not counting
commercials. At the moment the kids seem to love them.
For similar reasons, serious rock fans hate them. They know the Monkees are to­
gether by happenstance, that they are not too irreverent, too precocious, too sexual­
too anything. They know they are lousy singers and can hardly play their instruments.
They note that Micky Dolenz was once “Circus Boy” and forget that Mike Nesmith has
had a respectably bumpy folk-rock career. And they conclude that the music stinks.
It doesn’t. It’s not great, but it is good, better than much of what makes top
ten-an important test if rock is truly a popular art. The group’s second album,
More of the Monkees, is hard to criticize objectively. Do I hear that dishonest edge in
a funny, raucous song like “Your Auntie Grizelda” because it’s there l)1′ because I ex­
pect it to be? Who can tell? With a couple of horrible exceptions, the songs sound
OK, testimony to the truth that good rock is largely a matter of production and pub­
licity. “Mary, Mary,” which Nesmith wrote and produced, is very successful. He is
their clearest talent and a bit of a real rebel. One would hope that he and not Dolenz
will dominate the group. Something may come of this yet.
But whatever it is, it won’t be the Beatles.
Deccmber, 1967. !tis time for a progress report on the Monkees, who tooka big gamble by
releasing analbum and a single at about the same time as the big fellas from England. The
album, Hmdqllarters, has not done as well as Sgt. Pepper, but “Pleasant Valley Sunday”
blw “Words” is two-sided top ten, whereas” All You Need Is Love” is one-sided.
My original analysis of the group pitted Mike Nesmith (struggling singer, hence
good) against Micky Dolenz (ex-child actor, hence bad). As it turns out, the real bad­
die seems to be the other ex-child actor, Davy Jones, a repulsive showbiz type, cute as
a push button. The rest? Peter Tork is an anxiety-prone phonv, Dolenz a likable oaf
with a strong voice, and Nesmith still the most talented of the four, which may not be
saying much. His “You Just May Be the One” and “Sunny Girlfriend” are by h~r the
best songs on Headquarters and would sl)und good anywhere.
The Monkees began, if you’ll remember, as poor vocalists and no musicians at illl,
but now, as a note on the album proclaims, they are Doing It Themselves, This means
they are venturing live performances. I saw them at Forest Hills, and they stank. That
crisp studio sound was weak and ragged on stage, and their Act (they tell the press
that the kids won’t go for “four dots” anymore) was unbelievably (l)rny. The kids
screamed, of course, but the stadium was far from full, and the 01lEo’ lonelv rush at the
stage quickly stymied by a bored and overstaffed security force. Good signs.
Further Reading
Bodroghkozy, Aniko. Gro01’e Tllbe: Sixtin; Tcle1’isio1l and tile YOlltl1 Rcl>rllio1l. Durham,
N.C.: Duke University Press, 2001.
Christgau, Robert. “Rock Lyrics Are Poetry (Maybe).” In 1’11,. Age of R”ck: SOllnds or the
A1I1e,.iCn wid ply accepted as exemplifying the genre can be seen from
” recent blurb in tht> Spring 2002 TiIlIC-Li!,’ music c”talog:
During thellJf:'()s, th girl like yOll doing in” business like this?” Stereo Pcpicw (September ](72): 51′-61.
Two years lztter, TillIe feCltufl’d an article on the same subject (\\Tith a focus on Joni Mitchell) as
thdr cover storv. “Rock ‘n’ Roll’, Lt’ading L”dy,” Ti111e, Dt’cl’mber 16, ]974,63-66 (the titlt’ on the
cover is “Rock WOl1wn: Songs of Pride (lnd Passion”).
The Sound of Autobiography
housewife.”3 All this highlights how neither the mainstream press
(represented by Stereo Review, the publication where this article orig­
inally appeared) nor the publications most associated with rock criti­
cism (there are remarkably few articles from this period on female
singer-songwriters) could accommodate the new musical roles af­
forded to women by the singer-songwriter genre.
CAROLE KING: “You CAN GET TO KNOW ME
THROUGH My MUSIc”
Robert Windeler
The unquestioned queen of the singer/songwriter phenomenon that has already led
to some quieter sounds and more thoughtful lyrics in the music of the 1970’s is Carole
King. (The question of kingship remains highly debatable and must be taken up an­
other day.) And where Carole has led, others have followed. In fact, the disc jockeys
and record buyers of the United States haven’t had such an array of female voice5 to
