The Invasion: B-day, 2.9.64

Naturally, the first I ever heard of the Beatles was from a wannabe girlfriend in 1963. As you may have figured, I was the “wannabe” in this relationship – she was incredibly beautiful, and no doubt still is, wherever she lives. But if she said, “I love the Beatles,” I had to pay attention.

I was living in New York at the time. No, I wasn’t in the studio on Feb. 9, 1964, when the Beatles debuted on the Ed Sullivan Show. But in those days, just being in NYC was enough. It was in the air, and stayed there. Local legendary DJ Murray the K on WINS used to be the first in the country to play new Beatles releases – they were phoned in to him and his audience – literally, before being released on record in the U.S.

I was privileged to be in London in 1966 for a couple of weeks during a summer between my junior and senior years in college. The British who weren’t in the first wave of the invasion were planning their assault. I was accosted on the street by the “Get Rich Group,” who, upon hearing that I worked at a college radio station in the U.S., played their wannabe hit single for me right in the street.

I used that status of college radio DJ to finagle my way onto one of the pirate radio ships off the U.K. coast. These ships were the only real source of current music for Britain, programmed exactly like American radio stations. I traveled to the ship aboard a skiff out of the British port of Felixstowe. How I survived this experience, I don’t know.

I stayed at a small hotel in London W1, recommended by the radio station personnel. The price I paid was rooming with an Irish dishwasher who insisted on playing a portable record player with failing batteries, so the music was all off-speed. But the band called the Troggs (“Wild Thing”) practiced in the hotel’s basement!

I did visit a local record store. They used to let you sit in booths and listen to records before you bought them. I bought a Beatles Parlophone EP (4 tracks, two on each side). They sounded MUCH better than the Capitol Records releases in the U.S., which seemed somewhat distorted. An audio engineer explained to me that recording standards in the UK were different then.

The Beatles sort of lost me after “Rubber Soul,” but I wasn’t a hippie. Maybe I liked to shower daily too much, don’t know.

But the Beatles were a precious phenomenon: a collective American experience (actually, a worldwide one). That appearance on the Ed Sullivan show was important for many reasons, not the least of which was that it was the first such experience – a joyous one -- after the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Believe me, the Fab Four were there when we needed them.

Where Were You?

That’s the question of this day – actually, the question of this month, as the 50-year anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy is observed.

In order to answer the question, of course, you have to be a certain age, which I am, so here’s my story. I attended a fancy New England prep school, one of many in that part of the country. For today’s discussion, though, it’s significant. It was the Choate School, then an all-male institution, which JFK also attended, in his case, in the 1930s. I was there a generation later.

On the day of the President’s killing, I had taken a math exam which I didn’t do especially well on – fortunately, because of the news of the day, it seemed they weren’t graded quite as strictly as usual. We were all glued to the TV sets in the housemasters’ apartments, watching events unfold. It hit especially hard, as we knew President Kennedy had used the same sidewalks, sat in the same classrooms, and crossed the same athletic fields we did on a daily basis.

When JFK was at the school, according to historical records, he was a bit of a troublemaker. His older brother Joe, who would die later in World War II, was a top athlete and scholar at the time, and as the story goes, the younger Kennedy compensated for his second-fiddle status with pranks, one of which was blowing up a toilet seat with a firecrcacker. At a chapel service, which was required for students, the headmaster denounced the “muckers,” as he called them, who pulled it off. Kennedy adopted the name for his group, forming the Muckers Club.

The mood on campus was somber in the days following the news of his death, especially those daily chapel services. As a U.S. Senator, Kennedy had addressed students from the same pulpit from which the headmaster had excoriated the muckers.

This was the most significant shared American moment since Pearl Harbor – the only one since that time for which people could say they remembered where they were at the exact moment they heard the dreadful news. It’s difficult to think of another one quite like it since then. But it was only the emergence of electronic media that had made such moments possible.

