But Bill’s house was hardly unique. The same thing was happening in millions of homes all over the country. Everyone but the kids seemed to have declared war on the music. Old-line disc jockeys were calling it junk noise and were having rock and roll record-smashing parties on the air; television networks were refusing to broadcast Presley below the waist; church leaders were calling it the Devil’s music, cultural leaders were calling it barbaric, and a lot of otherwise mild-mannered ordinary citizens were calling it nigger music.
They should have guessed what the result of such mass persecution would be: The popularity of rock and roll soared.
“But the strife in your home served a useful purpose. It opened my eyes. I say with no little pride that I was probably the only man in the country who saw the true significance of what rock and roll was doing to American society.”
“You thought you saw significance, and you were very persuasive. But I don’t buy it anymore. It was only music.”
I leaned back and closed my eyes. Only music . . .
Bill was proving to be a bigger and bigger disappointment with each passing year. I’d had such high hopes for him. I’d even started bringing him to Commission meetings to prepare him to take my seat someday. But now I couldn’t see him ever sitting on the Commission. He had no foresight, no vision for the future. He couldn’t be trusted to participate in the decisions the Commission had to make. Nor could I see myself leaving my controlling interest in the family business to him.
I have a duty to the McCready newspaper chain: My dad started it with a measly little local weekly in Boston at the turn of the century and built it to a small string. I inherited that and sweated my butt to expand it into a publishing empire that spans the country today. There was no way in good conscience I could leave the McCready Syndicate to Bill. Maybe this was a signal to start paying more attention to Jimmy. He was a full decade younger but showing a lot more promise.
Bill had shown promise in ‘57, though. I’ll never forget the fall meeting of the Commission that year when Bill sat in as a non-voting member. I was set to address the group on what I saw as an insidious threat to the country. I knew I was facing a tough audience, especially on the subject of music. I drew on every persuasive skill I had to pound home the fact that rock and roll was more than just music, more than just an untrained nasal voice singing banal lyrics to a clichéd melody backed by a bunch of guitar notes strung together over a drumbeat.
It had become a social force.
Music as a social force—I knew that concept was unheard-of, but the age of mass communication was here and life in America was a new game. I saw that. I had to make the Commission see it. The Commission had to learn the rules of the new game if it wanted to remain a guiding force. In 1957, rock and roll was a pivotal piece in the game.
Irritating as it was, I knew the music itself was unimportant. Its status as a threat had been created by the hysterically negative reaction from the adult sector of society. As a result, untold millions of kids under eighteen came to see it as their music. Everyone born before World War II seemed to be trying to take it away from them. So they were closing ranks against all the older generations. That frightened me.
It did not, however, impress the other members of the Commission.
So for weeks before our regular meeting, I hammered away, throwing facts and figures at them, sending newspaper accounts of rock and roll riots, softening them up for my pitch.
And I was good that day. God, was I good. I can still remember my closing words:
“And gentlemen, as you all know, the upcoming generation includes the post-war baby boom, making it the largest single generation in the nation’s history. If that generation develops too much self-awareness, if it begins to think of itself as a group outside the mainstream, catastrophe could result.
“Consider, gentlemen: In ten years most of them will be able to vote. If the wrong people get their ear, the social and political continuity that this Commission has sworn to safeguard could be permanently disrupted.
“The popularity of the music continues to expand, gathering momentum all the time. If we don’t act now, next year may be too late. We cannot silence this music, because that will only worsen the division. We must find a way to temper rock and roll . . . make it more palatable to the older generations, fuse it to the mainstream. Do that, and the baby boom generation will fall in line! Do nothing and I see only chaos ahead!”
But in the ensuing discussion it became quite clear that nobody, including myself, had the foggiest notion of how to change the music.
Then someone—I forget who—made a comment about how it was too bad all these rock and roll singers couldn’t give up their guitars and go into the religion business like Little Richard had just done.
