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[December 14, 1968] The Emperor's New Nehru

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by Gwyn Conaway


The Emperor's New Clothes by Harry Clarke, inspired by the fashions of the Lucknow Court in present day India and Turkish fashions, a fitting comparison for this article.

A strange thing is occurring in American menswear this winter. A peculiar, most invisible thing. Invisible not because no one talks about it or buys it or advertises it… In fact, everyone from Playboy to J. C. Penny has brandished their bugle horn, lining up their bets behind this most fascinating fad.

No, it is invisible because although men are buying it, they simply aren’t wearing it.

It’s no surprise that men today yearn to move on from the somber three-piece suits and restrictive neckties that inspire discussions of Beau Brummel, Henry Poole, and two-hundred years of legacy. As the definition of American culture expands to include members of the Youth, Hippie, Women's Rights, and Civil Rights movements, just to name a few, young men have realized that they too can expand their own identities. Strangely enough, this ardent wish has manifested as the Nehru jacket.



Sammy Davis Jr in Fall 1968 wearing the new Nehru jacket trend with silk turtlenecks.

Named for Jahawarhal Nehru, the first prime minister of India, the Nehru jacket embodies many of the ideals of American youth. He was an anti-colonialist and social democrat determined to free his country from Western rule, a sentiment young people share against the backdrop of the Vietnam War. Like many other revolutionaries and thinkers from colonized cultures around the world, he chose to wear a traditional Indian coat called the achkan as a way of reclaiming India’s cultural autonomy by rejecting Western rules of business dress. Namely, the three-piece suit and the necktie.


Nehru met with Chancellor Konrad Adenauer and Deutsche Bank Chairman Hermann Josef Abs during a visit to West Germany in June 1956. He looks at ease next to the others with his top button undone, embodying a working class confidence that's defiantly attractive for a generation that distrusts establishment wealth and power, and searches for their own generational identity.

The Beatles wore Nehru jackets for their Shea Stadium concert in August of 1965, less than a year after the prime minister died in May of 1964. As we’ve discussed previously the article "Sgt. Pepper's Anti-War Military Rock Uniform," The Beatles have been an unstoppable force in shaping the fashions, and therefore the identities, of young people in the West through their mop haircuts, peacockish military designs, and bold color palettes. Others such as Sammy Davis Jr. and Lord Snowdon also donned the achkan-inspired look before Pierre Cardin introduced it to the American public last year.


The Beatles perform at Shea Stadium in matching putty Nehru jackets in 1965. Nehru's jackets were also grey and tawny colors. Sammy Davis Jr. often favors this utilitarian color palette in his Nehru jackets this winter.


The first James Bond film, Dr. No, mirrors the hero and villain through the Nehru jacket. Both jackets are made of silk, but Bond's walnut brown jacket is a rough-hewn shantung while the doctor's appears to be a granite silk suiting. The contrast of the fabrics and the fit of the collars both indicate a struggle between the people (Bond) and power (Dr. No).

From there, gossip and excitement over the look has spread like wildfire among experts and celebrities. Esquire went so far as to suggest that the Nehru would be the talk of the winter. But where has it gone? Why have we seen so few of them?

The rather complicated answer is comfort.

Inspired by the total rejection of Western ideals, the Nehru jacket is largely comfortable only to those who also heavily criticize the sum of our mainstream society. However, most consumers are average by default. As a result, such bold shifts are too adventuresome for their everyday lives. These kinds of trends, which often come with great excitement, are bright but brief flashes in the pan.

So what do these emperor’s robes suggest, if they’re bought then stuffed at the backs of closets and into the bottoms of trunks? Bold shifts that make it to retailers and mainstream entertainment, no matter how brief, are indicative of a great yearning in society. And the revolution is happening—it is just taking on a different form.

Rather than rehaul the rules of their workplaces and ceremonies with the Nehru jacket, men are turning to designers like Bill Blass and Ralph Lauren, who are introducing wider, bolder ties and more athletic country tweeds that speak to America’s love of working class leisurewear.


James Coburn in Bill Blass fashions as of November this year for Vogue. Though the fabrics are bold, the shapes are familiar, sporting collars and cuffs with an expeditionary style that calls back to Western expansionism. This, perhaps, is a much more comfortable avenue for change in mainstream menswear than inspirations such as the Nehru that wholly reject the Western lifestyle. Photographed by Henry Clarke.

I agree deeply with the critic Marshall McLuhan in his opinion that after centuries of division, the great tectonic shift of equality in the West is pushing men and women to connect culturally in a way we simply haven’t before. While women are chasing educational and societal inclusion, men are chasing freedom of expression.

We can see this clearly in the rising popularity of Blass and Lauren, for example. The necktie is softer and brighter, but still a necktie. The turtleneck is less structured but still paired with a blazer for daytime events. The Norfolk jacket is slimmer and more youthful, but still made of traditional houndstooth wool. Does this not mirror the advancements of women in our society? Women may attend universities, but they must still wear stockings and skirts. They may work in offices but must maintain a certain figure.

Having donned the uniforms of war and business for as long as women have worn their gowns and corsets, the suggestion that Western men are decolonizing their own fashions, through styles such as Nehru’s achkan, is a hopeful sign of the future. Even if permanent change is slow. Only time will tell if the Western or the Eastern collar will ultimately be the victor…




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Fashion, music, politics, sports

[August 28, 1968] The Carnival is Over (The Seekers Break Up)

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by Kaye Dee

Without a doubt, Australia’s most famous musical export would have to be The Seekers, the folk-pop quartet from Melbourne who burst onto the international stage in 1964 and have given The Beatles and The Rolling Stones a run for their money when it comes to Top Ten hits. So, even with persistent rumours for some months that the band might soon break up, it comes as something of a surprise that, at the height of their fame, The Seekers announced in July that they have decided to go their separate ways.

The Seekers at the 1966 Royal Command Performance at the London Palladium

Singing for their Supper
The Seekers – Athol Guy (28), Keith Potger (27), Bruce Woodley (26) and Judith Durham (25) – formed in Melbourne in 1962. But how did a group of clean cut, coffee-house musicians – all of them with middle-class day jobs – become a hot property in the booming British pop scene and a household name on three continents? 

When the group was formed, none of its members were newcomers to the local music scene. The three male members had all attended the same Melbourne school and had their own bands before forming a new “doo wop” band, the Escorts, with singer Ken Ray. This group then transformed into The Seekers in 1962 as the folk music movement grew in Melbourne.

