A half-century of Beatles memories, Obama, & what would Lennon be now?

I don’t really have a first-hand story about the Beatles in Chicago.

I wasn’t yet conceived when they did their first concert in 1964 at the International Ampitheater – although my late aunt Charlene was at that concert, and she always insisted that Paul McCartney himself was looking at her throughout the entire event.

I WAS JUST a couple of weeks away from being born on the day in ’65 when the Beatles took to a stage erected in the building that is now the parking lot just north of U.S. Cellular Field. Does that mean John Lennon’s spirit lingers alongside that of Nellie Fox?

By the time I was old enough to comprehend much of pop music, the Beatles had moved on (I grew up with people in junior high school who thought Kiss was an immortal rock band – instead of just a more obnoxious-looking variation on the camp of the Village People).

So as all the hype has been spewed in recent weeks about how it has been 50 years since the Beatles “conquered” the United States, a part of me has to admit it comes across more like a history lesson.

Not that I object to a history lesson. It is intriguing to see what catches the popular mindset at any time. And that there are times when it is something more substantial than a Justin Bieber.

ALTHOUGH TO BE honest, to read the initial coverage of the Beatles’ arrival at JFK Airport in New York so they could appear on the Ed Sullivan Show (50 years ago Sunday), it would seem that some thought of the “Mop Tops from Liverpool” as being equally inconsequential.



Next time you go to a ball game, keep in mind you may be parking your car atop the Beatles' one-time stage.

There would be people from a half-century ago who would be completely amazed at the concept that anyone today even remembers the Beatles any more than they do Gerry and the Pacemakers.



OBAMA: Beatle-esque?!?

Perhaps it’s because songs by the Beatles evolved onto a different level of pop music – perhaps elevating it to standards beyond schlock. If the Beatles had never gone beyond wanting to hold your hand, they likely would just be the story of the summer of ’64 like that “Ferry ‘cross the Mersey” that the aforementioned Pacemakers performed?

My own preference when the Beatles come up is to remember the Rubber Soul and Revolver albums, which are at a level that no one in 1964 would have conceived of. Others usually come up with memories even later – although Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band is just too much of a period piece album to listen to casually.

NOW, OF COURSE, the Beatles are more nostalgia than anything else. How many times can PBS re-run their broadcasts of McCartney appearing at the White House (and singing Michelle to the first lady herself)? That, and the time Mick Jagger got Obama to sing a couple of lines from Sweet Home, Chicago (but that’s another commentary).

Although that is more of a tribute to the Beatles’ lasting qualities. I don’t see anyone asking the Dave Clark Five to show up at the White House!

Insofar as Obama is concerned, a part of me thinks of his persona and the Beatles in similar ways. Obama had been on the Chicago scene since the mid-1980s, but didn’t really become known to the public at-large until that 2004 speech at the Democratic National Convention.

Just as many people in this country had no clue what a Beatle (that has to be a typo, they must have thought) was, until they saw that Sullivan broadcast. Those who knew the Beatles in Britain in '63 are like those people who read "Dreams from My Father" when it first came out in the mid-1990s.

ALTHOUGH BEATLE SPECULATION these days plays out in my mind (at least) as wondering what it would be like now if Lennon had lived a full life.

I am old enough (I was in high school) to remember his death, which seems even more nightmare-like because I happened to be taking a nap that day and awoke to see a television news report about his being shot in New York.

Remnants of their last Chicago visit

My first reaction was to think I was having a bad dream.

Unfortunately for all, it was merely more confirmation that reality is capable of coming up with things more unique, unusual and sordid than I ever could dream up in my own mind.

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I wish Woodstock hype would pipe down

My mind is somewhat weary these days from all the hype it has encountered about the significance of what happened 40 years ago.

I’m tired of hearing about the “Woodstock” music festival that took place in mid-August in upstate New York – even though I have to appreciate that the bill is remarkable.

JUST THINK OF how many hundreds of dollars modern-day concert promoters would charge if they could get the 21st Century equivalents of Jimi Hendrix, the Jefferson Airplane and Santana to appear in one show.

Admittedly, Woodstock-goers also had to put up with about an hour of Sha Na Na, but that seems like a small price to pay for what would be the musical equivalent of an All Star team.

What gets to me about the whole concept of this being the 40th anniversary is the degree to which this whole thing has become commercialized. It has nothing to do with celebrating the development of popular music, or even commemorating the ideals of a generation that thought they could re-do our culture in a more civilized manner.

