Astral Weeks

by Ryan H. Walsh

  By the spring of 1963, even those actively ignoring politics recognized that the civil rights movement had arrived in Boston. On the Common, ten thousand people marched to support the battle for equality unfolding in Birmingham, Alabama, led by King. Later that summer, the black population of Boston engaged in a one-day boycott of work, commerce, and public transportation to highlight discrimination. Since 1815, Boston had funded separate public schools for black and white students; work to undo this segregation had begun in the mid-nineteenth century, but now the movement had a new urgency. In September, Tom Atkins, Harvard graduate student and newly appointed Boston NAACP director, led protesters into the school department building on Beacon Street, where they demanded action. Louise Day Hicks and other Boston school committee members went about their day, pretending not to notice the protest even as they had to physically step over African Americans in the hallways.

  Martin Luther King Jr. led a 22,000-person “March on Boston” in April 1965 to call attention to the civil rights work that the city desperately needed. Before the march, King toured Roxbury (routinely referred to as a “slum” by The Boston Globe), where the surge in black residents was inversely related to the property values and quality of city services. King told the crowd at Boston Common that the conditions in Roxbury were deplorable, but that he had come “not to condemn, but, instead, to encourage this great city.” “The vision of the New Boston must extend into the heart of Roxbury,” King said.

  School committee member Louise Day Hicks emerged as Kevin White’s opponent in the 1967 mayoral election, running on the slogan “You Know Where I Stand”—a dog whistle to racists and pro-segregation citizens. White defeated Hicks by a mere twelve thousand votes. In his inaugural speech on New Year’s Day 1968, White echoed King in calling for a “New Boston,” but the voting results were clear: A large part of the city was fine with the old one.

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  MAYOR KEVIN WHITE was taking in a screening of 1939’s Gone with the Wind when he got the news: Martin Luther King had been shot in Memphis. At City Hall, aide Barney Frank drafted an official statement. In 1968, the future congressman was a young, cigar-chomping, quick-witted political savant. The day of King’s death, the Globe had profiled Frank as someone who had “his finger in every pie.” It was Barney Frank who reminded White that his predecessor’s decision to send a sizable police force into Grove Hall the year before had been a disaster.* Instead, it was suggested, black community leaders should have a chance to visit troubled areas to encourage cooler heads to prevail. Some critics had nicknamed White “Mayor Black” for his focus on African-American issues, while others in the black community felt he had given them only the “illusion of inclusion.”

  Over at the Boston Tea Party, a milestone evening had become something else. Building on the success of its weekend shows, the club started booking Thursdays. The first night, April 4, was to be christened by Muddy Waters, with Peter Wolf’s Hallucinations opening. “I never heard anything like it,” manager Steve Nelson recalls. “This was like being at a wake in Muddy Waters’ apartment or something, and everybody was crying.”

  After an all-nighter at City Hall, Mayor White’s mind raced with ideas to prevent the assassination from igniting violence. Looking over the day’s list of concerts and theatrical offerings was the furthest thing from his sleep-deprived mind. But newly elected Boston councilman Tom Atkins—the first African American to hold that post in Boston in seventeen years—had his eye on one show in particular: James Brown was scheduled to perform at the Boston Garden that evening. James Byrd, a DJ at Boston soul radio station WILD 1090 AM, had tipped Atkins off to the potential for trouble. “It’s too late to cancel it; the word won’t get around in time,” Byrd said. “There’ll be thousands of black teenagers down at the Garden this evening, and when they find those gates are locked they’re going to be pretty pissed off.”

  Atkins explained the precarious situation to White and Frank. James who? Neither had heard of him. But riots linked to concerts—that was something they were familiar with. History suggested that whether Brown’s show was canceled or not, there might be trouble.

