Monthly Archives: February 2016

Anniversary, Beatles, Music et al

Beatles Meet Washington

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Beatles Meet Washington

February 11, 1964
The Beatles Meet Washington
poster for Washington, DC concert. The first US Beatle concert performance.
Beatles Meet Washington

Snowstorm cancels flight

A snowstorm had cancelled their flight, so the Beatles took a train to Washington DC and made their live concert debut in the US at the Washington Coliseum. Over 350 police surrounded the stage to try and control the 8,000 plus screaming fans. One police officer who found the noise so loud stuck a bullet in each ear as ear plugs. The Beatles had to stop three times and turn Ringo’s drum kit around and re-position their microphones so that they faced a different part of the audience. The set list: ‘Roll Over Beethoven’, ‘From Me to You’, ‘I Saw Her Standing There’, ‘This Boy’, ‘All My Loving’, ‘I Wanna Be Your Man’, ‘Please Please Me’, ‘She Loves You’, ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’, ‘Twist and Shout’, and ‘Long Tall Sally’.

Beatles Meet Washington

George Harrison remembers

George Harrison summed up his experience this way: That night, we were absolutely pelted by the fuckin’ things. They don’t have soft jelly babies there; they have hard jelly beans. To make matters worse, we were on a circular stage, so they hit us from all sides. Imagine waves of rock-hard little bullets raining down on your from the sky. It’s a bit dangerous, you know, ’cause if a jelly bean, travelling about 50 miles an hour through the air, hits you in the eye, you’re finished. You’re blind aren’t you? We’ve never liked people throwing stuff like that. We don’t mind them throwing streamers, but jelly beans are a bit dangerous, you see! Every now and again, one would hit a string on my guitar and plonk off a bad note as I was trying to play. (from The Beatles Off The Record, Keith Badman)

Beatles Meet Washington

Paul McCartney remembers

In 2010, Paul McCartney remembered, We’d seen a lot of British stars come back from America with their tails between their legs. We made a promise to ourselves to not go until we had a No. 1. We were so excited to be madly popular in America, which was to us the Holy Grail because every shred of music we ever loved came from there. It was euphoric, and now we were heading to Washington on the train, which was very glamorous. And to cap it off, there was that beautiful snow. (Washington Post article)

Beatles Meet Washington

John Lennon remembers

John Lennon’s memory of the reception following was a discomforting one: People were sort of touching us as we walked past, that kind of thing. Wherever we went we were supposed to be not normal and we were supposed to put up with all sorts of shit from lord mayors and their wives and be touched and pawed like A Hard Day’s Night only a million more times. At the American Embassy, the British Embassy in Washington, or wherever it was, some bloody animal cut Ringo’s hair, in the middle of… I walked out of that. Swearing at all of them and I just left in the middle of it. (John Lennon, 1970. Lennon Remembers by Jann S Wenner)

You can listen to the whole concert with the YouTube link below:

Today, the concert site looks a bit different than in 1964.

The Beatles Meet Washington

Reference >>> Beatles Bible site

Beatles Meet Washington

Activism, Today in history, Vietnam

David Miller Draft Card Burner

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David Miller Draft Card Burner

David Miller was not the first person to burn his draft card in protest of US involvement in the Vietnam War, but his case became the most publicized.

As more and more people protested the war, various ways of demonstrating that protest began. When burning a draft card was first being done, it was not illegal to do so.

David Miller Draft Card Burner

David Miller Draft Card Burner
Eugene Keyes Draft Card Burner

For example, Eugene Keyes burned his draft card on Christmas Eve 1963. He used to flame to light a peace candle.  The same day, Selective Service mailed Keyes a notice to report for his physical examination. ( NYT article)

On May 12, 1964 twelve student publicly burned their draft cards in New York City.

On May 5, 1965, forty men burned their draft cards at the University of California, Berkeley and a coffin was marched to the Berkeley Draft Board.

On August 31, 1965, President Johnson signed a law making the burning of draft cards a federal offense subject to a five-year prison sentence and $1000 fine. [The constitutionality of the federal law was upheld by the US Supreme Court in US v. O’Brien (May 27, 1968)]

On October 15, 1965, David Miller, a Catholic pacifist,  publicly burned his draft card. Three days later, the FBI arrested him. In its November 5 issue, Time magazine described the action of Miller and other draft card burners as “a post-adolescent craze.”

Miller responded to that description from the Onondaga County Penitentiary. [note the term Vietniks]

David Miller Draft Card Burner
Nov. 26, 1965, Vol. 86, No. 22
David Miller Draft Card Burner

Union Square burnings

David Miller Draft Card Burner
Photo by Neil Haworth, courtesy of War Resisters League
Draft-card burners in 1965 at the Union Square Pavilion, from left, Tom Cornell, Marc Edelman, Roy Lisker, David McReynolds and Jim Wilson. Dutch-born clergyman and activist A.J. Muste is at right in hat and topcoat.

Miller’s arrest did not stop the draft card burning. For example, on November 6, 1965 in Union Square, NYC, Thomas Cornell (teacher) Marc Edelman (cabinetmaker), Roy Lisker (novelist and teacher), and James Watson (on staff of Catholic Worker Pacifist Movement) burned their draft cards. (2015 Villager article)

On December 21, the four were indicted.

David Miller Draft Card Burner

David Miller

On February 10, 1966 a jury convicted David Miller of burning his draft card.

