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New York Times Op-Ed Page Takes Firm Stand On Beatles! Author Mourns The Loss Of Something Or Other! Cooler Older Brother Gary's Punk-As-Fuck Last Words Before Being Shot To Death By Firing Squad Sti

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Why This Band Plays On

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By MIKAL GILMORE
Published: August 24, 2005

Los Angeles

FORTY years ago this month, the Beatles began their second major tour of America with a performance at Shea Stadium in Queens. It's an event worth noting: more than 55,000 people attended that night, Aug. 15, 1965. It set a world record at that time for a pop concert, and it was the biggest public moment of the Beatles' remarkable career.

It's also worth noting that these days we seem to be reconstructing a shadow history of the band and its achievements. That is, almost every year now we observe some milestone of the Beatles. Last year it was the anniversary of the group's astonishing 1964 appearance on "The Ed Sullivan Show." Two years from now, June 2007, the occasion will be a commemoration of 1967's "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" - an epochal work that still stands as popular music's most famous and form-breaking album. Commentators from all over the world will weigh in on that one.

Which raises a number of questions: Why do we continue to pore over the Beatles' high points? Why is it that those lifetime-ago moments still fascinate us? In part, of course, it's simply because there's such an undeniable epic arc in both the Beatles' story and in their music. Certainly, they possessed an extraordinarily intuitive skill for filling the needs of their times, and for realizing the potential of their own talents.

But there's another reason, just as important, that accounts for the lasting appeal of their history: The Beatles demonstrated that musical and social change could emanate from the shared spirit of the same body politic.

Rock 'n' roll, of course, had already shown it could stir cultural tumult. In the 1950's, Elvis Presley and numerous rhythm-and-blues and rockabilly artists had brought new audiences and sensibilities into the mainstream. Rough, rude and provocatively rhythmic music - from both black and white upstarts - had broken through the barriers, meeting fierce opposition, until the new spirit was almost tamed.

Whether they meant to or not, the Beatles raised the stakes on all this, and they did it right from the start.

Their American debut, on "The Ed Sullivan Show" on Feb. 9, 1964, coincided with my 13th birthday. I certainly didn't understand everything I was seeing - the girls in the audience sticking their tongues out leeringly at the group, the whole shock-of-the-new effect of these four men who looked so foreign and who commanded their melodies with such assurance and their instruments with such synchronous force - but I knew, as millions of others did, that I was witnessing something seismic.

The next day, the Beatles' performance was the only thing we talked about at school. The girls loved the band members' long hair, the boys seemed unnerved by it, but everyone agreed that the Beatles and their music was an awakening.

In the days following, the arguments and reactions around the country only grew. While Elvis Presley had already shown us something about using rebellious style as a means of change, the Beatles helped incite something stronger in American youth that night - something that started as a consensus, as a shared joy, but that in time would seem like the prospect of power - a new kind of youth mandate.

I wasn't at Shea, but I saw the Beatles a week later at Memorial Coliseum in my hometown, Portland, Ore. I was 14 and had won tickets to the concert in a local drawing, which I count among my life's luckiest moments.

I could see them on stage - small, suited figures moving and playing, looking holy in the blinding luminescence of flashbulbs and house lights. The collective yowling scream of the audience - to this day, the loudest thing I've heard - seemed to emerge from a mass fever dream. All these years later it still moves me to realize how jolting and transcendent it was to be in a room - no matter how large - when the Beatles played.

And from film clips of the Aug. 15 concert, Shea was the same. Everybody there that night - the thousands upon thousands of screaming teenagers ("supersonic seagulls" as Paul McCartney recently described them), the legion of exhausted policemen, even the Beatles themselves - seemed overwhelmed by the intensity of the event and its implications.

The poet Allen Ginsberg attended the same performance I did at Memorial and rendered the experience in his poem "Portland Coliseum":

The million children

the thousand worlds

bounce in their seats, bash

each other's sides, press

legs together nervous

Scream again & claphand

become one Animal

in the New World Auditorium

- hands waving myriad

snakes of thought

screetch beyond hearing

while a line of police with

folded arms stands

Sentry to contain the red

sweatered ecstasy

that rises upward to the

wired roof.

Ginsberg understood what he was witnessing: mass fervor that great - especially from the young - has always felt threatening. That's because it can seem unruly, powerful enough to upset traditions and values or to incite dangerous action. There had been small riots at rock 'n' roll concerts in the 1950's - chairs thrown, fisticuffs - but the threat implicit in 1960's music was something else: it was about setting things loose, about changing or upending the world. The barricade of policemen I saw that day at the Beatles' show - the same line Ginsberg had seen - certainly acted as if they were seeing something more than mania. The scream the Beatles brought forth in America was just too unforeseen and too big. It could help shake the order of things, and in time it would.

THAT August in 1965, we didn't fathom where the power in this sort of communion might lead. We didn't know where we were going with the Beatles, and they didn't know where they were headed. The music that followed their 1966 retirement from live performances turned often hopeful and generous (not to mention unbelievably creative), and more important, compassionate. "Sgt. Pepper" is often viewed as whimsical or naïve, and yet songs like "She's Leaving Home," "Getting Better" and "A Day in the Life" gave voice to the combined senses of hope, strangeness and anxiety that marked the lives of many in that period.

By the end of the 1960's, though, the Beatles' songs had grown more mournful, frightened and angry. John Lennon grew suspicious of his audience's politics in "Revolution" and of the whole world in "The Ballad of John and Yoko," whereas Paul McCartney's "Let It Be" and "The Long and Winding Road" played like doleful prayers of solitude. By 1969, the two men - who had once exemplified collaboration - could barely sing to each other across a gulf of mutual recrimination.