It is about taking advantage of the desire that some people have for nostalgia and trying to figure out how to make money off of it.

FOR THE PAST month, the Barnes & Noble bookstore near me has had a special display of Woodstock-themed merchandise it is trying to sell. I’ve seen the same stuff for sale elsewhere.

The one thing that gets to me is the packet of reproductions of front pages and other newspaper pages from the New York Times that were devoted to coverage of the concerts.

For those people who may have lost their newspapers from that era (or for those like me who were just a couple weeks shy of my fourth birthday), it is a chance for an instant souvenir – sold in a special clear plastic wrap meant to ensure that they age as slowly as possible.

And all for a mere $14.95.

THERE ALSO ARE the picture books, the posters, the biographies of musicians who performed at the concert, and even a few tie-dyed t-shirts for those whose authentic merchandise from that era no longer even comes close to fitting over their bloated guts.

Personally, I only shelled out money for one item.

I have always enjoyed the music of Santana – particularly their first few recordings from the early 1970s (although I’ll take their cover of “Oye Como Va” over “Black Magic Woman” anytime).

So of course, we’re getting “The Woodstock Experience” series of compact discs.

I DIDN’T FEEL the need to buy the disc in the series devoted to Sly and the Family Stone or Janis Joplin.

But I did shell out $12.95 for the Santana take, which is two discs – one devoted to their 45-minute set of eight songs that they performed at Woodstock on Aug. 16 (which I happen to be listening to as I write this commentary).

The other is a disc of their first LP, entitled simply, “Santana.” Remember “Evil Ways?”

Of course, I already owned a copy of that disc (both on LP and CD).

SO IT ALMOST feels like the ultimate scam – finding a way to get me to buy something once again that I already owned.

It feels a lot like the constant upgrading of video players and devices for watching films. Those people who build up a significant library of worthy films wind up having to rebuy them all over again to be in compliance with whatever the current format of player is.

It’s almost enough to make me wish I was one of those people who watched or listened to artistic garbage and never felt the desire to invest in owning a copy of something.

And speaking of garbage, how many people think the soon-to-be-released film about Woodstock (“Taking Woodstock”) is just an excuse to shoot footage of topless blonde girls running around in mud?

SO I’M OUT just under 15 bucks (don’t forget tax). I’m sure some people spent more money (some may have spent significantly more, but their foolishness is a topic for a future commentary).

Somewhere, some marketing executive has managed to take what could have been a chance to look back on what significance, if any, we should give to that time when thousands of people converged on a rural community and managed to behave peacefully.

No riots at Woodstock.

Which is why I feel some distaste toward the people who want to diminish the significance of what happened.

IT’S NOT THAT I’m one of those halfwits who can’t stand the thought that the whole world doesn’t revolve about our pop culture icons. I’m only thankful that the 1980s produced nothing (Boy George? Oingo Boingo?) that could even come close to being compared to Woodstock, or else we’d be equally insufferable.

Nor am I someone of an ideological bent who is determined to diminish the cultural significance of the three-day musical fest because of a desire to keep living in the past (the kind of people who probably think that Pat Boone did superior cover versions of early rock ‘n’ roll hit songs).

When I hear the Eric Cartman character on South Park cartoons go into his rants about “hating hippies,” I shudder not because I think “hippies” were all that great – but because I realize some people do find that line funny.

Which means the “peace” and “love” of that generation managed to miss a few individuals – some of whom are probably of a segment of the older generation that thinks it is “PC run amok” that we don’t still think of Martin Luther King Jr. as some sort of “communist.”

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EDITOR’S NOTES: Are “Mad Men” and “Woodstock” evidence of a generation taking themselves way too seriously (http://www.ethiopianreview.com/articles/24286), or a sign that a younger generation wishes it could accomplish something that people would remember a few decades from now?

Will we be asked to buy new versions of all this junk some 10 years from now when Woodstock (http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/ent/stories/DN-woodstock_0816gd.ART.State.Edition1.4c58a78.html) will have reached the half-century mark?

Obama should not be trashed for associating with a 'Weatherman'

If a certain segment of society in this country gets its way, Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama will be tainted by the fact he lives in the same South Side neighborhood as Bill Ayers.

To listen to the questioning that came up during this week’s presidential debate in Philadelphia, it becomes obvious that some people paid no attention during history class and have little to no clue as to what the social turmoil of the 1960s was all about.

