Seven Events That Made America America (21 page)

Rock and roll perfectly complemented the new freedom in Eastern Europe. It was indeed the music of the people, and occasionally, the voice of protest—completely unsupported by government at any level. Rock originated in the United States, was nourished in the United States, and perfected in the United States, so it is ironic that one of the greatest events in American history came with the arrival of the English “Fab Four,” the Beatles, on American soil in February 1964. That a British band would play such a crucial role in the revival of rock—which in turn would be energized, re-Americanized, and spread throughout the world—was one of those ironic twists that makes history perpetually entertaining. Just as Reagan relied on Margaret Thatcher for support, so too the American rockers mixed freely with their English cousins in the revival of rock that ensued. But ultimately it was the American record market, American producers, American audiences, and often American artists who eventually helped pry open the jaws of tyranny enveloping much of the world. In the end, whatever the British or, for that matter, the Czech, Polish, or even Russian underground rockers played or sang, it was more or less “made in the USA.”

In the mid-1960s, antiwar radicals, some of them seeking a revolution that would overthrow Western capitalist society, latched on to rock icons, hoping they would provide the attractive and popular front men (and women) necessary to reel in the youth. They were disappointed. Bob Dylan, the Beatles, Mick Jagger—all sooner or later let down the leaders who sought social upheaval by refusing to become the standard bearers of their cause. Ironically, then, two decades later rock as a musical form and cultural movement would contribute mightily to eroding the foundations of the Communist system that so many of the true radicals loved.

The paradox is that rock and roll by its nature is both entertainment and social criticism, revolutionary yet extremely sympathetic to the very liberties that infuse the American capitalist and political system. Artists who complained about “the man” and sang of “takin’ it to the streets” enthusiastically took—and mostly kept—large checks for their performances. One has to look no further than the concerns musicians express over music pirating; most artists had starved to get where they were, but after meeting with some success, quickly adopted the clichéd rock-star lifestyle of indulgence and luxury. At the very moment Doors singer Jim Morrison waxed romantic about “revolting against authority,” he was tooling around Los Angeles in the “Blue Lady,” a Shelby GT 500 (a “terrible and mean machine,” as Doors keyboardist Ray Manzarek labeled it). Shelbys weren’t cheap—about the price of a fully tricked-out top-of-the-line Corvette!
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Guitarist Jim McCarty, of “Devil with a Blue Dress On” fame, rolled his eyes when he recalled the fascination of Cactus bandmates Tim Bogert and Carmine Appice (formerly in Vanilla Fudge) with their Panteras.

Commentators from the Left later attempted to redefine reality, trying to claim that some of the rockers’ actions complemented their own ideology. When the Beatles formed Apple Records, one writer insisted it represented “the worker seizing control of the means of production.”
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The reality that Paul McCartney deeply resented England’s high tax laws and found a way around them by forming a label in the United States seemed lost on such writers. When McCartney described Apple as a “kind of Western communism,” he was talking a good Karl Marx but his actions were 100 percent Adam Smith: Apple launched a blizzard of new products and divisions—books, electronics, clothing, films—all at a profit.
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Rock’s revolutionary character came from the quite capitalistic spirit of creativity itself, a point leftist interpreters frequently missed. While rock may have “fought the system,” it fought
every
system! The same undefined craving for freedom that infused American musicians’ call for civil rights for blacks lay behind the East Bloc artists’ battle for their own civil rights against much more repressive regimes. And where some rockers could croon—or scream—about love, peace, and brotherhood, it often failed to line up with their personal lives. Pete Townshend of the Who even smacked Yippie leader Abbie Hoffman on the head with his guitar for interrupting the Who’s set at Woodstock.
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Like jazz and country and western before it (both also 100 percent American music forms), what made rock revolutionary when it arrived on the scene in the 1950s was not its lyrics or political preaching but rather its essential liberating form. All three styles shared a common thread of liberty, in which the band starts together, then after a few verses or choruses, introduces soloists, followed by a reunion at the end. This musical genre symbolized the nation’s essence like no other music forms, in that it reflected both the communal and the individualistic nature of American society. But by 1960, American rock had begun to lose its dynamism, having drifted away from the revolutionary sounds and moves of Elvis Presley to sappy love songs and appearances in B-level movies, such as
King Creole
and
Flaming Star
.

