American culture, drug, sex, rock and roll

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The Sixties Unplugged

A ~aiBi~~~~~~i~ ~i~tor~ of a ~i~or~Brl~ ~B~H~B

Gerard]. DeGroot

HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS

Cambridge, Massachusetts

London, England

2008

Property of Univ. of MO-·St. Louis

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Printed in the United States of America

Lyrics from "Until We're Free" by Elaine Brown are reproduced by kind permission of the author.

Jan Kerouac 1985. Permission granted by John Sampas, Literary Representative,

The Estate of]ack and Stella Kerouac.

by Allen Ginsberg. Reproduced by permission of HarperCollins Publishers.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Dara

DeGroot, Gerard]., 1955-

The sixties unplugged: a kaleidoscopic history of a

disorderly decade I Gerard J. DeGroot. p. em.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-o-674-02786-2 (hbk: alk. paper)

r. Nineteen sixties. I. Title.

Dro53.D4 2oo8 909.82' 6-dc22 2007039919

--:?"---------------------~~ --,

To my fomily-

a fine example of a durable institution

220 1 Sex, Drugs, and Rock 'n' Roll

ever, shed light on the actual extent of promiscuity, mainly by diligently

striving to include those who would not ordinarily respond to sex surveys.

Klassen discovered that among women born in the 1940s, 37 percent en-

tered marriage as virgins, while a further 31 percent had had sex, but only

with their husband-to-be. In all, around half the cases of premarital sex

among this cohort involved sex between the woman and her eventual hus-

band. Only 3 percent of women had ten or more sexual partners.

Males were more likely to have sex before marriage. Klassen found that

only n percent of those born in the 1940s entered marriage as virgins,

which suggests that by the 1960s the ideal of premarital chastity was

largely abandoned, among men at least. Another 12 percent, however, had

had sex only with those women who eventually became their wives. That

still leaves a significant 78 percent who were inclined to experiment, com-

pared to just 33 percent of women.

Klassen found that the typical male born in the 1940s had six sexual

partners during his life. That constitutes a doubling of experience com-

pared to the generation born before 1900. In other words, the sexual revo-

lution can be reduced to, in reality, an additional three sexual partners

per average male. As an indicator of more permissive times, this statistic

hardly seems earth-shattering, especially since the generation of men and

women born in the 1940s enjoyed better health standards, increased lon-

gevity, and greater social mobility, not to mention a reduction in the

threat of unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases. This

cohort also married later and therefore had more time between puberty

and marriage to devote to experimentation. Generally speaking, however,

experimentation did not usually take the form of rampant orgies and one-

night stands-as folklore suggests. While premarital sex and cohabitation

did rise during the 196os, this did not mean the death of monogamy, no

matter how hard some tried to smash it. Instead, the most common pat-

tern of behavior was serial monogamy-a sequence of long-term relation-

ships leading eventually to marriage when the right person came along.

Sexual restraint remained a respected goal among both sexes, particularly

after individuals fell in love. 26

Something nevertheless had happened. In 1963, So percent of American

women thought premarital sex was wrong. By 1975, only 30 percent did. In

other words, a change had occurred, even if it was not enough to be called

Sex, Drugs, and Rock 'n' Roll 1 2 21

a revolution. The change was undoubtedly greatest for women, who could

now admit to sexual desires and could openly pursue their fulfillment.

"I find it very odd that women who are otherwise perfectly sensible say

that the 'sexual revolution' of the sixties only succeeded in putting more

women on the sexual market for the pleasure of men," Angela Carter re-

flected. "What an odd way oflooking at it. This seems to deny the possibil-

ity of sexual pleasure to women except in situations where it's so hedged

around with qualifications." One of the greatest achievements of the de-

cade, she felt, was that "sexual pleasure was suddenly divorced from not

only reproduction but also status, security, all the foul traps men lay for

women in order to trap them into permanent relationships." In other

words, while terrible abuses did occur, the enjoyment of sex was not one-

sided. And those abuses were often illuminating, if only in retrospect.

