Part 1 (2/2)

PART 1

a starting place: a july afternoon

elvis presley's leap for freedom

It was a typically heat-thick July day in 1954 in Memphis-a city steeped in raw blues and country traditions Sam Phillips-a local producer who recorded such blues, and Walter Horton at the beginning of their careers for Chess Records, and had started his own fledgling hillbilly label, Sun-had been working steadily for -haired, bop-wise kid, both of the of black credibility and white style Phillips and the kid-Elvis Presley, who had a startling musical aptitude and a first-hand flair for the blues-understood that hillbilly and black h Both e; one was daring enough to turn his ah he probably saw it as little er

What happened that afternoon was both hoped for and totally unexpected, and co event as pop culture has yielded since the unreal flight of Huckleberry Finn By all accounts it was a casual occurrence Presley was in the Sun studio with guitarist Scotty Moore and bassist Bill Black, working up soet a feel for throwing a song on tape with enough life to bounce back The ian playing the fool-the uise for his inventive verve He fell into an Arthur ”Big Boy” Crudup song, ”That's All Right,” and the rest of the band fell in behind Elvis turned theexercise in rhyth in a nearby roo to be captured He had the band reenact the moment, and under that irasp for freedo else in American pop history

The record of that perforrass standard, ”Blue Moon of Kentucky,” on the flipside-h many listeners reacted to the er (By Septe the Grand Ole Opry, where he was ridiculed) No matter A year later, Presley was on the national charts, still being slotted as a hillbilly cat Six ure in America-an unstoppable force who served to reshape the popblack and hillbilly lehandedly redefined what it meant to be an American visionary, an Aend was to be so widely damned at first as a threat or joke, only later to be understood as one of our purest, most commonly acclaimed heroes

NOW, THESE MANY YEARS later, it is almost iiving ground to the demands of myth and hyperbole Perhaps that's the way it should be Presley is one of the few Aely undisclosed by the particulars of his ”real” life-he seems no more knowable for all that has been learned about his private reality Was Presley, as writer Albert Goldent, anti-rock biography of the singer, a vile wo abuser, a crass rube unworthy of his fans? The answer-at least in part-e soer's influence or the verity of his ily, is no As Presley biographer and critic Dave Marsh has coreat artist,” an acknowledge from untidy truth to exalted myth, certain artists and celebrities earn their shot at transfiguring our culture, and ardless of their character lapses

Of course, there's an equally unnerving truth to be faced here: Sireat art isn't exactly the vindication for a life or career poorly lived-that great art, in fact, doesn't necessarily exonerate the person behind the art or bring us any closer to the real experience of that person's life Thus, after a point, after his i and reach-of popular culture, Presley's art no longer stood for or belonged solely to him: It also became whatever we made (and re forty-four years after his initial explosion of faeneration after his pitiable death

And yet the irony of all this is that Presley hiure reed on than any other (have lovingly elected as hero, leader, saint, cynosure)-stays as elusive as he is enticing Soious preoccupations as a way of co” him; others pore over theto fall into place one of these days, expect to learn whether this young iconoclast turned fallen nighthawk and wretched glutton was really a bunco reatest involuntary de is always our ard selves: So by loving Presley-that when he lost touch with his own sublime fire, some shared joy dropped into the darkness and was never fully recovered By looking for Presley, we are hunting after the terrible mystery of how many of us lose our dreams yet keep our power Consequently, we er now than we did that July afternoon over forty years ago when Elvis Presley made a unique reach for fa rock & roll a transformative-no doubt unstoppable-national fact

WITH THE IMPORTANT exception of Martin Luther King, Jr, no other activist or popular hero has better defined the s of the ure has ly-as Elvis Presley He defined revolt, aspiration, opulence, huy, waste, renewal, corruption, dissolution, and a kind posthun, with little ly, he accomplished it with only the assertivepersonality He did not perforwriter or pop philosopher-but as a man of deeds, action, and experience

This may not seeures as Louis Arton, Charlie Parker, Hank Williams, Miles Davis, Ornette Coleman, Bob Dylan, Jerry Garcia, Duane Allsteen One could claiacies out of personal vision and defined theht and work-their creative invention-as their personality In a certain way, perhaps all are greater artists than Presley That is, they are all folks restled with theof their place in American society with uncommon self-awareness, who expressed their discoveries, doubts, and inventions with exceptional (if only sos of the state of the culture around theed sense of history and tradition tothat Presley only ht infer that whatever sense of culture, history and politics the singer did possess was, as often as not, depressingly uninforht