The Beatles transformed American rock from nonthreatening, simplistic, feel-good tunes popular in the 1950s into a sophisticated (and rebellious) medium, returning it to its roots. They were aided in that transformation by a radical new instrument, Leo Fender’s new electric guitar with its distinct sound tailored perfectly for rock and roll. Soon the Gibson company’s Les Paul, with its more “bluesy” sound, joined with Fender’s to create a recipe for a cultural explosion: a radical new instrument with a new sound mixed with several streams of music—much of it (country, folk, R&B, and rock) rebellious in nature—together energizing the largest generation of prepubescent Americans in history.

These trends collided with a fourth development: a radical turnover in talent from the original rock and rollers. Already, however, Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J. P. Richardson (aka the Big Bopper) were dead; Jerry Lee Lewis had become a pariah due to his scandalous marriage to his thirteen-year-old cousin; and Little Richard had been born again, playing only gospel music between 1957 and 1963. Carl Perkins’s “Blue Suede Shoes” was already considered an “oldie,” and had increasingly come to be identified with a new subvariant of rock called “rockabilly.” On top of that, Perkins was three years older than Presley, four years older than Roy Orbison, and almost a decade older than up-and-comers such as Gene Pitney and Ricky Nelson. In teen years, like dog years, that made Perkins ancient. And the King? Elvis’s “rock star” was waning. He was increasingly absorbed with making movies, and most of his songs came as tie-ins to his films. Though “Jailhouse Rock” became a classic, more often the material proved second-rate and forgettable.
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Both Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra, big crooners of the forties and fifties, had transitioned from music to Hollywood, though Sinatra still occasionally ducked into a studio and emerged with a new “easy listening” hit. Elvis, on the other hand, slipped into an artistic funk for years.

On the eve of the Beatles’ arrival in the United States, then, American music featured a top 40 of such forgettable songs as “18 Yellow Roses” (Bobby Darin), “Abilene” (George Hamilton IV), “500 Miles Away from Home” (Bobby Bare), “Baby Workout” (Jackie Wilson), and “The Bounce” (The Olympics). The longest-lasting hits were Peter, Paul, and Mary’s cover of “Blowin’ in the Wind” by Bob Dylan—a folk song; “Blue Velvet” by Bobby Vinton; and “Be My Baby” by the Ronettes. The number one song of the year was the lightweight “Dominique” by the Singing Nun. In short, by 1964, American “rock” had disintegrated into a bland, non-threatening, marshmallow-gray medium.

Even before they set foot in America, the Beatles had begun to shake up rock and roll. After honing their talents in Hamburg, the Silver Beatles—consisting then of John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Stuart Sutcliffe, and Pete Best—returned to Liverpool where the band had formed. There, Sutcliffe left the band and, while playing a gig at the Cavern, the group replaced Best with Richard Starkey (aka Ringo Starr). The renamed “Beatles” had not only brought in a new drummer, but had incorporated a heavy dose of R&B, particularly Sam Cooke and Ray Charles, into their act—something the American surf groups were slow to do. This would provide the key infusion that had begun in the United States with Presley, Little Richard, Chuck Berry, and Buddy Holly, in which R&B would be given a “white” makeover for mainstream Caucasian audiences. Under the careful guidance of their manager, Brian Epstein, the Beatles donned fashionable suits, submitted to bowl-type haircuts, and, most important, smiled a lot. In England, that look made them conservative and acceptable; in America, it gave them the aura of youthful rebelliousness. Either way, the image (along with the music) sold.

The Beatles also arrived at a critical point in American social history, although the sixties weren’t as radical, nor the fifties as dull, as previously thought. Historians have assumed that because little outward evidence of nonconformity and rebellion were on display in the 1950s, American society was somnambulant, even catatonic. According to this interpretation, it took the radical sixties to shake the United States out of its stupor and confront the “real issues” of women’s rights, race, sex, and individuality. Pointing to the sameness of new businesses in the 1950s such as McDonald’s and Holiday Inn, critics argued that their similarities reflected a dull, cookie-cutter world. Nothing could be further from the truth. The revolution had begun shortly after World War II when, using pent-up savings and constrained desires, Americans unleashed their consumptive fury on retailing, travel, and above all, auto purchases.
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A car culture transformed the United States into a new nation of transportation liberty; one in which average people were no longer confined geographically for work or play; one in which (unlike the steam-boat, railroad, or even stagecoach),
individuals
could control their own time and simultaneously make a statement about themselves through the style and model of auto they chose.