When taboos were pulled down, some awful truths were revealed, from

which important lessons were learned. 27

LIVERPOOL: THE BEATLES

In 1960, there were probably 400 pop groups in Liverpool, all competing

for stardom. "Every teenager who could tap his foot in rhythm ... had

gathered three mates together, signed an HP [hire purchase] agreement

with Frank Hessy's music store, and was rocking away with the requi-

site set of drums, amp, rhythm and bass guitars," Liverpudlian Maureen

Nolan recalled. "I suppose the excitement stemmed from the belief that

anything was possible, it was all within reach."28

For the Beatles everything was possible. They somehow rose above the

fray, eventually becoming the most successful rock group in history. Their

success can easily be gauged by record sales, but also by creative versatil-

ity-their ability to mold musical tastes. Their catalogue of songs recorded

from 1963 to 1969 provides a perfect chronicle of the decade, a collective

Bildungsroman moving from innocence to excess.

In 1962, however, the Bearles were just a rock-and-roll band singing sim-

ple songs. No one would have predicted their enormous success, nor how

they would evolve. Granted, their manager, Brian Epstein, claimed they

would be "bigger than Elvis," but managers always talk like that. The only

ones supremely confident of the Beatles' potential were the Beatles them-

II 222 1 Sex, Drugs, and Rock 'n' Roll

selves, or, more specifically, John Lennon. "We were smart heads," he ex-

plained in March 1966. "We knew from the start we were better." "I'm age-

nius," he boasted a few years later. "I've been like this all me life."29

For quite a long time, genius went unrecognized. John Lennon and Paul

McCartney first played together on October r8, 1957, at the Conservative

Club in Norris Green. Back then they were the Quarry Men, playing local

dances, birthday parties, and church fetes. What distinguished them was

that they performed their own material, but this was hardly sufficient

to send them shooting to stardom. For more than six years they played

in a succession of dingy clubs, desperate for the big break During a spell

in Hamburg, they performed almost every day, sometimes for six hours

at a stretch, to audiences of drunks, soldiers, and prostitutes. John sur-

vived the pace by swallowing amphetamines like candy. The artist Klaus

Voorman, who first stumbled upon the band in Hamburg, recalled a mu-

sic "so raw and so fresh, ... the words of the songs were so simple and so

direct and ... they were so happy, having such a good time on stage. And

that was what was missing in all these others I'd seen before .... The com-

bination was such magic-unbelievable."30

Their break came when they met Epstein in late 1961. "They were fresh

and ... honest," he later recalled, "and they had what I thought was a sort

of presence and ... star quality." He cleaned them up, dressed them in

smart clothes, and instilled discipline. "I don't think John particularly

liked wearing a suit-nor did I," George Harrison recalled, "but we wanted

more work, and we realized that's what we had to do." Being a hot rock

band was not, however, a guarantee of success, since it was not yet clear

that rock and roll would be the soundtrack for the new decade. The classic

rockers-Buddy Holly, Jerry Lee Lewis, Chuck Berry, and the like-had

faded away. Elvis had retained his popularity by turning smooth and soul-

ful. Rockers, it seemed, had given way to wholesome crooners and bal-

ladeers like the Everly Brothers. In Britain, pop music was dominated by

Cliff Richard, who proved that millions could be made from bland songs

that couldn't possibly offend one's granny. Some music-industry insiders

predicted that jazz would dominate, since it seemed to harmonize so

well with the decade's taste for existentialism. "Groups are out; four-piece

groups with guitars particularly are finished," Dick Rowe, an executive at

Decca, told Epstein when he rejected the Beatles in 1962. Pye, Philips, Co-

lumbia, and HMV all decided that the group wasn't worth an audition.31

r Sex, Drugs, and Rock 'n' Roll I 223

In came George Martin, a producer at Parlophone, an EMI subsidiary.