choose from since the days when Patti Page, Jo Stafford, and Rosemary Clooney were
singing about sand dunes on Cape Cod, jambalaya and crawfish pie in New Orleans,
waltzes in Tennessee, and pyramids along the Nile, and that was so long ago that it
only cost a nickel a song to hear Teresa Brewer on the jukebox. However, there is a
crucial difference between now and those earlier times: most of today’s women write
their own material.
Carole King was a successful songwriter for a dozen years before she released, at
the age of thirty-two, her second solo album as a performer. The record was called
“Tapestry,” and the songs on it do weave a highly subjective view of life. They have
also kept Carole King and half a dozen other singers at the top of music surveys ever
since. “Tapestry” at last count had sold more than 5,500,000 copies in this country
alone and has long since surpassed the movie soundtrack of Thc Sound of Music, the
original Broadway-cast recording of My Fair Ladl/’ and Simon & Garfunkel’s “Bridge
over Troubled Water” as the best-selling record album of all time. Carole won three
Grammy Awards at the 1972 ceremonies of the Academy of Recording Arts and
Sciences in Hollywood. Such artists as Peggy Lee, Barbra Streisand, and James Taylor
sing Carole King songs, as do Blood, Sweat and Tears and Dionne Warwicke, but so
far no one sings You’vc Got a Friend, I Feel the Earth Mopc, or Where You Lead as suc­
cessfully as Carole herself does.
Sh~ is a near-recluse who is married for the second time and the mother of three.
She didn’t attend her triple-win Grammy ceremonies because she was still nun;ing her
latest baby. When not rehearsing, performing, or recording, she keeps house in Laurel
Canyon, West Hollywood, and still considers herself a writer rather than a perfDrmer.
Carole’s long climb to the top has been dazzling, but she is most reluctant tD talk
about it. She likes her three dogs, her privacy, and most other musicians. She di~ljkes
interviews, and even the very rare one she grants will have to take place after a whole
3. This description is strangely reminiscent of the profile of Areth” Franklin given in chap leT 37.
Source: Robert Windeler, “Carole King: ‘You Can Get to Know Me Through My Music:” Stm’<7 Review (May 1973): 76~77. Reprinted bv permission of Wright's Rpprints. 282 The 19705 long list of other more important things get done, such as taking empty soda bottles to the recycling center. cI1w young woman who stuns audiences whenever she appears on tour, and sits at the piano nearly mesmerized by her own music, says Simply "I want my music to speak for me. You can get to know me through my music." Music indus­ try insiders have been doing just that since 1959 when she wrote (ironically, with her ex-husband) Will )~'u Still Love Me TimlOrrow?, a Shirelles hit then and a standard now. She was bom in New York, went to high school in Brooklyn, attended college in Manhattan (City) and Queens (Queens), married her high-school sweetheart, and had two children (her third was not born until November 1971). Carole and her husband­ collaborator, Gerry Goffin, had a string of hits, including a song they wrote and pro­ duced for their maid, who billed herself as Little Eva when she performed her employers' Loco-Motion. Goffin and King survived rather than participated in the brasher sounds of the 1960's, and created songs in their own style for Aretha Franklin (Natural Womou), the Drifters (Up on the Roo!>, and others. cI11e marriage did not survive,
however, and in 1968 Carole left New York for Los Angeles. “I needed to get together a
new identity,” Carole says. “Tt’s very hard to maintain a marriage writing together.” But
the Goffins found they were occasionally able to collaborate after their breakup.
As early as 1961, Carole had auditioned as a recording artist, doing a demon­
striltion record of her own It Might O~ Well Rain Until September, which was eventually
recorded by Bobby Vee. And Atlantic Records’ president Ahmet Ertegun says he re­
memhers “this little Jewish girl constantly hanging around begging me to let her
make a record.” But Carole didn’t really get the chance to record until she joined with
guitarist Danny Koolch and a drummer in a Los Angeles group called the City in