On March 15, Federal District Judge Harold R Tyler, Jr gave Miller a three-year suspended sentence and placed him on probation for two years.

Tyler also stipulated that:

  • Miller obtain a new draft card within two weeks
  • carry that draft card
  • obey all lawful orders of his Selective Service board
  • if called to serve, to submit to induction into the armed services

Miller said after, “I have no intention of obeying any of the judge’s directives even if I have to go to jail.”

Anti anti-Vietnam violence

As an example of how divisive the war in general and draft card burning became, on March 31, 1966, high school boys punched and kicked seven anti-Vietnam demonstrators on the steps of the South Boston District Court House after four of the protesters had burned their Selective Service cards. With shouts of “Kill them, shoot them,” about 50 to75 high school boys charged the steps and knocked the demonstrators to the ground as a crowd of 200 watched. David O’Brien, 19, was one of the card burners. On July 1, O’Brien was sentenced to a Federal Youth Correctional Center for an indefinite term.

David Miller Draft Card Burner

Judicial process

On October 13, 1966, the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit upheld Miller’s conviction. It held that Congress had the right to enact a law against destroying a draft card so long as it did not infringe on a constitutional right.

The NY Civil Liberties Union challenged the constitutionality of law prohibiting draft card burning on December 12, 1966. The appeal charged that the law was an unconstitutional abridgment of the freedom of expression guaranteed by the First Amendment and its purpose is to suppress dissent.

The US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit held unconstitutional the amendment to the Selective Service Act that forbade the burning of draft cards on April 10, 1967.

On May 27, 1968, in United States v. O’Brien in a 7 – 1 opinion, the Supreme Court upheld the 1965 law that made it a crime to burn or otherwise destroy or mutilate a draft card. Chief Justice Warren, writing the majority opinion, rejected the lower court’s contention that draft card burning was “symbolic speech” and that Congress was forbidden by the First Amendment’s free-speech guarantees to outlaw it. (Oyez article)

After Miller lost in the U.S. Supreme Court, he served 22 months in federal prison in Pennsylvania from 1968 to 1970.

David Miller Draft Card Burner

Honky Tonk Communists

Miller later wrote I Didn’t Know God Made Honky-Tonk Communists.  Here is a link to an excerpt from the Reclaiming Quarterly site. 

David Miller Draft Card Burner
Beatles, Music et al, Today in history

Ed Sullivan Meets Beatles

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Ed Sullivan Meets Beatles

February 9, 1964

If February 3, 1959 was the “day the music died,” then five years later, it was reborn.

From the NY Times article, February 9, 1964: Beatlemania creeps in slowly. Collar­less jackets, usually worn Saturday nights on Forty‐second Street, are turning up in the strangest places, like the safe suburbs. Teen‐agers who once considered the G.I. crew‐cut the height of adolescent fashion are letting their locks curl down their necks and over ears and across foreheads. Twenty thousand beatle wigs have been sold.

Ed Sullivan Meets Beatles

The day the music died

Everyone has milestone dates. Generations share dates. For Don McLean February 3, 1959, the day a plane crash killed Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper, and Ritchie Valens, was “The Day the Music Died.” 12 years later, McLean wrote “American Pie.” In it , a 13 year old newsboy remembers that “February made me shiver/with every paper I’d deliver”

For Boomers, shared “where we were” dates are likely: when we found out President Kennedy was killed or later Martin Luther King, Jr, or that same year, Robert Kennedy. Each, like McLean’s, a sad day.

Ed Sullivan Meets Beatles

The day the music was reborn

February 9, 1964 is at the other end of that spectrum. Rather than the music dying, the music was born.

That was the evening we sat in front of our black and white TV (the only one in our home?) and watched The Beatles inaugural performance on the Ed Sullivan Show.

Unless you are a Beatles trivia fan, you may not know that that afternoon the Beatles had recorded Twist And Shout, Please Please Me, and I Want To Hold Your Hand, in front of a different audience than the one that saw their live debut that evening. Ed Sullivan broadcast that set on 23 February on their third appearance. By the 23rd, John, Paul, George and Rich were back home in the UK.

Ed Sullivan Meets Beatles

“Sorry girls…“

On the evening of February 9, 1964, the Beatles performed “All My Loving,” “Till There Was You,” which featured the names of the group members superimposed on closeup shots, including the famous “Sorry girls, he’s married” caption on John Lennon, and “She Loves You.” The act that followed Beatles in the broadcast was pre-recorded, rather than having someone perform live on stage amidst the pandemonium that occurred in the studio after the Beatles did their first songs. They returned later in the program to perform “I Saw Her Standing There” and “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” The broadcast drew an estimated 73 million viewers, at the time a record for US television.

Ed Sullivan Meets Beatles

How he met the Beatles

How Ed Sullivan’s and the Beatles’ paths crossed is open to some guessing. The most popular story is that Ed Sullivan and his wife happened to be in London’s Heathrow Airport on October 31, 1963 when they encountered thousands of screaming teenagers. (Ironic, I suppose, as he’d have to get used to such happenings in just a few months!)

When he asked what the commotion was all about, he was told that a band called the Beatles  were arriving.

He decided that such popularity was something he’d love to bring to his American show.

Whether that is actually the sequence or not matters not.  By mid-November, Beatles manager Brian Epstein had booked the Beatles.

And like the moon landing, we all remember where we were.

I’d love to see comments about where you were!

Ed Sullivan Meets Beatles