Stanley Kubrick, The Trashmen and Robert A. Heinlein: The Unholy Trinity of the Late 20th Century; or, How I Learned To Begin Worrying And Fear The Bird

As I walk along, I wonder
A-what went wrong with our love
A love that was so strong.
--Del Shannon

Teen angel, can you hear me?
Can you see me up above,
And am I still your only love?
--Mark Dinning

A-well, everybody's heard
About The Bird.
--The Trashmen

American pop music changed in 1963; everyone knows that. But not everyone knows why.

Your first thought is doubtless The Beatles arriving at La Guardia airport, or their televised appearance on The Ed Sullivan show, or some confused muddling of the three (hey, it was forty years ago, I'm not criticising). Your second thought is almost certainly that I (me, not you) have my facts wrong, that it really is The Beatles that I'm thinking of, really. It's not likely you're thinking of some surf band from Minneapolis (I'm sorry, where?) and their bizarre, one-off hit recorded in the cold, shell-shocked month of December, 1963, full of weird voices and weirder words.

But things had changed, changed utterly and forever by the time a small-time band of wanna-be surf guitarists from a city by the Great Inland Seas made their way out of a small recording studio, blinking in the sudden sunlight, backed by payola, greed and young wonder.

Minneapolis, Bob Dylan's university career and that dog. songs aside, hasn't been known for it's centrality to Rock!. No wonder; being smack dab in the middle (geographically, demographically, politically and totally) is not what Rock! is all about.

But novelty sells, sometimes.

Jerry Ivers, despite having held down the job competently since spring of '61, wasn't the greatest mid-morning DJ at WIXH ("Minneapolis's Rock'n'Roll Home!") by anyone's estimation. Oh, he had the voice and the patter down, and he could press the buttons he needed, figuratively, literally, whatever, to get people to listen to WIXH. But hell, anyone with the right larynx and two fingers could do that. Whatever eldritch power it was made a man/woman compulsively listenable, he was missing. He knew it, too; partly out of self-recognition and partly 'cos his boss let him know regularly just how much Jerry didn't fit into the scheme of things there at good ol' WIXH.

But he did have some few things going for him. One, he had a couple contacts, promoters and industry guys upstream a link or two from himself, guys that couldn't help but latch onto him Just In Case (You Never Know). Two, he had a radio show and the accompanying ears. Three, he had access (Legitimate? Sanctioned? Who the hell cared?) to a small recording studio the station ran on the side, even came with some half-competent engineers and mikes that wouldn't quite make your ears bleed. Four, a disappointingly stolid, completely non-melodramatic realization of what he'd have to do to get big: ride someone else to the top, duh. Put 'em together and whaddaya got? A wanna-be record producer desperately waiting to happen. Rock! has got by on considerably less.

July of '63 was when Jerry realized that his other options (which basically consisted of Work Hard and/or Suck Up To The Boss) were petering out, so he'd better get serious. He started to spend his free time looking around Minneapolis looking for Someone to Happen with. He parlayed his few assets (op cit.) into a small reputation as someone who was, you know, interested. Bands invited him to shows. He got put on guestlists (plus one, never used; he didn't want the distraction, he told himself, but he liked the compliment). Managers even smaller fry than he was handed him their pasteboard cards, carefully rubber-stamped in their basements while yelling at their charges to keep rehearsing. He lived for three months without buying more than 25% of his drinks; not bad, to someone else, to someone not so determined to show everyone not so much What For as I Can Play Too.

Minneapolis isn't that big now, and it wasn't that big then, not in the social sense anyway. Things get heard; rumours circulate; tales travel; eventually, anything that is out there needing to be heard gets heard by someone, maybe (probably) even someone useful. After all, your man is only a couple, maybe three connections away in a place like that. Case in point: Our DJ got himself pointed in the direction of The Trashmen, got himself pointed toward the small club bottom of some pool hall somewhere where they were playing, got himself pointed toward the stage right at the spot where the crappy PA sounded good, actually. After that he figured out on his own what to do; he wasn't completely incompetent, after all.

And hey, let's give Ivers his due: it wasn't intuitively obvious, even in hindsight, what the hell the appropriate reaction should be. Our Band had this sound that was so weird, so out of place, so completely apart from That Which Had Spawned It, that it was like they'd been dropped by helicopter by some weird-ass government relocation program gone subtly wrong. Surf? Minnesota? Weirdness incarnate. Money out of that? Long shot, boy, long shot, and stick to horses for long shots; there's a certain self-respect allowed racetrack failure, at least.

But he went up, went up and talked to them afterward, bought them drinks over and above his 25% allowance, talked about Studio Time and Radio Play and National Top Ten; timeless blandishments even if enhanced by technology and specified by medium, enticements that have stayed the same over millennia uncounted: You've Got Something; I Can Help; People Will Notice You.

They said they'd think about it and they did; for a good hour and a half they kept Ivers sweating by the bar. Then they said all right then, let's do this thing. We've got the perfect song.

The recording session in December 1963 should've been forgotten. It went wrong from day zero, and had saner minds been in control we might never have heard "Surfin Bird". But things changed, snapped and turned, and it's a wonder the world has continued as well as it has since.