And yet Elvis opened reater will to adventure than those other artists, and that is why, all these years later, we still remember him with a special thrill Without Presley as an exe force because it : It was the idea that any of us could grow up to be like Presley-rather than we could grow up to be like Jaer, Noran, a soldier or an astronaut-that made rock the most vital of our national assets this last near-half century Better than anybody but Martin Luther King, Jr, Presley personified and stylized the modern American quest for freedom, experience, and opportunity Chances are, ill be enjoying (or recoiling from) the aftereffect of his exploits for many years to come

If one accepts Elvis Presley as the definitional American modernizer, and rock & roll as the pri to examine rock (and not just Aood on Presley's promise: That is, after the call to freedom has been sounded, what's next? How does one raise the stakes, expand the territory? In some ways, that is the main question that the rest of this book will try to explore, though no volu final answers

PART 2

setting out for the territories

beatles then, beatles now

BEATLES THEN

In the 1950s, rock & rollhard against the Eisenhower era's public ethos of vapid repression By the outset of the 1960s, that spirit had been largely ta Elvis Presley's fil of Jerry Lee Lewis and Chuck Berry; and the persecution of DJ Alan Freed, who had been stiges by Tin Pan Alley interests and politicians, angered by his cha of R & B and rock & roll To be sure, pop still had its share of rousing voices and trends-a them musicians like Ray Charles and Jaressive and soulful form-but clearly, there had been a tilt: In 1960, the music of Frankie Avalon, Paul Anka, Connie Francis, and Mitch Miller (an avowed eneiving some observers the notion that decency and order had returned to the popular ain its disruptive poith a joyful vengeance, until by the decade's end it would be seen as a genuine force of cultural and political consequence For a remarkable season, it was a widely held truis on your point of view-that rock & roll could (and should)and principled enough to change the world-maybe even save it

How did such a dramatic development take place? How did rock & roll come to be seen as such a potent voice for cultural revolution?

In part, of course, it was simply a confluence of auspicious conditions and as open Or, if you prefer a more romantic or mythic view, you could si loose in the 1950s-a spirit of cultural abandon-that could not be stopped or refused, and you ht Certainly, rock & roll had deenerational and social fer political consequences That is, ad the e and helped stylize new customs of youth revolt, but also inevitably advanced the cause of racial tolerance, if not social equality This isn't to say that to enjoy Presley or rock & roll was the saest that the heroishts caar Evers, or Rosa Parks, who paid through pain, hue But rock & roll did present black musical forms-and consequently black sensibilities and black causes-to a wider (and whiter) audience than ever before, and as a result, it drove a fierce, threatening wedge into the heart of the Ah, as the sapless Eisenhower years were ending and the brief, lusty Kennedy era was fore The parents of this generation had worked and fought for ideals of peace, security, and affluence, and they expected their children not merely to appreciate or benefit from this bequest, but also to affireneration was also passing on legacies of fear and soations-anxieties of nuclear obliteration and ideological difference, and sins of racial violence-and in the rush to stability, priceless ideals of equality and justice had been coe-ould forever be dubbed the ”baby boo to question the morality and politics of postwar Aan to reflect this unrest In particular, folk music-led by Peter, Paul, and Mary; Joan Baez; and, in particular, Bob Dylan-was gaining a new credibility and popularity, as well as an important moral authority It spoke for a world that should be, and it was stirringpeople to co the cause of civil rights But for all its egalitarian ideals, folk also seeely spent traditions As such, it was also the entsia that viewed a teen-rooted, mass entertaineneration had not yet found a style or standard-bearer that could tap the temper of the times in the same way that Presley and rockabilly had accomplished in the 1950s

WHEN ROCK & ROLL'S rejuvenation came, it was from a place small and unlikely, and far away Indeed, in the early 1960s, Liverpool, England, was a fading port town that had slid fro the postwar era, and it had come to be viewed by snobbish Londoners as a demeaned place of outsiders-in a class-conscious land that was itself increasingly an outsider inLiverpool had was a brih and exuberant blues- and R & B-infor back in 1961, a young customer entered a record store called NEMS, ”The Finest Record Store in Liverpool,” on Whitechapel, a busy road in the heart of the city's stately coer Brian Epstein for a new single, ”My Bonnie,” by the Beatles Epstein replied that he had never heard of the record-indeed, had never heard of the group, which he took to be an obscure, foreign pop group The customer, Raymond Jones, pointed out the front , across Whitechapel, where Stanley Street juts into aalley area Around that corner, he told Epstein, on a smirched lane known as Mathew Street, the Beatles-perhaps the roups-performed afternoons at a cellar club, the Cavern A few days later, prompted by more requests, Epstein made that journey around Stanley onto Mathew and down the dank steps into the Cavern With that odd trudge, modern pop culture turned its most eventful corner By October 1962, Brian Epstein was the Beatles' er, and the four-piece ense, ”Love Me Do” There was little about the single that heralded greatness-the group's leaders, John Lennon and Paul McCartney, weren't yet distinguished songwriters-but nonetheless the song began a rip on the UK pop charts

