Seven Events That Made America America

by Larry Schweikart

  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.7 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.”8

  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.9

  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.

  It didn’t hurt that the Beatles had already grafted Motown onto their act: on their second album, With the Beatles, Lennon sang Gordy’s 1959 song “Money (That’s What I Want)” and the Smokey Robinson hit “You Really Got a Hold on Me” as well as the Marvelettes’ “Please Mister Postman.” This led Black Panther Eldridge Cleaver to boast that they were “injecting Negritude by the ton into the whites. . . . soul by proxy,” even as other radical blacks such as LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka) complained that the Beatles were “stealing music . . . stealing lives.”10 Either way, when the Beatles were booked on the Ed Sullivan Show on February 9, 1964, it was in many ways a homecoming for a moribund American rock music industry, and in other ways, a revival. More than 70 million viewers tuned in to watch, including Rev. Billy Graham, who broke his rule about never watching television on Sunday to see the moptops. “They’ve got their own groups,” mused McCartney. “What are we going to give them that they don’t already have?”11 In reality the Beatles were giving back rock and roll to the nation that invented it, reminding
Americans of who they were.12

  Britain had another gift for America, though it arrived too late to keep the Beatles touring. In late 1965, Jim Marshall and his son, Terry, were selling Fender amps and other musical equipment from their store in London. Rock legends such as Pete Townshend and Ritchie Blackmore frequented the shop and complained that Marshall needed more guitar equipment, whereupon Jim began modifying the Fender amps in his store by adding larger speakers and more power. Townshend was impressed, but hardly satisfied, with the first iteration of the “Bluesbreaker” amp, named for British blues legend John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers. Mayall’s band featured a young guitarist named Eric Clapton, who first used the Marshall sound on the group’s Beano album. Already, however, Townshend was pushing Marshall for more power. By 1966, further modifications impressed an American guitarist residing in London, Jimi Hendrix, who so loved the Marshall sound that he offered to buy two of the amplifiers immediately. (Someone had already discovered that two of the Marshall speakers could be linked to a single power head, yielding the famous Marshall “stack” that would become a common feature on stage.)

  Americans responded immediately to this brave new electrified world. Bob Dylan was booed offstage when he first went electric at the 1965 New-port Folk Festival. “People were horrified,” said Peter Yarrow of Peter, Paul, and Mary. “It was as if it was a capitulation to the enemy—as if all of a sudden you saw Martin Luther King, Jr., doing a cigarette ad.”13 “Where’s Ringo,” some shouted from the audience. Nevertheless, Dylan’s 1965 song “Like a Rolling Stone” changed the genre forever, moving radio songs from 2.5-minute cookie-cutter molds to a stunning six minutes of nasally, whiney, angst-ridden depth that once and for all merged folk and rock. With the door opened, English bands swarmed into America by the dozens in the famed “British invasion.” The Kinks, the Dave Clark Five, Herman’s Hermits, the Rolling Stones, and others arrived either physically or on vinyl. Ray Manzarek of the Doors called the invasion an “irresistible force” and “a juggernaut,” adding, “we were all in awe of their success, if not their musical accomplishments.”

  Immediately American musicians “saw the headlines” about the Beatles and the other groups and “drooled. . . . My mind did a cartwheel at the possibilities,” Manzarek wrote.14 The “invasion” sparked immediate American responses. One of the first was the Byrds covering a Dylan song, “Mr. Tambourine Man,” and a soulful New York group, the Young Rascals, turning out hits like “I Ain’t Gonna Eat Out My Heart Anymore” and “Good Lovin’.” The bubble-gum, feel-good music was ever-present on the Billboard top 40 hits of 1965 (“Can’t You Hear My Heartbeat” by Herman’s Hermits, “Game of Love” by Wayne Fontana and The Mindbenders, and “This Diamond Ring,” by Gary Lewis & the Playboys) along with a heavy influence of Motown (“My Girl,” by the Temptations, “I Can’t Help Myself [Sugar Pie Honey Bunch],” by the Four Tops, and “Stop! In the Name of Love,” by the Supremes).

  There is no question that the most radical directions of the Beatles’ musical careers were still ahead of them with Revolver, the White Album, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, and Abbey Road, or that their musical genius did much to define rock during the ensuing six years. However, they were also drifting into the drug culture that had in many ways already swirled past them. Long before the flower children of San Francisco began toking, before Hunter S. Thompson went “gonzo,” and before Timothy Leary urged his disciples to “tune in, turn on, and drop out,” English author Aldous Huxley dabbled in psychedelic drugs (in his case, mescaline).15 Imbibing in only low doses, Huxley tried LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide), also nicknamed “acid.” But Huxley had a “good trip,” and pronounced such drugs harmless and even useful, in that they could turn anything ordinary into something of universal import—oatmeal became the substance of the cosmos, bird droppings were Hindu death-wheels. As Huxley described acid’s power, “Eternity in a flower. Infinity in four chair legs, and the Absolute in the fold of a pair of flannel trousers!”16 Or, more realistically, madness in a chemical flake the size of a booger—but no one at the time was concerned with the evil effects of mind alteration when saving Western consciousness was at stake.