All this, sadly, reflected the tenor of the time. The spirit of Western youth - especially American - descended from bliss to disillusionment, as political assassinations, the madness of Vietnam, the strife over civil rights and political protests, the effects of unmonitored drug use and the violence of the Manson family and Altamont all bore down, taking a steady toll.

The Beatles came to their bitter, nasty end in April 1970 - the one event we tend not to commemorate. It's more pleasurable remembering the big bang of the "Ed Sullivan" appearance and the Shea Stadium concert. But the sort of promises born in those moments may no longer be possible. It's true, of course, that subsequent mass popular music events like 1985's Live Aid and this year's Live 8 concerts have followed through on some of what the Beatles made possible, albeit in cautious, inoffensive ways.

It's also true, though, that the sort of youth power that the Beatles helped awaken is simply no longer even considered. The cultural perspective that defines youth has changed drastically.

We've infantilized adolescents. We view them as children whose judgments are immature, who have to be protected from influences that may steer them in wrong directions - directions that may threaten decency or disrupt social authority. True, the same things were said about teenagers in the 1950's and 1960's, but part of our ambition was to dispute mores and intimidate hegemony. Today, the pressures against such instincts for adolescents come from both within their peer group and the culture at large. Teenagers now are themselves often the harshest critics of young nonconformists.

Meanwhile, watchdogs across the spectrum - from Bill O'Reilly to the Rev. Al Sharpton to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton - worry over the effects that rude rap or scandalous video games may be having on the young. And today's conservative mind-set stigmatizes the sort of insurrectionary voice that the Beatles, Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones and others exercised in much of their 1960's music.

Last year, when R.E.M., Bruce Springsteen, Pearl Jam, the Dixie Chicks and others played concerts to promote a defeat of President Bush, their efforts were seen as a risky anomaly. It was as if songs like the Beatles' "Revolution" or Buffalo Springfield's "For What It's Worth," James Brown's "Say It Loud (I'm Black and I'm Proud)" and Marvin Gaye's "What's Going On" had never filled the air in those years conveying a sense of political and generational transformation that, for a time, seemed imminent and irrefutable.

Maybe this sort of reflection seems too far a stretch from the joys felt on those warm nights in the summer of 1965. There's no denying that above all else the Beatles were fun; had they not been, they would not have enjoyed so much effect or such staying power.

But fun on the level that the Beatles managed to achieve - at least in those days - implied more than a collective, thrilling scream. We remember the Beatles for their music and spectacle, but we celebrate them because, when they stood before their American audiences in 1964 and 1965, we witnessed the social and cultural power that a pop group and its audience could create and share. From there, I guess, you measure how much we've learned, or how much we've lost.

Mikal Gilmore, the author of "Shot in the Heart," is working on a book aboutthe Beatles and the 1960's.

― scott seward (scott seward), Wednesday, 24 August 2005 12:17 (twenty years ago)

is he? oh good.

― mark grout (mark grout), Wednesday, 24 August 2005 12:22 (twenty years ago)

OH FOR ALSKJAFLKKLA

Can we have an op-ed on the importance of Jimi Hendrix's "Star-Spangled Banner" next, plz? And can we fact-check to make sure that this statement - "And today's conservative mind-set stigmatizes the sort of insurrectionary voice that the Beatles, Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones and others exercised in much of their 1960's music." - doesn't, y'know, apply ACROSS THE F&D**S BOARD?!?!?

― David R. (popshots75`), Wednesday, 24 August 2005 12:31 (twenty years ago)

Hi, Scott!

― David R. (popshots75`), Wednesday, 24 August 2005 12:31 (twenty years ago)

So basically its the boomers' turn at playing Greatest Generation - "we had it better than you, and we were also more important than you (even if our irresponsibility and unmonitored use and whatnot did ultimately hasten our decline)"

But there's another reason, just as important, that accounts for the lasting appeal of their history: The Beatles demonstrated that musical and social change could emanate from the shared spirit of the same body politic.

Groan.

"Sgt. Pepper" is often viewed as whimsical or naïve, and yet songs like "She's Leaving Home," "Getting Better" and "A Day in the Life" gave voice to the combined senses of hope, strangeness and anxiety that marked the lives of many in that period.

Double groan. So The Beatles were the first people ever to express emotions about life in song?

Meanwhile, watchdogs across the spectrum - from Bill O'Reilly to the Rev. Al Sharpton to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton - worry over the effects that rude rap or scandalous video games may be having on the young. And today's conservative mind-set stigmatizes the sort of insurrectionary voice that the Beatles, Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones and others exercised in much of their 1960's music.

As opposed to in the 1960s, when it was not stigmatized at all ...

We've infantilized adolescents. We view them as children whose judgments are immature, who have to be protected from influences that may steer them in wrong directions - directions that may threaten decency or disrupt social authority. True, the same things were said about teenagers in the 1950's and 1960's, but part of our ambition was to dispute mores and intimidate hegemony.

Uh huh ...

― Hurting (Hurting), Wednesday, 24 August 2005 12:33 (twenty years ago)

sorry that should have said "unmonitored DRUG use"

― Hurting (Hurting), Wednesday, 24 August 2005 12:33 (twenty years ago)

The Boomers In Power (BIP!) have been making that "greatest generation" play for about 20 years! Folks that be paving paradise need to get off their damn coffee break.