Confronted with a Red menace and an atomic threat abroad, as well as the growing challenge of racial tensions at home, Americans well understood what serious problems they faced. What historians have viewed as sameness and uniformity was superficial—a calm layer concealing turmoil beneath it. With the mobility of the automobile people moved to new surroundings, tried different foods, and mingled with ethnic groups and dialects they had never seen before. This rapid exposure to the new served to make those things that were familiar all the more desirable, even necessary. It was this search for the familiar that inspired Ray Kroc to create what was to become the first true fast-food restaurant chain, McDonald’s, in 1955. Kroc made every McDonald’s the same in its appearance, food delivery, and approach. For families traveling cross-country, relying on greasy spoon diners, the constancy and reliability of McDonald’s was heaven-sent. The same was true for Kemmons Wilson, whose Holiday Inns offered standardized hotel rooms at a reasonable price for travelers previously at the mercy of local roadside inns. Even the most famous theme park in the country, Walt Disney’s Disneyland, emphasized these standard, traditional themes with its “Main Street.”
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Music, too, felt the tensions brought on by a mobile society. With people moving all over the country, the demand for familiar music led to the national market for a “top 40” of songs that Alabamians relocated to California or Iowans vacationing in Florida could recognize. Berry Gordy fit perfectly into this mass national music market. Having started Motown Records in the early 1960s with the intention of reaching the larger white audience, Gordy polished rhythm and blues acts by dressing them in tuxedos and evening gowns, grooming the artists with elocution lessons and interview skills, and introducing what has become classic Motown choreography. By the end of the decade, Motown songs constantly made the top ten hits, and Gordy became one of the wealthiest African Americans in the USA. More important, white kids in Phoenix were just as likely as black kids in Detroit to listen to the Four Tops, and Minnesotans were as likely as Mississippians to sing “Baby, baby, where did our love go?”

Having already brought R&B standards into their act, the Beatles more than any American rock group were superbly poised to reach the largest possible audience. Possessing a new sound and new (and, for Americans, unusual) clothing styles, the group also benefited from the timely introduction of 33 rpm records, known as LPs (for “long play”), which had made up a smaller part of the market until 1963. The Beatles’
Please Please Me
album (later released in the United States as
Introducing the Beatles
on Vee-Jay Records) was among the pioneering LPs introduced. As music historian Jonathan Gould observed, “LPs were the first records to be sold in foot-square cardboard jackets faced with glossy cover art, which served as an alluring advertisement for the music within . . . [allowing the cover to become] a companion piece to the listening experience: a contemplative object that functioned like a fan magazine,” putting a face to the voices on the album.
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While those forces converged, John Lennon and Paul McCartney, in the summer of 1963, penned what would become the Beatles’ signature song, “She Loves You.” From the crash of Ringo’s tom-tom roll to the harmonic, energetic refrain of “yeah, yeah, yeah,” “She Loves You” constituted the apex of the Holland-Dozier-Holland “hook,” which allowed people who only heard the song one time to be able to sing along the next time. Eschewing any instrumental intro at all, and bursting straight into the chorus, the song captured all elements of the Fab Four’s sound: a unique blend of the Lennon/McCartney/Harrison voices (which have proven difficult to replicate by almost any group) driven with the powerful Starr/McCartney/Lennon rhythm section. This was “it”: the Beatles had succeeded in combining the smooth melodies of Elvis, Orbison, Pitney, and Nelson with the hard-charging guitar of Chuck Berry, topped off with the energy of Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard. Black, white, soft, cool, suave, rough—the Beatles had it all. Dubbing the phenomenon “Beatlemania,” the British press paved the way for the arrival of the Fab Four on American shores.