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The Right

I speak for those who have had difficulty cultivating a convincing admiration for the popular culture of the rockers, foremost among them, of course, the Beatles.

Those who were not born into the movement can usually remember their first experience with it. Mine is vivid. I first remember engaging rock on learning years ago that a Mr Alan Freed (1) was very famous, (2) was generally credited with launching the new musical form, and (3) had bought the house a couple of dwellings down from my own in the country, from whence he was broadcasting three hours daily as a network disc jockey.

Alan Freed and his wife came calling one day. It was late on a summer afternoon, and I had been up the night before, and my mind wandered as he talked about this and whatever. My watchful wife managed, unnoticed, to nudge me. I jerked back into consciousness and, fumbling for something to say, ventured with, "Tell me, Mr Freed, do you know Elvis Presley?" This elicited from my wife a shaft of social despair such as to make me feel that I had just asked Mr Gilbert whether be had ever heard of Mr Sullivan. Alan Freed, upon recovering, explained to me that he had discovered Elvis. I couldn't think what was appropriate to say under the circumstances, but, having to say something, I asked, "Is he nice?" "Is he nice!" Freed responded, clearly indicating that I had moved from Ignorance into idiocy,. "Why, do you know, he makes ten times as much as I make, and he calls me sir!" He slapped me on the knee, so that I might share with him the full force of the paradoxes of life. I had, by that time, come to and was now a working member of the band. I knew—I have a sense, baby, for that kind of thing, only just warm me up—I knew where to go from there, and all those bits and pieces of information I had run across, in years of traversing the newspapers and magazines since first the phenomenon had occurred, focused into the question that was totally to redeem my previous ineptitudes: "But will the rock and roll movement last?" My guest was made a happy man. He answered that question as lustily as the evangelist being asked whether God exists. Will it last! Why, he said, I must have appeared on one million panel discussions where they asked me just that question, and I told them all, I told them, rock and roll is here not just for a month or two, not like Davy Crockett and the hula hoops, it's here forever. What was my opinion, he asked dutifully. I don't know, I said, I've never heard it. He told me numbly that the next day he was giving a party down the road at his house, celebrating an anniversary, and Fats Domino and his orchestra were going to play, and would I like to hear some real rock? Indeed I would, I said. We strolled over, my wife and I, not at the hour of seven, as suggested, but at ten, knowing the likely length of the preliminaries; but when we got there, we found Fats and his entire group, fully clothed, in the swimming pool, their instruments somehow unavailing. Mr. Freed, still shaken by my question of the night before, was clearly concerned that I should not arrive at the impression that here was a sign of the deliquescence of the art. "Don't you forget it," he said—only a few months before being indicted for provoking to riot by musical orgy, and a very few years before his sad, unrhythmical death—"rock is here to stay." He was, of course, right.

And he had persuaded make a serious effort. I spent a very short evening—listening [unclear: for] son's collection. I foun[unclear: d] quite scandalous, and I pro[unclear: ch] most unfortunate judgm[unclear: ent] to my newspaper colum least, emphatic. I receive letters denouncing—not my mu[unclear: gjh] my [unclear: mu] stodglness, or my ph[unclear: one] infidelity. To manifest t[unclear: o] picked out one letter to found it so wonder[unclear: ised] eloquent. "Dear Mr Bu[unclear: se] young lady wrote from San F[unclear: ra] a ratty, lousy, stinky, c[unclear: r] P.S You are too crummy person."

I mean, how can one [unclear: pre] them? The answer is: one [unclear: cannc] if the Beatles are hard to list[unclear: en] an exuberance there that is [unclear: ched] anywhere else in the [unclear: fvy] a group calling itself the Conspiracy! You figure beaten, and the next day the Strawberry Alarm Clock you see the peace feelers. Tr[unclear: uy] Playboy, telling us [unclear: s] young popular musicians are t[unclear: he] people around. Ditto, such youth-watchers as Jack Time magazine, relenting, puts on the cover. Suddenly one day, of [unclear: back] the car, you look up, [unclear: t] was music you just heard, b[unclear: sfg] radio. It's gone now, bu[unclear: t] you hear it again. And s[unclear: on] of Gilbert Pinfold, it is c[unclear: ool] from everywhere. And y[unclear: ou] that, indeed, rock is here