― David R. (popshots75`), Wednesday, 24 August 2005 12:37 (twenty years ago)

To paraphrase Buffalo Springfield "There was something happening here, but what it was just ain't clear."

― Hurting (Hurting), Wednesday, 24 August 2005 12:40 (twenty years ago)

and David R. OTM, BTW.

― Hurting (Hurting), Wednesday, 24 August 2005 12:41 (twenty years ago)

Last year, when R.E.M., Bruce Springsteen, Pearl Jam, the Dixie Chicks and others played concerts to promote a defeat of President Bush, their efforts were seen as a risky anomaly. It was as if songs like the Beatles' "Revolution" or Buffalo Springfield's "For What It's Worth," James Brown's "Say It Loud (I'm Black and I'm Proud)" and Marvin Gaye's "What's Going On" had never filled the air in those years conveying a sense of political and generational transformation that, for a time, seemed imminent and irrefutable.

...until Nixon won the 1972 election in a landslide. And how many members of Woodstock Nation voted for Reagan?

I don't believe in...I just believe in me/Yoko 'n me...

― m coleman (lovebug starski), Wednesday, 24 August 2005 12:41 (twenty years ago)

Ooh, can everyone on ILM write angry letters to the Times? I'd love them to get an earful for this.

― Hurting (Hurting), Wednesday, 24 August 2005 12:43 (twenty years ago)

When Churchill was ousted from the prime ministership, it was because the people genuinely wanted to control their own destinies after fighting a war to preserve the ability to do so, and not because Billy Bragg wrote a song.

― mark grout (mark grout), Wednesday, 24 August 2005 12:45 (twenty years ago)

And, hey, Mr. Gilmore sir, let's conveniently ignore the pro-teen anti-establishment counter-cultural aspects to be had in heavy metal and punk rock and, um, THAT NOISE MADE BY BLACK PEOPLE.

Also, where the hell did this thought go:

"We've infantilized adolescents. We view them as children whose judgments are immature, who have to be protected from influences that may steer them in wrong directions - directions that may threaten decency or disrupt social authority. True, the same things were said about teenagers in the 1950's and 1960's, but part of our ambition was to dispute mores and intimidate hegemony. Today, the pressures against such instincts for adolescents come from both within their peer group and the culture at large. Teenagers now are themselves often the harshest critics of young nonconformists."

50s AND 60s? Oh come on! Talk to one hundred million Elvis fans, dude!

There is something to be said about commodified dissent and marketing a revolution in yr head as the Hot Topic du jour, but to prop up THE BEATLES as the paragons of Where The Personal Politic Thrived is just LAKJLKJSL!LIDU)*(*())!

Fuck an editorial.

― David R. (popshots75`), Wednesday, 24 August 2005 12:49 (twenty years ago)

"When Churchill was ousted from the prime ministership, it was because the people genuinely wanted to control their own destinies after fighting a war to preserve the ability to do so, and not because Billy Bragg wrote a song."

And whose fault is that?

― Stewart Osborne (Stewart Osborne), Wednesday, 24 August 2005 12:58 (twenty years ago)

Billy Bragg's for existing?

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Wednesday, 24 August 2005 13:06 (twenty years ago)

I blame skiffle.

― David R. (popshots75`), Wednesday, 24 August 2005 13:25 (twenty years ago)

As if the Beatles only radiated outward. As if something wasn't going on in England at the time that the Beatles were influenced by (Churchill's defeat being a good example).

― Rick Massimo (Rick Massimo), Wednesday, 24 August 2005 13:26 (twenty years ago)

I don't mind so much hearing self-congratulations from civil rights activists, but this guy seems to think that just by going to rock concerts he in some way contributed. It's like maybe if everyone just focuses hard enough they can levitate the earth, man!

― Hurting (Hurting), Wednesday, 24 August 2005 13:29 (twenty years ago)

So basically its the boomers' turn at playing Greatest Generation - "we had it better than you, and we were also more important than you (even if our irresponsibility and unmonitored use and whatnot did ultimately hasten our decline)"

i can't stand boomer smugness. yeah they had it really good and easy -- get a well-paying job just outta school and stay with the company forever and manage to live comfortably -- and they have no idea that things might not be so simple for the rest of us. they could play around at being hippies cuz they could AFFORD to! there'd surely be an adult life waiting for them when they got bored.

― and I can walk out into the world, singing with my people (Jody Beth Rosen), Wednesday, 24 August 2005 13:30 (twenty years ago)

when you are done romping in the fields just go to law school. It's simple!

― scott seward (scott seward), Wednesday, 24 August 2005 13:38 (twenty years ago)

I mean the WWII generation can get annoying with their schtick too, but my Grandpa ACTUALLY HAD IT HARD. He grew up poor, he served in combat a major war, he experienced rampant anti-semitism, and he took genuine personal and professional risks to stand up for the civil rights of others. Gilmore can go fuck himself with his Ginsberg poem.

― Hurting (Hurting), Wednesday, 24 August 2005 13:38 (twenty years ago)

And when they did become adults, they'd stay true to their old ideals! They'd never elect someone like Ronald Reagan or George Bush! (xpost)

this guy seems to think that just by going to rock concerts he in some way contributed.

Right. Going to a rock concert can INSPIRE someone to contribute, no question. But it's not a contribution in itself.