Martin, like Epstein, could hear something special within the loud, rather

raucous music. He also had the technical ability to refine the music to

make it marketable. The Beatles wisely listened to Martin, at least in the

early years. His first significant piece of advice was to drop their much-

loved drummer, Pete Best, who had been with them for two years. Lennon,

McCartney, and Harrison were sufficiently ruthless to cut Best loose. In

came Ringo Starr.

Martin's bosses were not impressed, but he persevered, promising great

things. Their first single, "Love Me Do" came out on October 5, 1962, and

rose to a respectable seventeenth on the charts. The next song was "Please,

Please Me," originally intended as a soulful ballad, in the manner of Roy

Orbison. Martin took the song, added a harmonica at the start, upped the

tempo, rearranged the vocal harmonies and ended up with something he

guaranteed would top the charts. He was right. Released in mid-February

1963, it hit number one on March 2.

After waiting so long for success, the Beatles now found that it came in

a torrent. Their next song, "From Me to You" went straight to the top, as

did their first album, Please, Please Me. The British, most of them at least,

fell instantly in love, thanks in part to Fleet Street's conspiracy of adora-

tion. "You had to write it that way," one correspondent reflected. "You

knew that if you didn't, the Sketch would and the Express would and the

Mail and the Standard would. You were writing in self-defence." The Beatles

had the good fortune to emerge at a time when the papers were full of sto-

ries about the scandals and mismanagement of Harold Macmillan's gov-

ernme"nt. Journalists enjoyed contrasting the perfidy of an aristocratic

Home Counties Cabinet with the fresh-faced, innocent vitality of the Fab

Four from Liverpool. "We were the first working-class heroes in England

to ever get anywhere without changing their accents," Lennon claimed,

not altogether accurately. For a country eager to pretend that the class sys-

tem was in decline, the Beatles were welcome folk heroes. "The Beatles are

the first people to make rock 'n' roll respectable," wrote the Evening Stan-

dard. "They have won over the class snob, the intellectual snob, the music

snob, the grown-ups and the husbands .... They appeal to the family and

they appeal to the nation."32

Beatlemania gripped Britain. "I Want to Hold Your Hand," released

at the end of November 1963, became the biggest-selling British pop re-

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II 224 1 Sex, Drugs, and Rock 'n' Roll

cord ever released, selling more than ten million copies worldwide. People

weren't just buying records-they were also buying a huge variety of mer-

chandise designed to keep the image ubiquitous. Hairdressers were inun-

dated with requests for Beatie haircuts; stores sold out of Beatle wigs.

After the group had stormed the citadel of British musical taste, other

rock bands-Gerry and the Pacemakers, the Dave Clark Five, the Rolling

Stones, the Kinks-swarmed over the ramparts. Those who had predicted

the early demise of rock and roll swallowed their words and started mov-

ing to the beat. Except, that is, for Cliff Richard, who felt as if a rug had

been pulled from under him. "Anyone who can shout can be a Beatie," he

told the Daily Mirror. 33

The most conspicuous, and worrying, manifestation of Beatlemania

was the horde of screaming girls who went hysterical at the mere mention

of the band's name. After a gig in Cambridge on November 26, 1963, the

seats and floor were soaked with urine. Psychologists were quick to offer

explanation. Some concluded that it was pent-up energy which the girls,

had they been boys, would otherwise have released playing football or

rugby. One English doctor surmised that "this sort of activity was impor-

tant for young women because it made the pains of pregnancy easier ...

when they grew up and got married." In the New Statesman, Dr. David

Holbrook argued that the Beatles were "a masturbation fantasy." Noel

Coward, inclined to agree, compared Beatlemania to a "mass masturba-

tion orgy," while the Daily Telegraph found disturbing parallels with Hit-

ler's Nuremburg rallies. 34

Most people, however, simply joined in the hysteria, though rather less

loudly than the young female fans. One of the most surprising converts

was William Mann, music critic for the Times.