At the same time, Miss Durham, blessed with perfect pitch and originally planning to become an opera singer, was carving out a place in the local jazz scene. As the lead vocalist with a top Melbourne jazz band, “Judy” Durham had already released an EP with a local record label. With her beautiful and versatile voice, she can sing jazz, opera, blues and gospel – and there is no question that Judith Durham’s vocal talents have been a major factor in The Seekers’ success over the past six years.

When Ken Ray married and left the Seekers, Miss Durham was working at the same advertising agency as Athol Guy, and he recruited her as Mr. Ray’s replacement, creating The Seekers as we know them today: Judith Durham, the lead vocalist, also performing piano and tambourine; Athol Guy on double bass and vocals; Keith Potger on twelve-string guitar, banjo and vocals; and Bruce Woodley on guitar, mandolin, banjo and vocals.

On the cover of The Seekers first album, Keith Potger was replaced by former Seeker Ken Ray, because his day job as a radio producer at the Australian Broadcasting Commission barred him from involvement in a commercial enterprise. (L-R: Judith Durham, Ken Ray, Bruce Woodley and Athol Guy).




Breaking Into the Australian Charts
Miss Durham’s golden voice and the group’s folk-influenced sound quickly made them popular in Melbourne, although they were largely unknown outside it. When her previous connection with local record label W&G provided the opportunity for a recording contract, The Seekers released their debut album "Introducing The Seekers" in 1963, opening the way to reach a national audience.

In the liner notes for the album, The Seekers described their approach to their music: “We don't claim to be folk singers in the true sense of the word. Then again, we don't regard ourselves as being ‘commercial’. Why? Because we sing the songs we like, the way we like and the way we think people will like to hear them. No long-haired ethnic purity for us, it's more fun our way.”

Two tracks were released as singles, with their version of Australia’s unofficial national anthem “Waltzing Matilda” charting in the Top 40 in Melbourne, and the Top 100 nationally. Obviously, people did like to hear The Seekers singing what they liked, their way.

Sailing Away to International Fame
Since the 1950s, many Aussie entertainers seeking fame and fortune have headed off to Britain to try their luck in its larger, more vibrant entertainment industry, and in 1964, The Seekers decided that the time had come for them to follow suit. With a year-long contract to work as the house band on a cruise ship, the group departed Australia in March.

The Seekers planned to work in the UK and get some exposure for their music during the ten-week layover there before working the return cruise to Australia. Shrewdly, the group sent copies of their album and promotional photographs ahead of them to London talent agencies, hoping this might help them line up some work once they arrived. The tactic was successful, and once in London in May, the group discovered that a top agency had taken them on and already booked them on national TV shows, and on the UK variety theatre and club circuit.

Their planned “working holiday” almost immediately turned into a full-time career, with important London bookings and television appearances, a UK recording deal and the release of their first UK single, “Myra”. This was quickly followed by two studio albums and, at the end of 1964, their first big hit “I’ll Never Find Another You”.

What made The Seekers (deprecatingly described by some in the British press as “three bank tellers and a secretary” due to their conservative style of dress and a lifestyle that was definitely not “sex, drugs and rock’n’roll”) such a marketable property in a British pop scene fuelled by teen angst and teenage rebellion?

Internationally successful folk acts like Peter, Paul & Mary had paved the way for The Seekers’ sound, the product of Judith Durham’s pure and powerful voice and the “nice harmonies” of the three men. With their clean-cut good looks, equally clean-cut voices and quiet dress, they appealed to English squares because they represented something they could understand and feel comfortable with, while at the same time their catchy tunes and soulful ballads, and their sheer musical talent attracted a wide range of audiences. The conservative BBC loved them, because their music contained no offensive lyrics, and their performances no outlandish behaviour, meaning that they received a large amount of air time on radio and television, which gave them wide exposure. 

A Match Made by a Manager
Many of the catchy tunes that repeatedly propelled Seekers to the top of the charts, commencing with “I’ll Never Find Another You” (apparently recorded at the famous Abbey Road Studios by day while The Beatles were recording there at night), were written expressly for The Seekers by singer-songwriter-producer Tom Springfield, brother of Dusty Springfield. In a clever move, the agent managing The Seekers introduced them to Mr. Springfield shortly after he had split with his sister. Tom Springfield felt that The Seekers’ style of singing and performance would suit the particular kind of music he preferred to write. He became their resident songwriter, signing the group to his production company. 

In November 1964 “I'll Never Find Another You” became a massive worldwide hit, reaching Number 1 in Australia and the UK, and Number 4 in the US. It also rated highly in Europe and eventually sold 1.75 million copies worldwide. This earned The Seekers a place in the record books as the first Australian pop group to have a Top 5 hit simultaneously in the Australian, UK and US markets, as well as the first to sell over a million copies of a single.


A World of Their Own
You could say that 1965 was the year that The Seekers conquered the world, with hit after hit rising up the charts! “A World of Our Own”, “Morningtown Ride”, and my favourite, “The Carnival is Over”, were all Top Ten hits, as was their 1965 album release. With its melody apparently drawn from a Russian folk song, “The Carnival is Over” reached Number 1 in the UK, even overtaking The Rolling Stones' “Get Off My Cloud”! I’ve heard that the single sold over 90,000 copies per day in Britain, which is no mean feat.

The Seekers receiving their gold record in Australia for "The Carnival is Over"








Winning the Top of the Pops Best New Group of 1964, The Seekers starred in the New Musical Express “All-Star Poll Winners Concert” in April 1965, on a bill that included the cream of the British pop scene – The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Cliff Richard, Dusty Springfield, The Who and The Yardbirds: The Seekers would go on to outsell them all in 1966! Then followed a breakthrough performance in June on The Ed Sullivan Show – the first time any Australian musicians had appeared on US television.

The Seekers during their first performance on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1965


The Seekers' amazing success was repeated in 1966, commencing with a sell-out concert tour of Australia, during which they filmed their first Australian TV special, “At Home with the Seekers”. There was also a successful collaboration with Paul Simon (of Simon & Garfunkel fame), which produced “Someday, One Day”, another major hit. Bruce Woodley then co-wrote several songs with Mr. Simon, including “Red Rubber Ball”, released on The Seekers 1966 UK Top 10 album “Come the Day”. 

In November, The Seekers appeared on the bill at the prestigious Royal Command Performance concert at the London Palladium, before H.M. Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother. Finally, in December, the group released what became their biggest hit, and highest charting American release.