Bill had piped up then: “Or the Army. I’d love to see a military barber get a hold of Elvis Presley. Can’t we get him drafted?”
The room suddenly fell silent as the Commission members—all of us—shared an epiphany:
Don’t go after the music—go after the ones who make the music. Get rid of the raucous leaders and replace them with more placid, malleable types.
Brilliant! It might never have occurred to anyone without Bill’s remark.
The tinkling of the ice in Bill’s glass as he took another sip dragged me back to the present, to Nantucket and the storm. In what I hoped he would take as a friendly gesture, I slapped Bill on the knee.
“Don’t you remember the excitement back then after the Commission meeting? You and I became experts on rock and roll. We listened to all those awful records, got to know all about the performers, and then we began to zero in on them.”
Bill nodded. “But I had no idea where it was going to end.”
“No one did. Remember making the list? We sat around for weeks, going through the entertainment papers and picking out the singers most closely associated with the music, the leaders, the trendsetters, the originals.”
I still savor the memory of that time of closeness with Bill, working together with him, both of us tingling with the knowledge that we were doing something important.
Elvis was the prime target, of course. More than anyone else, he personified everything that was rock and roll. His sneers, his gyrations, everything he did on stage was a slap in the face to the older generations. And his too-faithful renditions of colored music getting airplay all over the country, the screaming, fainting girls at his concerts, the general hysteria. Elvis had to go first.
And he turned out to be the easiest to yank from sight. With the Commission’s vast influence, all we had to do was pass the word. In a matter of weeks, a certain healthy twenty-two-year-old Memphis boy received his draft notice. And on March 24, 1958—a landmark date I’ll never forget—Elvis Presley was inducted into the US Army. But not to hang around stateside and keep up his public profile. Oh, no. Off to West Germany. Bye-bye, Elvis Pelvis.
Bill seemed to be reading my thoughts. “Too bad we couldn’t have taken care of everyone like that.”
“I agree, son.” Bill seemed to be perking up a little. I kept up the chatter, hoping to bring him out some more. “But someone would have smelled a rat. We had to move slowly, cautiously. That was why I rounded up some of our best reporters and had them start sniffing around. And as you know, it didn’t take them long to come up with a few gems.”
The singers weren’t my only targets. I also wanted to strike at the ones who spread the music through the airwaves. That proved easy. We soon learned that a lot of the big-time rock and roll disc jockeys were getting regular payoffs from record companies to keep their new releases on the air. We made sure that choice bits of information got to congressmen looking to heighten their public profile, and we made sure they knew to go after Alan Freed.
Oh, how I wanted Freed off the air back then. The man had gone from small-time Cleveland d.j. to big-time New York music show impresario. By 1959 he had appeared in a line of low-budget rock and roll movies out of Hollywood and w
as hosting a nationwide music television show. He had become “Mr. Rock ‘n’ Roll.” His entire career was built on the music and he was its most vocal defender.
Alan Freed had to go. And payola was the key. We set the gears in motion and turned to other targets. And it was in May, only two months after Presley’s induction, that the reporters turned up another spicy morsel.
“Remember, Bill? Remember when they told us that Jerry Lee Lewis had secretly married his third cousin in November of ‘57? Hardly a scandal in and of itself. But the girl was only fourteen. Fourteen! Oh, we made sure the McCready papers gave plenty of press to that, didn’t we. Within days he was being booed off the stage. Yessir, Mr. Whole Lotta Shakin’ / Great Balls of Fire was an instant has-been.”
I laughed, and even Bill smiled. But the smile didn’t last.
“Don’t stop now, Dad. Next comes 1959.”
“Bill, I had nothing to do with that plane crash. I swear it.”
“You told your operatives to ‘get Valens and Holly off the tour.’ I heard you myself.”