TOO MANY PEOPLE seem to want to put that era into some sort of 1980s context by which the spirit of Ronald Reagan would have us believe that any association with the less conservative elements of our society during that era taints one for life.

Even when one takes into account that Obama was only a child at the time (he turned 10 in 1971), some people would have us believe the fact that he knows people who were not “hawks” when it came to the Vietnam War is enough reason to hold him suspect.

Obama got hit with questions about his support for Ayers, even though as best as I can tell, they have only met because they literally both live in the Hyde Park neighborhood, just a few blocks from each other.

Of course, nearly 30,000 people live in that neighborhood on the Lake Michigan shorefront. Do we hold them all suspect?

Barack Obama was all of 7 years old when Bill Ayers was posed by the Chicago Police Department for this "mug shot" in 1968.

NOW FOR THE bulk of his adult life, Ayers has devoted himself to academia. He currently is on the education faculty (a “distinguished professor of education” is his exact title) at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

But Ayers suffers from Jane Fonda Syndrome.

The social conservative elements of this country do not want us to forget the fact that Ayers (along with his partner Bernardine Dohrn) were a part of The Weatherman – that ‘60s collective of largely privileged white youths who believed they were waging war against the corrupt establishment that had the United States in a war in Vietnam.

Now admittedly, the Weatherman (named for a line in the old Bob Dylan song, “Subterranean Homesick Blues”), were considered by many people to be a bit extreme – even for those who fondly remember their liberal activities of that era. That’s what messing around with explosives will get for you – a reputation as a kook.

CONSERVATIVES ALSO TAKE into account the fact that Ayers, on many occasions, has said he is not apologetic for his belief that the United States should never have got involved in a war in Vietnam.

To listen to questions concerning Ayers during the debate (and the way Hillary Clinton piled on during her responses to Obama’s answers), Obama is friends with a man who is the moral equivalent of the people in the Middle East who commit acts of violence in the name of Allah.

They would have you believe that Obama is friends with a man who attacked the Pentagon and other public facilities and who also planted bombs that killed people. They also would want you to think this is the man who, on Sept. 11, 2001, while airplanes crashed into the World Trade Center and Pentagon, told the New York Times “I don’t regret setting bombs,” and “I feel we didn’t do enough” to undermine the U.S. military.

By Clinton’s logic, the Weatherman attack on the Pentagon was identical in stature to the airplane three decades later that religious extremists piloted directly into the same building.

HERE’S A DOSE of “fact,” as it relates to those Weatherman bombs. The only people they ever managed to kill were themselves.

Property damage was what they were after, such as the “Days of Rage” protests of 1969 where members ran through the Rush Street nightclub district and shattered store windows and parked cars in a lame attempt to simulate the disruptiveness of war to the people of Chicago.

Explosives are tricky, particularly if one doesn't really know what they are doing. That's what caused a March 6, 1970 explosion at a Greenwich Village townhouse where Weatherman members were holed up. This “terrorist” group (as some on the far right are determined to label them, even though they’d dispute the same label being applied to the Ku Klux Klan) only managed to kill themselves off – no one else.

Another fact – the Weatherman attack on the Pentagon may very well be one of the most pathetic attempts by anyone to attack a military installation.

AS I UNDERSTAND it, the group placed an explosive in a men’s rest room at the Pentagon. When it went off, it caused some pipe damage and serious water overflow in part of the building. That water resulted in damage to computers that were processing information related to the Vietnam war effort.

The spin by Weatherman members was that the disrupted the Vietnam War – bringing it to a half for a couple of hours. Reality says they were more an annoyance than a threat, behaving in a manner like the kid in high school who thinks he’s cute because he lights a cherry bomb and drops it down the toilet.

Looking at it factually, it makes Clinton look ridiculous for comparing the Weatherman to Islamic radicals.

I can't help but wonder if she now seriously believes that the Pentagon was levitated (remember when Abbie Hoffman and his Yippie allies protested outside the building, then later told people they caused the building to float in the air as a sign of protest against the war?)

AND AS FAR as Ayers being the guy who badmouthed the United States on the day of the New York and Pentagon attacks? He had just published a book (semi-autobiographical, with some details changed to protect others) and was trying to promote it. The fact that a Times feature appeared on the same day, hours before the attacks, is coincidental.

His belief that he wanted to do more to oppose the military was NOT a response to the activity of Sept. 11, which is how Clinton tried to spin it during the debate.

