In 1959, twenty-five year old Jeanine Deckers was coming off a broken engagement when she found the family she was seeking: the Fichermont convent in Belgium.
Jeanine Decker’s Singing Nun album cover
Singing Nun Jeanine Deckers
Sister Smile
The reclusive Dominican order in Fichermont convent permitted Jeanine Deckers to bring her guitar with her. As, Sister Luc-Gabrielle, she wanted to use her musical talents to raise funds for the order. That is the quick story of “Dominique.” That is the happy beginning to a sad story ending.
Singing Nun Jeanine Deckers
Dawn of US Beatlemania
In the twilight of December 7, 1963 the sun was about to rise on American Beatlemania, but Soeur Sourie’s “Dominique” was both Billboard’s #1 single and album. The single remained at #1 for all of December. The album remained at the top spot until February 15, 1964. Less than a week after the Ed Sullivan showcased the Beatles, their “Meet the Beatles” album deposed the Singing Nun.
As a reclusive convent Jeanine Decker remained apart from the busy outside world. Such may be the right idea: isolation from the the world’s selfishness can make life simpler and allow productivity. World fame found Jeanine Decker and removed that isolation. She found some happiness outside the Order’s strict rules. She fell in love with Annie Pécher, a novice nun. And Annie Pécher fell in love with Jeanine Decker.
Jeanine Deckers and Annie Pécher
Singing Nun Jeanine Deckers
Leaves
In 1966, they left the convent to live together.
Decker’s financial success brought tax troubles. Once apart from the convent, the profits that the song had given the order became Decker’s responsibility. Though she tried to pursue a secular recording career, her Catholic fan base lost interest in the lack of a religious habit, her living with another woman, and her praise of birth control.
Determined to live her new life, Deckers even wrote a song, Sister Smile Is Dead, (reminds me of Dylan’s “Maggie’s Farm.” )
In 1982 she released a disco version of Dominique
Singing Nun Jeanine Deckers
Open school
In 1983, she and Pécher opened a school for autistic children. It failed financially.
Their lives, filled with addiction and despair, the two women took their own lives on March 29, 1985.
In her part of the note left behind, Pécher wrote, “We do suffer really too much… We have no more place in life, no ideal except God, but we can’t eat that….We go to eternity in peace. We trust God will forgive us. He saw us both suffer and he won’t let us down.”
Headline announcing Jeanine Deckers and Annie Pecher’s death.
It is an extraordinary Rolling Stones bookend: December 6, 1968 and December 6, 1969. The Stones released Beggars Banquet on the former date. The album was a return to a more rock sound than the previous Satanic Majesty’s Request of 1967.
The more popular the band, the more it seemed to attract media criticism and the band rewarded the critique with more to criticize. The first cover, the cover that the record companies immediately dismissed, was a dirty bathroom wall full of graffiti. It was always a Rolling Stones banquet of needling their detractors.
rejected cover for Beggars Banquet
A year later was Altamont.
Rolling Stones Altamont Banquet
Rolling Stones Tour
After nearly two years off the road, the Rolling Stones first show for their 1969 American tour was on November 7 in Fort Collins, CO at the Moby Gymnasium. It was the first of 16 stops in 22 days and the first of 23 shows as some dates had two shows. One of those shows included the Ed Sullivan Show on November 23.
…and then came the idea for a free concert. Not a new one for them as in July they’d given a free show in London’s Hyde Park. The concert was a success, an entirely peaceful event financed and filmed by Granada Television.
Rolling Stones Altamont Banquet
Discordant Echos of Woodstock
Free Concert
1969. The year of so many festivals crowned with the Woodstock Music and Art Fair. And exactly one year after the Stone’s BeggarsBanquet release, it was time for Woodstock’s odd uncle: the Altamont Free Concert, at the Altamont Speedway in Livermore, CA.
There had been criticism of ticket prices for the Stones’ concerts and the idea of giving free concert, a la the many that had happened for years by San Francisco bands, had an appeal.