  The Beatles had made drug use acceptable for the middle class, being the first celebrities to make reference to drug use in their lyrics and public comments. Most of them dropped acid in 1966. Four years later, John Lennon spoke of his first trip: “I did some drawings at the time. . . . I’ve got them somewhere—of four faces saying, ‘We all agree with you.’”17 Lennon and George Harrison, especially, saw the expressive power of drugs, but for different reasons. The mystically attuned Harrison sought nirvana; Lennon sought only himself, seeking to reach a sort of genuine autobiographical plane. “I was suddenly struck by great visions when I first took acid,” he recalled, labeling the view he had from the other worlds “real life in cinemascope.”18

  It was also noteworthy that at the very time the Beatles discovered drugs they also began to discover taxes, or the impoverishing effects of them. On the Revolver album (1966), George Harrison first discovered “even though we had started earning money, we were actually giving most of it away in taxes. It was and still is typical.”19 His song “Taxman” constituted the group’s first real foray into political criticism. Over the next decade, numerous English rockers would relocate to France, Switzerland, or the United States to escape Britain’s high tax rates, even while continuing to champion “social justice” and welfare programs they claimed to favor.

  “Taxman” wouldn’t be the last political statement the Beatles made, with the White Album of 1968 featuring one of the most famous calls to revolution ever, aptly named “Revolution.” A John Lennon-written song, “Revolution” was recorded in two versions on the album—one “straight” for top 40 radio, and one psychedelic, indulging every electronic gimmick Lennon and George Martin could throw in. “Revolution” asked, “You say you want a revolution/ Well, you know/ We all want to change the world,” then warned “But if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao, you ain’t going to make it with anyone anyhow.” In two lines, Lennon distanced himself from both the “Establishment” and the icons of the counterculture, the Communists.20

  Every artist now had a new, “invisible” partner in production, the recording studio. Increasingly, albums such as the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds and the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper demonstrated the production capabilities suddenly available to artists as the technologies spread like wildfire. Jimi Hendrix capitalized on the sounds in his 1967 album Axis: Bold as Love, then, less than a year later, followed up with one of the greatest albums of all time, Electric Ladyland, which in sheer mastery of the knobs surpassed anything the Beatles had done, only to be matched by Cream’s Disraeli Gears, which combined psychedelic-fantasy lyrics (“tiny purple fishes run laughing through her fingers,” how their “naked ears were tortured by the sirens sweetly singing”) with Eric Clapton’s innovative guitar wah-wah pedals.

  At the same time, the San Francisco sound, led by groups such as Jefferson Airplane, and shortly thereafter, Moby Grape, brought a completely different approach to the psychedelic music scene. Surrealistic Pillow, released in 1967 during the “summer of love,” featured equally bizarre lyrics (“one pill makes you larger, and one pill makes you small”) mixed with a new approach to studio musicianship that called for elevating rawness and energy over precision and accuracy. Guitars were occasionally out of tune, vocalists went flat and sharp, with lead singer Grace Slick trailing off whenever she couldn’t sustain a note, but it was all fresh and innovative. Indeed, it was precisely what musicians on drugs would be playing! Like many other rockers, however, the Airplane admitted “we didn’t give a shit about politics. . . . We wanted the freedom to make our own choices.”21 In 1968, Bob Dylan stunned an interviewer who had derided him about one of his pro-war friends when he said, “People just have their views. . . . Anyway, how do you know I’m not, as you say, for the war?”22 Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys observed, “You
can always write about social issues but who gives a damn. I want to write about something these kids feel is their whole world.”23

  Indeed, while somewhat left in their leanings, few of the top musicians allowed themselves to be drawn into the maelstrom of radical politics. Hendrix, in particular, refused to be pigeonholed as an anti-American political voice. After being arrested for riding in stolen cars, he was given a choice of jail or the army, and he enlisted in May 1961, completed boot camp, and was assigned to the 101st Airborne at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. His friends and officers remembered him as a poor soldier, who habitually missed bed checks and thought about little except playing a guitar.24 He later reminisced about his parachute training (“once you get out there everything is so quiet, all you hear is breezes”) and told Dick Cavett only that he had been stationed at Fort Campbell. But on other occasions his comments were mixed. In 1962, he took pride in being in the 101st, saying “I’m in the best division: the 101st Airborne. That’s the sharpest outfit in the world.”25 He met Billy Cox, who would be his bass player in Band of Gypsys, at the post recreation center, and the two formed a band called the King Casuals.26 In interviews with Melody Maker magazine, where he mentioned his military experience, he claimed to dislike the army. Yet in 1969, the same year, in his second Melody Maker interview, Hendrix was pressed by European reporters to comment on the Vietnam War, and he shocked them by comparing Vietnam to D-Day: “Did you send the Americans away when they landed in Normandy? . . . No, but then that was concerning your own skin. The Americans are fighting in Vietnam for the complete free world. . . .”27 In 1969, when asked about racial issues in the United States, Hendrix insisted, “Music is stronger than politics. I feel sorry for the minorities, but I don’t feel part of one.”28