196R. James Tilylor <'ame to LA., and Kootch, who had worked with him in New York, introduced Taylor to Carole. Taylor played guitar in jam sessions with the City, and they produced a nice, straightforward sOlmd that was slightly ilhead of its time. Tilylor asked Carole to play piano on his second album, "Sweet Baby James," which introduced the phenomenal Fire and Rain. Carole then approached Lou Adler, producer of "Tapestry" and founder Ihead of Ode Records, Carole's label, to help her do a solo record. She had known him in the late Fifties and early Sixties when she was under contract to Colgems Music Publishing and he was their West Coast manager. Although a fan of Carole's who had often tried to persuade her to record, Adler was still busy with the Mamas and the Papas, so he turned her over to a friend, John Fishback, who produced her first illbum. "Caroh> King: Writer,” as it was called, contained twelve
King songs and ten lyrics by Gerry Goffin, who also mixed the recording. “Writer” sold
all of eight thousilnd copies, mostly to friends and bns in the business who had been
collecting her old demos and tapes all those years anyway. But the album was critically
acclaimed, ilnd Adler, one of the boy wonders of the music business since his Dunhill
dilys, took personal charge of Carole’s second, third, and fourth albums.
Taylor, Kootch, ilnd Charles Larkey (a bass player with a group called Jo Mama
and Cilrole’s current husband), played on her first album and all subsequent ones.
Cilroll’ began touring with Taylor, at first just playing the piano for him, then doing
an occasional solo, finally as second act on the bill (with .10 Mamil opening the show).
She electrified iludiences, but the album remained il dud commerciallvc Adler, who
speculates that it was because “Writer” was soft-sell and had more of a-jazz feel than
“lilpestry,” which milnilged to be commercial without compromising Carole’s bilsic
musical integrity, said, “Nothing discourilged me. I’m a fan and in love with her.”
Suddenly it was Carole King, performer, and she, for one, was scared. “As a
writer it’s very safe and womb-like,” is Carole’s view, “because somebody else gets
the credit or the blame.” She WilS nervous about performing live, and credits the la­
conic country-tinged singer I composer Tilylor with teaching her how to relax. As for
the singer Isongwriter phenomenon she finds herself such an importilnt pilrt of, “It’s
The Sound of Autobiography l~::S
a question of everything moving in cycles. In the Sixties, after President Kennedy’s
death, everything got very ‘anti.’ 111e Beatles in all their glorious insolence were the
start of <1I1ti-heroism, anti-romanticism. Now the cycle has gone back to romanticism. People got sick of the psychedelic sound and wilnted softer moods." She counts herself fortunate to have "happened to be there at the right time." And Carole characterizes herself as not being success-motivated. "I wilnt to play music, but I have no particular desire for the limelight itself." "I have always written more in the direction of my friends and family," she says. "1 like to touch them with my songs; touching a mass of people is a whole other trip-it is a high-energy trip and it's very exciting, but it's another trip. I don't want to be a Star with a capital S. 111e main reason I got into performing and recording on my own \vas to expose my songs to the public in the fastest way. I don't consider myself a singer." Carole's husband Charles is several years her junior (Carole is quite hung up on being 34, an advanced age for a pop heroine, and wishes she were a good deal younger). She lives with him, her two daughters by Goffin, who are now eleven and thirteen, and the Larkeys' own child in her white frame house in Laurel Canyon. When she writes a song (now often serving as her own lyricist), Cilrole has a general idea about what she wants, discusses it with Adler, and then sits down with the mu­ sicians selected, illways including Taylor and her husband. "We play it a couple of times and we learn it just by listening because we are all so close," she says. "Then it's only a question of polishing and refining it, until it has a degree of spontaneity about itbut is still tight." Carole's third and fourth albums, "Music" and "Rhymes and Reasons," have come ilnd gone. Although "Music" did not come close to the sales total for "Tapestry," it sold 1,200,000 copies, hardly an embarrassment in an industry in which $1,000,000 in sales is recognized by a gold record award. The ilcceplance she's received as a com­ poser is whilt keeps her going as il