8/10/23
Newsletter #423
The Crack of Dawn
I like to know when things change, and the changes that they cause. The beginnings and ends of eras, if you will. In my movie, If I Had a Hammer, I chose February 9, 1964 as the change of an era. The Beatles appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show, which caused the folk movement to die.
Or, when did rock & roll exactly begin? There are those who purport that rock & roll began in 1956 when Elvis Presley exploded on the scene. There is a very good TV documentary from 1987 called Elvis ’56 that takes you through that single year with Elvis. At the beginning of the year he was nobody; at the end of the year he was the biggest star in the world. But that’s not where rock began.
The year before in 1955 the movie Blackboard Jungle came out and it begins with a punch with Bill Haley & His Comets singing Rock Around the Clock. Bill Haley had already been around a while, although he was Bill Haley & the Wagon Wheels until then. What made him change his wagon wheels to comets? Perhaps it was Little Richard’s Tutti Frutti or Chuck Berry’s Maybellene, both from 1955. But when did the actual change happen?
There are those who say that the first rock & roll song is Fats Domino’s The Fat Man from 1949, but it’s not; that’s a boogie-woogie song. Or possibly it’s Ike Turner’s Rocket 88 from 1951, but I don’t think that’s rock and neither did Ike Turner. And what is rock & roll anyway? R&B with an attitude? Or is it a cry of rebellion? Young people telling old people to fuck off. There is clearly a connection made in Blackboard Jungle between rock & roll and juvenile delinquency. Then Elvis exploded on the scene in 1956, with his sneer and his lascivious hip gyrations, that by the end of 1956 were so disturbing that he had to be censored or the youth of America would go insane, and that was the real birth of rock & roll.
Therefore, I think the moment of rock & roll’s inception can be pinpointed to the first time Elvis was censored – where they only photographed him from the waist up – which was on the Ed Sullivan Show at the end of 1956. However, if you watch the movie, Elvis ’56, Elvis made a half dozen TV appearances before Ed Sullivan, on shows like the Milton Berle Show, where he was not censored, and you feel like you’re seeing something you’re not supposed to see. There’s a lot more footage of young Elvis the pelvis letting go — and it’s incredible — which once they censored him, they stopped showing.
So, when did the “modern world” begin anyway? The modern world can be defined in many ways, of course. Was it when people threw off the oppressive, though cherished, restrictions of the Victorian era? From high starched collars and floor-length dresses to letter sweaters and skirts to the knees. An obvious demarcation is the 1890s to the 1900s, which is the basis of Orson Welles’ The Magnificent Ambersons. A change from old world to the new world, exemplified by automobiles.
Another specific moment of change from old to new was on the night of May 29, 1913. At the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris, Igor Stravinky’s ballet, Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rite of Spring), premiered. With the dancers dressed in flesh-colored bodystockings causing them to appear naked, and set to Stravinky’s throbbing, primal music, with erotic choreography, it really seemed like the naked dancers were really fucking, which caused a riot. Seats were torn out of the theater. Fist fight erupted. Duels were made.
This was a much bigger deal than, say, Michael Jackson moonwalking to Billie Jean. People got so upset at the Rite of Spring that there are those who seriously believe this ballet/riot led in some way to World War I, fifteen months later.
Dawn’s just breaking, or cracking, or snapping, or possibly even popping.