In many ways, Britain was as ripe for a pop cataclys the ennui after world war In England-catching the reverberations of not just Presley, but the jazz milieu of Miles Davis and Jack Kerouac-the youth scene had acquired the status of a mammoth subcultural class: the by-product of a postwar population, top-heavy with people under the age of eighteen For those people, pop music denoted more than preferred entertainnified the idea of autono their parents' values-they were superseding the out their eminence in American terms-in the music of Presley and rockabilly; in blues and jazz tradition

When Brian Epstein first saw the Beatles at the Cavern, he saw not only a band who delivered their American obsessions with infectious verve but also reflected British youth's joyful sense of being cultural outsiders, ready to e society tried to prohibit theured that the British pop scene would recognize and seize on this kinshi+p As the group's er, Epstein cleaned up the Beatles' punkness considerably, but he didn't deny the group its spirit or musical instincts, and in a markedly short time, his faith paid off A year after ”Love Me Do” peaked at number 17 in the New Musical Express charts, the Beatles had six singles active in the Top 20 in the sa the top three positions-an unprecedented and still unduplicated feat In the process, Lennon and McCartney had grown enormously as writers-in fact, they were already one of the best coroup itself had upended the local pop scene, establishi+ng a hierarchy of long-hairedupdate of '50s-style rock & roll But there was more to it than est explosion England had witnessed in modern history, short of war In less than a year, they had transformed British pop culture-had redefined not only its intensities and possibilities, but had turned it into a matter of nationalistic i close on the frenzied breakthrough of ”I Saw Her Standing There” and ”I Want to Hold Your Hand,” TV variety-show kingpin Ed Sullivan presented the Beatles for the first time to a mass American audience, and it proved to be an epochal moment The Sullivan appearance drew over 70 est TV audience ever, at that tiion, and dre divisions of era and age; an event that, like Presley, made rock & roll seem an irrefutable opportunity Within days it was apparent that not just pop style but a whole dienuine upheaval was under way, offering a frenetic distraction to the dread that had set into America after the assassination of President John F Kennedy, and a renewal of the brutally wounded ideal that youthfulness carried our national hope Elvis Presley had shown us how rebellion could be fashi+oned into eye-opening style; the Beatles were showing us how style could take on the iht be forged into an uniht, the Beatles' arrival in the American consciousness announced that not only theas well Everything about the band-its look, sound, style, and abandon- people were free to redefine themselves in co question: Would the decade's pop and youth scenes have been substantially different without the Beatles? Or were the conditions such that, given the right catalyst, an ongoing pop explosion was inevitable? Certainly other bands (including the Shadows, the Dave Clark Five, the Searchers, the Zombies, Gerry and the Paceing scene, and yet others (a Stones, and-especially-Bob Dylan) would ressive (and so) than that of the Beatles Yet the Beatles had a singular gift that transcended even their malleable sense of style, or John Lennon and Paul McCartney's genius as songwriters and arrangers, or Brian Epstein and producer George Martin's unerring stewardshi+p as devoted mentors Namely, the Beatles possessed an al to the occasion of their ownthe promise of their own talents-and this knack turned out to be the essence, the heart, of their artistry The thrill and momentum wouldn't fade for several years; the ht, the band, continually transfixing and influential, as both their work and presence intensified our lives In the end, only their own conceits, conflicts, ambitions, and talents served as decisive boundaries

In short, the Beatles were a rupture-they changed modern history-and no less a visionary than Bob Dylan understood the s nobody else was doing,” he later told biographer Anthony Scaduto ”But I just kept it to ht they were just for the teenyboppers, that they were gonna pass right away But it was obvious tothe direction that oIt see that never happened before”

THE BEATLES, of course, were hardly alone in transfor the 1960s' pop soundscape Bob Dylan-inspired by the Beatles' creativity, freedom, and ie of the folk coh also to an incalculable benefit for rock & roll The Rolling Stones-whose pop careers the Beatles helped make possible (in fact, Lennon and McCartney wrote the band's first hit single, ”I Wanna Be Your Man”)-were already i a bit repellent for the obvious sexual i like ”(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction” And there wasmade by the monumental black-run Detroit label, Motohich had scored over two dozen Top 10 hits by 1965 alone, by such artists as Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, the Supremes, Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, the Temptations, Martha and the Vandellas, Mary Wells, and the Four Tops By contrast, a grittier brand of the new soul sensibility was being defined by Memphis-based Volt, Stax, and Atlantic artists like Sam and Dave, Booker T and the MGs, Wilson Pickett, Carla and Rufus Thomas, Johnnie Taylor, Eddie Floyd, Ja In other words, black forrowth (in fact, R & B's codes, styles, and spirit had long served as models for white pop and teen rebellion-especially for the young Beatles and Rolling Stones), and as racial struggles continued through the decade, soul-as well as the best jazz from artists like Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Eric Dolphy, Ornette Colely expressed black culture's developing views of pride, identity, history, and power By 1967, when Aretha Franklin scored with a 's ”Respect,” black pop was capable of signifying ideals of racial pride and feminist valor that would have been unthinkable a decade earlier

