'60s Rock 'n Roll

I nearly drove off the side of the road the first time I saw this billboard. There they were: the Beatles, floating above the street just three blocks from our house. Two months later, they are now ubiquitous throughout the city, inviting us to buy their music on iTunes. I love seeing them, even though they’ve become a big part of the visual noise of Los Angeles.

And speaking of the Beatles, Tim and I are in the midst of taking a (free!) five-week class called “What a Long Strange Trip It’s Been: A Review of Rock’s Greatest Decade” at the Grammy Museum downtown. I’d looked for such an opportunity for years. Still, I thought it was a risky commitment since we’ve both been students of 1960s rock-n-roll our entire lives—Tim, in fact, is currently reading Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards’ new autobiography. Would we know more about the topic than the instructor?

But not to worry. Robert Santelli, executive director of the Museum, is an excellent teacher and master storyteller. Not only is he our age, he’s also met and worked with many of the artists he talks about, making his classes extremely personal and fascinating. I knew we’d struck gold when, halfway through the first session, Tim leaned over and whispered, “I LOVE THIS!”

In the first class, Santelli highlighted music of the early 1960s, positing that this era is often forgotten because no one sound dominated. Sure, there were the “girl groups” and male teen idols we all watched on American Bandstand. These were also formative years for Motown and the Beach Boys. Still, no one great group or musician emerged like, say, the Beatles or Eric Clapton, so this period has been forgotten. At the end of the first session, Santelli promised to dedicate the entire next class to the single most influential songwriter of our generation.

“Paul Simon?” I said, daring Tim to disagree.

“Nope! Brian Wilson!" he countered.

We were, of course, both wrong. According to Santelli, Bob Dylan was the single most influential songwriter—and to hear him tell it, the single most influential human being!—of our generation. I’ve never been much of a Dylan fan (sorry Ginny!), but the lecture was illuminating, taking us through the singer’s entire career right up to last year, when Dylan joined Santelli at the White House for a concert celebrating civil rights. Exciting stuff.

Week 3 finally brought us to what Santelli calls the “1st British invasion”—the Beatles, naturally, but also early Clapton, the Animals, and groups like the Dave Clark Five. I especially liked how the instructor focused on the Beatles’ formative period in Germany—a time that I’ve always found absolutely fascinating. At one point, Santelli asked the students—some 150 of us, mostly baby-boomers—if anyone in the room had seen the Beatles in concert. A woman said she’d seen them twice: she was in the audience for their first Ed Sullivan appearance and then again at Shea Stadium. Our collective jaws dropped in pure envy.

The Beatles’ story continued in week 4 as Santelli compared the group’s (arguably) greatest album, Sgt. Pepper (1967), to the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds (1966). Though I didn’t think so then, I now believe Pet Sounds is the far superior album and listen to its songs regularly. Sgt. Pepper, on the other hand, is fairly dated—“A Day in the Life” being the only song worth playing over and over again. Santelli then challenged us to come up with a list of the 25 most important rock songs of the ‘60s. Here are mine (in alphabetical order):

All Along the Watchtower (Jimi Hendrix)

Be My Baby (The Ronettes)

California Girls (The Beach Boys)

Crossroads (Cream)

A Day in the Life (The Beatles)

Eight Miles High (The Byrds)

For What It’s Worth (Buffalo Springfield)

God Only Knows (The Beach Boys)

Good Vibrations (The Beach Boys)

I Got You Babe (Sonny and Cher)

I Heard It Through the Grapevine (Marvin Gaye)

I Saw Her Standing There (The Beatles)

Light My Fire (The Doors)

Like a Rollin’ Stone (Bob Dylan)

Louie, Louie (The Kingsmen)

Respect (Aretha Franklin)

Satisfaction (Rolling Stones)

Something (The Beatles)

Sounds of Silence (Simon & Garfunkel)

Stop! In the Name of Love (The Supremes)

What’d I Say (Ray Charles)

White Rabbit (Jefferson Airplane)

Whole Lotta Lovin’ (Led Zeppelin)

Woodstock (Crosby, Stills and Nash)

You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling (The Righteous Brothers)


One more class to go. We’ll be discussing the 2nd “British invasion” (e.g., Led Zeppelin, et al.) on Tuesday.

Which 25 rock songs would you nominate as the best of the 1960s?

Brian Wilson

Karen had an extra ticket to the Hollywood Bowl Sunday night, so I went with her to see Brian Wilson’s end-of-summer concert.

Wilson, of course, was the main architect of surfer rock ‘n roll as well as the brilliant mastermind behind the Beach Boys. He had a rather infamous nervous breakdown in the late 1960s and pretty much fried his brain on drugs (subscription and otherwise). Still, he’s managed to outlive his brothers and bandmates, Dennis and Carl Wilson, and continues to create beautiful music, even though his voice is fairly shot. Over the past four decades, I’ve seen him perform on stage more than any other musical artist.

We took the early bus to the Bowl, so we had plenty of time to look around and survey the audience. Most of the people were our age: baby-boomers who, like my sister and me, probably spent their teen summers hanging out in Santa Monica, listening to the Beach Boys on their transistor radios.

There wasn’t an opening act. Instead, the L.A. Philharmonic orchestra was scheduled to play a selection from “The Marriage of Figaro,” a Bach concerto and the overture from George Gershwin’s “Girl Crazy,” before Wilson and his band took the stage.

I called Tim while Karen was in the bathroom.

“It’s a good thing you didn’t come with us, because the Phil is playing ‘The Marriage of Figaro,’ Bach and ‘Girl Crazy’ before Brian comes out,” I told him.

“Gershwin is OK. But Bach and ‘The Marriage of Figaro’?!” he nearly yelled. “That was never part of the deal. Quick! Take a cab and come home right now!”

Well, a little opera never hurt anyone, so I stayed. And thank goodness, too, because there actually was a method to this seeming madness. Turns out Mozart, Bach and Gershwin are Wilson’s favorite composers, so the Bowl decided to include them as part of the celebration.

After the “Girl Crazy” medley, Wilson’s band came out, followed by Brian himself, looking a lot more spry than in the past. He greeted his fans and proceeded to immediately launch into “California Girls,” one of the Beach Boys’ most popular songs. Without missing a beat, the woman sitting directly in front of us leapt out of her seat, ripped off her jacket, and started gyrating in a tight-fitting Hawaiian-print dress. Not only was she (quite literally) the only person dancing in the entire Hollywood Bowl, but her movements were extremely provocative. I swear, all that was missing was a pole! Her poor husband was duly mortified.

Though our view was mostly obscured by the pole dancer’s shenanigans, we ended up having a great time and even got up to dance ourselves during “Help Me Rhonda” and “Johnny B. Goode.” I screamed along to “Fun, Fun, Fun”—SEEMS SHE FORGOT ALL ABOUT THE LI-BRARY, LIKE SHE TOLD HER OLD MAN, NOW! After all these years, Brian still knows how to rock.

The show ended with fireworks as Wilson and his band exited stage right. Summer is now officially over.