Lately, I've been listening to songs of the 1950's and 60's on Sirius XM radio - a perk in the car I recently bought. I've come across so many one-hit wonders and short-lived performers. Songwriters housed in the Brill Building had offices near to music publishers, agents, and others who moved and shook the music world. By 1962, this building located at 1619 Broadway housed 165 music businesses. Songwriters we remember like Lieber and Stoller, Mann and Weil, Goffen and King (yes, Carole King) had offices there and produced hit after hit. Who sang these hits was of little consequence. If you could carry a tune, you could be tapped to turn one of these songs into a hit. If you were lucky, you had a successful album around that hit. A few vocal groups and teen idols (Frankie Avalon, Bobby Vee, The Platters, etc) had careers that actually spanned a few years, but pop music was pretty much a revolving door for teen-aged artists. Until...
The British Invasion hit. I remember hearing my first Beatles song on the radio. It was "I Want to Hold Your Hand, and I heard it on my mother's table top black bakelite AM radio. What was this? It was a revolutionary happy sound that made you want to get up and jump around. As a "rate-a-record" teen on American Bandstand might have said, "It has a great beat and I can dance to it." The Beatles took the U.S. music industry by storm, and in that storm came the Rolling Stones, the Animals, Kinks, Zombies, and ...well, the beat goes on. The music of the Beatles changed and grew. We changed and (maybe) grew. By the latter part of the 60's, the mantra of youth embracing the hippie idea of people power, free love, and following nature was "don't trust people over 30." Those old fogies and farts had no clue what was going on. All they knew was how to make guns and send boys over to Viet Nam to be killed. "All You Need is Love," don't you know. We were happy living in "Strawberry Fields Forever."
And we have been. An editorial cartoon on the op-ed pages of The Boston Globe shows a bubble with lyrics from the Beatles' song "Help" and two medical professionals looking down at the floor. One says to the other, "McCartney's fallen again." Yes, Paul McCartney is 70. Not only is he 70, he's still singing, and unlike some of the throwback artists who are touring today, he never stopped. Also unlike the sign hanging in the cartoon, he's not living in an assisted living facility. He's touring and entertaining and still writing songs. And we are still listening, attending concerts, and buying McCartney's music. The life span of the musical artist has now become nearly infinite. Bands like The Rolling Stones and Aerosmith sell out in minutes. So does Barry Manilow. Bon Jovi, can fill football stadiums, and Bruce Springsteen has added a second night to his appearance at Boston's Fenway Park. These artists are not just getting older, they are getting better, producing new material and still surprising us with their ability to entertain with energetic, engaging shows.
We may not have trusted anyone over 30 (which ended when WE turned 30, 40...) but out kids and their kids are listening to and enjoying these artists who made their debuts before many of our kids were born. My daughter was born in the "Mandy" era and is as big a Manilow fan as I am. We go to concerts and see multiple generations of families coming together, all smiling and singing along. Everyone knows the words. One of my most incredible and uplifting experiences was seeing 11,000 people of all ages standing up and singing "Philadelphia Freedom" at an Elton John concert a few years ago. I thought the roof was going to come off the place.
Observe, though, that these artists all share something in common - something I believe has led to their longevity. They are all songwriters. They are no longer just picked off the street to be commodified by putting their voices to something someone else wrote and conceived. They have put their hearts and souls into creating the music they deliver. So while I love the songs written by all those Brill Building writers, thank them from bringing pop music to the forefront, and enjoy re-experiencing the better parts of my youth by singing along with the 50's on 5 and 60's on 6, it's even better to tune into Rhapsody and hear the brand new album by The Beach Boys! After 50 years, three of the original members of the band have put out one of their best albums ever and selling out concerts as fast as they can book them. If you haven't yet listened to That's Why God Made the Radio, put on your flip-flops, grab a tall cold one, settle into your favorite hammock or Adirondack chair, and "turn on, tune in, and drop out" for a while.
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