At that time, Sam Cutler managed the Stones. When the idea of a free concert began, Cutler visited the Dead in bucolic Novato, the rural spot the Dead spent much or their time. Cutler states that the idea emanated from Grateful Dead manager Rock Scully. Like old times at the Golden Gate State Park’s free concerts, the Stones would join the Dead and the Airplane there.
But…
Golden Gate was unavailable (a Chicago Bears–San Francisco 49ers football game at Kezar Stadium, located in Golden Gate Park, made that venue impractical). The venue was then changed to the Sears Point Raceway. And when that site fell through, Altamont Speedway was chosen.
Dead Influence
Owsley Stanley ran the sound console. Betty Cantor and Bob Matthews, also part of the Dead family, recorded the event using an Ampex MM1000‘s 16-track 2-inch tape recorder that they’d used to make the groundbreaking album, Live/Dead.
Also involved were the Diggers, a San Francisco-based collective who, in their words, combined street theater, anarcho-direct action, and art happenings in their social agenda of creating a Free City. Their most famous activities revolved around distributing Free Food every day in the Park, and distributing “surplus energy” at a series of Free Stores (where everything was free for the taking.)
Hells Angels
The Hell’s Angels were also involved. Who invited them, what their purported role was, and how were they compensated are still questions that have several proposed answers.
Two days
Construction began on December 4, just two days before the event and we all know how prepared Bethel, NY was with only two weeks to prepare there. For example, lights were scheduled to be attached to towers but the lights never arrived. There was no real divide between the stage and the audience. That space was controlled by the Angels.
A 2019 New Yorker article reported that rock critic Greil Marcus, who was then in his mid-twenties, got there early in the morning. “I went right to the front and sat down with the person I’d come with,” he told writer Sasha Frere-Jones. “It felt perfectly safe, except for acid casualties, and then the Angels, but people were unfriendly, territorial, selfish—just a weird reversal of Woodstock, where I’d been just a few months before.
He added, “Four or five plainclothes Alameda County sheriffs stood around backstage, their weapons in their holsters. After intervening in one of the early fights between the Hells Angels and fans, they took note of how thoroughly outnumbered they were, and thereafter ceded the field to the Angels.”
Also [from Wikipedia]: At one point Jefferson Airplane…Marty Balin is knocked out by a Hells Angel; Paul Kantner in response: “Hey, man, I’d like to mention that the Hells Angels just smashed Marty Balin in the face, and knocked him out for a bit. I’d like to thank you for that.” To which a Hells Angel sitting on stage grabs a microphone, and replies: “You’re talking to my people. Let me tell you what’s happening. You, man, you’re not happening!”
That violence, captured in the film Gimmie Shelter by by Albert and David Maysles and Charlotte Zwerin , shows how attempts to control the crowd failed. What happened? Wherever that answer lays Hell’s Angel Alan Passaro stabbed spectator Meredith Hunter, Jr to death in a melee.
Rolling Stones Altamont Banquet
Aftermath
The Dead began to sense that the concert’s challenges and disorganization would be too much to handle, too much of a hassle. Bill Kreutzmann said he’d rather not and soon after the band decided to drop off the bill.
There was a huge media backlash and finger pointing following the concert. Even today, the most common description heard about Altamont was that it was the death of the 60s. The demise of peace and love. The death of the barely-born Woodstock Nation.
Jerry Garcia compared Altamont and Woodstock as “two sides of the same coin.” Both had the potential to be amazing. Both had the potential to go wrong.
On December 10, respected music critic and Dead supporter Ralph J Gleason wrote in the San Francisco Chronicle: “Why did Grateful Dead people and other locals involved go wrong with the idea? Now it is ended in murder and that was a murder, not just a death like the drowning or the hit and run victims. Is the the new community? Is this what Woodstock promised? Gather together as a tribe, what happened? Brutality, murder, desperation. You name it. The name of the game is money power and ego. Money is first and it brings power.”
Rolling Stones Altamont Banquet
New Speedway Boogie
Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter typically wrote songs that were difficult to pin down, that were subject to various interpretations. Not uncommon with writers, but on December 20, only two weeks after the the failed concert, the Dead premiered New Speedway Boogie. It was Hunter’s response to the response to Altamont. He hadn’t been there. He’d been at the movies seeing Easy Rider.