― Rick Massimo (Rick Massimo), Wednesday, 24 August 2005 13:41 (twenty years ago)

yesterday in the new york times i learned that the rolling stones are STILL GOING STRONG despite being very very old. and that mick can run - that's RUN not walk or saunter - the length of a stage that is as wide as a football field or somesuch even after an entire show of high energy rock & roll. RUN! and he is OLD.

― scott seward (scott seward), Wednesday, 24 August 2005 13:47 (twenty years ago)

Not only are baby boomers better than you, they are in MUCH better shape than you too you lardass corn-syrup sucking mtv fan who does nothing to make the world a better place!!!!

― scott seward (scott seward), Wednesday, 24 August 2005 13:49 (twenty years ago)

*pats backs all round*

― heavens!, Wednesday, 24 August 2005 13:56 (twenty years ago)

Fuck that "lardass" crack! I'm paying my $25 for a full tank of gas just like everyone else. Anyone thinks I'm not pulling my weight can bite my Twinkie.

― David R. (popshots75`), Wednesday, 24 August 2005 13:59 (twenty years ago)

Is your cream artificially produced and guaranteed to last for months?

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Wednesday, 24 August 2005 14:04 (twenty years ago)

from the stones article: "After decades, the Rolling Stones are too dependable to seem dangerous. But long after the Stones could have retired, it's not so bad to stand for sheer tenacity."


HOW DOES BEING A WORKING MUSICIAN WHO IS IMPOSSIBLY RICH EQUAL TENACITY?????? somebody help me here.

― scott seward (scott seward), Wednesday, 24 August 2005 14:07 (twenty years ago)

THEY COULD HAVE STOPPED AT A BILLION DOLLARS, BUT NO, THEY ARE GAMELY TRUDGING ON. TRUDGE ON LITTLE TROOPERS. DO IT FOR MY ENLARGED PROSTATE!!!!!

― scott seward (scott seward), Wednesday, 24 August 2005 14:08 (twenty years ago)

How do they keep going?

― Hurting (Hurting), Wednesday, 24 August 2005 14:09 (twenty years ago)

who, the stones? blood transfusions. the livers and kidneys of small orphans. who knows.

― scott seward (scott seward), Wednesday, 24 August 2005 14:11 (twenty years ago)

a) Cialis
b) Red Bull
c) The blood of virgins
d) Mick needs to pay back the advance he got for his solo album

― David R. (popshots75`), Wednesday, 24 August 2005 14:12 (twenty years ago)

even their fuck you money has fuck you money.

― scott seward (scott seward), Wednesday, 24 August 2005 14:15 (twenty years ago)

Sorry Scott, I meant to say that with a kind of 1950s middle-class housewife feigned-wonder: "How do they keep going?"

― Hurting (Hurting), Wednesday, 24 August 2005 14:15 (twenty years ago)

I hate having to hear people go on about the Beatles more than pretty much anybody, but Gilmore's a decent writer & his points about adolescence aren't foolish - the way we construe adolescence presently vs. the way we construed it in the sixties & seventies is a topic worth comment; the social construction of "childhood" and related notions has been of great interest since at least Blake, and "the Sixties" contributed/contributes a fair amount to the discussion

I do wish somebody would do the same sort of op-ed about Carcass or At the Gates, though

― Banana Nutrament (ghostface), Wednesday, 24 August 2005 14:19 (twenty years ago)

i was listening to carcass in the car this morning as i was taking rufus to day-care! i have read good stuff by him in rolling stone before. good journalistic pieces.

― scott seward (scott seward), Wednesday, 24 August 2005 14:25 (twenty years ago)

Banana, can you explain what you mean by that (about the adolescence thing?) I was under the impression that our present-day construction of adolescence is pretty much directly descended from the one formed in the 60s and 70s.

― Hurting (Hurting), Wednesday, 24 August 2005 14:26 (twenty years ago)

what's interesting to me is what the boomers themselves have done to childhood. how fearful they are. all the scheduled activities and carseat/bikehelmet mania. they are truly afraid of having their kids play down by the railroad tracks and become addicted to crack. or something. the anything goes generation is way into structure.

― scott seward (scott seward), Wednesday, 24 August 2005 14:28 (twenty years ago)

they don't want their kids to partake in any of that 60's fun stuff. just the boring 60's stuff. like recycling. it's straight out of the car seat and into S.A.T. prep class. they are such wet blankets.

― scott seward (scott seward), Wednesday, 24 August 2005 14:32 (twenty years ago)

I'm not sure that I buy this argument that adolescents are taken less seriously now than they were in the '60s. And if it's true that the Beatles had anything to do with helping to awaken a sense of youth consciousness in the '60s, I think that it wasn't because their music was particularly political. Even their most political song, "Revolution", was essentially conservative - the whole point of it is that they are skeptical of revolution. However, I think their non-musical activities and public statements had more of a political dimension. When I think of explicitly political music from the '60s, I don't think of the bands that were mentioned in this column - I think of the folkie political acts of the '60s - stuff like Joan Baez, Peter Paul & Mary - and countercultural West coast stuff like Country Joe & the Fish.

― o. nate (onate), Wednesday, 24 August 2005 14:34 (twenty years ago)

bbbut does NO ONE REMEMBER "MOSH"???

― M@tt He1geson (Matt Helgeson), Wednesday, 24 August 2005 14:38 (twenty years ago)

you could pretty much do ANYTHING in the 60's and have it be looked at as a statement of some sort. grow your hair, put out a double album, sing about bananas.the list goes on and on.