perfnrmeL And it is in writing that she really ex­ presses herself, as in her poignilnt Child of Mille (which Anne Murray and others have also recorded), a song written to and rejoicing in her daughter. If others like to listen­ and tnday's incrmsingly sophisticated and honest audiences apparently do-that's fine too. "But she's still bilsically a writer," SilyS Lou Adler. "The performing part is amaz­ ing to her. All of those artist trips don't interest her at all. She's a Laurel Canvon housewife. She's always been writing ilnd thinking in much the same way; the only differencE' is that now, with a different kind of music listener, she's being heard." Further Reading Emerson, Ken. A!, of Mitchell’s ml”ic, set’ Lloyd Whitesell, “Harmonic Palette in Early joni
Mitchell,” P0I'”lllr !I·ll”i,., 21, no. 2 (May 20(2); 17:l~94; and jeffrey Pepper Rodgprs, “My Secret
Plore; The Cui”‘r Udys5<>v of joni Mitchell,” in The fo”i Ivlildlell COI1lI'”niml, 21’J-:1O.
3. Timothy Crouse, “Review of Rille.” Rollins Siolle, August 5, 1971; reprinted in Tile Rolling
Shille Ileeord Rel’in”, VollI”,e /I, by the editors of Roil/liS Stone (New York: Pocket Books, 1974), 471.
?R4
joni Mitchell journeys Within
interviewer in the piece that follows, the words “free” and “freedom”
probably occur more often than any others in her lyrics from this period.
The following conversation with the Israeli folksinger, MaIka,
comes from the height of her fame in 1974. Mitchell touches on the auto­
biographical nature of her work and on the importance of introspection
and analysis, but also gives a nuanced view of the interaction of these
autobiographical elements with values that she shares with musicians
working in other genres.
JONI MITCHELL: SELF-PORTRAIT OF A SUPERSTAR
Maika
MaIka: YOl/’re Oil tlJr rOl1d perforl11illg I1gl1in. Will/ the silence of tW(1fl/1I years’
Joni Mitchell: J like to retire a lot, take a bit of a sabbatical to keep my life alive and
to keep my writing alive. If I tour regularly and constantly, I’m ahaid that my ex·
perience would be too limited, so 1 like to lay back for periods of time and come
back to it when 1 have new material to play. I don’t like to go over the old periods
that much; I feel miscast in some of the songs that 1 wrote as a younger woman.
Maika: How do youfed, tl1en, u/ltmllislening to Llour records?
Joni: I don’t enjoy some of the old records; 1 see too much of my growing stage; I’ve
changed my point of view too much. There are some of them that I can still bring
life to, but some that 1 can’t. Let’s take the Lndies (1f II/(‘ Call1/on album; there are good
songs on there which I feel still stand up and which I could still sing. TIlere’s a song
called “The Arrangement” which seemed to me as a forerUlUler and I think has
more musical sophisticalion than anything else on the album. And the Bluf’ album,
for the most part, holds up. But there are some early songs where there is too much
nalvete in some of the lyrics for me to be able now to project convincingly.
MaIka: Your /lalile has f’ce/l lillked 10 S(11lle li(1werflll people in the business, {allles Till/1M
Il/ld Gmhalll Nl1sh, for illslallce. Do l!ou{t’f’I tl1t11 YOla frif’llds llaw helped your CI11’eer
inllnyway’
Joni: 1don’t think so, not in the time that James and I were spending together anyway.
He was a total unknown, for one thing-maybe 1 helped his career? … But [ cia
think that when creative people come together, the stimulus of the relationship is
bound to show. The rock and roll industry is very incestuous, you know; we have
all interactf’d and we have all bt’en the source of many songs for one another. We
have all been close at one time or another, and 1 think that a lot of beautiful music
came from it. A lot of beautiful times came from it, too, through that mutual under­
standing. A lot (If pain too, because, inevitably, different relationships broke up.
Maika: But iSII’1 there a certailll1J1l(1Zmt ofdall;;;er, luhen 1/0/1 SII!TUl/lld ljOUrse!f luitli I/Il/si­
cil1W; alld troubadollrs doillg tlte ,l1i/le killd o( work liO/I arc doill;;;, thl1t ljOl1 renlhi creat”
YOIIr UU’IT special world alld arc 1/01 so o/””’ 10 lullal’s happenillg ill Ihf’ resl or tlze world?
SOlll’ce: MaIka, “joni Mitchell: Self-Portrait of” Superstar:’ Madml1’s, june 1974. Rqninted 11\
Stacy Luffi!” ed., Till’ lOl1i Mitchell CO”‘!’aJllOIl; FOllr Decades OfCo)/l1llcI1lary (New York; Schirmer
Books, 2(00), 66-74.