“Georgy Girl”, the title song for the film of the same name, reached Number 3 in the UK, Number 1 in Australia, and Number 1 on the US Cashbox Top 100 in February 1967, ultimately selling 3.5 million copies worldwide. Jim Dale and Tom Springfield, the song’s writers, were nominated for the 1967 Academy Award for Best Original Song of 1966, although The Seekers had to pass up the opportunity to perform at the awards ceremony due to a prior booking in the UK. Unfortunately for them, the Oscar was won by the title song of the film Born Free.

The Seekers at the Myer Music Bowl, a publicity shot for "The Seekers Down Under"




While touring Australia in March last year, The Seekers appeared at a concert at the Sidney Myer Music Bowl in Melbourne, which is claimed to have drawn an audience of 200,000 – the largest concert audience ever in the southern hemisphere according to the Guinness Book of Records. (Though rumour has it that the audience figure is somewhat exaggerated, because visitors to the annual Moomba festival occurring in the vicinity were also counted!). During their 20-minute performance, the group was accompanied by the Australian Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Hector Crawford, also a producer of radio, film and television. Film of this performance was included in The Seekers’ second Australian TV special, “The Seekers Down Under,” which drew a record audience of over 6 million!

A scene from "The Seekers Down Under", showing the group in Canberra

By this time Miss Durham apparently felt the need to branch out on a musical career of her own, and recorded a debut solo single, "The Olive Tree", which was released in June last year, while The Seekers were on a North American tour. For The Seekers as a group, the hits just kept on coming, for both their single releases and their most recent album, “The Seekers Seen in Green”. But when Judith Durham’s second solo single, “Again and Again”, appeared at the end of last year, it sparked early rumours that the group might split up.

During their North American tour, The Seekers joined fellow Aussie performers Rolf Harris, Normie Rowe and Bobby Limb in the special “Australia Day at Expo 67” concert in Montreal, that became the first official satellite broadcast into Australia. They also made another appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, singing “Georgy Girl”, which has turned out to be their last US hit.

The Seekers performing at the Australia Day concert broadcast via satellite to Australia from Expo 67

Our Last Goodbye
Though we didn’t know it at the time, when The Seekers returned to Australia last December, it was to be their final Australasian tour. But in a fitting finale to their career, The Seekers’ rapid rise to international fame was crowned with Australia’s highest honour: in January, they were collectively named “Australians of the Year for 1967”. This was the first time that a group, rather than an individual, has received this prestigious national recognition.


The Seekers with Australian Prime Minister John Gorton and his wife after receiving the "Australians of the Year" award.

During this tour, they also filmed their final Australian TV special, “The World of the Seekers”. Filmed in colour for international distribution, the programme was first screened in cinemas (so we could see it in colour, lacking colour television in this country) before being broadcast nationally to outstanding ratings. 

At some point during the tour, Miss Durham informed her band mates that she intended to leave The Seekers in the middle of the year, although the swirling rumours of their impending break-up were consistently denied and laughed off, even a few weeks before the split was announced. 

Despite knowing that their days of performing together were coming to a close, The Seekers recorded a final single, “Days of My Life”, in April, which sadly has proved less than successful. A final UK album, “Live at The Talk of the Town” has also been recorded and will be released later this year. A compilation album, “The Seekers — Greatest Hits” has just been released here in Australia (quick work by the record company, that one!).

When The Seekers publicly announced in the UK on Wednesday 3 July that they were breaking up, they insisted that they had never intended to go on performing indefinitely. “It’s getting far too complicated, and should be run as a cold hard business, which means it has now reached a stage we never wanted it to,” they said in a group statement. “It is time for us to part. We are all at a stage where we should be growing up as individuals, not as a group”. This rather suggests that Miss Durham was not alone in her desire to branch out into a solo career, and her decision to depart simply accelerated something that was already in train.

The Seekers made their last appearance together in a 50 minute television special on 9 July, rapidly arranged by the BBC. “Farewell The Seekers”, which has not yet been screened in Australia, was reportedly an emotional experience on screen and off, attracting an audience of more than 10 million viewers. When the lights went down, the carnival was over, and an amazing chapter in Australia’s musical history had drawn to a close. I wonder what will come next for the former Seekers?

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Movies, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[July 28, 1968] Once Upon A Time, Or Maybe Twice… (Yellow Submarine)

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By Jessica Holmes

Yellow Submarine is a weird film. Directed by George Dunning and produced by Al Brodax and King Features, the latest Beatles movie is a bit different from the previous live-action offerings. For one, it’s animated, and for two… the Beatles are barely even in it. I mean, they’re in it as characters, and in person in a very brief cameo at the end, but the four themselves don’t actually voice their animated counterparts. I’m sure they’re busy smoking whatever the hell made them come up with Revolution No. 9. But that’s not the weird bit.

The weird bit is the content of this film.

Think ‘Alice In Wonderland’ if Alice sampled a rather more special kind of mushroom.

It's All In The Mind, Y'Know

Strip back all the surrealism and Yellow Submarine is a pretty straightforward adventure. The idyllic realm of Pepperland comes under attack from an army of Blue Meanies, prompting one of the inhabitants, Old Fred, to go and find help. He goes off, recruits the Beatles, then they journey back together through various locales so they can defeat the Blue Meanies through the power of music. Cue awkward live-action cameo, roll credits.

But of course, we’re not really watching this for the plot, are we?

Yellow Submarine is like a dream. As such, it operates on dream logic. Old Fred (Lance Percival) stalks a depressed Ringo (Paul Angelis) through the streets of Liverpool in a flying submarine. Ringo’s house is bigger on the inside, and has doors that open onto many different locations. John Lennon (John Clive) is Frankenstein’s Monster. George Harrison (also Paul Angelis) can manipulate reality with his mind. Paul (Geoff Hughes)… Paul’s actually pretty normal.

Their journeys take them to the Sea of Time, where they age backwards, forwards, and back again, then to the Sea of Science, where… nothing happens. Really, nothing. There’s a decent tune in this section (‘Only A Northern Song’) but it doesn’t even have any much video to go with it. It’s just soundwaves accompanied by pictures of the group. It’s an out of place sequence in a film of out of place sequences.

The weirdness immediately starts back up as the submarine sails into the Sea of Monsters, where they encounter creatures that Hieronymous Bosch would be proud of. There’s the purple elephant thing which is so ugly they bully it until it cries. There’s a pair of Kinky Boots. There’s some stuff I have no name for, and creepiest of all, a vacuum monster that goes around sucking up all the other creatures.

