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"Something," The Beatles |
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There is nothing more glamorous to me than the rock's reigning royal couples of the 1960s.
"I love you, but quietly."
 Sammy Juste & Micky Dolenz
Part of it, I think, is the cultural glamour attributed to the 1960s in general: the patina of glossy mythology attributed to what was in actuality a harsh decade softened by its enduring pop culture, romanticized by the black-and-white turned color footage of the first celebrity nightclub hangouts, swooning fans at concerts, paparazzi shots of Tahitian honeymoons and London courthouse weddings. There is a star-crossed quality to transatlantic love. There is an unattainable quality to the 1960s, this sense that it was a swirling era of magic and change that will not come again in any of our lifetimes, if ever again, simply because were such a chance to arise, it would be compared to the 1960s: and come up short.
"Being so close to him was electrifying."
 Chad & Jill Stuart
And then there is the glamour of those 1960s rock'n'roll lovers themselves -- the most beautiful men and women I've ever seen, and they just look different than people do today. Lighter. More pensive. More in love. Their faces seem to fit together better (if I could look like I were from the 1960s, I would jump at the chance in a heartbeat). Maybe it was the excitement of the style revolution: letting down your long straight hair, being one of the first (or the first, Jean Shrimpton!) to wear a miniskirt. Everything is commonplace now, it's all been done, we only have left to copy the styles of the past and remake only their small revolutions -- the big revolutions have been had. The small revolutions have been had. We have innovation now, but we don't take advantage. We only retool, not rethink. If you look into the faces of the beautiful 1960s, those minds are always racing, spinning, tripping a million ideas, new ideas. "I met [him]... and then I went comatose and I was captured and
spellbound from here to eternity because he was so real
he was unreal."  Marianne Faithfull & Mick JaggerI wonder if a part of the allure is its tragedy: so much youth and beauty so old and destroyed now. Or dead. Reading the passages about death of Gram Parsons in I'm With The Band reduced me to tears -- and I don't even like most of the tragically beautiful dead from Pamela Des Barres' California: "I was making a shirt for some record producer when the phone shook me from my buttonhole stitch. It was Michele Myer with the news that Gram Parsons had been found dead in Joshua Tree. I felt a dull thud somewhere inside myself and started to bawl... Gram had gotten thick and clumsy, like a puffy old man, way before his time. He wasn't quite twenty-seven when he OD'd in his favorite spot in the desert... [he] died in the turquoise Naugahyde chair looking out the window... I listened to Gram's pain every time he sang, and I felt it cut into me like a sliver of sharp ice, making me feel stuff I didn't know was down in there... his beautiful hands dangling at his sides like forgotten flowers." "When Jim Morrison died, I flummoxed around wondering, what was it all for anyway?? Had he served his purpose, or what? Was I serving any purpose? Was there a purpose to serve?"
"Miss Christine, GTO, the Dr. Seuss character of the group, died a tragic death alone in a hotel room in Boston. ... Her mascara had coursed down her cheeks in a splendid design..."
"Ah, the frailty of legends."
 Paul McCartney & Jane Asher
Looking at Keith Richards or Pete Townshend or Brigitte Bardot today, thinking about Jimi Hendrix and Keith Moon and Sharon Tate, makes me wonder: where will today's rockstars and beauties be in fifty years? I can't imagine their legends enduring as it stands, but what will happen to little Nick Jonas, crying on stage that in just a little bit longer, he'll be fine; the apparent new Eddie Vedder (according to Rolling Stone)? Joe and Taylor, more likely but lesser Trace and Hanna -- will she write a book one day about how beautiful it was to love him once upon a time? How tragically will Miley fall? How much harder can Britney be pushed? Lindsay and Chris have both already broken, not so beautifully as stars once did, their hands don't dangle like flowers but like deli meat, useless and heavy. Who will be the next beautifully broken...?
"Fame" is too easy today, that's why there are no legends. "Fame" is not the goal: respect, endurance, change, innovation, mythology and beauty, those are the goals. Fame is a popular MySpace page.
   George Harrison & Pattie Boyd"Will you marry me? And if you won't marry me, will you have dinner with me tonight?" There is something breathtakingly stomach-turning about the absurd perfection of 1960s rock'n'roll romances. None of them lasted.
I think they could have, and in becoming the epitome of romance... they did. They are, in their own way, the most enduring portrait of love. |
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