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  IT STARTED IN THE SPRING OF 1956. At a “rock ’n’ roll dance” at MIT, a student was badly injured, leading police to shut down a similar event the next week in Roxbury. When Chuck Berry and Jerry Lee Lewis hit Boston in May 1958, chaos erupted in the streets after the show when a group of twenty-five boys in identical satin jackets got rowdy. Papers claimed that the law-abiding youths suddenly became “bedeviled into gangsterism” and “ran berserk.” A sailor was stabbed, dozens of others were beaten. The district attorney indicted show promoter Alan Freed under antianarchy laws, declaring he had unleashed a “form of rock ’n’ roll paganism” in Boston. Freed was eventually released, but Mayor John Hynes had seen enough, grumbling, “These so-called musical programs are a disgrace and must be stopped. As far as I’m concerned, Boston has seen the last of them.”

  After Hynes left office in 1960, the total ban on rock shows lifted, save for some at the Boston Arena and the Boston Garden. City censor Richard J. Sinnott was in charge of figuring out if an act was rock ’n’ roll or not, and in turn, whether they could book a concert at those venues. The Beatles were allowed at the Garden, for instance, because “they are not really R-’n’-R.” As for the Beach Boys, Sinnott vacillated. “Some people have claimed that they’re folk singers,” he said.

  Whoever decided that James Brown was not rock ’n’ roll in 1968 had been woefully misinformed.

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  WHAT IF THE Brown concert was broadcast live on television? It was an audacious, nick-of-time proposal. (No one remembers who came up with the idea, but some accounts point to Barney Frank.) Each home viewer would be another person not on the street. WGBH was an obvious choice: The station had filmed Timothy Leary’s ’67 debate at MIT with a few hours’ advance notice. David Atwood, who had manned the controls for What’s Happening, Mr. Silver?, jumped at the chance to direct the show. Everyone was happy with the plan, except James Brown.

  The morning of April 5, the singer was in New York working on a TV special titled Man to Man. The show’s contract dictated that Brown was not to participate in any other East Coast television appearances until after it aired a few months later. When Brown’s New England representative, James Byrd, told Councilman Atkins the singer would likely be fine with this decision, he had no idea about the Man to Man clause. Greg Moses, Brown’s manager, was livid when he found out about the telecast. Contract aside, Moses thought the live broadcast would kill the size of the Garden crowd—a blow to the performer’s pocketbook and pride.

  Atkins told Mayor White that the city would need to cover the lost earnings from concert tickets. Which seemed absurd—but what could he do? With each passing hour, the city’s immediate fate seemed to hinge upon the details of James Brown’s live show. It was Friday; a wrong move that night would trigger a weekend of unrest. At last White agreed, but demanded circumspection. “If word ever gets out we underwrote a goddamn rock star with city money, we’ll both be dead politically,” he said to Atkins. Meanwhile, White assured the citizens of Boston that the situation was under control. He appeared on a WGBH program hosted by Louis Lyons, “a salty old New Englander” who had nearly broken down on air speaking about King’s death the night before. White said that the city was working closely with the “negro leadership” of Roxbury and that there was “reason for apprehension but not alarm.” That evening’s “memorial” event, White said, would allow people to let off some steam. “I hope we’re going to weather this,” he solemnly remarked.

  Impromptu vigils popped up on Boston Common, Post Office Square, and in front of Marsh Chapel. National Guard units went on standby. Inside the Boston Garden, Atwood and his WGBH crew set up three cameras—two in the balcony, one from behind the stage, so t
hat they could cut to Brown’s perspective. Outside, a young concertgoer approached a policeman and asked whether the show was still on. “Yeah,” the cop replied, “but if I were you I wouldn’t come. . . . It could be a little edgy in there. You can get a refund.”

  There was a certain irony in pinning the hopes of civic peace on a performer as notoriously hot-tempered as Brown, who had once showed up at a Georgia nightclub to fire shotgun rounds at a musical rival who had mocked his signature cape routine onstage. Still, many in the black community did look up to him as a role model and a civil rights spokesperson. To Brown, Black Power meant “black pride and black people owning businesses and having a voice in politics,” as he wrote in his 1986 autobiography. “I wanted to see people free, but I didn’t see any reason for us to kill each other.”