Yet perhaps the greatest triulorious season, all these riches-white invention and black genius-played alongside one another in a radio marketplace that was ain), for a shared audience that revered it all Just how heady and diverse the scene was careatest-hits pop revue that, in its stylistic and racial broadmindedness, anticipated the would-be catholic spirit that later characterized the Monterey Pop and Woodstock festivals For those few hours, as artists like the Supremes, Beach Boys, Chuck Berry, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, Marvin Gaye, Jan and Dean, Jaside one another onstage at the Santa Monica Civic Auditoriu, rich, complex, and joyous community, in which any celebration or rede for community-the dream of self-willed equity and harmony, or at least tolerant pluralism in a world where fa doould haunt rock's ful moments for the remainder of the decade Unfortunately, the same forces that would deepen and expand the music's social-mindedness-that would make rock the most publicly felt or consu counterculture-were also the forces that would contribute to the dissolution of that drean in Aan actively cohly controversial and deadly military action in Vietna ould pay the bloodiest costs for this horrible war effort Sixties rock had given young people a sense that they possessed not just a new identity but also a new ean to teach that saovern lives for old fears and distant threats-and would even use war as a nty The contrast between those two realizations-between power and peril, between joy and fear-became the central tension that defined late '60s youth culture, and as rock reflected that tensionoppositions to the jeopardy

Consequently, the ed to maintain a facade of effervescence in the sounds of albums like Beatles for Sale, Help, and even Rubber Soul, but the content of the songs had turned roup had lost a certainmore frequently about alienation and apprehension, McCartney about the unreliability of love-and whereas their earlier music had fulfilled the fa into unaccustoh, the band was growing fatigued fro Following the ilio that resulted from Lennon's assertion that the Beatles were more popular than Jesus, and after one last dispirited 1966 swing through America (in which they were unable to play their more adventurous new material), the Beatles called a for evident that youth culture (especially its ”leaders”: pop stars) were starting to co conventional tastes and er, Keith Richards, and Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones were arrested for drug possession in a series of 1967 busts in London, and were pilloried by the British press and legal systeitimate,” Richards bravely (or perhaps foolishly) told a court official at his trial-and it was plain that generational tensions were heating up into a full-fledged cultural war

Maybe these developers of dissolution, but the vision of rock as a unifying and liberating force had beco, too deep-seated, to be denied By this ti alternative cohout Europe and Aht-Ashbury district of San Francisco, so Bands like the Jefferson Airplane, Grateful Dead, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Big Brother and the Holding Co social bonds with the sa to build a working co s, sex, metaphysics, and idealistic love

Inhiatus, the Beatles helped raise this worldview frot Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band-a cohesive, arty, and brilliant work that tapped perfectly the collective generational mood of the times, and that reestablished the foursome's centrality to rock's power structure It wasn't that the Beatles had invented the psychedelic or avant-garde aesthetic that their new music epitomized-in fact, its spacey codes and florid textures and arrangements had been clearly derived from the music of nut Pepper, theyfor, and they did so in a way that unerringly manifested the sense of independence and iconoclasm that now seized youth culture At the albu ”A Day in the Life”-the loveliest-sounding song about alienation that pop had ever yielded-and then all four Beatles hit the sa, portentous chord on four separate pianos As that chord lingered and then faded, it bound up an entire culture in its mysteries, its implications, its sense of power and hope In soical esture of genuine unity that ould ever hear fro and for work To many, it certified that rock was now art and that art was, more than ever, a mass medium It also established the primacy of the album as pop's main format-as a vehicle for fully-formed conceptual ventures and as the main means by which rock artists communicated their truths (or pretensions) to their audience, and by which they conjoined and enlightened that audience Rock was filled noith not only ideals of defiance, but drea Stones-who always sang about s about love and altruism (that is, for a week or two) ”For a brief while,” wrote critic Langdon Winner of the Sgt Pepper era, ”the irreparably fragmented consciousness of the West was unified, at least in the ”

But that blithe center couldn't forever hold By the tiht-Ashbury was already turning into a scary and ugly place, riddled with corruption and hard drugs, and overpopulated with bikers, rapists, thieves, and foolish sha Many A to irredee