Ringo accidentally ejects himself from the submarine, and the others have to rescue him by deploying the submarine’s cavalry company. There’s a button for everything. Unfortunately for them, the vacuum monster immediately slurps them up, before slurping up all the other monsters, then the actual backdrop of the film, and finally itself, leaving the submarine stranded in an endless white void. They are…nowhere.

But they aren’t alone. Enter Jeremy Hillary Boob, Ph.D. (Dick Emery) a peculiar little nowhere man who speaks entirely in rhyme. He offers them a hand with their engine, and in return,Ringo, feeling sorry for the little guy’s loneliness, invites him to join them aboard the submarine.

They don’t get far before breaking down again in the foothills of the headlands, and the submarine (with Old Fred still aboard) flies off without them when they get out to fix it. So they might as well squeeze a song in. The ‘Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds’ sequence isn’t exactly plot heavy (it’s mostly just rotoscoped imagery of dancing girls) and really doesn’t have a thing to do with what’s going on, but it’s undeniably gorgeous to look at.

From there the group follows a trail of pepper to the Sea of Holes, an infinite white void filled with black holes. Three dimensional space works a little differently here. It’s as the laws of physics had been written by M.C. Escher.

Jeremy gets himself captured by a Blue Meanie, and the group eventually find a hole to the Sea of Green, and find themselves at last in Pepperland… which is decidedly lacking in green of late.

The Blue Meanies hate colour, and music, and life itself, so they’ve taken it upon themselves to cure Pepperland of these ailments.

The Beatles revive the mayor of Pepperland with a snippet of song, restoring him to life and colour, and reunite with the submarine and Old Fred. The old mayor comments that the Beatles bear an uncanny resemblance to Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, and theorises that if they were to disguise themselves, they might rally the people to rebel against the Meanies.

And cue the music! I think you can guess what song they start with. The Meanies hate it, of course, but the tune brings life back to Pepperland. The group even manage to find and revive the real Lonely Hearts Club Band, teaming up with them to take the fight to the meanies. Oh, and Ringo rescues Jeremy.

Faced with the combined power of the Beatles and the Lonely Hearts Club Band, the Meanies turn and flee, despite their Chief’s exhortations. Jeremy transforms the Chief Meanie with the power of rhymes, and John extends the hand of friendship to the band’s defeated foes. The Meanies accept, and everyone joins in for a final dance party. All’s well that ends well, and here come the end credits.

But first, we must indulge the real Beatles in a clumsy cameo. The absolute flurry of puns and wordplay that are present in practically every line of Yellow Submarine are no less present here, and no less painful. With newer and bluer Meanies being spotted in the vicinity of the theatre, the Beatles sing us out.

Not Quite Right

So, sounds like a cheerful, colourful, fun little romp, right? Wrong. This film is unsettling.

And it starts barely a couple of minutes in with the arrival of the Blue Meanies.

Good grief, the Blue Meanies.

It’s not just their concept that’s creepy. Sure, sure, a villain that hates everything good and nice and is relentlessly negative. We’ve seen all that. But they are deeply unnerving to look at with their too-wide yellow grins. The Chief Meanie (also Paul Angelis…poor man, give his vocal cords a break!) is by far the creepiest. I have to give a nod to Angelis and his vocal talents for creating such a nightmare. He goes from a sickly sweet sing-song tone to irate shrieking at the drop of a hat. It gets my skin crawling.

As if the Chief Meanie wasn’t bad enough on his own, there’s his Dreadful Flying Glove to think about. It’s…well, it’s a glove. A giant, angry-looking, sentient glove that chases people across Pepperland. Sounds ridiculous? Sure. But it's a rather dreadful looking thing.

Outside of Pepperland, the seas offer plenty of discomforts. There’s obviously the Sea of Monsters with its various grotesques, but I found ‘nowhere’ to be quite creepy too. Just the idea of being alone in an infinite white void with nothing but my own thoughts for company… it gives me the shivers. I am perhaps just projecting, but I would hazard a guess that a fair few people share my feelings.

You’re not even safe from the surreal and uncanny on dry land, as Liverpool is no less peculiar. There’s an art shift in the Liverpool sequence, where the people are not drawn, but composited in from highly processed photographs and film stock. The colours are minimal, and most living things are completely static. Those that are not static are trapped in short loops of actions as the submarine passes them by. We even see someone perched on the ledge of the uppermost window of a tall building, as if about to leap. Towards the end of the sequence, there are hundreds of people on rooftops. All this, to the tune of ‘Eleanor Rigby’. It’s painting a depressing picture of the home-town of the Beatles, to say the least.

Then you’ve got Ringo’s house, and I do not like that place. He keeps a Monster around, sure, and that’s a bit off-putting, but there’s something more subtle about the place that unnerves me a lot more. It does not feel like a place where people belong. There’s a long hallway with dozens of identical doors, each opening onto a different locale entirely—even onto oncoming trains. It’s vast, and quiet, and you could get lost for hours or even days, and I don’t think anybody would be coming to find you. It’s that sort of place. There’s a palpable absence of humanity.

I searched around for the right word to describe what this film actually made me feel. ‘Unsettled’ feels too vague. It just means that I feel different from my normal emotional state. ‘Scared’ is over the top. It’s not scary. And ‘creeped out’ is too simple. It’s not all creepy. Some parts are beautiful. I think my response ultimately comes down to the atmosphere of the film. And that atmosphere is one of loneliness.

Ah, Look At All The Lonely People

There is something about this film that positively oozes an atmosphere of isolation and loneliness. Even in colourful Pepperland at the start of the film, though there are crowds of people, they’re almost entirely static and lifeless. The Mayor is at least animated enough to play the violin, but even then he’s more interested in that than in fending off the Blue Meanies or trying to escape from them. There’s precious little humanity to be found here. I think something was wrong with Pepperland long before the Blue Meanies ever showed up.

Of course, once they do, what little semblance of life there is soon goes away.

The Liverpool section, as with all the musical sections of the film, is essentially a music video for the song ‘Eleanor Rigby’, and it’s as lonely and depressing an image of the city as I have ever seen. That’s the thing with big cities—everyone lives on top of one another, but you don’t really know each other, and so you even feel alone in a crowd of people who all feel exactly the same way. ‘Look at all the lonely people’, indeed.

Ringo even says so himself.

Liverpool can be a lonely place on a Saturday night, and this is only Thursday morning.

