THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, November 26, 1995 TAG: 9511230295
SECTION: PORTSMOUTH CURRENTS PAGE: 22 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: Olde Towne Journal
SOURCE: Alan Flanders
LENGTH: Long : 156 lines
I CAN'T REMEMBER the exact day or month when we first heard them, but I know we had just begun our Saturday morning ritual basketball game behind a friend's house on Briarwood Lane.
Most of the players were sophomores at Churchland High School and, since I had just turned 15 years old, that would have made the year 1964. Those basketball games now have some historical significance to me since it was there we always seemed to meet to discuss the crushing realities of those days we have now come to collectively call the ``Sixties.''
Between conversations about who you were going to ask out to the dance at the American Legion Hall, we tried to figure out where a place called Vietnam was after learning that an American destroyer had been allegedly attacked off North Vietnam. And, during breaks, there still were lingering questions about the recent assassination of President John F. Kennedy after Jack Ruby was sentenced to death for killing the President's assassin Lee Harvey Oswald.
During one of those impromptu meetings on the basketball court, someone went over to where we had piled our coats and sweat shirts and turned on the transistor radio. That year, everyone seemed to be walking around with one of the hand-held radios that, looking back now, should be given at least partial credit for having ushered in a new era of instant communication around the world.
The minute we heard them, their voices broke our concentration. It was as if a mysterious, unseen referee had just blown a whistle that stopped us in our tracks. There in the center court of our youth, our ``Magical Mystery Tour'' through the turbulent '60s began. Turning up the volume on the tinny-sounding radio, someone yelled, ``Listen everybody, it's the Beatles!''
By today's hi-tech laser disc standards, they sounded like they were singing ``I Want To Hold Your Hand'' through an empty Coke can, but we never had heard anything like ``The Fab Four.'' And although no one in my group had laid eyes on them at that time, hearing - not seeing - was believing.
Their English voices singing lyrics with music that was derived from familiar American greats like Little Richard, Chuck Berry and Elvis Presley seemed to have come from another world. But the era they began, we claimed in unison, was distinctly our own. We had been swept away in what seemed like only a single second by a worldwide phenomena called ``Beatlemania.''
The following Monday we found out that our high school was not immune either. Forget questions about algebra or history. The real test was in the hallways as fellow students came up and asked, ``Can you name the four Beatles?''
By lunch time, enough transistors had been collected in the office to start a radio shop. As we joined our classmates in the cafeteria, one of the gang not only rattled off their names: ``Paul McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr.'' He also knew they were a band from Liverpool originally called the ``Quarry Men.''
Finally, a few black and white photographs were run in the newspaper, which caused a reaction just as strong as the first time we heard them. Their ``moppish'' hair styles were readily accepted by those of us under 21 as a badge of independence from any previous generation. We were all too happy to hear those over 21 criticize their looks. Without realizing it, the great divide we have come to know as ``The Generation Gap'' was created over their hair alone.
Now not just hearing but seeing was believing when the Beatles made two live appearances in February 1964 on the popular Ed Sullivan television variety show. Glued to the sets, we tried to hear some of the songs as Sullivan's entire studio audience seemed to burst out of their seats, screaming and crying for a wave or smile from the quartet.
For our age group, they were not the hand-me-down sounds of the 1950s. The Beatles represented our very own sound that made our generation, we thought, different from any other.
By 1966, my senior high school year, the schism that divided the generations in America had deepened. National political struggles over Civil Rights and the Vietnam War served to radicalize political thought, moving many of us into distinct political camps that wore easily identifiable badges.
Longer hair styles, blue jeans, tie-dyed shirts and love beads replaced the cleaner, neater, ivy/prep style. Life or death debates over the draft and drugs severed parents from their children. Our once favorite basketball court was now empty. The pressures of earlier career choices and college deferments canceled our Saturday morning pickups forever. Yet through all the chaos, we still had the Beatles and we also had the perceived insurance that they were changing with us, too.