287 286 The 1970S
]oni: A friend of mine criticized me for that. He said that my work was becoming
very “inside.” It was making reference to roadies and rock ‘n’ rollers, and that’s
the very thing I didn’t want h) happen, why 1like to take a lot of time off to travel
some plJce where I have my anonymity and I can have that day-to-day en­
counter with other walks of life. But it gets more and more difficult. That’s the
wonderful thing about being a successful playwright or an author: you still
maintain your anonymity, which is very important in order to be sompwhat of a
voyeur, to collpct your observations for your material. And to suddenly often be
the center of attention was … it threatened tlw writer in me. The performer
threatened the writer.
MaIka: MallY [if your sonss arc biogmphiml-do yOll think tllI/t the change il1 your
lifestyle /1011′ has affected yOIl r songs?
]oni: I don’t know. I had difficulty at one point accepting my affluence, and my
success and even the expression of it seemed to me distasteful at one time, like
to suddenly be driving a fancy car. I had J lot of soul-sE’arching to do as 1 felt
sonlE’how or other that liVing in elegance and luxury canceled creativity. I still
had that stereotyped idea that success would deter creativity, would stop the
gift, luxury would make you too comfortable and complacent and that the gift
would suffer from it. But I found the only way that [ could reconcile with my­
self and my art was to say this is what I’m going through now, my life is chang­
ing and 1 am tl)O. I’m an extremist as far as lifestyle goes. [ need to live simply
and primitively sometimes, at least for short periods of the year, in order to
keep in touch with something more basic. But I have come to be able to finally
enjoy my success and to use it as a form of self-expression, and not to deny.
Leonard Cohen has ,1 line that says, “Do not dress in those rags for me, I know
you are not poor,” and when I heard that line [ thought to myself that I had
been denying, which was sort of a hypocritical thing. I began to feel too sepa­
rate from my audience and fro[11. my times, separated by affluence and conve­
nience from the pulse of my times. I wanted to hitchhike and scuffle. I felt
maybe that I hadn’t done enough scuffling.
Maika: On your /lPW albul/l, Court and Spark,for the first time you’ve recorded a song
that iS/I’t [lOllI’S, “T’clstcd.” Why did .’1011 decide to record “ol71etiJing tilat i” not your
OZ(ll1 ?
]oni: Because I love that song, I always have loved it. I went through analysis for a
while this year, and the song is about analysis. I figured that J earned the right to
sing it. I tried [() put it on the last record, but it was totally inappropriate. It had
nothing to do with that time period, and some of my friends feel it has nothing
to do with this album either. It’s added like an encore.
MaIka: I hope 1’111 /lot e/lcroaehi/lg 011 YOllr primcy, but why the analysis /lOW7
Joni: I fPlt I wanted to talk to someone about the confusion which we all have. I
wanted to t,llk to someone and I was willing to pay for his discretion. [ didn’t
expect him to have any answers or that he was a guru or anything, only a
sounding bonrd for a lot of things. And it proved effective because simply by
confronting parJdo”es or difficulties within your life several times a week, they
seem to be not so important as they do when they’re weighing on your mind in
the middlt’ of the night, by yourself, with no one to talk to, or someone to talk
to who probably will tell another friend, who will tell another friend, as friends
do. I felt that [ didn’t want to burden people close to me, so r paid for profes­
sional help. And I went thrOlIl!;h a lot of changes about it, too. It’s like driving