And he would know a thing or two about loneliness, living in his cavernous house, under the same roof as his bandmates and yet with the four of them isolated from one another.

Starting to notice a pattern?

In the Sea of Monsters, the vacuum monster eventually finds itself completely alone. And so it consumes its own body. In Nowhere, Jeremy has lived his whole life by himself. Though he seems initially content with his way of life, when the Beatles are about to leave him behind, he breaks down sobbing. He’s utterly pitiful, and utterly alone.

Everyone in this film… is lonely. Scratch the surface of the colourful surrealism and catchy tunes and you’ll find a deeply melancholy undercurrent to the whole thing.

How could it fail to rub off on the audience?

Final Thoughts

Heinz Edelmann’s art direction is stunning. The extraordinary psychedelic presentation is really the key to making this film work. It’s bright, beautiful, and occasionally frightening. There’s bold, bright pop art style elements (think Warhol), but also grotesque creatures that would fit well within the pages of a medieval bestiary, or perhaps in a Dali. I’m sure the unique visual style will make this a hit with anyone with an appreciation for psychedelic art—or psychoactive substances.

Music-wise, what can I say? It’s the Beatles. If you like the Beatles (which I do), you’ll like the music. There’s a nice selection of tracks from their previous albums, and also a couple of new songs. I say new, but I’m pretty sure they’re unused tracks from previous albums. The B-sides’ B-side. Still, even if ‘All Together Now’ is not their strongest offering, it’s definitely catchy.

The band’s music might be what people are coming to this film to hear, but let’s not forget the rest of the soundtrack. ‘Fifth Beatle’ George Martin’s score is lush and romantic, tying the film together with dreamy orchestral interludes.

Finally, here’s a miscellany of thoughts about Yellow Submarine I had that don’t really relate to anything else:

The live action bit at the end is really weird. And I don’t mean surrealist weird, I mean ‘deeply awkward and filled me with a sense of vicarious embarrassment’ weird. It’s probably there to fulfill contractual obligations, but they could have at least tried to act less awkward than a group of unprepared teenagers giving a school presentation. I suppose it was at least appreciated by those people who lose their minds at the very sight of the Beatles.

As for the animated version of the group, I thought the voice actors did a very good impression of them. It’s just a shame that they all sounded bored out of their skulls throughout the whole film.

You’d have thought the jokes might have coaxed some life out of them. There’s enough of them. A veritable smorgasbord of agonisingly painful wordplay. Particularly excruciating highlights include:

“I can’t help it. I’m a born lever-puller.”

And:

“Are you blueish? You don’t look blueish.”

Oh, and of course the Rimsky-Korsakov/Guy Lombardo joke which took me far too much effort to understand, and when I did, it still wasn’t actually funny.

I could go on, but I shan’t. I'm not a cruel woman.

Lousy jokes aside, this is a movie I’m glad to have seen. I wasn’t sure if I liked it at first, but once I stopped trying to make sense of things and just went along for the ride, my appreciation of the film went right up.

This strange, beautiful film will surely be a hit with all the lonely people. Sure, it’s often melancholy and alienating. But it also offers hope.

In the end, how do the Beatles win? Not with combat prowess, but good old peace, love and rock n’ roll. Even the Blue Meanies benefit from hearing the band’s message. They just needed to abandon their relentless negativity and accept what was freely offered. Thanks to the Beatles, Pepperland is livelier than ever.

To defeat the forces of misery and loneliness… all you need is love.

(Four stars out of five)




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Movies, TV

[January 22, 1968] The Magical Mystery Tour (February 1968 Fantasy and Science Fiction…plus the Beatles movie!)

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by Gideon Marcus

A small pond

We have exciting tidbits from both sides of The Pond today, so stay tuned for both.  But first up, the latest issue of Fantasy and Science Fiction.

I got a letter from Ted White the other day.  Seems he's no longer assistant editor over at F&SF, which is a shame.  Apparently, he was once under consideration for editor at Fantastic (and possibly Amazing) back when Celle Goldsmith (Lalli) left!  Boy, would that have been an interesting tenure–certainly more interesting than what we got under Sol Cohen.

Anyway, keep reading, because this isn't the only time Ted's name will come up.


by Ronald Walotsky

The Colonies

Stranger in the House, by Kate Wilhelm

We've been seeing a lot more of Kate Wilhelm, lately, which is generally a good thing.  Stranger seems as if it will be a fairly typical, if sinister, haunted house story.  A middle-aged couple moves into a house in the country, a surprisingly good deal, to escape the hustle and bustle of the city after the husband suffers a heart attack.  Immediately, the wife begins to suffer fainting spells and strange visions.  A little research uncovers that, since 1920, the place has seen an inordinate number of deaths and inexplicable illnesses amongst its ocuppants.

Is it a vengeful spook?  Radon poisoning?  Actually, as we quickly learn, it's an alien in the basement.  Not just any alien: this one was sent on a first contact expedition.  The hope of its race was that they would get to see that transient moment when a species first makes the jump into space.

The problem is, said aliens are hideous, live in a toxic atmosphere, shed acid, and communicate via a telepathy that is about as conducive to human communication as an icepick in the forehead.  How, then, can there be a meeting of the minds?

I love a good "first contact" story, and I appreciate that Wilhelm has created a truly alien being.  What keeps this piece from excellence are a couple of factors.  For one, it is overlong for what it does.  More importantly, much of the story, particularly that told from the alien's point of view, is detached and told in past tense.  This lack of immediacy in a story that deals with turbulent emotions puts a muffling gauze over the proceedings.  I wonder, in fact, if the whole story might have been improved by only including the human viewpoint.

Three stars.

The Lucky People, by Albert E. Cowdrey

Why stay hitched to three channels on the boob tube when you can watch the cannabalistic mutants that prey on your neighbors from the comfort of your own picture window?

Notable for being the first mention of Star Trek I've seen in print science fiction, it is a cute but frivolous tale.

Three stars.

The Stars Know, by Mose Mallette

A young ad exec, graduate of Dr. Ferthumlunger's 40-week handwriting analysis course, is convinced that his boss, the comely Lorna D., is in love with him.  How else to explain "the sex-latent capitals, the rounded n's and m's, the generous o's and a's, and the unmistakably yearning ascenders in late."

Never mind that the note which our hero has examined is an angry exhortation to get his work done on time.

The misunderstanding continues, with Lorna actually becoming infatuated with the exec, but said exec steadfastedly refuses to believe it, analysis of subsequent notes revealing (so he believes) that she isn't interested at all.  Of course, he doesn't actually read the contents of the notes.  He only looks at the handwriting.