The outstanding English composers of1963 must seem to have been

John Lennon and Paul McCartney .... The slow sad song about

"That Boy" ... is expressively unusual for its lugubrious music, but

harmonically it is one of their most interesting, with its chains of

pandiatonic clusters .... But harmonic interest is typical of their

quicker songs too, ... so firmly are the major tonic sevenths and

ninths built into their tunes, and the flat sub-mediant key switches,

so natural is the Aeolian cadence at the end of"Not a Second Time."

r Sex, Drugs, and Rock ·n· Roll 1 225

The Sunday Times ballet critic, Richard Buckle, joined the chorus, call-

ing the Beatles "the greatest composers since Beethoven." As Buckle and

Mann demonstrate, the Beaties had made rock and roll respectable, some-

thing further confirmed at the 1963 Royal Variety Show. Lennon delighted

the crowd with his introduction to "Twist and Shout": "Those in the

cheaper seats, clap your hands, and the rest of you ... just rattle your jew-

elry." After the performance, the Queen Mother called it "one of the best

shows I've seen .... The Beatles are most intriguing." Around this time, the

staid Daily Telegraph began to publish a weekly listing of the top ten pop

records. Politicians eagerly told everyone how much they loved the Beatles.

Some even resorted to incorporating lyrics into their speeches. 35

Next stop America, where music industry executives were contemptu-

ous of the possibility of the Beatles making it big, for the simple reason

that no British group ever had. The Beatles bringing rock and roll to

America seemed like Rover sending cars to Detroit. But then, on January

!7, 1964, came news that "I Want to Hold Your Hand" had reached number

one on the US charts, a nice prelude to the American tour, which was to

begin on February 7· In no mood to gamble, publicists spent an unprece-

dented $so,ooo on pretour publicity, all to the tune of "The Beatles Are

Coming!" This included paying a crowd of teenagers to meet the group on

their arrival at Kennedy Airport.

The moneymen needn't have worried. Everywhere the Beatles went, they

encountered crowds of young people (mostly girls) desperately indulging

in madness. Stores maintained a brisk trade in Beatie memorabilia and

concerts were packed. A journalist described the reaction when the Beatles

hit Los Angeles:

For more than twelve hours the crowd has been gathering with

quiet anticipation. Now, fifteen minutes before concert time, the

Hollywood Bowl is surrounded. People crowding the security

guards to get in, while the guards look less than amused and a little

apprehensive. . .. Tiny teenage girls, dressed in their finest, wave

half-heartedly at each other, not anxious to break the privacy of the

mood created by the months of waiting for this day. No matter

who they are, each of them feels that SHE is the one who will be

seen by the Beatles-SHE is the one who will get backstage and see

I i 226 1 Sex,Drugs,andRock'n'Roll

them, talk to them. Of course they dress up! No-those aren't early-

American night gowns (what kind of nut are you?)-rhat's the "Lon-

don look." Don't you even read Seventeen?

An appearance on the Ed Sullivan show attracted 78 million viewers, the

largest audience ever for any television show. By the beginning of April

1964, the Beatles had the top five spots on the American charts, twelve sin-

gles in the top 100, and the top two albums. Bob Dylan, observing the ma-

nia, reflected: "I knew they were pointing the direction music had to go ....

It seemed to me a definite line was being drawn." The rock critic Greil

Marcus has written that the arrival of the Beatles in New York "was the

moment that took Bob Dylan out of his folksinger's clothes."36

By the beginning of1966, a little over three years after their first hit, the

Beatles had published around ninety songs which were recorded in nearly

3,ooo different versions by artists famous and forgettable. They themselves

had sold close to 200 million records, while sales of cover versions reached

half a billion. Most pop bands would have reacted by offering more of the

same. Had the Beatles done so, they would have quickly faded away, as

most groups do. The shelf life of bands is seldom more than a few years.