― scott seward (scott seward), Wednesday, 24 August 2005 14:40 (twenty years ago)

who, the stones? blood transfusions. the livers and kidneys of small orphans. who knows.

I always thought Mick is the provider on this one, as he keeps on making babies.

― Gerard (Gerard), Wednesday, 24 August 2005 14:40 (twenty years ago)

I was under the impression that our present-day construction of adolescence is pretty much directly descended from the one formed in the 60s and 70s.

I think this is true (although you could really roll it back to the '50s), but I guess that's part of the point -- the concept of the teenager as a rock'n'rollin', dope-smokin', fuck-you snarlin' "rebel" was actually threatening and alarming to a lot of people at one point. Now it's been more or less completely absorbed, commodified, etc. Older people will still cluck their tongues about piercings or baggy pants or whatever, and lord knows a lot of them don't like that hippity-hop, but I don't think baby boomers are as likely as their parents to see Satan and the Four Horsemen in their kids' wardrobes or music collection. So to some extent what people like Gilmore are mourning is the normalization of what they naively thought was a revolution. Like, what if everybody tuned in, turned on, dropped out, man? Well, turns out they'd spend a lot of time doing beer funnels and watching reality TV.

― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Wednesday, 24 August 2005 14:46 (twenty years ago)

I would say that I'm surprised that nobody mentioned the following line, but there is so much dumbassery in the editorial that we couldn't possibly have covered it all in only 40 posts, so I'm not too surprised at all:

It's true, of course, that subsequent mass popular music events like 1985's Live Aid and this year's Live 8 concerts have followed through on some of what the Beatles made possible, albeit in cautious, inoffensive ways.

Wow, I had no idea that the concept of large, historically or culturally notable musical gatherings was a concept INVENTED by the Beatles! Also, I have no clue what "cautious, inoffensive ways" means.

― MindInRewind (Barry Bruner), Wednesday, 24 August 2005 14:48 (twenty years ago)

o. nate: not "taken less seriously," just "construed differently." I agree that the Beatles' purported "poiltical consciousness" doesn't really have anything to do "awakening youth consciousness" (scarequotes ahoy!) - but still agree with Gilmore about the Beatles being, if not a catalytic moment, certainly a signal moment for a different understanding of youth.

Hurting, it's a really really really long discussion to have! but 1) while our conception of adolescence does indeed descend from 60s/70s (quite different those two btw) conceptions of same, it's far more reified - I think this has to do with understanding the demographic as a market, which I'm not calling-out as A Big Bad Thing necessarily (although I'm not wild about it, because it's hell on poor kids) but just pointing out. Not the children haven't been a market for as long as there's been marketing, but by the late seventies to mammoth power of that market was becoming clearer to manufacturers. 2) boomers are especially prime marketing territory since they construe their own adolescence as this Blakean Time Of Wonder, right, and it's easy to convince them that it's their job to give their children similar conditions.

As I say this is real thorny, it's not like the whole matter can be gone over in a post - certainly anything I might say on the subject practically raises its own objections, which in turn pose their own questions, etc. The one other thing though Scott is it's a fact that structure's a good thing for kids! the notion of fun unstructured time is heaven to grownups, who are drowning in structure, but kids minus a fair amount of structure = atrophying branes often

― Banana Nutrament (ghostface), Wednesday, 24 August 2005 14:49 (twenty years ago)

Wow, I had no idea that the concept of large, historically or culturally notable musical gatherings was a concept INVENTED by the Beatles! Also, I have no clue what "cautious, inoffensive ways" means.

You don't? Seems clear enough - events that just play music and traffic in inarguable truisms ("hunger is bad, we should love our brother" are cautious and inoffensive, no? And I think his argument is not that the Beatles "invented" anything but that their cultural positioning (probably less their own doing than an historical accident/inevitability I'd say, but the point stands) placed popular music in something of a pulpit.

― Banana Nutrament (ghostface), Wednesday, 24 August 2005 14:54 (twenty years ago)

Anyway, if it's true that today's teenagers are less politically motivated than the boomers were in the '60s, then I think there's no one to blame but the boomers. After all, the last thing that any self-respecting teen wants to do is what they think older people expect them to do. And now that the boomer generation basically controls the media outlets that cater to youth and tries to tell them what to think (ie., MTV, popular music, film) and the schools are filled with greying ex-hippie teachers, you have this dysfunctional dynamic of politically nostalgic boomers trying to project the sort of idealized false memory of political energy that they remember from the halcyon days of their '60s youth onto the kids they see today - and the kids, predictably, aren't having it. Nothing can make being political seem less cool, then having some dorky ex-hippie English teacher trying to convince you that it is cool. Or having youth-oriented media outlets like MTV trying to wag the dog with strenuously "hip" public service announcements about the value of political consciousness.

― o. nate (onate), Wednesday, 24 August 2005 14:55 (twenty years ago)

nate otmx1000 and what's sad is there really is a way you can share core values with adolescents without seeming preachy, but it's really demanding & exhausting and most people just give up (or don't realize they're doing anything wrong) and start saying "we did it this way, that's how it's done") and pretty much push adolescents into apathy

― Banana Nutrament (ghostface), Wednesday, 24 August 2005 14:57 (twenty years ago)

I think this has to do with understanding the demographic as a market, which I'm not calling-out as A Big Bad Thing necessarily (although I'm not wild about it, because it's hell on poor kids) but just pointing out. Not the children haven't been a market for as long as there's been marketing, but by the late seventies to mammoth power of that market was becoming clearer to manufacturers.