What seems a silly story at first is actually, upon further analysis, an indictment of those who miss the forest for the trees: the mystics, numerologists, saucer enthusiasts, and what have you, who ignore the evidence and invent their own patterns to reinforce their beliefs.  It's really quite brilliant satire!

Or…perhaps I'm reading too much meaning into the thing.

Three stars.


by Gahan Wilson

Aperture in the Sky, by Theodore L. Thomas

Thomas' essays are usually not worth the single page they are written on.  This time, however, he's hit on a good'n: artificial satellites designed to occult radio sources for better measurement of their distance.  It sounds rather brilliant to me.

Four stars.

From a Terran Travel Folder, by Walter H. Kerr

Less successful is this one page program, I think advising aliens on the joy of eating people.  I read it a few times and did not find myself enjoying it.

Two stars.

He Kilt It with a Stick, by William F. Nolan

Then we hit the nadir of the issue.  The author of Logan's Run offers up a tale of a man who hates cats and does horrible things to them until they get their inevitable, macabre revenge.

Not only is this story cliché in the extreme, but if I never read another account of cruelty to cats, it'll be too soon.

One star.  For shame.

Wednesday, Noon, by Ted White

Quality returns with this short piece by Ted White.  When the rapture comes, the music may not be heavenly in origin, but it'll be compelling, all the same.  This story took a whopping three and a half years to be printed from the date of submission (latter 1964), but I'm glad it finally made it.  White has a real knack for living in his characters, conveying their sensory experience and internal monologues with visceral effectiveness.  Wilhelm's piece could have used his touch, I think.

It helps that White lives in New York, the setting of the story, and lived through that brutal summer when Martha Reeves' classic first hit the airwaves…

Four stars.

The Locator, by Robert Lory

Gerald Bufus, accountant, is meticulous to the extreme.  He also has a hobby: tracking the visitations of flying saucers to ensure he can one day be present at a landing.  Sadly, his overwhelming addiction to symmetry compells him to greet the alien ship at the exact center of their predicted arrival site.

Three stars.

I Have My Vigil, by Harry Harrison

The three human crewmembers of the first interstellar flight go mad in hyperspace, and presently, none are left alive aboard the vessel except the one robot steward, who mechanically goes through the motions of serving the dead humans.

The twist at the end is ambiguous: has the robot also gone insane?  Or is he actually a fourth crewmember, who has retreated behind a fictional metal shell in his own kind of insanity?

Four stars.

To Hell with the Odds, by Robert L. Fish

I love "deal with the Devil" stories, and this one, about a washed-up golfer who bargains to win this year's Open, is great all the way up to the end…where it flubs the finish.  The problem I have is the clumsy phrasing of his final wish (an attempt to get out of the deal, which of course backfires,) given that he had 18 holes to perfect it.

Three stars.

The Predicted Metal, by Isaac Asimov

The Good Doctor continues his series on the discovery of metals, this time recounting the creation of the Periodic Table.  It's a fine piece, but I feel as if it was recycled from his 1962 book, The Search for the Elements.

Four stars.

The Veiled Feminists of Atlantis, by Booth Tarkington

The last is a 40-year old piece.  Two scholars meet to discuss a legend of Atlantis in which the women not only win equality, but then fight a cataclysmic war with Atlantean men for the right to retain the distinction of their femininity–the veil.

Tarkington wrote the piece to poke a bit of fun at the war between the sexes that was waging in the 20s, whereby women had the temerity not only to demand the vote, but also to engage in male or female fashion and hobbies as they chose, and men were affronted by their cheek.

Interesting as an artifact, I suppose.  Three stars.

Summing up

All in all, a decent but not outstanding magazine this month.  And now onto something in an entirely different vein…


by Fiona Moore

At the outset of The Magical Mystery Tour, which premiered in black and white on Boxing Day but which was released in colour on 5 January this year, we are promised the “trip of a lifetime,” and, later on, we are assured that everyone is “having a lovely time.” Whether or not this includes the viewer is more open to question.

The Mystery Bus attempting to flee its critics.

The movie has the loose framing premise of Ringo Starr taking his Auntie Jessie on a Mystery Bus tour, in the company of the other Beatles, a few swinging hip types, an assortment of British pensioners who seem a little nonplussed by the proceedings, and The Courier, a Number Two figure who leads the tour assisted by Miss Winters and Alf the Driver. What follows is a series of short musical interludes featuring a selection of numbers from the eponymous album, interspersed with sketches that are a cargo-cult cross between At Last The 1948 Show and The Prisoner, which seem to miss the point of either.

There’s a sketch with a sergeant-major drilling the tour participants; a sort of school games’ day and car race around an airfield or test track (featuring Angelo Muscat, the Butler in The The Prisoner); a whirlwind romance between Auntie Jessie and a character named Buster Bloodvessel; a tent in a middle of a field that turns out to be bigger on the inside than on the outside. But no real sense of what all this is supposed to be saying to the audience.

Yes, but why?

The highlights of the film are definitely the musical interludes. “Flying”, when seen in colour, is actually rather beautiful (which is rather lost in the black and white version). There are also short films for “Blue Jay Way,” featuring George Harrison playing on a chalk-drawing piano, and “Fool on the Hill”, with Paul McCartney standing on, well, a hill. Everything really comes together, though, in “I Am the Walrus”, with the surreal costumes of the performers echoing the imagery of the song, and the Beatles all seem to be enjoying themselves. This is far from true of the other sketches, in which John and, in particular, George seem more than a little surly.

Everyone having a lovely time, apparently.

The film hit its nadir, for me, with a rather disgusting dream sequence of Auntie Jessie being served mountains of sloppy spaghetti by John Lennon in a restaurant, while the bus crew sit around half-naked drinking milk. Similarly peculiar was the decision to have a sequence where the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band perform their song “Death Cab for Cutie” in a strip club complete with stripper, watched by George and John. And the movie more or less ends right there, with that sequence going straight into a 1950s Hollywood-musical-style production of “Your Mother Should Know.”

I’d say this is definitely one for Beatles completists more than anything else.

Two out of Five stars.

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[July 26, 1967] We Got Some Kicks on Route 66 (the continuing saga of Vicki and Mel)

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by Victoria Lucas

Well, we’re here! Months have gone by, I know, since my last report to this newsletter about my usual shenanigans, damped last time by my mother’s death but buoyed by anticipating the journey my sweetie Mel and I just finished to New York City.