joni Mitchell Journeys Within
out your devils-do you drive out your angels as well? You know that whole
thing about the creative process. An artist needs a certain amount of turmoil
and confusion, and I’ve created. out of that. [t’s been like part of the creative
force—even out of severe depression sometimes there comes insight. It’s sort of
masochistic to dwell on it, but you know it helps you to gain understanding. I
thil1k it did me a lot of good.
MaIka: When I listen to ym/l’ s’1I1gs ] notice tl/(/t there are certain the1lles tI/(/t keep a~)J’em’­
ing: Ollt’ theme that comes III’ often is loneliness.
Joni: I suppose people have always been lonely but this, [ think, is an especially
lonely time to live in. So many people are valueless or confused. I know a lot of
guilty people who are living a very open kind of free life who don’t really bE’­
lieve that what they’re doing is right, and their defense to that is to totally ad­
vocate what they’re doing, as if it were right, but somewhere deep in them
they’re confused. Things change so rapidly. Relationships don’t seem to have
any longevity. Occasionally you see people who have been together for six or
seven, maybe 12 years, but for the most part people drift in and out of relation­
ships continually. There isn’t a lot of commitment to anything; it’s a dispos­
able society. But there are other kinds of loneliness which are very beautifut like
sometimes I go up to my land in British Columbia and spend time alone 11l the
country surl’l’unded by the beauty of natural things. There’s a romance which
accompanies it, so you generally don’t feel self-pity. In the city when you’re sur­
rounded by people who are continually interacting, the loneliness makes you
feel like you’ve sinned. All around you you see lovers or families and you’re
alone and you think, why? What did I do to deserve this? That’s why [ think the
cities are much lonelier than the country.
MaIka: Another theme r think is predominant in YOllr sOl1gs is loue.
]oni: Love … such a powerful force. My main interest in life is human relation­
ships and human interaction and the exchange of feelings, person to person,
on a one-to-one basis, or on a larger basis projecting to an audience. Love is a
peculiar feeling because it’s subject to so much … change. The way that love
feels at the beginning of a relationship and the changes that it goes through
and I keep asking myself, “What is it?” It always seems like a commitment to
me when you said it to someone, “J love you,” or if they said that to you. It
meant that you were there for them, and that you could trust them. But know­
ing from myself that I have said that and then reneged on it jn the
supportive-in the physical-sense, that [ was no longer there side by side
with that person, so I say, well, does that cancel that feeling out? Did I really
love? Or what is it? [ really believe that th€ maintenance of individuality is so
necessary to what we would call a true or lasting love that people who say “I
love you” and then do a Pygmalion number on you are wrong, you Imow.
Love has to encompass all of the things that a person is. Love is a very hard
feeling to keep alive. It’s a Verv fragile plant.
MaIka: 1son/climes fiJld myself C/1UlIing Jieople that sccm to be able to handle lout’, J’cople
who !lapcfolll1d af01’1l1lllafor marriage. YOIl were 11/arried at Ol1e IJoil1t yourself; IlOro do
YOllfeell1bout marriage 1l0W?
]oni: I’ve only had one experience with it, in the legal sense of the word But
there’s a kind of marriage that occurs which is almost more natural through a
bonding together; sometimes the piece of paper kills something. I’ve talked to
so many people who said, “Our relationship was heautiful until we got

