From Showtunes to Melodrama: Storytelling and Poetry in
Sixties Pop!!!

I am in possession of a surprisingly sturdy little book with a golden cover published in the budding spring of ninteen-sixty-nine. It is a third printing. Aside from the cover’s uncanny shine, it shows a pale silhouette of an ambiguous figure with scraggle-end hair just touching his shoulders. He slumps in profile, and at the fore of his face, all up in the contour of his nose and lips and brow, are little drawn music people, highlighted in candy colors, one wearing a fish scale suit with a fat green guitar in hand. Lennon and a mustached McCartney are the only recognizable facsimiles; the others are so tiny and only done in thin blue outline, making them evade concrete identification. The title of the book is Richard Goldstein’s The Poetry of Rock. I will pass it on to my children someday.

They will not need to be big to enjoy its contents, which are a menagerie of song lyrics printed in line-stanza format. The Lennon-McCartney dream team show up multiple times, as well as Brian Wilson’s “Wonderful”, which is juxtaposed with Jackson Browne; Dylan and Donovan also appear. The inclusion of “New York Mining Disaster 1941” warms my heart, as do two Procol Harum songs, “Coconut Grove”, and “If I Were a Carpenter”. Jim Morrison’s verse is in it thrice, which makes me realize that I personally have likely read more sentences written about Jim Morrison by women — Babitz, Des Barres, Didion, in alphabetical order — than I have listened to minutes of Jim Morrison singing. My mother often ponders why young people nowadays don’t go through Doors phases like they used to — I inherited a book of previously-unpublished poetry of his from her. I tell her that they certainly do, and to slightly terrifying extents, too, though he just isn’t my style.

I can love, though, “The End”, which is the final song of the book. There could be no other way to conclude such a tome, this New American Songbook for a supposedly hipper age. But hip-ness never dies; it simply changes shape.

There are two compositions by a man credited quite amusingly as ‘Peter Townshend’ in the Poetry of Rock book — an incredible act of foresight, given the few months between the collection’s publication and the release of Tommy, the album that would cement the man as one of the age’s great rock-composers. There is also a collage of the songwriter-singer-guitarist in the middle of the book, which is dedicated to a series of creative cut-ups of famous faces. Opposite Grace Slick engulfed in gorgeous John Austen art-deco-ness-art, his smug, mop-topped mug emerges from a cartoony trash can. Nothing, not even the sanctity of rock-and-roll, is sacred.

It is a Bantam Book, special edition, or so claims tiny text on the side of the cover. And how special it is, for it contains some of the most interesting anecdotes in the entire history of music criticism, courtesy of Goldstein, our editor. ‘Rock ’n’ roll … has become a full-fledged art form, perhaps the most preened and pampered of our time”, he declares. “Even Plato’s Cave has become a discotheque. Amid its electronic shadows, longhaired princes tell it like it is.” What I would give to write a sentence so vivid in its efficiency.

Goldstein goes on to cite Chuck Berry as “America’s first rock poet”, citing his plugging-in to an essential and beautifully simple energy that encapsulated what I must add was one of the first generations to have a teenager-dom. Postwar prosperity made this generation; dancing, cars, and girls meant freedom in every manner conscious and subconscious — “the triumph of the material not over, but in conjunction with, the soul”. That Goldstein perceives Berry’s genius not in spite of his audience but in tandem with it is such a refreshing statement — those youngsters were simply taking advantage of what was at their disposal, regardless of the gas fumes and sore feet, and Berry tapped into that excitement like no other. Nowadays, materialism is more frowned upon than ever by holier-than-thou thrift-store-tablecloth enthusiasts, yet dancing, cars, and girls are now so easily taken for granted, integrated seamlessly with life to the extent that if you are without one, you are considered abnormal: stick-assed if it’s dancing, povertous if it’s a car, unfuckable if it’s a girl.

Too, the citation of black musical artists in the history of American music is a modern given and a luxury Goldstein did not necessarily have. He speaks at length in his introduction about the undeniability of cross-cultural pollination to the day’s manifestation of rock-music, seemingly snickering at the laudation granted to the Beatles, who took heavy inspiration from Berry’s infectious and singular jawn in their early days. They, quote, “get some credit for turning a primitive form into art; or, as one respected straight critic put it, carrying pop music “beyond patronization.’” Goldstein’s jab is sly, but clear. There is nothing to be patronized about the blues standards, he says with a knowing smile; they are as worthy of a place in any modern pop-pantheon than post-Beatlemania takes on the blues. It is no wonder, then, that one of the Townshend lyrics included is “Substitute”, infamously sanitized for American radio play: “I look all white, but my dad was black”.

This is an age before Led Zeppelin lawsuits, before ‘Elvis was a hero to most’ — against segregated stations, shotgun weddings, and the increasing intensity of a war abroad that was drafting its young men, America was still sorting out how it was to treat its teenagers: were they young innocents or creatures made worldly by the the policeman’s baton, however literal the stick? As these teenagers shaped their own, chosen boundaries using the cerebral escapism of rock music as their chosen medium of bravado, the adults around them wrestled with this new reality. The really hep cats, bearing names like Southern and Ginsberg, needed not to do much. They were naturally integrated, the progress’s grandaddies. The rest were left to try and understand it all, reacting either as appalled or intrigued; the latter group, functioning from a sociological standpoint, sought to capture the moment, take hold of a little piece of it for themselves through the art of compilation and dissection. Goldstein’s Poetry of Rock was one such attempt at a snapshot document of how youths functioned, in its case the establishment of a new canon for a new age.