The Beatles, however, were ambitious, not for money and fame, but for im-

mortality. For them, fame brought freedom, the freedom to let creativity

bloom. "We are so well established that we can bring the fans along with

us and stretch the limits of pop," McCartney told the Rolling Stone journal-

ist Michael Lydon in March 1966. "We don't have to follow what everyone

else is doing."37

Lennon felt that the Sixties was "a revolution in a whole new way of

thinking .... We were all on this ship-a ship going to discover the New

World. And the Beatles were in the crow' s nest." Their artistic whims be-

came international trends. They did not consciously reinvent themselves,

nor did they try to anticipate trends. They instead allowed themselves to

develop, safe in the knowledge that whatever they produced would sell. As

McCartney explained: "We started off first with songs like 'Love Me Do,'

with easy, easy, stupid rhymes that didn't mean very much, then we moved

to a middle bunch of songs which meant a little bit more. Not an awful

lot more, but they were a little deeper. There was no mystery about our

growth; it was only as mysterious as a flower is mysterious .... We were just

growing up." The freedom to improvise was strengthened by the group's

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Sex. Drugs. and Rock 'n' Roll I 227

conscious decision to retreat into the studio. Playing before a crowd of

screaming fans quickly lost its appeaL "We don't progress," Harrison com-

plained in July 1965,."because we play the same things every day, every rime

we play somewhere." By cutting back on concerts, and eventually stop-

ping them entirely, the group was able to rejuvenate its artistic drive. It

also meant that they no longer had to conform to audience expectations.

"That's it," George Harrison said after their last concert, "I don't have to

pretend to be a Beatie any more." 38

The Beatles' immense popularity caused many people to endow them

with an importance they did not deserve. Their every move was intricately

analyzed. Off-the-cuff remarks, like Lennon's assertion that they were

more popular than Jesus (which was true), were given far too much weight.

As a result of Lennon's statement, thirty-five US radio stations banned

their music and some communities staged record burnings. The Beatles

were made into role models and then attacked for setting a bad example.

Revelations about their drug-taking caused widespread condemnation,

when in fact their behavior was no different from that of millions of or-

dinary young people from a similar background. "One thing that mod-

ern philosophy-existentialism and things like that-have taught people,"

Lennon protested in 1966, "is that you have to live now. You have to feel

now. We live in the present, we don't have time to figure out whether we

are right or wrong, whether we are immoral or not. We have to be honest,

be straight, and then live, enjoying and taking what we can." That said, the

Beatles occasionally got carried away with their own celebrity; they began

to believe that they might indeed be gods worthy of worship. Lennon, for

instance, expected the world to accept without question his credentials as

a pacifist, despite the fact that he had a long history of violence, as his first

wife, Cynthia, could attest.39 The peak was reached in 1967 with the release of Sergeant Pepper's Lonely

Hearts Club Band, perennially judged the best rock album ever produced.

After that came two years of bitter unraveling. The media circus grew un-

bearable. "Ifi could be a fucking fisherman, I would," Lennon told Rolling

Stone's Jann Wenner in 1970. "If I had the capabilities of being something

other than I am, I would. It's no fun being an artist .... These bastards are

just sucking us to death; that's about all that we can do, is do it like circus

animals." Their time at the top lasted about seven years-longer than most

bands, shorter than some. But bands that stay together for a long time,

228 I Sex, Drugs, and Rock 'n' Roll

like the Rolling Stones, do so in part because they don't evolve. Stasis

brings stability. The great strength of the Beat!es was their versatility,

but that was also their greatest weakness. All that improvisation inevita-

bly created conflict, as individual members tried to pull the band in differ-

ent directions. The breakup left their fans crushed, but to them it seemed

logical. "I wouldn't mind being a white-haired old man writing songs,"

McCartney told Lydon in 1966. "But I'd hate to be a white-haired old

Beatie at the Empress Stadium, playing for people." "Always the Beatles

were talked about ... as being four parts of the same person. What's hap-

pened to those four parts?" Wenner asked shortly after their demise. "They

remembered that they were four individuals," Lennon replied, with perfect

simplicity.40

"Changing the life-style and the appearance of youth throughout the

world didn't just happen," Lennon boasted. "We set out to do it; we knew

what we were doing." The Beatles suited their era perfectly. The music in-

dustry back then was young, innocent, and open-minded. Improvisation

was possible because success had not yet become an algebraic formula.