  Atkins and Brown discussed possible solutions on the drive from Logan Airport, while inside the Garden musicians and the WGBH team both got ready. If the city of Boston would cover his financial losses, Atkins finally suggested, then perhaps Brown could alter the clause in his Man to Man contract? The singer had done some calculations: He was poised to lose $60,000 that night. Atkins had persuaded the mayor to cover the difference, but no one had imagined a figure so substantial. With this promise in place, Brown gave WGBH the okay to air his concert live. The singer even talked to fans before curtain, telling them it didn’t make sense to turn their rage over Dr. King’s death into a riot at a concert. The mayor arrived at six and finally met Brown. Later, White would describe the encounter as a collision between two arrogant people. In the one photo of White, Brown, and Atkins backstage at the Garden, the mayor appears to lecture the other two men.

  “I’ll get you your money,” White promised the singer. “But I want you to get up on that stage and put on a performance. I don’t mean a musical one, either.”

  What Mayor White definitely did not tell James Brown backstage was that the city simply did not have the money to pay him $60,000. He’d worry about that later. Right now, all that mattered was that the show work some kind of miracle.

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  “LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, apologies, we’re still waiting for the audio connection to the Boston Garden for the memorial concert this evening featuring negro singer Jimmy Brown and his group,” WGBH announcer Bill Pierce explained to those tuning in. “Cohosting the concert will be Mayor Kevin White. That’s coming up next on this station. The time: 8:30.” As rioting in D.C. came within a few blocks of the White House, James Brown took the stage in front of approximately 1,500 souls and launched into “If I Ruled the World,” a vision of a better life for everyone.

  Then Atkins addressed the crowd in the Garden and at home. “He’s been doing some things around the country where, if other people were to join with him, would make a big difference,” the councilman said, as Brown stood behind him with his arms behind his back. When Atkins suggested people send in donations to the Martin Luther King Trust Fund to City Hall, Brown applauded, and so did the audience. As the councilman reverently introduced Kevin White, Brown realized that the tone was all wrong: This was a concert, not a campaign stop. As Brown grabbed the microphone from Atkins, the surprised councilman exclaimed “Wait a minute!” But Brown knew what he was doing. “I had the pleasure of meeting him,” Brown said, in a tone his fans could relate to, “and this is a swingin’ cat. Mayor Kevin White. Give him a big round of applause, ladies and gentlemen, he’s a swingin’ cat.” White, who had mistakenly referred to the singer as James Washington all afternoon, allegedly asked an aide to remind him of the actual name just before walking out onstage.

  White reminded the audience that they were at the Garden to listen to “a great talent: James Brown.” James Brown laughed as the audience cheered. “But we’re also here to pay tribute to one of the greatest Americans: Dr. Martin Luther King,” White continued. “Twenty-four hours ago, Dr. King died . . . for all of us. Black and white.” Now he directly petitioned his city not to riot, without using that word. “Stay with me as your mayor, to make Dr. King’s dreams a reality in Boston.” The audience was slower to clap at this, so Brown got it going for them, maybe the only time in his career where he played onstage hype man for a white person.

  “He’s a young man, ya dig?” Brown told his fans as the mayor left the stage. “So he’s thinking together.”

  With the night’s all-important business concluded, Brown proceeded to do what he did best: Deliver one of the best live shows anywhere on the planet, anywhere in time. “It’s getting late in the evening,” he sang, teasing out the intro to “That’s Life,” a 1963 song made famous by Frank Sinatra. With its eerily off-by-a-month lyrics (“You’re riding high in April/shot down in May”), it was a potentially chilling opener, but the crowd was too happy to notice, gasping as Brown did his first 360-degree spin of the night. Even though upbeat numbers dominated the set, you could hear something mournful in Brown’s cathartic wailings. (“He was a man who knew how to express the utterances and the screams and the feelings of a whole people,” Al Sharpton would later comment about the show.) In the wings, Marva Whitney, a featured vocalist who was also Brown’s girlfriend, prayed for everyone’s safety as she waited her turn.