Right, except the way I always learned it (granted, in flaky American Studies classes), the realization of youth as a demographic market happened in the 50s, not the 70s, and in turn contributed greatly to the very creation of the hippie generation.

― Hurting (Hurting), Wednesday, 24 August 2005 14:59 (twenty years ago)

Skipping 48 messages at this point... Click here if you want to load them all.
Their American debut, on "The Ed Sullivan Show" on Feb. 9, 1964, coincided with my 13th birthday.

18 years old in 69. I'm guessing this guy is a little upset he just barely missed the action.

Hence:
We've infantilized adolescents. We view them as children whose judgments are immature, who have to be protected from influences that may steer them in wrong directions - directions that may threaten decency or disrupt social authority.

Man, at 16 I was totally tuned in to hip 60's stuff, not like the kids today. I mean, I spent my allowance on Beatles records man. Beatles records! These teen-sheep today, with their video games and whatnot.

By the end of the 1960's, though, the Beatles' songs had grown more mournful, frightened and angry.

After an intense 4 years of watching the movement on TV and that one time when I won the tickets, the whole thing just collapsed under it's own weight. Burned too bright man, too bright. That aimless summer before college, working at the ice cream stand, I knew an era had come to an end.

― jhoshea (scoopsnoodle), Wednesday, 24 August 2005 23:26 (twenty years ago)

'Well, sure. And the majority of that generation never marched against the war either.'

thats my folks!

― hateboomer (latebloomer), Wednesday, 24 August 2005 23:39 (twenty years ago)

cause they were still in junior high

― latebloomer's rectal mocha latte (latebloomer), Wednesday, 24 August 2005 23:41 (twenty years ago)

i wish my dad had vietnam or hippie stories. he just has stories about roller discos in germany. ooh and a baader meinhoff bombing!

― latebloomer's rectal mocha latte (latebloomer), Wednesday, 24 August 2005 23:44 (twenty years ago)

By the end of the 1960's, though, the Beatles' songs had grown more mournful, frightened and angry.

PH34R the all-new, all-hard post-Pepper Beatles, bringing you such mope-rock classics, invocations of millenial paranoia and cathartic blasts of righteous rage as:

"Your Mother Should Know"
"Penny Lane"
"Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da"
"Wild Honey Pie"
"Martha My Dear"
"Rocky Raccoon"
"Yellow Submarine"
"Octopus's Garden"
"Paperback Writer"
"Two Of Us"
"One After 909"

By 1969, the two men - who had once exemplified collaboration - could barely sing to each other across a gulf of mutual recrimination.

By 1969, the two men - who had always disliked having to share the spotlight - could barely conceal their mutual joy and being wealthy enough to tell each other to go screw.

Or would that spoil the bullshit circle-jerk. This is miscast as a genX/Y vs Baby Boom battle though. This is the battle of honesty, intelligence, and precious, hard-won perpective against self-serving bullshit.

― rogermexico (rogermexico), Thursday, 25 August 2005 00:06 (twenty years ago)

"By 1969, the two men - who had always disliked having to share the spotlight - could barely conceal their mutual joy and being wealthy enough to tell each other to go screw."

Wow. That might be the most original line of criticism I've read in months.

― Alfred Soto (Alfred Soto), Thursday, 25 August 2005 00:11 (twenty years ago)

I like Mikal Gilmore. His collection Night Beat has quite a few insightful interviews with the likes of The Clash, Miles Davis, Dylan, Sinead O'Connor, and Jagger. But when he attempts cultural criticism his talent for pithily-worded generalizations is barely discernible from his weakness for banality.

― Alfred Soto (Alfred Soto), Thursday, 25 August 2005 00:17 (twenty years ago)

I haven't read Gilmore, though I always meant to get around to Shot In The Heart. This was not a good introduction.

And if "original" is a good thing in this case, then thank you! (btw, "and being wealthy" obv. should be "at being wealthy")

― rogermexico (rogermexico), Thursday, 25 August 2005 00:23 (twenty years ago)

From reading John's (untrustworthy but highly entertaining) interviews post-breakup and 1980, your conclusion that his wealth and newfound joy made him miss the Beatles not a bit is strikingly on-target.

― Alfred Soto (Alfred Soto), Thursday, 25 August 2005 00:27 (twenty years ago)

So, OK, it should be possible to say something new about the Beatles, shouldn't it? A 40th anniversary should allow for some kind of perspective previously missing. It seems like what we mostly get (even on ILM) is just some variations on "classic" and "dud," but all mostly within the already existing (and, as Gilmore makes painfully clear, very tired) framework.

So...anyone?

― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Thursday, 25 August 2005 00:28 (twenty years ago)

Hey, per Alfred I just did!

But here's a thought. Let's let the old Reppin' Teh Woodstock Kidz saw stand. I think there a story about four people with different agendas, different politics, different ego needs, different talents, different demons, different scars, different ambitions, different unspoken dreams and unspeakable delights managing to find enough common ground for a few memorable years to achieve something together that they never could have alone, or would again apart, but something that couldn't go on forever, wouldn't, would inevitably tear itself apart in a watershed say-it-ain't so moment always lurking in the memory of the generation that would institutionalize divorce and would, like its icons, of necessity succumb to lassitude and entropy and time and responsibility and the requirements of late capitalism, but would always have Woodstock.

― rogermexico (rogermexico), Thursday, 25 August 2005 00:38 (twenty years ago)

Or, get one Vineland.

― rogermexico (rogermexico), Thursday, 25 August 2005 00:39 (twenty years ago)

haha, that was so much better than Gilmore. And shorter too.

― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Thursday, 25 August 2005 00:43 (twenty years ago)

(yours, I mean, not Pynchon's)

― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Thursday, 25 August 2005 00:44 (twenty years ago)

Which is why the story that John and Paul briefly considered reuniting on SNL for the huge sum of $3200 is so perfect. The Beatles understood the absurdity of being cultural icons better than their critics.

― Alfred Soto (Alfred Soto), Thursday, 25 August 2005 00:44 (twenty years ago)

PS the phrase "you have succumbed to lassitude" should ring a vague bell with readers of another generation...

― rogermexico (rogermexico), Thursday, 25 August 2005 00:56 (twenty years ago)

parents' stories:

my dad was drafted in 1965 to go over to south korea and work on hawk missile systems. He, along the entire base and nearby radar station, saw a UFO. he came back to get an education degree from Michigan State.

my mom went to Olivet-Nazarene, and transferred to nearby Kent State University in 1969 for her teaching degree. So, guess what she was around for.

Both of them voted for Bush. Twice.

― kingfish fucked up his login (kingfish 2.0), Thursday, 25 August 2005 01:22 (twenty years ago)

boring pedant alert: "paperback writer" is pre-pepper.

― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Thursday, 25 August 2005 01:31 (twenty years ago)

Brock Vond to thread.

― rogermexico (rogermexico), Thursday, 25 August 2005 01:31 (twenty years ago)

And JD, the pedantry is totally appreciated.

― rogermexico (rogermexico), Thursday, 25 August 2005 01:32 (twenty years ago)

oops, that should be "along WITH the"

xpost

hey, where do the kinks fit into all this?

― kingfish fucked up his login (kingfish 2.0), Thursday, 25 August 2005 01:32 (twenty years ago)

A-and another thing... FUCKING GINSBERG? GINSBERG?

Namecheck Ginsberg if you must but quote him at your own risk.

The man had talent (vis. "Howl," A Supermarket In California," "Kaddish") but early success and a flair for self-promotion turned him into a first-rate icon and a cut-rate and frankly lazy poet.

Perhaps another another apt representative after all of the Woodstock Generation, Unreflective And Self-Aggrandizing Division.

― rogermexico (rogermexico), Thursday, 25 August 2005 02:49 (twenty years ago)

presiding chairman, David Crosby

― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Thursday, 25 August 2005 02:54 (twenty years ago)

Two years from now, June 2007, the occasion will be a commemoration of 1967's "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" - an epochal work that still stands as popular music's most famous and form-breaking album. Commentators from all over the world will weigh in on that one.

Would it be too much to ask to have Jann Wenner humanely put down sometime before oh, I dunno, June 2007. Even just sequestered?

― rogermexico (rogermexico), Thursday, 25 August 2005 03:03 (twenty years ago)

Teenagers now are themselves often the harshest critics of young nonconformists.

Jocks be enforcin' the ruling ideology...

― rogermexico (rogermexico), Thursday, 25 August 2005 03:10 (twenty years ago)

My god, another Sgt. Pepper's anniversary. I declare a fatwa on anything beginning, "It was 40 years ago today..."

― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Thursday, 25 August 2005 03:20 (twenty years ago)

Sgt. Pepper" is often viewed as whimsical or naïve, and yet songs like "She's Leaving Home," "Getting Better" and "A Day in the Life" gave voice to the combined senses of hope, strangeness and anxiety that marked the lives of many in that period.

HAHAHAHAHAHA

I know I already pulled out this line, but

HAHAHAHAHAHA

― Hurting (Hurting), Thursday, 25 August 2005 03:24 (twenty years ago)

one of my high school substitute teachers overheard a classmate talking about the Beatles and told us stories about how you could walk down certain streets in San Fran in 1967 and hear the entire album from one block to another.

it was a lot like the one ep where Bart hides all the teachers' editions of textbooks, so we get a montage of the helpless faculty. The one pony-tailed teacher(with sandals and a cigarette) is sitting crosslegged on the desk, asking the children "Did I ever tell you kids about the '60s?"

― kingfish 'doublescoop' moose tracks (kingfish 2.0), Thursday, 25 August 2005 03:30 (twenty years ago)

you could walk down certain streets in San Fran in 1967 and hear the entire album from one block to another.

See, stuff like this I really don't mind. It's great color that helps explain what it was like to be alive at a certain time. That's fine. I just hate when it turns into "The Beatles' music being everywhere made us all get up and overthrow the establishment but then John got killed and what were we doing again?"

― Hurting (Hurting), Thursday, 25 August 2005 03:36 (twenty years ago)

This thread reminds me of all the kids in my high school days (oh so recent) who used to pine over Smiths records and the Smashing Pumpkins and look real morose. I listened to the Dead Milkmen, I didn't have time for any whiny bullshit.

My dad told me that when he was in college he used to walk up to hippies and pull the joints out of their hands and crumple em up and walk away. He was a preppie, but he's still a democrat, and those clowns are probably neo-con clowns these days.

Still, I'd punch my dad in the face if he crumpled up one of my joints.

― polyphonic (polyphonic), Thursday, 25 August 2005 04:13 (twenty years ago)

Also, my dad once said that when he heard "Revolution #9", he realized that rock music was total bullshit.

― polyphonic (polyphonic), Thursday, 25 August 2005 04:14 (twenty years ago)

Was it because he though the song was bullshit? Or because he thought the lyrics made the point that rock is bullshit?