The reason the Beatles phenomenon has not been repeated is perhaps that

the industry today could never accommodate a band so creative, autono-

mous, and progressive. Pop culture in the Sixties, writes Ian MacDonald,

was "intrinsically democratic." The Beatles "represented an upsurge of

working-class expression into a medium till then mostly handed down to

the common man by middle-class professionals with little empathy for

street culture." They succeeded in changing so much within the industry,

but in the end they could not transform the mechanics of power. "The

only significant aspect of pop the Beatles failed to change was the business

itself."41

MANCHESTER: THE BATTLE FOR BOB DYLAN

The crowd in the Manchester Free Trade Hall on the night of May 17, 1966,

confirmed that the times were indeed a-changin'. Half were folkies with

rucksacks and sandals who had come to hear their Bob Dylan. The rest

were rockers in jeans and black leather eager to hear their Dylan. A fair pro-

portion, in other words, were destined to be disappointed. For quite a few,

that concert was the Great Betrayal-the day Dylan went electric. In fact,

he'd gone electric some time before, but the folk faithful were desperate to

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Sex, Drugs, and Rock 'n' Roll I 2 2 9

deny the truth. For them, seeing Dylan plug in his Stratocaster was like

watching Pontius Pilate pass judgment on Christ. The amplified wail felt

like nails piercing flesh. The rockers were delighted, but the folkies grew

increasingly restless as each song underlined Dylan's treachery. And then

came the most famous catcall in the history of rock: "JUDAS!"

Dylan, it seems, was waiting for this moment, this instant of attack in a

culture war. He barked to the five members of his band: "Play Fucking

Loud!" They responded with a terrifying, ear-splitting fusillade-a seven-

minute barrage of"Like a Rolling Stone," played with intent to wound. "It

was great," Sue Miles felt. "Half the audience pissed off-all the ones that

had rucksacks." Among the angry was Keith Butler, who left in disgust.

On the way out, he ran into the filmmaker D. A. Pennebaker. "He's a trai-

tor," Butler muttered. "He wants shooting."42

The words "I was there" echo across the ages. The number who re-

call that seminal event, who felt personally the stab of betrayal, could fill

the Free Trade Hall ten times over. That is the nature of rock legends:

those who remember an event far exceed those who actually experienced

it. Some attended later concerts on the tour; others heard stories from

friends; still others saw film clips of the concert. Some even swear the be-

trayal occurred at London's Albert Hall, not in Manchester. Imagining

that one had been present was easy, because the emotional challenge

Dylan posed was so profound. With a few wailing notes, he had asked:

"Where precisely do you stand?"

In truth, the question was first asked at the Newport Folk Festival on

July 25, 1965, the day after "Like a Rolling Stone" had entered the American

charts. Dylan came onstage with some members of the Paul Butterfield

Blues Band, looking like an extra out of The Wild Bunch. He carried his

Stratocaster like a Kalashnikov. On that occasion, the crowd was mainly

folkies, as befits a folk festival. The new song (played badly) brought forth

boos, tears, hysterics. A minuscule few cheered, but most sat in stunned si-

lence. The air was thick with reproach: "Play folk music!" "Sell-out!" "Get

rid of that band!" And epithets more abusive. Backstage, Pete Seeger, his

face a deep purple, was shaking his head and kicking equipment. "I had

never seen any trace of violence in Pete, except at that moment," one wit-

ness remarked. 43

Dylan left the stage, dripping sweat and disgust. Peter Yarrow, of Peter,

Paul and Mary, acting as emcee, promised that Dylan would return by