To me, NYC is “The” City, the literary and musical and cultural center on the East Coast that outshines even “The City” where Mel and I met and where I had lived for a few years, San Francisco. I salivated at the thought of working at a publishing house, going to concerts of new experimental music, and getting involved in the protests here against the Vietnam War.


Route 66

It was exciting, too, because I had never been east of Arizona, or indeed visited any other state except California, or any foreign country except Mexico. Now Mel and I are living in New York City and planning – in a year or two – to travel to Europe. On our way here we spent many hours on Route 66, and yes, and there were some “kicks,” such as going through the Petrified Forest, and eating at diners along the way, but Mel is the one who likes to drive. He will drive just about anywhere just to check it out. In this case there was a lot of the US to check out: from coast to coast.

To avoid getting lost, we visited our local AAA office and consulted with them about the best way to get to New York from our apartment in North Beach. After some deliberation, we asked for a TripTik that took us to Route 66 at Barstow via 101, 152, and 99. From there to Oklahoma City, our little spiral-bound book said, we could experience the historic highway, but the last leg to Chicago seemed a waste of time since we had no business there, so we dropped off 66 at OK City and followed 40 till we could pick up Highway 81 just east of Knoxville. Mel had never been in the south, so it was an adventure for both of us.

Aliens among them


Not that kind of alien.

Just a little anecdote about how alien it was to be in the south, even though we are both white and didn’t have to worry about where to sleep or eat as we tooled along in our green and white VW bus – nothing bad, just alien. We pulled into the parking lot of a hamburger joint – maybe somewhere in Tennessee (it’s all starting to melt together in the summer heat). It was evening and we were looking for a motel to spend the night, since our expenses were being paid by Mel’s company for whom he is now working (with a promotion) in NYC. We both ordered hamburgers. There were few condiments on the table, including salt and vinegar, but no ketchup or mustard. When the burgers arrived, we asked for ketchup.

The waitress looked at us as if we had just walked through a wall. “Ketchup?” she repeated, as if even the word were foreign to her. (Did she want it spelled “catsup”?) Yes, we reiterated that we wanted ketchup. She left and returned with a bottle of the red stuff. We were almost the only people in the place since it was after dinner time, and we heard a lot of giggling of the staff behind the counter. Mel and I looked at each other. In what corner of the world did we find ourselves that ketchup was an unknown and ridiculous accompaniment to a hamburger? This one, evidently.


Ketchup! (or is it Catsup!)

New York City turns out to be alien too, even though there are concerts (YES!), and we have joined something called LEMPA (Lower Eastside Mobilization for Peace Action–spelling out “lamp” in Spanish) to protest The (Vietnam) War.  The streets here in the Lower East Side where we found an apartment (we are saving for Europe) are full of trash, and parking is problematic because any car left on the street overnight is lacking something in the morning that it had had only the night before. Including our van. Watching the van out the window isn’t helpful, because what would we do if we saw someone stealing something? We hear screams at all hours of the day and night. We do not see any police near our apartment. We are looking for a place where we can park and leave the van without its being dismantled like other cars we see on the street, and that won’t be too expensive. Think want ads. Think New Jersey.

The first thing we did after getting Mel to work, finding a place to stay, and moving in, was visit our friends' pad and their business. They share an apartment as a little commune, and on opening the outer door a waft of patchouli incense, dog, and whatever they're cooking caressed our nostrils, with just a hint of grass (shhhh, don't tell anyone about the marijuana) not covered by the other odors, even the incense sticks.

The dog is a St. Bernard puppy. Ideal for a teensy New York City apartment, right? With the dog in the room and more than a couple of people, even in the living room, it's hard to maneuver around it. Its paws are huge for its size, indicating that it's going to be a much bigger adult. They are paper-training it, and it's a very congenial dog. They have that going for them. And they know the "Mamas and the Papas" and have a business relationship with them of a sort I'm not prepared to disclose.


That is a puppy?!?

Their legitimate business, The Bead Game, used to be a pharmacy. There are hundreds of little drawers lining the walls that – up to the day they occupied it after acquiring it – still held herbs and drugs. Now the drawers hold beads of every shape and variety imaginable. Of course I had to buy some. Everybody needs beads, yes?


Sgt. Pepper & friends

And everybody needs Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Ask me how much I love it and whether we brought our record player! I don't know why I love such a peculiar eclectic mix: I don't like Dixieland, blues, soul, gospel, or most popular music, but I love John Cage, The Beatles, Morton Subotnik, Pauline Oliveros, Van Morrison, Jefferson Airplane, The Mamas and the Papas, Jimi Hendrix, The Doors, Moody Blues, and a bunch of other, less popular bands. Why? Who knows!

New York The Movie


A few blocks from our apartment

When Mel's not working, we're not home listening to music and cooking, visiting friends, etc., we go for walks, sometimes with our friends, sometimes without. We learned not to take notice of the people living in cardboard boxes, the shit on the sidewalk, and to laugh at the evidence of what we started calling "The Mad Pisser." You see, we would get to a corner and there would be a puddle of urine there. We would look around the corner, into the street, back in the direction from which we came–and see no one. No dogs. No humans. Whodunnit!?

But in general there are so many people: people with signs, people without signs, people with and without dogs, adults with children, children without adults. We learned to look at it all as if it were a movie set. This isn't real–not the people living in boxes, not the small gang of children running down the sidewalk and tugging on my purse strap (just in case I was holding it lightly), not the man with dark skin sitting on a park bench as if it were his home porch swing and addressing us as "dude."

Be cool till next time

Stay tuned for the further adventures of Mel & Vicki as we cruise the streets of the Lower East Side evenings and weekends, shower frequently, use pounds of Gold Bond powder to keep the sweat from soaking our clothes, and get together with friends and friends of friends to (smoke dope and . . . ) –oh! I didn’t say that, did I? Not aloud. Not in print! (Speaking of print, we read the East Village Other and the street handouts from somebody’s mimeograph.)


The East Village Other newspaper

And of course I need a job. Wish me luck!



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[June 18, 1967] Sgt. Pepper's Anti-War Military Rock Uniform

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by Gwyn Conaway


Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band was released on May 27th, 1967 and has kicked off the album art era as well as bolstering the influence of psychedelic and progressive rock. This album is the flag ship of the Summer of Love.