288 The 1970S Sly Stone 289
married.” If I ever married again, I would like to create a ceremony and a ritual
that had more meaning than I feel our present-day ceremonies have, just a de­
claration to a group of friends. If two people are in love and they declare to a
room of people that they are in love, somehow or other that’s almost like a mar­
riage vow. It tells everybody in the room, “I am no longer flirting with you. I’m
no longer available because I’ve declared my heart to this person.”
Maika: Do yOIl til ink YOII’1I get lIlarricd again.’
Joni: I really don’t know. I wouldn’t see a reason for marriage except to have chil­
dren, and I’m not sure that I will have children, you know. I’d like to and 1 have
reillly strong maternal feelings, but at the same time I have developed ilt this point
into a very transient person and not your average responsible human being. I
keep examining my reasons for wanting to have a child, and some of them are re­
ally not very sound. And then I keep thinking of bringing a child into this day and
age, ilnd what values to instill in them that aren’t too high so they couldn’t follow
them and have to suffer guilt or feelings of inadequacy. I don’t know. It’s like I’m
still trying to teach myself survival lessons. 1 don’t know what I would teach a
child. I think about it … in terms of all my talk of freedom and everything.
Maika: Freedom, and in particillar tile wllrd ‘free,” is allotller tlll’lnc in YOllr mllsic. What
docs frcedom meall to yOll’
Joni: Freedom to me is the luxury of being able to follow the path of the heart. I
think that’s the only way that you maintain the magic in your life, that you keep
your child alive. Freedom is necessary for me in order to create, and if I cannot
create, 1 don’t feel alive.
Maika: Do yOIl ever f/11’isio/l or fear that the well of creath1itJ/llIigllt dry lip?
Joni: Well, every year for the last four years I have said, “That’s it.” I feel often that
it has run dry, you know, and all of a sudden things just come pouring out. But I
know, I know that this is a feeling that increases as you get older. I have a fear that
I might become a tunesmith, that I would be able to write songs but not poetry. I
don’t know. It’s a mystery, the creative process, inspiration is a mystery, but I
think that as long as you still have questions the muse has got to be there. You
throw a question out to the muses and maybe they drop something back on you.
Maika: Sittingfrolll the olltside, it seellls that as a crcati!’c persoill/oll have attained qllite
a Int: you havc all avenlle in which to express .110111′ talellt, affillencc, recognition. What
lilT .110111′ aims now?
Joni: Well, I really film’t feel I’ve scratched the surface of my music. I’m not all
that confident about my words. Thematically 1 think that I’m running out of
things which 1 feel are important enough to describe verbally. I really think that
as you get older life’s experience becomes more; I begin to see the paradoxes re­
solved. It’s almost like most things that I would once dwell on and explore for
an hour, I would shrug my shoulders to now. In your twenties things are still
profound and being uncovered. However, I think there’s a way to keep that
alive if you don’t start putting up too many blocks. I feel that my music will
continue to grow-I’m almost a pianist now, and the same thing with the gui­
tar. And I also continue to draw, and that also is in a stage of growth, it hasn’t
stagnated yet. And I hope to bring all these things together. Another thing I’d
like to do is to make a film. There’s a lot of things I’d like to do, so I still feel
young as an artist. I don’t feel like my best work is behind me. I feel as if it’s
still in front.
Further Reading
Luftig, Stacey, cd. Ti,e loni Mitchell Companion: FOllr Decade, of CO/1//1/clltary. New York:
Schirmer Books, 2000.
O’Brien, Karen. [lmi Mitchell: Slwdows alld Light. London: Virgin, 2001.
“Rock ‘n’ Roll’s Leilding Lady.” Ti/1/e, December 16, 1974: 63-66.
WhiteselL Lloyd. The Music of loni Mitdlcll. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008.
Discography
Mitchell, Joni. Song to a SCI/gull. Warner Bros./WEA, 1968.

