Chapter Twenty-Six
The world changed on my twenty-second birthday. It was February 9, 1964, when Gerry and I watched Ed Sullivan introduce the Beatles on his television show. I could barely hear the band over their screaming fans. By the time the Fab Four had finished their first number, teenage boys across America had resolved to let their hair grow and take up the guitar. The growing restlessness of young Americans was fertile soil for the seeds of dramatic sociological transformation planted by the lads from Liverpool. Irreverent answers in interviews with John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr resulted in many young men realizing, Yeah! These guys look how I wanna look, and they’re sayin’ what I’m thinkin’! And as young men wanted to be the Beatles, young women wanted to… well, you know. But underlying the Beatles’ sociological impact was their remarkable music. Their songs had catchy melodies, smart lyrics, imaginative harmonies, and energetic arrangements.
The day after the Beatles’ appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This might not have happened without the lobbying skills of President Lyndon B. Johnson, arguably the most powerful Caucasian American then working to ensure civil and voting rights for all Americans.
Gerry and I became involved in the civil rights movement in part because of our close connection with African American artists, but mostly because of our shared sense of outrage about racial injustice. We canvassed for the cause and gave money to support activists on the front lines in Mississippi and Alabama. When civil rights workers James Chaney, Michael Schwerner, and Andrew Goodman were murdered in Mississippi around the solstice of “Freedom Summer,” we were saddened by the loss of all three, but the loss of Andy Goodman hit closest to home. We knew his mother, Carolyn.
President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act on July 2, 1964, and the Wilderness Act on September 3, 1964. We viewed these as signs of progress. Other signs of the times included long hair, Renaissance clothing, East Indian print curtains, beanbag chairs, discotheques, pop art, hallucinogenics, and antiwar protests that would swell to such large numbers that President Johnson would announce on March 31, 1968, that he would not seek reelection.
In 1964 I was somewhat aware of current events, but I was more concerned about my husband’s declared desire to expand his mind. I had no interest in doing that. Someone in our family needed to keep enough brain cells functioning to run our household. One of us needed to at least pretend to be an adult. I could do that by writing melodies to Gerry’s increasingly socially conscious lyrics. After that, all I could do was hope those songs would be hits. There was a fair chance of that happening. As the antiwar movement grew stronger and Americans became increasingly polarized, protesters were romanticized in popular songs. A man’s long hair, by which he self-identified as “hip,” invited name-calling and worse from other men who proudly asserted their status as “straight” with the short hairstyle of a businessman or a Marine buzz cut. At the time “straight” was not associated with sexual orientation; it meant you were not a hippie. Women who wanted to be hip wore their hair long and straight, while the hairstyle of a straight woman might be a teased flip with bangs resembling that of an astronaut’s wife. If a woman’s hair was curly and she wanted to be hip, she either ironed her hair or wound it tightly around orange juice cans to remove all the curl. That was my category.
Other things besides hair revealed one’s political inclination. “The Man” was a name hipsters used to refer to entrenched interests. You were either against The Man, or you were The Man. The slogan “If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem” galvanized young people to oppose the existing social order. In the music business, Bob Dylan and other folksingers with “message songs” began to eclipse the pop singers who had previously dominated the charts. Unfortunately for Gerry’s and my livelihood, the marginalized artists included many who had been recording our songs. Groups from Great Britain such as the Rolling Stones, Gerry and the Pacemakers, and the Beatles climbed the charts in record numbers. Collectively referred to by the news media as “the British Invasion,” most were self-sufficient. Sometimes they covered songs by American writers, but the British groups were successful in the United States primarily with their own material. They didn’t need our songs. Without a small miracle, Gerry and I were not going to be able to maintain our comfortable lifestyle.
We got our miracle, and it wasn’t small. It was exactly the size of the woman whose reign as the Queen of Soul would transcend several generations.