For a start the guitarist had the Great Wracking Coughing Flu, and could barely hold on to his plectrum he was so weak from the constant demands that he have more chicken soup. For another The President (now known, in the wake of the events of November 21, by title alone) had just been killed, for god's sake, and not two weeks before. Time for a surf record? Why not just dance on The President's grave, try to kick out the eternal flame on his tombstone?

For a final, most important third of all: the song. The song was wrong, that's why. Ever heard "Papa Oom Mow Mow" by The Rivingtons? What about "The Bird's The Word", same guys? Of course not. They were throwaway little songs from a throwaway little band that both fell helplessly from the top 100 down through where they don't even keep track of how little you're selling, like someone just yanked the Mastercard Icarus used to pay for his flight. So let me get this straight, you want to take two songs you barely ever heard of except as cautionary tales and put them together? You wanna do this 'cos you're a surf band from Minneapolis? You wanna lay down a while, I should call a doctor?

Something told Ivers he should trust them on this one, though opinion has differed since on what exactly that something was. He was close, he knew, and he didn't want to throw it back in Fate's face by telling them they were crazy. So when they came back to the bar 90 minutes later and said We Got This Song, he said sure, sounds great, when can you guys cut? Three weeks? Sounds good. Here's my card. I'll tell you where and when to show up.

Three weeks later JFK was dead, the winter brought in a host of up-and-coming influenza viruses, and the music wasn't looking great either. That National Top Ten of previous mention was sewn up by four guys who persuaded a nation that haircuts were round, who made Minneapolis far not just from New York and Los Angeles but from England now too, like the city's not got enough problems already. The studio'd had three of its best mikes stolen in by an engineer who hadn't had his keys taken away before getting fired. And Ivers kept having these weird-assed nightmares that woke him up all the time.

He's out, in these dreams, somewhere in Minneapolis, walking around late at night and thinking that there's Something he should be looking for: a car, a friend, a bar, he's not sure, but it's important that he find It. He keeps looking around, here, there, streets he's hardly been even in his multitudinous walking-around-looking-for-bands days/nights, and he still can't find It. And then he realizes he's not alone: not not alone in the sense that it's a city of x hundred thousand, but not alone in the Oh Shit, I'm Not Alone sense, the sense of there's someone nearby you'd rather read about, tomorrow, in the paper, having been near someone else. Only he starts to think that this is a Something else, comes to realize that that's a heck of a thought, how's that for insight, and he'd love to pursue it somewhere else and, while he's making wishes, he'd love It -- the Something he was looking for and now realizes he wants no part of -- to pursue someone else. The dreams invariably end with the standard scream that leaves him utterly unable to think about the cliche of it all, he's so scared.

An ambitious man would've quit. A crazy man would've just got frustrated, maybe hit someone and got locked up. Ivers wasn't crazy that way, he was very ambitious, and he kept himself together and The Band going until they were ready to record.

He'd arranged to be in the studio all night; he didn't know how long it might take, new band and producer and all, so err on the side of caution right? The good engineer was there, c/o some granular and/or folded incentive. The boss was screwing his mistress for the weekend. The band was here, even had their instruments. So what if there was a bit of flu in the air? They just had to last one night, right?

He got them going, set up a bit of a table on the side if interests started to flag -- just a precaution, that's all, just a back up, just a test of the Emergency Recording System, you'll be alerted if it's for real. The mix was set up, the run-through run through, and then the red light said RECORDING and they played.

And it sucked.

Well, okay, maybe not that bad, but not great, either, you know? Just a little shy of what Ivers had seen potential for back in the poolhall. He figured it was maybe nerves, or maybe the flu, or maybe just another try was needed, so he tried again. They tried again. Takes one through twenty-two passed slowly and things were beginning to...fade. Time to try the Emergency Recording System, right? So Ivers handed out straws all round, let them try again. Closer, definitely closer...

By this time it was midnight. The 'mines and 'aine had definitely stirred up something in everyone there -- the band, the engineer, the producer. They kept speeding up their medley, cranking it up beyond the placid original version that'd vanished underneath Icarus years before. Ivers began to see how this would work, how it might take another night or two like this but hey, he could have the studio cheap if not free. It was a little disappointing he couldn't nail it the first time, but hey.

Hey.

"Hey, what was that?"

Those were the words out of everyone after take thirty, when all of a sudden the drummer passed out right into his snare drum with a single paradiddle. He was pale, twitching, and had his eyes rolled back in his head once they pulled it up to check whether to call a doctor or a lawyer. Some kind of seizure? Maybe, though none of the other band members had seen this before. Oh fuck, what if he's ODing? He was --

He was awake. And he was insisting that he sing this one.

Q: What's the last thing your drummer says to you?
A: "Hey guys, I've got some songs."
--Musician's joke

Now feature this, ladies and germs, the most joked-about member of a rock band coming to from some kinda fit and insisting, after thirty takes, that he sing the song that's gonna make them huge if it doesn't get fucked up.

They couldn't stop him. He wouldn't shut up. He had this weird look now that at least one of his eyes had mostly rolled frontwards again into his head, and he kept talking a mile a minute. The 'mines&'aine were clearly a little too much.

But that weird look was kind of convincing, in an I-don't-want-to-find-out-what-he'll-do sort of way, and they let him have his way.

Ironically, it really did seem like the safest thing to do at the time.