Mixed Metaphors

Growing Up in the Early 1960s

“Ah, but I was so much older then I’m younger than that now”   Lyrics from My Back Pages by Bob Dylan

A number of recent events and anniversaries coalesced this month, prompting me to reminisce. My birthday is in January and like the month’s namesake Janus, the god of beginnings and transitions, I’ve been looking back at mine. Fifty years ago, as a baby boomer growing up in the early 1960’s, my life was about to change in ways I couldn’t imagine.

Yesterday, I finally saw the new Coen brothers’ film, Inside Llweyn Davis. It was the final film on my must see list for 2013. As always, the Coen brothers’ unconventional storytelling grabbed my attention from the opening scene and left me sitting in the theater until the final credit rolled. The story takes place in Greenwich Village in 1961 and follows a struggling folk singer. Based on the emerging folk scene of the early 1960s, we follow Llewyn Davis as he navigates his life, reacts to the consequences of his actions, and embarks on a road trip to realize his dream as a folksinger and artist. Davis, played by Oscar Isaac, a singer, musician and actor, was credibly captivating as his character from the first chord he played and the words he spoke.

T-Bone Burnett, a Grammy award-winning musician, songwriter and record producer, who worked with the Coen brothers on an earlier film, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, was executive music producer on the film. Burnett possess an additional claim to fame, he performed with Bob Dylan on his Rolling Thunder tour. The music, an integral element of the film’s success was featured in a separate Showtime documentary and live concert, Another Day/Another Time: Celebrating the Music of Inside Llewyn Davis. The back story about the music, musicians, filmmakers, and cast is as mesmerizing as the film. See the film, the documentary and the concert!

This past week I also watched the PBS American Experience documentary, 1964. The film chronicled the changes facing Americans following the assassination of JFK and the changing political climate; the rise of the conservative movement with the nomination of Barry Goldwater as the Republican candidate for president in 1964, LBJ’s State of the Union Address where he announced the War on Poverty, and his University of Michigan commencement speech when he first talked about The Great Society.

Betty Friedan’s best-selling book, The Feminine Mystique, talked about the “problem that has no name.” The Beatles landed in New York City and mounted Ed Sullivan’s stage causing teenagers, especially girls, to scream and break down barriers to try and touch their idols. NYC also hosted the World’s Fair and Andy Warhol changed the face of the art world when he mounted his gallery show of Campbell Soup serigraphs.

In Ohio, university students, trained for Freedom Summer, a non-violent protest and effort to register black voters in Mississippi. Three civil rights workers were arrested and detained in Philadelphia, MS, by the sheriff who was also a member of the KKK. The workers were released after posting bond, and were never seen again. After weeks of speculation that they were murdered, and growing pressure placed on the President to intercede, 250 FBI agents traveled to Meridian, MS and found the bodies of the civil rights workers buried beneath a dam.

Martha and the Vandellas’ song, Dancing in the Streets, foretold the Harlem Riots of July 16th of that year as people protested what was happening in the south and the pervasive poverty and continuing discrimination in Harlem and nationwide.

On the west coast, Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters painted their school bus psychedelic colors and hit the road spreading the gospel and the recreational drugs of the hippie movement. At the University of California – Berkley, the Free Speech Movement was born, the campus occupied by protesting students, with Joan Baez singing the anthem of the civil rights movement, We Shall Overcome. The war in Viet Nam was escalating after the bombing by North Viet Nam of U.S. naval carriers in the Gulf of Tonkin. Bob Dylan recorded, The Times They Are a Changin’.

With this backdrop, in 1964 I was a middle school student in my hometown of Racine, Wisconsin. A new teacher, John Nickelsen, taught our English class and was our drama coach. He used music lyrics to teach us poetry and help us understand the language and meter of Shakespeare. The girls all had crushes on the young teacher. We swooned over him as we did the Beatles, we walked past his house giggling, hoping he would see us. We were young and foolish, yet hungry to learn.

One more life-changing event occurred this year, three of my best friends and I saw The Beatles live in concert in Milwaukee. An excerpt of that story from my memoir, Perfectly Flawed follows:

In countless ways I feel fortunate to have been born a baby boomer, and a boomer born precisely in 1950. Especially when I consider the music of my generation, it provided a priceless soundtrack to my life. I’m old enough to have grown up during the birth of rock n’ roll, jazz and bebop of the 50s and surfing music with the Beach Boys in the early 60s while young enough to be a teenager during the British invasion. I watched Dick Clark’s, American Bandstand, Shindig and Hullabaloo on television and learned to dance. As a high school student during the civil rights demonstrations, I listened to soul music and danced the boogalu. In college during the anti-war movement, I marched to the protest and folk songs of Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Pete Seeger, and Peter, Paul and Mary.