  Reports started rolling in from police officers all around the city: Boston was a ghost town. “This concert was like magic,” Tom Atkins recalled. “The city was quieter than it would’ve been on an ordinary Friday night.” This was true even at 53 Berkeley Street, where the Amboy Dukes, a Detroit band led by guitarist Ted Nugent, played for a near empty house at the Tea Party.

  Marva Whitney performed four songs while Brown changed outfits backstage. Then saxophonist Maceo Parker announced that the city was very quiet and calm. “The reports also say that everyone is home watching the TV program,” he said, hailing the show and its broadcast as a “big success.”

  Brown reappeared, clad in a blazer, and ripped into “Get It Together.” Had the mission already succeeded? Was it too early to declare victory? The band blasted through its second set with urgency. That Friday night, a repertoire of songs consisting of two-chord vamps and only a handful of repeated lyrics vibrated with an extra hypnotic quality. Brown’s inspired, electric fits of dance between verses took the place of guitar solos, and at times he appeared to float across the stage. His musicians, trained not to take their eyes off Soul Brother #1, accentuated Brown’s dramatic movements with an extra snare hit or burst of saxophone. To get the band to cut the heat, the singer would suddenly freeze, hands in the air in a motion of surrender.

  He would typically close his shows draped in a sequined cape, escorted slowly to the wings by a handler, as though against his will. It signaled that the performer would give it his all, would just keep going if it were up to him. The only reason I stay alive is because my team knows when to get the cape and drag me offstage.

  On April 5, the cape routine was especially magnetic, drawing young fans to clamber onto the stage. One of Brown’s entourage managed to push the first kid off, but suddenly a contingent of Boston police officers, nearly all white, swarmed the stage and forced back the surge. Inside WGBH’s mobile broadcast unit, David Atwood was getting worried. At some point in the proceedings, the station had decided to re-air the concert immediately upon conclusion. But now that things were deteriorating, Atwood questioned the plan. “That was really tense,” Atwood recalls. “Is this going to turn into a major riot? I held back visually, trying to walk this fine line between showing what was going on and not trying to over-show what was going on.” If a riot was about to go down, should WGBH keep airing the concert?

  Brown whispered to the man with the cape, who folded it up and briskly left. The band segued into the closing song, “I Can’t Stand Myself (When You Touch Me).” After another interaction with a stage jumper and a Boston cop, Brown called off the band mid-riff. “Wait a minute!” he shouted. “I’ll be all right. I’ll be fine.” As Brown asked the police to clear the s
tage, the crowd cheered wildly. One kid, then two, then six now surrounded the singer. As police reemerged, Brown insisted, “Wait a minute! They’re all right, it’s all right!” The phrases sounded like signature Brown lyrics, now shouted without any music behind them. Amid the chaos, the house lights came up.

  “Let me finish the show for everyone else,” Brown said. “We gotta show we’re young men and young ladies. Wait a minute, wait a minute!”

  Atwood cut to the rearview shot as Brown, who sounded angry for the first time all evening, yells, “Now, We. Are. Black. Can’t you all go back down and let’s do the show together? We’re black, don’t make us all look bad. Lemme finish doing the show.” Another fist-pumping audience member, unaware that the time for games had long passed, approached Brown.

  “You make me look very bad, ’cause I asked the police to step back and you wouldn’t go down. No, that’s wrong. It’s wrong. You’re not being fair to me, yourself, or your race. Now I asked the police to step back because I thought I could get some respect from my own people. Don’t make sense. Now are we together, or we ain’t?” The crowd cheered in the affirmative. Suddenly the stage was clear again. An agitated Brown turned back to drummer Clyde Stubblefield and ordered, “Hit the thing, man.” The house lights went back down.

  “Good God,” Brown howled in the spotlight. “Can’t stand your love.”

  Strobes, bows, handshakes. Then it was done.

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  “IN JUST A MOMENT we’re going to do something rather wild for television,” WGBH’s Bill Pierce announced. “If you have any friends who would’ve enjoyed tonight’s concert at the Boston Garden, won’t you tell them that we’re going to repeat the show right now?”