― Hurting (Hurting), Thursday, 25 August 2005 04:17 (twenty years ago)

Pretty much everything about it. He is probably the squarest dude who ever lived.

― polyphonic (polyphonic), Thursday, 25 August 2005 04:17 (twenty years ago)

It was a critique of music and self-critique all rolled into one, unlike his precious Chopin.

― polyphonic (polyphonic), Thursday, 25 August 2005 04:18 (twenty years ago)

Non-boomers can't have any idea of the cultural impact the Beatles had (there's never been a pop phenomenon like them -Thriller was close but it wasn't five years and a dozen albums). For five years they got the kind of attention Brad/Angelina/Jen have gotten this year (well timed to hype their crappy movies), even grandmothers knew the words to Eleanor Rigby (which was a #1 pop radio hit). The happy cheery McCartney songs like When I'm Sixty-Four and Your Mother Should Know were embarassing to everyone except Sir P himself (drove old John mental). It's worth noting that songs like Day in the Life and Strawberry Fields were POP songs, not altrock or whatever -EVERYBODY heard them. Picture Britney (who doesn't get anywhere near as much press as the fab four did) singing "I know what it's like to be dead" or "I think I know I mean a yes but it's all wrong / That is I think I disagree".

As for boomers patting themselves on the back, it's pathetic and sad, they should wait until they're dying like the "Greatest Generation" and in the now try to finish saving the world instead of telling their kids to do it.

BTW I though Gilmore's piece was fecal (like the NYT generally).

― steve ketchup, Thursday, 25 August 2005 04:19 (twenty years ago)

This thread reminds me of all the kids in my high school days (oh so recent) who used to pine over Smiths records and the Smashing Pumpkins and look real morose. I listened to the Dead Milkmen, I didn't have time for any whiny bullshit.

I love all three of them! To heck with everyone's bigotry there.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Thursday, 25 August 2005 04:20 (twenty years ago)

I g

― polyphonic (polyphonic), Thursday, 25 August 2005 04:21 (twenty years ago)

Whoops. I grew up, Ned! I like all three now as well.

Well I like Siamese Dream anyway.

― polyphonic (polyphonic), Thursday, 25 August 2005 04:21 (twenty years ago)

I remember reading that in 1968 the greatest supporters of our troops in Vietnam were actually young white men and that older people were actually more opposed than people gave them credit for.

― Cunga (Cunga), Thursday, 25 August 2005 04:58 (twenty years ago)

"McCartney songs like When I'm Sixty-Four and Your Mother Should Know were embarassing to everyone except Sir P himself"

Not so.

― Tim Ellison (Tim Ellison), Thursday, 25 August 2005 05:07 (twenty years ago)

"most . . . form-breaking album"? Does Gilmore mean up to its moment, or for all moments?

― Rickey Wright (Rrrickey), Thursday, 25 August 2005 07:33 (twenty years ago)

ihttp://www.amazon.com/gp/product/images/B000005S37/ref=dp_product-image-only_0/103-7639573-5138263?%5Fencoding=UTF8&n=5174&s=music

― Rickey Wright (Rrrickey), Thursday, 25 August 2005 07:35 (twenty years ago)

ihttp://www.amazon.com/gp/product/images/B000005S37/ref=dp_product-image-only_0/103-7639573-5138263?%5Fencoding=UTF8&n=5174&s=music

― Rickey Wright (Rrrickey), Thursday, 25 August 2005 07:35 (twenty years ago)

Damn it! Anyway, what about 'Metal Machine Music'?

― Rickey Wright (Rrrickey), Thursday, 25 August 2005 07:36 (twenty years ago)

Picture Britney (who doesn't get anywhere near as much press as the fab four did) singing "I know what it's like to be dead"

there was the one video where britney committed suicide in the bathtub.

― and I can walk out into the world, singing with my people (Jody Beth Rosen), Thursday, 25 August 2005 10:59 (twenty years ago)

Yeah, but now picture it ON WEED!

― Hurting (Hurting), Thursday, 25 August 2005 13:36 (twenty years ago)

awful piece but mikal gilmore's memoir "shot through the heart" is a really powerful book. he's great on specifics (his own story, one-to-one interviews), but his cultural theory stuff makes hornby look like foucault.

― Fritz Wollner (Fritz), Thursday, 25 August 2005 13:43 (twenty years ago)

Or, get one Vineland.
-- rogermexico

rogermexico in Pynchon-fan SHOCKAH!

― Myonga Von Bontee (Myonga Von Bontee), Friday, 26 August 2005 01:15 (twenty years ago)

A very palpable hit. But for a book that seemed so minor when it came out, Vineland does seem more and more OTM.

― rogermexico (rogermexico), Friday, 26 August 2005 03:41 (twenty years ago)

Ha. I just realized they actually printed my letter. I don't even think it's that good, but I managed to pull off the ultra-concise, snappy, NYTimes letter style I guess:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/28/opinion/l28beatles.html?ex=1126152000&en=97cda43f96199338&ei=5070
(last one down)

To the Editor:

As a twentysomething, I am a little tired of hearing about the Beatles. I appreciate their importance as a social phenomenon. I understand that they were unlike any band before them. I even enjoy their music.

But I've also been to rock concerts, and I'm not naïve enough to conflate the hormonal excitement one feels with a genuine force for political change.

Josh Saltzman
Jersey City, Aug. 24, 2005

― Hurting (Hurting), Tuesday, 6 September 2005 23:59 (twenty years ago)


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