It started with the hair
by digby
It was 50 years ago today, the Beatles taught the world to say ... yeah, yeah, yeah. I was a little kid and I saw it on a tiny black and white TV my Dad bought just for the occasion. His famous remark was "and I thought Elvis was bad..."
What really bothered him was the hair. He found it to be some sort of disrespect to American manhood. And he wasn't alone. The hair was what seemed to inflame a lot of people. All the remembrances this past week included comments like this:
And there was Ray Bloch, the musical director for “The Ed Sullivan Show.” He was so unimpressed by the Beatles that he told a reporter for The New York Times: “The only thing that’s different is the hair, as far as I can see. I give them a year.”
Or this from the Washington Post:
"The Beatle cut is best done at home ... with a rusty knife and fork."
This ridiculous obsession with hair went on for years. Recall California Governor Ronald Reagan's famous comment:
"A hippie is someone who looks like Tarzan, walks like Jane and smells like Cheetah."
The "walks like Jane" part is particularly telling, don't you think? By the time they were making Broadway musicals about the topic, the freaks had become a part of the mainstream landscape and the traditionalists had started to grow sideburns and move on to other outrages about our changing culture. By 1976, our president had a modified Beatle do:
I think the modern panic about sex roles started with that allegedly "feminine" Beatle haircut. And it only took 50 years to get to gay marriage on the road to full legalization. Let's just say the straights (in all senses of the word) have been on the wrong side of all this for a very long time.
At one point they worked themselves into a complete frenzy:
Sweet young girl: The deacons in our church said they ought to ban the Beatles and firmly believe in everything that can be done to just about ruin the Beatles.
Questioner: You want to ruin the Beatles?
Sweet young girl: (smiling) Well, it really doesn't matter. I think it might be funny, but I guess that's sort of ugly of me ...
No culture stages a witchhunt with quite the panache and pure joie de vivre of Americans. We really know how to do it right.
I liked the hair, myself, along with most people under the age of 25 at the time.
Oh, and the music was pretty good too.
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