Now for those who are going to accuse me of being an Ayers apologist, I’m not. I’ve never met the man, although I’m sure that if I were older (I was only 4 at the time of the Days of Rage), I would not have had the nerve to mess with explosives, no matter how negatively I might have perceived Vietnam (I have two uncles who served in the military – army and marine corps – and saw combat in that war. This is something we disagree on).

But I believe we need to quit thinking about the 1960s as some sort of litmus test by which everyone who opposed U.S. involvement in Vietnam or looks down on J. Edgar Hoover’s use of the FBI to harass civil rights dissidents is somehow tainted for life.

NOW IT IS true that some of The Weatherman people went on to commit crimes of violence separate from their activist protests. They have either done their prison time, or may be serving time still.

But Obama’s ties are only that he knows Ayers, who doesn’t have any criminal convictions of his own (in part because the FBI’s investigations into “radical” activity were so overzealous that all their evidence against him was ruled inadmissible in court).

Trying to tar Obama because Ayers wasn’t a “hawk” during the Vietnam War is absurd.

THIS RIDICULOUS MENTALITY belongs to the people who were behind much of the right’s disgust with the presidency of Bill Clinton (and for that matter, Hillary herself). The only people who are going to accept such a premise are the ones who would never vote for Clinton to begin with.

In short, it plays right into reinforcing the campaign of Republican opponent John McCain. It makes me wonder if those Democrats who suspect Hillary would secretly be comfortable with a McCain victory in 2008 (so she could try again in ’12) are not just being paranoid.

Actually, all she’s doing is taking down the reputation of the Clinton years among Democratic activists and ensuring that she herself could never get the party’s nomination to serve in the Oval Office.

If that’s the case, we might have to wait for Chelsea to become “of age” before we see another Clinton in the White House.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: Bill Ayers’ website (http://www.billayers.org/) is devoted to his educational credentials, but does not shy away from his activist days.

Rick Ayers is disgusted with Hillary Clinton’s comments about his brother, Bill (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rick-ayers-/clintons-mccarthyism-and_b_97220.html), seeing them as evidence that Hillary will say anything to try to chip away at Barack Obama’s lead.

The Weather Underground’s “declaration of war” on Amerika (http://marathonpundit.blogspot.com/2008/03/weather-undergrounds-1970-declaration.html) can be found here.

Was President Bill Clinton wrong to give pardons to people with ties to the Weather Underground (http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/04/17/clinton-campaign-gets-weather-underground-questions/) movement of the 1960s?

The 1960s will end some time around 2050

One of Barack Obama’s presidential campaign themes is that his election will bring an end to the infighting between the factions of U.S. society who lived through the social turmoil of the late 1960s.

He thinks that choosing a president who did not come of age during the “Summer of Love” or the My Lai Massacre will allow the nation as a whole to move forward, rather than getting caught up in the continuing battles of the culture war between so-called liberals and conservatives.

Critics of the Vietnam War march along Michigan Avenue in conjunction with the 1968 Democratic Convention. These placards (below) were distributed to Chicagoans who approved of the brutal police treatment towards the protesters, which the Walker Commission labeled a "police riot." Photographs provided by Chicago History Museum.

But the degree to which the spirit of the ‘60s is embedded in the mindsets of the people (both “dove” and “hawk”) who lived through the era ensures that not even Obama in the White House could bring an end to the social squabbles that had their roots planted 40-something years ago.

The latest outburst of ’60s tensions came earlier this week when 58-year-old Joseph Pannell said he would not fight extradition to face criminal charges related to the 1969 shooting of a Chicago police officer.

Understandably, the officer who was shot, Terrance Knox, remains upset, particularly because Pannell has managed to live the bulk of his life in freedom in Canada without having to face criminal charges.

At the time of the shooting, Pannell was 19 and a sympathizer of the Black Panther Party, which saw itself as a revolutionary group willing to use force to defend the civil rights of black people. Many African-American people who lived during the times remember the Panther party as being a group offering social programs such as free breakfasts to help impoverished West and South side neighborhoods.

Knox is firmly on the other side of the culture clash, telling the Chicago Sun-Times that Parnell of the Black Panther Party, “is what I would consider in today’s terms a terrorist.”

I know Knox is not alone in that belief. When the City Council seriously considered a proposal two years ago to rename a one-block strip of Monroe Street to honor Fred Hampton (the Black Panther leader in Chicago who was killed during a Dec. 4, 1969, police raid), the Fraternal Order of Police used its clout with white aldermen to squash the measure.

