Let's start with a simple association. The 1960 musical, "Bye Bye Birdie," was a comedy about a rock and roll star being drafted, as well as a shout-out to one of the best friends Broadway ever had, newspaper columnist and TV host Ed Sullivan. The film included a break-out performance for Ann-Marget, co-starred Bobby Rydell who himself already had four Top 10 hits, provided Dick Van Dyke his film debut, and continued the fascination Hollywood had with parent/teenager relationships, albeit in a much funnier vein than, for example, "Rebel Without a Cause."
It also - however inadvertently - taught American kids what they were supposed to do when the Beatles arrived. The song chanted by fans of Conrad Birdie, "We Love You Conrad," both formally and informally was transformed into "We Love You Beatles" in January 0f 1964 when Sullivan provided the Beatles for three weeks in a row on his Sunday night variety show.
Elvis was the real rock and roller who had gotten drafted, and in his absence a number of pop stars became part of the popular consciousness. Bobby Rydell, just as dozens like him, sang songs written by other people while musicians behind him played arrangements written by different people. The teen-idol phase of his career was intended to be the star of a longer career, perhaps in Vegas, and that's what happened. Philadelphia gave the world Bobby, Frankie Avalon and Fabian. Detroit gave us Mary Wells and Martha Reeves.
But also in Detroit, Smokey Robinson was writing songs for himself and others. Chicago had the haunting falsetto and socially-conscious voice of Curtis Mayfield. Texas gave us Buddy Holly for four short, prolific years. Dozens of blues musicians recorded whatever they got paid for. At Sun studios after Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins and Johnny Cash were recording country songs for pop audiences. And with "Maybelline," Chuck Berry appeared to have married country and blues and created rock and roll.
A bunch of lower-middle-class kids in England were eating it all up and spitting it back out with a verve, an intensity and a life all its own. Even now, "Please Please Me" (the Beatles' second single) and "She Loves You" (their fourth) leap out of a set of speakers with startling vitality. In the months to come, a dozen other British music groups arrived to grab whatever scraps were falling off the tables. Some of them had been listening to American blues for years. Some were art school drop outs. A few were kids who'd been stuck taking piano lessons for classical music recitals.
In Greenwich Village, a Columbia Records producer introduced Woody Guthrie acolyte Bob Dylan to the music of Robert Johnson. Not much later, a couple of L.A. kids came out of the theater having seen "A Hard Day's Night" and, deciding they wanted to be rock and roll stars, set Bob Dylan lyrics to electric guitar music and called themselves "The Byrds."
The legendary advice about Hollywood from screenwriter William Goldman applies double to the record industry, "Nobody knows anything." A group of blues players went into a London studio at the direction of their record company to record "a rock New World Symphony." The album they recorded with symphonic instruments and electronic keyboards, songs chronicling a single day, "Days of Future Passed," was not that but, having paid for an album, the company released it anyway and "art rock" began. Even funnier - one band took a section of New World Symphony and grafted it onto Bernstein's Broadway show-stopper, "America" - and almost no one noticed (as I write this, the song is still widely available on collections of the The Nice and still incorrectly credited only to Bernstein; the keyboardist involved soon became friends with Aaron Copland but never quite paid back Dvorak).
This is not an absolute principle but it's close - take any music group working in 1966 and look at the album(s) they released that year in comparison to what they recorded in the five following years and you will notice they have one thing in common - extraordinary growth.
- For the Rolling Stones, the curve starts with "Under My Thumb," goes past "Sympathy for the Devil" and lands at "Gimme Shelter."
- For the Kinks, a British-patter "Dedicated Follower of Fashion" led to the shimmering "Waterloo Sunset" and to "Arthur," a song cycle about the end of the British Empire.
- The Impressions went from "You've Been Cheatin'" to the civil rights anthems "We're a Winner" and "Choice of Colors" to arrive at "Check Out Your Mind."
- Even Elvis had to get on board. His own arc started with yet another movie song, "Frankie and Johnnie," then "U. S. Male," then "In the Ghetto." Along the way his first black-leather suit and his first solo TV special reintroduced him as an idol and gave him his gold ticket to Vegas.
- In 1966, the Who created a generation gap anthem, "My Generation" with a hopped-up singer stuttering "Why can't they all f-f-f-f-fade away?" By 1970, they'd already served as the world's smallest touring opera company with "Tommy" and were looking back to American rockabilly with their loud remake of "Summertime Blues."
In 1970, the film "Woodstock" fed the festival to millions who hadn't been there while allowing thousands who had their first chance to actually hear the music. Rock was firmly established as a canvas on which anything was possible on any instrument one could grab. Flute with a blues band? French horn with shatteringly loud drums? Screaming guitars playing Latin salsa? Tape loops and multiple rhythms and theremin against vocal choir and clarinet? Ho hum; it's been done. What else ya got?
Because the performers were creating their own music, because the industry never understood the music well enough to participate (Motown and Columbia came closest, and both made crucial mistakes, and even Fillmore producer Bill Graham couldn't handle a record company) and because the whole world was engaged in struggles for equality and against the Vietnam war, the music managed to go in all directions at once.
A return to "three-chord" rock by Southern groups only added additional texture, it did not stop the 20-minute science-fictional jams. Disco did not kill rock, but gave some of the older and straighter musicians new jobs while setting the stage for the rebirth of Michael Jackson and rap. Katy Perry may call herself the new millennial Bettie Boop, but the Beatles were cartoons twice, once on TV and then in the visually-anarchic "Yellow Submarine."
We have all been here before, and some of us feel like we owe it to someone to sleep with both eyes open, lest we miss something.
The music of the period endures, despite the expectations of many who, like the unhappy Time magazine reporter renamed "Mr. Jones," simply didn't know what it was that was happening. Solid performers, many who were not born before the day the music died, are available on a new tribute album, singing Buddy Holly songs. All you need, according to the savant who produced the Beatles, is ears. Love helps, of course; it always does.
