came the dissent associated with the Vietnam escalation, and with that came hippies and flower children. And one day I found myself (just as my own parents had done when Elvis peaked) condemning modern music as the hedonistic, un-American, ill-tempered, God-awful, indecent warblings of scrungy, tatooed, long-haired, uncouth, drugged-out, so-called musicians.
I didn’t know Jimi Hendrix was alive until he overdosed and died, and I thought Janis Joplin was Missouri’s entry in the Miss America pageant.
All the new groups had such odd names. There was Bread, and Cream, for instance. And there was Jefferson Airplane and Iron Butterfly and Grand Funk Railroad and a group named Traffic. I wondered why so many groups were named after various modes of transportation. I theorized that it was because those performers had all been deprived of electric trains as children.
I expected the members of musical groups to wear the same clothing when they performed — like white suits with white tails — and to do little steps together like “The Temptation Walk.”
These new groups, however, apparently wore whatever they found in the dirty clothes hamper each morning before a performance. T-shirts and filthy jeans seemed to be the most popular garb. Some, of course, performed without shirts. I found this to be particularly disturbing, since I have no use whatsoever for any music made by a person who looks as if he has just come in the house from mowing the grass on an August afternoon and his wife won’t let him sit down on the good furniture because he’ll sweat all over it and probably cause mildew.
I didn’t like drug songs and anti-war songs, and I didn’t like songs that were often downright explicit. Even The Beatles just wanted to hold somebody’s hand. The new groups, however, wanted to take off all their clothes, get in the bed, smoke a bunch of dope, and do all sorts of French things that have no business being watched, discussed, or sung about outside a porno flick on the sleazy side of town.
The only piece of raw rock ’n’ roll we ever knew about before The Beatles came along was a song by The Kings-men called “Louie, Louie,” and we really weren’t certain that what they were saying about “Louie, Louie” wasn’t just a rumor.
It was basically impossible to understand the words, except the part which went, “Louie, Lou-eye, Ohhhhh, baby, we gotta go.” After that, it sounded like, “Evahni ettin, Ah fackon nin.”
The smart money had it, however, that if you slowed the record down from 45 RPM to 33 RPM, you could make out some of the words and that the song was really about doing something quite filthy. Naturally, we all rushed home to slow down the record. I still couldn’t make out any of the words. It simply sounded like I was hearing the bass portion of “Evahni ettin, Ah fackon nin.”
I made myself a vow never to spend money on any of this new music. But as naive as I was concerning what was taking place in my once placid, sensible world, I was bound to break my vow. I did so by attending an Elton John concert... completely by mistake.
I was dating a girl who was several years younger than me. I was in my late twenties at the time, but she could still remember where everybody sat in her high school algebra class.
“What do you want to do Friday night?” I vividly recall asking this young woman.
“Elton John is in town,” she said.
“He’s somebody you went to school with?” I asked, in all honesty.
“You’ve never heard of Elton John?” she said, an unmistakable tinge of amazement in her voice.
“Well, I’ve been working pretty hard and....”
“Elton John is a wonderful entertainer. You would love him.”
She was a lovely child and had big blue eyes, so I managed to purchase excellent tickets for the Elton John concert — third row from the stage.
I had never been to a concert by anybody even remotely connected with modern rock music. As a matter of fact, the only concert I had been to in years was one that Jerry Lee Lewis gave. “The Killer” came out and did all his hits, and everybody drank beer and had a great time. I didn’t see more than a dozen fights break out the entire night.
What I didn’t know about attending an Elton John concert was that Elton didn’t come on stage until his warm-up group had finished its act. I don’t remember the name of the group that opened the show, but I do remember that they were louder than a train wreck.
When I was able to catch a word here and there in one of their songs, it sounded like the singer was screaming (as in pain) in an English accent. One man beat on a drum; another, who wasn’t wearing a shirt, played guitar. They were very pale-looking individuals.
“What’s the name of this group?” I tried to ask my date over the commotion. I heard her say, “Stark Naked and the Car Thieves.” I thought that was a strange name, even for an English rock group, so between numbers I asked her again. Turned out I had misunderstood her; their real name was “Clark Dead Boy and the Bereaved.”
“So what was the name of that song?” I pursued.
‘“Kick Me Out of My Rut’,” she answered. I was having trouble hearing, however; my eardrums had gone into my abdomen to get away from the noise. I thought she said, “Kick Me Out on My Butt.”
After the next number, I asked her to name that tune, too.
“It’s called ‘I Can Smell Your Love on Your Breath’.”
That’s what she said, but what I heard was, “Your Breath Smells Like a Dog Died in Your Mouth,” which sounded a great deal like “Kick Me Out on My Butt.”
Finally, Elton John came out. He wore an Uncle Sam suit and large sunglasses.
“Is this man homosexual?” I asked my date.
“Bisexual,” she answered.
That must come in handy when he has to go to the bathroom, I thought to myself. If there’s a line in one, he can simply walk across to the other.
I had no idea what Elton John was singing about, but at least he didn’t sing it as loudly as did Stark Naked and the Car Thieves.
As the concert wore on, I began to smell a strange aroma.
“I think somebody’s jeans are on fire,” I said. “Do you smell that?”
“It’s marijuana,” said my date. “Everybody has a hit when they come to an Elton John concert.”
I looked around me. My fellow concert-goers, some of whom weren’t as old as my socks, were staring bleary-eyed at the stage. Down each row, handmade cigarettes were passed back and forth. Even when the cigarettes became very short, the people continued to drag on them.
Suddenly, down my row came one of the funny cigarettes. My date took it in hand, took a deep puff, held in the smoke, then passed it to me.
“No thanks,” I said. “I think I’ll go to the concession stand and get a beer.”
“Go ahead,” said my date. “It’ll loosen you up.”
This was my moment of decision. I had never tried marijuana before. I had never even seen any up close, but now here I sat holding some, listening to a bisexual
