By David Glenn Cox
It comes down to a simple choice for me between a dreamscape or doomscape. And with the doomscape impending on us, let us gather some warmth together. The world is on fire and there’s no good reason for it. In the words of Scarlett O’Hara, “I’ll think about that tomorrow.”
A You Tuber was listening to his first Beatles music, starting with Abbey Road. [Facepalm] That’s like studying WW2 from the atomic bomb forward. The Beatles were a work in progress; you never knew what they might do next. And there was some anticipation in not knowing. You can’t start the story in the last ten pages and hope to understand it. In three short years, the Beatles somehow went from “I wanna hold your hand” to “I know what it’s like to be dead.”
“Tomorrow Never Knows!” or “Doctor Robert.” Landmark today, totally unfathomable in the 1960s. The most popular band in the world was also the most Avant garde. Jack Parr, host of the Tonight Show did a segment about the Beatles. Almost preemptively warning America. Oh boy! Wait until you get a load of these guys! Long hair! Can you believe it? It’s almost touching his ears!
The press either loved the Beatles or hated them. My father, legendary kitchen table music critic. Who correctly predicted Elvis as a flash in the pan, who would soon be back driving a truck in Memphis. He wasn’t quite so flattering towards the Beatles. “Bums living off the gimmick of long hair and loud guitars. Talentless hacks deceiving the youth of America just to make a fortune.” Then the song “Yesterday” came out. My old man grumbled, “That kid didn’t write that song! That song was written by a professional.” A left-handed compliment, if ever I heard one.
Which is why John Lennon would say, “This is a song from our latest record or electronic noise. Depending on whose side you’re on.” There were sides!
Another You Tuber naively said, “I seem to like Paul’s songs more.” Oh Boy! Did he ever step in it now! There were two kinds of people in the world in the sixties. Those who liked Paul’s songs and those who liked John’s. If you were looking to start an argument … A cultural dividing line. Were you, “Turn off your mind, relax and float downstream.” Or “I’ve got to admit it’s getting better!” If you were a John guy, Paul girls wouldn’t date you and vice versa.
If you start at the end of the story, you miss the transition from Pop group to Cultural Icons. We lived in dark caves without an Internet or many of the distractions so common today. If we wanted to hear the Beatles, we had to call the radio station and ask them to play some. Or play whatever records we had on hand. As was the custom of the time, the Beatles would release singles not found on the album. Almost as a foretaste of what to expect next. Then came Strawberry Field and Penny Lane.
WTF? I bet the Sergeant Pepper album will really be good! It’s not only revolutionary for its time, it’s still revolutionary. The arrival of Sergeant Pepper on the heels of Rubber Soul and Revolver was earth shaking. Either you had a copy of the album, and everyone was coming to your house to hear it. Or you were going over to their house, or you were unpopular.
We did the things we did to get in the mood for music and as the needle dropped, we listened quietly all the way through. We looked at the album cover trying not to spill the seeds on the floor. We examined the crowd collage trying to identify as many of the notables as we could. And played with the cardboard Sergeant Pepper moustache cutouts.
Saddled as we were without electronica, we were forced into ancient ways. Books! If you wanted to appear cool and have any hope at dating. You must appear to be semi-literate. You’d read Ken Kesey and Kerouac, and Catcher in the Rye. Slaughter House Five and the Motorcycle Diaries. The Beat poets and Woody Guthrie. If you wanted to be cool in the 60s, you had some reading to do. Do you think you could hang out with Jim Morrison and talk about baseball?
In the early 60s (Pre-Beatles) there was a Folk Movement in America. Peter, Paul and Mary and the New Christy Minstrels singing “Hang down your head Tom Dooley, hang down your head and cry. Puff the magic dragon lived by the sea! Then came this Dylan kid singing “The times they are a changing, your sons and your daughters are beyond your command! What?
Then Dylan taught Lennon and McCartney how to take bong hits. And suddenly, the music changed. Revolutionary times! Don’t trust anyone over thirty man! I saw the best minds of my generation! There comes a time when the machine becomes so odious you’ve got to make it stop. You don’t need a weatherman! That’s one small step for man. One giant leap for mankind. We interrupt this program to bring you a special bulletin from Dallas.
It wasn’t all fun and games, weed and wardrobe, sitars and silliness. But it was something and we knew was precious at the time, and we also knew it couldn’t last.
“Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run, but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant.”
― Hunter S. Thompson
“The future is like having a hive of bees living in your head.” – The Firesign Theater