A series of albums including ``Revolver,'' ``Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band'' and ``Magical Mystery Tour'' bridged the gap between our graduation from high school and college. But the divisions that had rocked the country over war and politics now entered our personal lives.
I remember an argument at a dance in 1966 between two friends over the year's two popular hits that said more about themselves and their personal values than they realized. One fought to play the Beatles' ``Eleanor Rigby,'' while the other argued the merits of Frank Sinatra's ``Strangers in the Night.'' A smaller group, heads already shaved to ``boot camp'' requirements, knew the lyrics to the other pop hit of 1966: ``Ballad of the Green Berets.''
Many more of us were left straddling two giant divides: one day declaring Paul McCartney our hero, the next day cheering the New York Yankees base baseball great Mickey Mantle as he headed toward his 500th home run. And then, that same year, there was the appearance of the ``miniskirt'' !
Perhaps the most controversial and tragic year of that era came in 1968. Crimes of violence in America had skyrocketed since 1960 by 57 percent. But nobody expected to see the live replays over and over again of the assassination of Robert Kennedy, nor did we have time to react to the news bulletin that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had been murdered. The graphic anti-war violence that surrounded the Democratic Party's presidential convention in Chicago was not only exposed to 78 million television sets in the United States, but around the world.
Before that fateful year was up, Richard Nixon - promising throughout his campaign to end the Vietnam war - had been elected 37th President of the United States by the narrowest margin since 1912 and a U.S. manned spacecraft orbited the moon. But we still had the Beatles and with the release of their ``White Album'' and a single, ``Hey Jude,'' some of the pain and anxiety of that momentous year were eased.
The next two years that ended the decade passed in a blur. Compressed into that brief time, U.S. Sen. Edward Kennedy permanently damaged his family's legacy when police found the body of Mary Jo Kopechne in the car he drove off Chappaquiddick Bridge; Lt. William Calley stood trial for the massacre of civilians at Mylai, Vietnam; four students were killed by the Ohio National Guard during anti-war demonstrations at Kent State University, causing nationwide student protests; and the Paris Peace talks between U.S. representatives and those from North Vietnam stalled for a second year.
Yet, at the end of 1969, the Beatles released two new albums, including ``Yellow Submarine'' and ``Abbey Road.'' Once again, the magic worked and offered our generation, now fragmented socially and politically, a brief and nostalgic look backward to our youth.
Then it happened. After the 1970 release of their albums, ``Hey Jude'' and ``Let It Be,'' the Beatles announced the beginning of their formal breakup. I can't remember anyone being surprised. The Vietnam war had become the all-consuming issue for us. Whether our friends were for or against, evading it or on the frontlines, there was little time to concentrate on anything else. The political climate within the nation had grown painfully ugly. We were two years away from a District of Columbia police arrest of five men in the Democratic National Headquarters in a complex known as Watergate, but for us, the magical decade of the '60s, our age of innocence, like the Beatles, was in the past.
As if sealing it permanently shut, a crazed gunman by the name of Mark David Chapman murdered John Lennon on Dec. 8, 1980.
But 15 years later, one of the largest television audiences in history tuned in to hear the release of a new Beatles single entitled ``Free As A Bird.''
What I didn't expect was the excitement and the memories both the song and the video would create for me. It was Saturday morning in 1964 all over again. I could still name the Beatles, of course, and half remember the lyrics of their songs. But the real nostalgia came when I could remember the names of those I played basketball with and the innocence that seemed so precious and rare among a group of 15-year-olds when they heard the Beatles sing for the first time.
For me it has been ``a long and winding road'' to where I can now begin to understand the meaning behind some of their music. It's good to hear them again and to have lived through those times with them. Maybe it is true as they sang, ``the love you take is equal to the love you make.'' ILLUSTRATION: ASSOCIATED PRESS Photo
The Beatles perform during their appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show
Feb. 9, 1964. From left, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and John
Lennon. Ringo Starr is in the rear.
by CNB