“I don’t deny that. But I meant ‘off the tour’—not dead! We couldn’t dig up anything worthwhile on them so I intended to create some sort of scandal. We discussed it, didn’t we? We wanted to see them replaced by much safer types, by pseudo-crooners like Frankie Avalon and Fabian. I did not order any violence. The plane crash was pure coincidence.”
Bill studied the ceiling. “Which just happened to lead to the replacement of Holly, Valens, and that other guy with the silly name—The Big Bopper—by Avalon, Fabian, and Paul Anka. Some coincidence!”
I said nothing. The crash had been an accident. The operatives had been instructed to do enough damage to the plane to keep it on the ground, forcing the three to miss their next show. Apparently they didn’t do enough, and yet did too much. The plane got into the air, but never reached its destination. Tragic, unfortunate, but it all worked out for the best. I couldn’t let Bill know that, though.
“I can understand why you lost your enthusiasm for the project then.”
“But you didn’t, did you, Dad? You kept right on going.”
“I had a job to do. An important one. And when one of our reporters discovered that Chuck Berry had brought that Apache minor across state lines to work in his club, I couldn’t let it pass.”
Berry was one of the top names on my personal list. Strutting up there on stage, swinging his guitar around, duck-walking across back and forth, shouting out those staccato lyrics as he spread his legs and wiggled his hips, and all those white girls clapping and singing along as they gazed up at him. I tell you it made my hackles rise.
“The Mann Act conviction we got on him has crippled his career. And then later in ‘59 we finally spiked Alan Freed. When he refused to sign that affidavit saying he had never accepted payola, he was through. Fired from WNEW-TV, WABC-TV, and WABC radio—one right after the other.”
What a wonderful year.
“Did you stop there, Dad?”
“Yes.” What was he getting at? “Yes, I believe so.”
“You had nothing to do with that car crash in sixty—Eddie Cochran killed, Gene Vincent crippled?”
“Absolutely not!” Damn! The booze certainly wasn’t dulling Bill’s memory. That crash had been another unfortunate, unintended mishap caused by an overly enthusiastic operative. “Anyway, it remains a fact that by the middle of 1960, rock and roll was dead.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that—”
“Dead as a threat. What had been a potent, divisive social force is now a tiny historical footnote, a brief, minor cultural aberration. Only two years after we started, Elvis was out of the service but he was certainly not the same wild man who went in. Little Richard was in the ministry, Chuck Berry was up to his ears in legal troubles, Jerry Lee Lewis was in limbo as a performer, Alan Freed was out of a job and appearing before House subcommittees.”
Bill tossed off the rest of his drink and glared at me. “You forgot to mention that Buddy Holly, Richie Valens, and Eddie Cochran were dead.”
“Unfortunately and coincidentally, yes. But not by my doing. I say again: Rock and roll was dead then, and remains dead. Even Presley gave up on it after his discharge. He got sanitized and Hollywoodized and that’s fine with me. More power to him. I bear him no ill will.”
“There’s still rock ‘n’ roll,” Bill mumbled as he got up and stood by the bar, glass in hand.
“I disagree, son,” I said quickly, hoping he wouldn’t pour himself another. “I stay current on these things and I know. There’s still popular music they call rock and roll, but it has none of the abrasive, irritating qualities of the original. Remember how some of those songs used to set your teeth on edge and make your skin crawl? That stuff is extinct.”
“Some of it’s still pretty bad.”
“Not like it used to be. Its punch is gone. Dried up. Dead.” I pointed to the radio at the end of the bar. “Turn that thing on and I’ll show you.”
Bill did. A newscast came on.
“Find some music.”
He spun the dial until the sweet blend of a mixed duet singing “Hey, Paula” filled the room.
“Hear that? Big song. I can live with it. Find another so-called rock ‘n’ roll station.” He did and the instrumental “Telstar” came on. “Monotonous, but I can live with that, too. Try one more.” As a d.j. announced the number one song in the country, a twelve-string guitar opening led into “Walk Right In.”