Personally, I’m distressed that exploration of the events of November 22, 1963 has been turned into a hobby. I don’t think there is now or ever will be a set of facts that will completely convince some people that there wasn’t a conspiracy to kill the President. And even if that turns out to be true, by the time it’s revealed, the shock value will have greatly diminished.

What is going to happen is that this event will officially fade into history after this. The 51^st anniversary just won’t be the same, nor will the 75^th, though I may not be around to make a judgment about that one. The beat, as Sonny Bono reminded us later in the 1960s, goes on.

So You Think You Know This Court

We can’t be blamed if our heads are spinning – even though it may not be in the same direction for everyone.

Not 24 hours ago, the U.S. Supreme Court was being panned for its decision to throw out key provisions of the Voting Rights Act – a move interpreted by many as a blow to equality. Now today, the Court majority has thrown out key provisions of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), declaring it unconstitutional. In addition, the Court left standing a lower court opinion blocking Proposition 8, though only on what amounts to a technicality. The decisions open the door to same-sex marriage in states that have approved it.

Fittingly, both of these Supreme Court rulings have the biggest impact in California. Like that state, the Court has a major fault running through it, and occasionally, it shakes big-time – and we try to predict that tectonic shift at our peril. Maybe it’s all about Justice Anthony Kennedy, the traditional swing vote – but no matter. Personally, I think we’re better off having a fractured Court. A monolithic one would seem more stable, but this way, none of us can stay happy – or unhappy – for very long.

With regard to the rulings themselves, they’re a hint that we have either evolved (like the President) to a higher spiritual plane, or we’re heading to the other place in a handbasket -- you pick. But as I have said often in this space, if a certain percentage of all mammals have homosexual preferences, why should human beings be any different? And isn’t making quick judgments about the rightness or wrongness of human sexual proclivities -- or who is entitled to love whom -- a little silly anyway? We shouldn't need a court to tell us that.

The Missiles of October

I hope the creators of the movie don’t mind my borrowing the title for this post, but I’m too lazy to think of anything clever, and of course, now you know what this is about.

Today marks the 50th anniversary of the start of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Being now old enough to play the “I was there” game, this is what I remember about it.

In those days, I was a student at one of those fancy New England prep schools, at which I received a great education, partly because TV wasn’t really an option. The television was in the housemaster’s quarters, and only rarely were we allowed to watch. Certain exceptions were made occasionally, though, for stuff like “The Andy Griffith Show.”

But the days in question were unusual. There was one night -- October 22 -- when we were required to watch TV. We all assembled in the various housemasters’ apartments around the school to hear JFK deliver his now-famous address to the nation, warning the Russians not to station missiles in Cuba. You can find this easily on YouTube, but here’s an especially memorable line:

“It shall be the policy of this nation to regard any nuclear attack launched from Cuba against any nation in the Western Hemisphere as an attack on the United States, requiring a full retaliatory response upon the Soviet Union.”

Yes, that gets your attention! Sounds like something Harrison Ford might say, and probably has said, in one of his movies. But this was no movie. Nowadays, people who worry about the end of the world are considered one beer short of a six-pack, as they say – but for a few days, we actually had to consider it a real possibility.

I don’t remember much else about the experience at school. The headmaster was a minister, and there were daily chapel services we were required to attend, and the sermons at that time, as you can expect, were pretty heavy. And as President Kennedy actually had attended the school himself as a student, his address had a special meaning for us.

Since I’m able to write this, the world did not end. The Russian boats turned around. While the President got kudos for standing up to the Soviets, we all know now that there was a backroom deal: our own missiles in Turkey, which upset the Russians, had to go away. Even so, those are the times when you really appreciate a President with a brain.

As for movies, well, we needed some lightening up, and Stanley Kubrick gave us “Dr. Strangelove” a few years later. As I recall, it wasn’t until 1974, though, that “The Missiles of October” was shown on TV, and by then I was old enough to decide for myself what to watch. All I can tell you is, no actor has ever done as good a JFK as Bill Devane.