Some black activists to this day insist the police raid was an assassination of a budding black leader, although prosecutors never did bring criminal charges against anyone in connection with the incident.

Law enforcement officials prefer to remember Hampton and the Panthers as a criminal element not worthy of praise. They definitely do not want to be reminded that the reason Panthers felt the need to arm themselves was because they believed African-American people back then were being harassed – rather than protected – by the police.

The presence of the Oakland, Calif.-based Black Panthers in Chicago will always be controversial, even though many of the group’s survivors have moved well into mainstream society.

Bobby Rush – who now laughingly tells the story of becoming a founding member of the party’s Illinois chapter after national Panther leaders Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton were arrested in Chicago and knew of no one else in the city who could bail them out of jail – is possibly the biggest success story.

He has served in Congress since 1993, and currently represents the South Side and inner southwest suburbs. To some, even that is controversial.

The majority African-American city neighborhoods in his district view him as an old warrior from the ‘60s who is looking out for their interests, while some in the white suburban communities are wary of him.

In one case, former Crestwood Mayor Chester Stranczek tried to use his political influence to get his town drawn into another congressional district, saying he did not believe someone with Rush’s background could adequately represent the ideas of the white ethnics who live there.

Perhaps Obama’s presence on the political scene is a sign that, to quote Sam Cooke, “A Change is Gonna Come.”

After all, Pannell told reporters this week the reason he is now willing to return to Chicago after decades of living a peaceful life in the suburbs of Toronto is that he sees the presence of Obama and the way he is perceived by people in the United States as evidence that he might get a fair hearing in the judicial system.

But let’s be honest. While some of us like to mock Hillary Clinton’s claim many years ago that a “vast, right-wing conspiracy” was targeting her husband’s presidency, she wasn’t exactly being paranoid.

There WERE social conservatives with ample funding from sympathetic foundations who were anxiously awaiting, readying themselves to pounce on Bill Clinton the moment he dropped his pants at an inopportune moment.

The choice of Hillary Clinton as president will merely stoke the raw emotions of those people (thereby ensuring that the 2010s will be a repeat of the 1990s), their embers of anger will not die out just because of Barack Obama.

For some, the presence of a non-white man as Leader of the Free World may even cause more of an outburst than the presence of Hillary. The split caused by the ‘60s is not going to end anytime soon.

Who is winning the split is determined largely by the perceptions of the individual. Recently on MSNBC, a panel of professional political pontificators was talking about the presidential campaigns when conservative commentator Pat Buchanan said the situation in this country remained largely a battle between John Wayne and Jane Fonda, “and John Wayne is winning.”

To his mindset, I’m sure he likes the idea of the tough-talking cowboy actor beating up on the 60s generation star of such films as “9 to 5” and “Barbarella” (my favorite for pure cheesiness is “Cat Ballou”) whose opposition to the Vietnam War was so intense that she is still remembered for the North Vietnamese propaganda photographs she posed for alongside an anti-aircraft gun.

But would a country where “John Wayne is winning” seriously be banning cigarette smoking in public – the way Illinois and 21 other states have? I can’t help but think that Jane has ol’ John in a headlock and has the potential to drop him for good.

Whenever I think about it philosophically, I realize the 1960s will not end until some time between the years 2050 and 2060.

Think about it. Every generation manages to produce a few members who, through good health and the luck of the draw, live past 100. So someone in the United States who was a teenager or college-age person back in the 1960s and manages to live long enough will become a centenarian at about the middle of the 21st century – similar to how the last veteran of the Civil War didn’t die until 1959.

Only when all of the children of the ‘60s are gone will the unrest that sprang up in the decade come to an end.

Of course, that leaves one question. Will the last ‘60s child be a “hawk” or a “dove?” Are we destined for the sight about 40 years from now of the last ‘60s child wearing a tie-dyed shirt and proclaiming the virtues of the flower children over a racist society?

Or is it going to be someone who supported the idea of the U.S. military in Vietnam, proclaims him or herself to be a “real American,” and thinks that his survival longer than any other of his generation is the ultimate proof that, “the hippie freaks lost.”

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EDITOR’S NOTES: I love the Encyclopedia of Chicago. Here are entries concerning the Black Panther Party (http://encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/142.html) and civil rights protests in Chicago (http://encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/293.html).

Here’s a Panther perspective (http://www.blackpanther.org/legacynew.htm) about the organization denounced by then-FBI leader J. Edgar Hoover as, “the greatest threat to the internal security of the United States.”