The Beatles’ eighth album, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, was released two and a half weeks ago, and it continues to top the North American and European charts with no end in sight! The album is a fascinating journey from beginning to end, with a story woven into every aspect of the experience. This includes, of course, the costumes.

The album’s cover will live on in notoriety for decades, I’m sure. It’s colorful, optimistic, and draws from a rich history of live performance and influential figures. More than that, though, it’s a call to arms. Paul McCartney was inspired by Edwardian military bands for the title track, a concept which bled into the rest of the production, and when a theme such as this permeates an entire collection organically, it often suggests that the creators hit on a message of timely significance. With the Summer of Love upon us, The Beatles are setting themselves up as battlefield drummers leading an era of peace and optimism against modern warfare and exploitative economics.

A bold assumption on my part, I know. Let me convince you of my point of view.


The Beatles in their Sgt. Pepper uniforms, designed by May Routh.

On the cover of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, the four band members are wearing neon color officers’ uniforms inspired by the military bands of WWI and standing behind an upright marching drum. These imaginative costumes were designed by May Routh as a celebration and a challenge. The celebration is the color palette, a symbol of mind-altering psychedelic drugs, and the materials, all shine and showmanship. The challenge, by comparison, is the blatant lack of attention to ranks and insignias. All four band members wear symbols of rank and power, but not in any way that pays homage to actual militaristic order. This is a conscious choice meant to commandeer the power and authority of wartime for a counter-culture defined by its vehement opposition to war.

At first, I thought this could be a direct mockery of the military, but then I considered that drum again, standing upright with the band turned in towards it. For over four thousand years, from China to the Americas, drums have been used on the battlefield as a way to keep in step, to make advances on the field, and to work in sync regardless of visibility. As recently as WWI, soldiers would time the reloading of their weapons to the beat of a drum. These brave drummers were often the first target of the opposing army. In the modern media, this analogy holds true: the monoliths of youth culture simultaneously lead the charge with the beat of their music and are subject to intense media scrutiny.

It's not a huge leap to see that The Beatles are calling on the world to embrace this new age, to fight back against injustice, war, and prejudice. Whether they’d planned to from the beginning, their message has become: Reload your hearts to the beat of our drum. The irony of using a militant image to convey an anti-war message has made their point of view far sharper, and is inspiring others to wield their visibility and influence – their drums, if you will – to the same end.


On the left, see a hussar in uniform astride his horse. The garment pictured center is a hussar's pelisse of the late 19th century, customarily worn over one shoulder as a mantle rather than a jacket. Note that Hendrix wears his pelisse as an open jacket and bare-chested.

Jimi Hendrix has also adorned himself in militaristic garments after his own experiences as a soldier. Hendrix has chosen the image of a royal hussar. These cavalry officers were prized for their unparalleled effectiveness on the battlefield for much of the past millennium, but disbanded after WWI in which they faced insurmountable odds. Regardless of being obsolete in the face of weapons of mass destruction, the hussars continue to be a symbol of militaristic supremacy and sophistication. By wearing an officer’s pelisse open over a bare chest, Hendrix supplants the power of the hussar and assumes their authority in defining himself as a sex symbol, an effortless master on the guitar, and icon of the Summer of Love. He challenges the role of The Beatles as the generals of the New Age while leading his own troops onto the battlefield of cultural change.


Left, a drummer boy of the 1st Scots Guard. Flaunting the same rules of rigmarole as The Beatles and Jimi Hendrix, Mick Jagger is wearing the uniform as if it's a casual garment.

The boldest (or perhaps the most blunt) symbol of the anti-war, peace-loving army, is Mick Jagger, who is also this year wearing the uniform coat of a drummer boy of the 1st Scots Guard. Let’s remember the call to arms in the drum of the Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album cover. Their choices of fashion and costume aren’t coincidental. These rock stars are gathering their army to affect change in society.

They also reach beyond the military, looking to symbols of wealth and sex, redefining upperclass fantasies as symbols of equality and empathy. They dress in frock coats and cravats rather than suits and ties. The Hippie Movement even denies the use of modern notions, such as snaps and zippers, in favor of simple cords or buttons.


Jean-Honoré Fragonard, The Shepherdess, ca. 1750/52. This is a pastorale genre painting of the French court which glorifies the countryside life without acknowledging their struggles. The genre of painting is now a symbol of how tone-deaf the French courts had become to their people's strife.


Marie Antoinette's le Petit Hameau on the grounds of Versailles.

As a historian, I see a direct correlation between these choices and the pastorals of Rococo France in the 18th century (back when buttons were fairly modern technology). Before the French Revolution, the nobility romanticized a countryside, working class life, glorifying shepherdesses and minstrels, farmers and hunters. Marie Antoinette’s le Petit Hameau is the perfect example: an extremely expensive designer cottage based on rural French homes, in which she held exclusive soirees and fed impeccably groomed farm animals as an escape from the pressures of the royal court. Fashion and portraits played a big role in this blind fantasy of the nobility as well.


Jimi Hendrix often wears stripes, frothy necklines, cravats, and even a carmagnole jacket. The carmagnole was a symbol of the French Revolution. Striped pantaloons and a loose cravat were also symbols of the Sans Culottes (or anti-nobility) movement of the late 18th century. Interestingly, this type of cravat was popular in France because of the Battle of Steenkerque, in which French troops were taken by surprise and had no time to tie their cravats properly. The French won the battle, making a disheveled cravat immensely popular thereafter.


Left, Jimi Hendrix in a carmagnole, stripes, and frothy neckline. Right, Mick Jagger and John Lennon bedecked in frock coats inspired by the habit à la française, menswear of the French courts in the 18th century.

How does that relate to the music scene of the Summer of Love? It’s no different than using militaristic imagery to disseminate an anti-war message and ridicule the institution. These musicians that speak directly to the youth movement are pulling down images of traditional wealth, power, and escapism to the level of working class people. The intent is to break down the barriers of social propriety and offer an alternative to the machine of tradition. They fully believe that their message of equality and empathy is more powerful than money or gender or race or religion. They are anti-wealth, and so equalize the symbols of wealth. They are anti-corporate, and so dishevel men's suits and grow their hair long. They are anti-division, and so adopt softer fabrics, lace, and makeup to challenge the definition of masculinity and femininity.

Mark my words, a cultural revolution is underway, and the generals at the forefront of the war know how to use the establishment’s symbols against them. Extremely narrow and rigid views on issues such as gender, race, and national identity are going to be challenged in the years to come. What an exciting and volatile time! Now excuse me while I flip my album over.




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