___. Blue. Warner Bros./WEA, 1971.

___. Court alld Spark. Elektra/WEA, 1974.

___. Dmz [uall’s Reckless Daugliter. Elektra/WEA, 1977.

___. Hits. Warner Bros./WEA, 1996.

Both Sides Now. Warner Bros./WEA, 2000.
The Very Best of Singers and SOllgH’riters. Time Life Records, 2003.
_Sly Stone5
“The Myth of Staggerlee”
The phenomenal popularity of Aretha Franklin, the ongoing success of
James Brown along with the grittiest practitioners of Southern Soul, and
the continued ubiquity of the pop-oriented productions of Motown at­
tested to soul music’s continued relevance to a broad cross section of
the u.s. audience in the late 1960s. However, the activity and popularity
of many of the first wave of soul practitioners declined after 1968•
Producer /songwriters Holland-Dozier-Holland, who had been responsi­
ble for the bulk of the hits for the Supremes and the Four Tops during the
peak 1964-67 period left Motown, while Stax, following the death of Otis
Redding, underwent administrative reorganization and became increas­
ingly inconsistent in both artistic and commercial terms (by 1975, the
company filed for bankruptcy).
Nevertheless, soul music was far from finished; instead it split in
two directions: a “sweet” soul style taking its cue from Motown and
balladeers, such as Curtis Mayfield, and a “funky” soul style, taking its
cue from James Brown, the “Southern Soul” practitioners, and Aretha
Franklin. The discussion of funk rightfully began in chapter 35 with the ex­
cerpts from James Brown’s autobiography. Brown’s innovations and their
adoption by other artists in the late 1960s also had an explicit political

290 The 1970S
component, since these musical innovations coincided with a shift in
African American politics from the integrationist stance of the civil rights
movement (associated with the rise of soul music) to the more radical
stance of the black power movement, a shift heralded by Brown’s record­
ing, “Say It Loud, I’m Black and I’m Proud” (1968).’ These shifts were dis­
cussed in Part 3 in conjunction with artists like Aretha Franklin and songs
such as “Respect.”
Concurrent with the developments in Brown’s band, other bands
created their own forms of funky soul music, including Booker T. and
the MGs, the Bar-Inguin
Books USA, Inc., Ii 97511(40), pp. 7R–BJ, 84-86. © 1975, 1’J97 by Greil Marcus. Used bv permission.

292 The 19705
without the p(1Wpr to movp an audipnce, but always leaving the audience (and the artist)
a way out. In retrospect, records mil de in this spirit often seem like reverse images of
narcissism. Rio/ is the real thing: scary and immobilp. It wears down other records, turn­
ing thpm into unintpntional splf-parodies. 111e negative of Riot is tough enough to make
solutions seem tri\’ial and alternatives false, in personal life, politics, or music.
Rock ‘n’ roll may matter becausp it is fun, unpredictable, anilrchic, a neatly pack­
agpd and amazingly intense plurality of good times and good ideas, but none save
the very yOlll1gest musicians and fans can still takp their innocpnce for granted. Most
have si I11ply seen and done too much; as the Rolling Stones have been proving for ten
years, you have to z(‘ork for innocence. You have to win it, or you end up with noth­
ing more than a strainpd na·lvpte.
Because this is so pop needs an anchor, a reality principle, especially when the
old ideas-thp joy of the Beatles, the simple toughness of the Stones-have run their
coursp and the music has begun to repeat its nlPssages without repeating their im­
pact. Rock ‘n’ roll may escape cOtwpntional reality on a day-to-day level (or remake
it, minute-to-minute), but it has to have an intuitive sense of the reality it means to
escape; the audience and the artists have to be up against thp wall before they can
climb over it. When the Stones made “Gimmie Shelter,” they had power because
their toughnpss had taken on complexity: they admitted they had doubts about
finding pven something ‘1S simple as shelter, and fought for it anyway But because
the band connected with its audience when they got that across, and because the
music that did it was the best they ever made, the song brought more than shelter;
it brought life, providpd a metaphor that allowed the Stones to thrive when
Altamont proved toughness was not the point, and gave them the freedom to go on
to sing about other things-soul survivors, suffocation, a trip down a moonlight mile.
Riot matters bpcause it doesn’t just define the wall; it makes the wall real. Its sen­
sibility is h

Order an Essay Now & Get These Features For Free:

Turnitin Report

Formatting

Title Page

Citation

Outline

Place an Order