Bill nodded and turned the radio off. “I concede the point.”
“Good. And you must also concede that the wartime and post-war generations are now firmly back in the fold. There are pockets of discontent, naturally, but they are small and isolated. There is no clear-cut dividing line—that’s what’s important. Jack’s doing his part in the White House. He’s got them all hot for his social programs like the Peace Corps and such where their social impulses can be channeled and directed by the proper agencies. They see themselves as part of the mainstream, involved in the social continuum rather than separate from it.
“And we saved them, Bill—you, me, and the Commission.”
Bill only stared at me. Finally, he said, “Maybe we did. But I never really understood about Buddy Holly—”
I felt like shouting, but controlled my voice.
“Can’t you drop that? I told you—”
“Oh, I don’t mean the crash. I mean why he was so high on your list. He always struck me as an innocuous four-eyes who hiccupped his way through songs.”
“Perhaps he was. But like Berry and Little Richard and Valens and Cochran, he had the potential to become a serious threat. He and the others originated the qualities that made the music so divisive. They wrote, played, and sang their own songs. That made me extremely uneasy.”
Bill shook his head in bafflement. “I don’t see . . .”
“All right: Let’s suppose the Commission hadn’t acted and had let things run their course. And now, here in sixty-three, the wartime and post-war baby boom generation is aware of itself and a group, psychologically separate and forming its own subculture within ours. A lot of them are voting age now, and next year is an election year. Let’s say one of these self-styled rock and roll singers who writes his own material gets it into his head to use his songs to influence the generation that idolizes him. Think of it: a thinly disguised political message being played over and over again, on radios, TVs, in homes, in jukeboxes, hummed, sung in the shower by all those voters. With their numbers, God knows what could happen at the polls.”
I paused for breath. It was a truly frightening thought.
“But that’s all fantasy,” I said. “The airwaves are once again full of safe, sane Tin Pan Alley tunes.”
Bill smiled.
I asked, “What’s so funny?”
“Just thinking. When I was in London last month I noticed that Britain seems to be going through the same kind of thing we did in ‘57. Lots of rock and roll bands and fans. There’s one q
uartet of guys who wear their hair in bangs—can’t remember the name now—that’s selling records like crazy and packing the kids into the old music halls where they’re screaming and fainting just like in Elvis Presley’s heyday. And I understand they write and play and sing their own music, too.”
I heard the windows at my back begin to rattle and jitter as hail mixed with the rain. I did not turn to look.
“Forget Britain. England is already a lost cause.”
“But what if their popularity spreads over here and the whole process gets going again?”
I laughed. That was a good one.
“A bunch of Limeys singing rock and roll to American kids? That’ll be the day.”
But I knew that if such a thing ever came to pass, the Commission would be there to take the necessary measures.
MÉNAGE Á TROIS
Burke noticed how Grimes, the youngest patrolman there, was turning a sickly shade of yellow-green. He motioned him closer. “You all right?”
Grimes nodded. “Sure. Fine.” His pitiful attempt at a smile was hardly reassuring. “Awful hot in here, but I’m fine.”
Burke could see that he was anything but. The kid’s lips were as pale as the rest of his face and he was dripping with sweat. He was either going to puke or pass out or both in the next two minutes.
“Yeah. Hot,” Burke said. It was no more than seventy in the hospital room. “Get some fresh air put in the hall.”
“Okay. Sure.” Now the smile was real—and grateful. Grimes gestured toward the three sheet-covered bodies. “I just never seen anything like this before, y’know?”
Burke nodded. He knew. This was a nasty one. Real nasty. He swallowed the sour-milk taste that puckered his cheeks. In his twenty-three years with homicide he had seen his share of crime scenes like this, but he never got used to them. The splattered blood and flesh, the smell from the ruptured intestines, the glazed eyes in the slack-jawed faces—who could get used to that? And three lives, over and gone for good.
A Soft Barren Aftershock Page 32