While the “speedway” referred to is the one at Altamont, there is also a Speedway Meadow at Golden Gate Park. Hunter often used imaginary place, think Fennario, in his songs, and so he was allowing that for this one as well.
Rolling Stones Altamont Banquet
This Darkness Got to Give
Please don’t dominate the rap, Jack If you’ve got nothing new to say If you please, don’t back up the track This train’s got to run today
I spent a little time on the mountain Spent a little time on the hill Heard some say, “better run away” Others say, “better stand still”
Now I don’t know, but I been told It’s hard to run with the weight of gold Other hand I have heard it said It’s just as hard with the weight of lead
Who can deny? Who can deny? It’s not just a change in style One step done and another begun And I wonder how many miles?
I spent a little time on the mountain Spent a little time on the hill Things went down we don’t understand But I think in time we will
Now I don’t know, but I was told In the heat of the sun a man died of cold Keep on coming or stand and wait With the sun so dark and the hour so late
You can overlook the lack, Jack Of any other highway to ride It’s got no signs or dividing lines And very few rules to guide
I spent a little time on the mountain I spent a little time on the hill I saw things getting out of hand I guess they always will
Now I don’t know, but I been told If the horse don’t pull you got to carry the load I don’t know whose back’s that strong Maybe find out before too long
One way or another, one way or another One way or another, this darkness got to give One way or another, one way or another One way or another, this darkness got to give One way or another, one way or another One way or another, this darkness got to give
Rolling Stones Altamont Banquet
Acquittal
The murder trial stemming from an incident ended 13 months later on January 19, 1971 when the jury declared Hell’s Angel Alan Passaro “not guilty” in the stabbing death of 18-year old Meredith Hunter. [NYT story]
Rolling Stones Altamont Banquet
#BLM
In 1977, Greil Marcus wrote, “A young black man murdered in the midst of a white crowd by white thugs as white men played their version of black music—it was too much to kiss off as a mere unpleasantness.”
What was #1 on Billboard sometimes offers an interesting cultural contrast and December 5 in the 60s does just that.
From Bonanza‘s TV star Lorne Greene singing his cowboy song Ringo, to the fresh-faced California Beach Boys in concert, to a group of “hippies” singing about confusion and distrust of the status quo.
December 5 Music Contrasts
Lorne Greene
Lorne Greene on Bonanza
December 5 – 11, 1964: “Ringo” by Lorne Greene #1 on the Billboard Hot 100. A “one-hit-wonder” the song only stayed at #1 for a week. Lorne Greene stuck around as a successful actor much longer.
Though there was an actual outlaw Johnny Ringo, the song’s story is not an accurate one. The country song became a hit on both the pop and easy listening charts before the country charts. That was unusual. Don Robertson and Hal Blair wrote the song.
The fact that a certain very popular band had a very popular drummer by the same name encouraged RCA to release the song.
December 5 Music Contrasts
Beach Boys
Beach Boys 1965
December 5, 1964 – January 1, 1965: The Beach Boys Beach Boys Concert was the Billboard #1 album. It would stay there nearly a month. Brian had not yet decided to go psychedelic.
The concert album was not quite as “live” as one would have thought. Vocals are overdubbed. Most of the album was part of a 1964 Sacramento concert (as advertised), but a couple of the songs were from December 1963. There were other studio enhancements as well.
Keep in mind that Beatlemania and the British Invasion were at their height by December 1964, but the Beach Boys’ popularity kept this album #1 for four weeks!
December 5 Music Contrasts
Buffalo Springfield
Dewey Martin, Jim Messina, Neil Young, Rich Fury, and Stephen Stills
December 5, 1966 – On this date, the Buffalo Springfield recorded “For What It’s Worth.” It will be released on January 9, 1967. They wrote it as a protest to the way the LA Police were treating teen-agers, not an anti-war song, but it became one nonetheless and an anthem to many of the Baby Boomer generation.
For a larger explanation about the song’s origins, see Sunset Strip Riots