My earliest memories of music were learning how to sing with my mother while she cooked in the kitchen. She enjoyed Burl Ives’ folksy voice, sweet as honey and the popular tunes of the Top 40 featuring Brenda Lee, Nat King Cole, and playful songs like How Much is That Doggy in the Window, Itsy, Bitsy, Teeny, Weenie Bikini, and One Eyed, One Horned, Flying Purple People Eater; Dad preferred early rock n’ roll and rhythm and blues. I shadowed him as he did his household chores while we listened to Elvis Presley’s, Hound Dog, Fats Domino singing, Blueberry Hill and the rockabilly and prison songs of the man in black, Johnny Cash. I was the firstborn child of my parents who married young and their friends, some weekend beatniks, would party at our house playing their bongo drums while listening to jazz, as I laid on the floor of my bedroom with my ears pressed to the heat register and listened to the music and laughter float up the duct work when I supposed to be sleeping.

The Christmas of my thirteenth year, I received a gift that would change my life, my first portable, stereophonic record player, with tilt-down turntable and my first record, a 45 rpm of the Beach Boys. Side A was Be True to Your School, the B-side, the moody, introspective, In My Room.

The first 33 rpm album I bought was in 1964 at the age of 14. I saved up my allowance and with money from my birthday in January purchased, Meet the Beatles, the first sensory peak experience of my young life. With lyrics and song titles rich with pronouns, I Want to Hold Your Hand, I Saw Her Standing There, All My Loving, and I Wanna Be Your Man, I believed the Fab Four were singing directly to me and I became utterly infatuated.

Three of my middle school friends and I each adopted a Beatle and would call each other by their moniker. I was John, my friend Joyce, Paul, Lyn was the quiet Beatle, George and the playful and popular Sheila was Ringo. We sported Beatle haircuts, wore Beatle caps and boots, and feigned English accents, peppered with slang such as, “fab,” “birds,” and “mate.” That summer of 1964 we discovered the Beatles would be performing at the Milwaukee Arena in September during their first American tour, just 30 minutes away from my hometown of Racine, Wisconsin. Impossible! Unbelievable! Fab!

Though I was raised Catholic, attended parochial school on Sundays and had received all the possible sacraments for my young age, I must confess my prayers were mostly rote for the exception of my first confession when I prayed so hard I hallucinated, seeing Jesus hovering near the top of a telephone pole which resembled a crucifix. Other than that day, I never really prayed in a heartfelt way, until I asked God for Beatle tickets and permission to go to my first live concert. I bargained with the good Lord, making every promise I could possibly imagine and only hope to keep. First, Sheila had to convince her mother to buy us tickets then volunteer to drive us to the concert. Next and this was the most challenging hurdle to clear, was obtaining my father’s permission to attend a Beatles concert.

As was often common between generations, pop music created an insurmountable divide. Since the Beatles first landed on American soil and captured the hearts and minds of teens like me, Dad insisted it was a passing fad and I could find better things to do with my time and how I spent my money. I tried to remind him that when Elvis first hit the scene and made the charts, his parents’ generation thought he couldn’t sing and didn’t understand all that lewd hip-shaking business, and look at him now, he was “The King!” I went so far as to even argue that the Beatles would be bigger than Elvis!

God, my father and Sheila’s mother all came through. On September 4, 1964, our Fab Four went to see the Fab Four. After the opening acts of Dusty Springfield and Petula Clark and the jelly bean throwing and applause, just as I had seen on news reels of other Beatle concerts, the auditorium became one sustained, adolescent scream-fest interspersed with tears and shaggy-topped boys and girls grabbing and shaking their heads in a frenzy of excitement. Our butts never hit the seats and Joyce or, should I say Paul, dug her hands and nails into my forearm, leaving deep impressions that lasted for days.

Following the concert, throngs of fans raced to the entrance of the Milwaukee Arena where it was rumored the Beatles were leaving in a limousine. The four of us who had seats near the back of the auditorium and were able to get quickly get in front of the mob and able to reach the limo. We leaned in to look in the windows and saw four ugly boys in cheap black Beatle wigs and a driver in a tuxedo. They were decoys. As I extricated my foot from underneath the passenger front tire as it pulled ahead, we broke into tears. We were tricked. We learned later that the Beatles escaped through the back entrance in a milk truck — only in Wisconsin!

We rendezvoused with Sheila’s mother and journeyed home, stopping at a Carvel for soft serve treats as we replayed the highlights of the concert, singing Beatle songs and sharing stories with Sheila’s mother. To this day it remains a sweet moment, branded in my memory forever. Not long afterwards, our musical tastes grew more sophisticated. I discovered the poetry and provocative message in Bob Dylan’s lyrics. He could certainly write songs, but his voice and singing talents were questionable. I would listen to his albums over and over again upstairs in my bedroom with the volume turned all the way up.

When my father would ask, “Who the hell are you listening to?” I’d say Robert Zimmerman (Bob Dylan’s birth name). It was my own private little joke. Dad would say, “That Robert Zimmerman sure can’t sing!”

From child to teenybopper, student to protester, to hippie and young married wife, from feminist to activist, and finally lesbian woman and crone, there was a soundtrack to accompany it. Beginning with the Beatles and now as an aging Baby Boomer, even the commercials targeted to my demographic promote products like retirement investments feature music from the soundtrack of our lives, still using the pronouns of the “me” generation in their theme song, Gimme Some Lovin’ by the Spencer Davis Group.

Yeah, it’s still a pretty fab life.