In examining this little tome I am immediately reminded of another, larger one — one much stuffier to the modern eye, much less penetrable, delegated nowadays to the paperstuff piles of junk shops in Midwestern nuggethamlets across and beyond the Rust Belt. It’s the Great American Songbook, alluded otherwise earlier, that I think of, less a real, physical object one can buy than a collection of fragile stacks of sheet music and hum-remembered choruses from the old films they used to show on tee-vee. Where did these relics fit in in this new landscape? Were they just relics, or were they something relevant in this new classification of the ‘new music’ of the day as something worth taking seriously? They certainly had a stronghold on the charts. In the years leading up to the Beatles’ breakthrough we have Tony Bennett, Louis Armstrong, Nat King Cole; Aretha Franklin sits on top of the world — not with the blues standard that Cream would later cover, but the one Al Jolson did; Ann-Margret, not even yet “the female Elvis”, does “Moon River”. Anthony Newley, an Englishman of many hats best known for the varied stage and screen musicals he helped compose would also rise to popularity during this time, winning a Grammy for his songwriting credit on “What Kind of Fool Am I”. I am particularly interested in Newley not only for his unsung relevance to the hip-pop-music canon — his distinctively thick accent would prove influential on one David Jones, soon to christen himself Bowie — but because I personally find his singular place in the cultural realm smashing. If men may let gut emotions and obsessive lusts over saving Sharon Tate guide popular interpretations of history, let a woman indulge in her appreciation for one talented, witty chap who happened to make good.

From the wild circus (Stop the World I Want to Get Off) to a class-divided Britannia (The Roar of the Greasepaint, The Smell of the Crowd) to Candyland (Gene Wilder’s Willy Wonka film), Newley waltzed through the sixties and early seventies with a distinct skip in his step, a heartfelt, full-body approach to the showtune. The term is often used in derision nowadays, and the crass commercialism that has plagued Broadway since Lloyd Webber’s unfortunate revolution (with no diss towards Jesus Christ Superstar or the Phantom of the Opera film intended) has only corrupted what was once an innocent playing field for well-written humor and well-earned grins and great costumes that were not skin-tight cat facsimiles. Jaunty piano and exaggerated accents deserve a place in every proud apple-pie American’s life; it’s not just thinking you’re cool for watching Cabaret in 2025, it’s a lifestyle.

While his songwriting partner Leslie Bricusse apparently did most of the word-smithing, the sheer definition of Newley’s persona — sharp-edged, up-right, and poetically composed in his use of the presentation of theatre — would essentially help define what we think of when we today think of a stereotypical ‘showtune’ sound — when we hear a particularly bombastic Ray Davies composition or hear Davy Jones sing “Daddy’s Song” in Head. Newley is most obviously known, though, for the tunes of his that hit the charts, not necessarily for himself, as is the curse of the great songwriter. His biggest hit was “Feeling Good” (from Roar of the Greasepaint), which has been performed everywhere from variety shows to presidential inaugurations. What song truly defines a moment in time so distinct it becomes eternal than Nina Simone’s rendition? It is freshly-shined heels dancing down an analog Times Square, fur coat on and purse in hand and pearls around the neck, a tight beehive and a smile making lovely war with the dingy billboards and humdrum brown-drab passers-by so weighed down by a labor they haven’t learned they don’t have to do to. A ditched dead-end job, a ditched dead-end boy, does it matter what mortal symbol has been done away with here? In the context of a scripted narrative it might, but here it does not matter, for life is ever shifting and that life has been reclaimed: “it’s a new dawn, it’s a new day, it’s a new life... for me”. It is brimming with optimism against all odds.

Such sailing stories through the capability for happiness are real, and they still affect people, no matter where the music is coming from. One of the greatest moments I an single out in my life came when I was in middle or early high-school, sitting on my twin bed with a cup of Dairy Queen cookie ice cream and my CD player, which was spinning a compilation of Cab Calloway, one of the great maestros of American performance, which I had just bought. Everybody does eat when they come to his house, don’t they? I was alone, totally untethered from communal structures aside from those supplied by the record store shopkeeper and college-loan-chained ice-cream scooper, and even those were far away from the individualistic coziness of my isolated little bedroom. But I did not need the joy to be spooned to me. I am sorry, modern society, that you will fight tooth and nail against any attempt at not only promoting but exhibiting instances of individual human happiness unreliant on social power structures. There’s nothing to be sad about when you think of Cab, so people just don’t talk about him anymore, despite his incredible legacy and body of work. There’s a reason why so many of the obituaries for Sly Stone, that beacon of blinding fringed light, unfortunately chose to revel in the drugged-out aftermath of his glory days: the powers that be cannot fathom great success from a minority without a depressing, supposedly-sobering side, as that is the side that can be exploited, disguised as a reality check, be wielded to ‘ground’ the legend. Stand, on the other hand?

But we are getting ahead of ourselves here. We move forwards in time. The awe-inspiring efforts of the black bluesmen to communicate the hardships of human experience through musical triumph have been co-opted, though kindly, by white musicians, sparking a revolution. Beatlemania and what should’ve been on a larger scale Newleymania coincide, making British anything very ‘in’ and ‘with it’. Eartha Kitt is still in the game and doing “Love for Sale”; Nancy Sinatra does ‘Oh! You Beautiful Doll’ opposite potentially singing about sucking acid from sugar cubes — in a pink bikini, of course. The back cover of Sugar promises “sweet, soulful serenades from the old timey years”, and the photo of her on the front is just grainy enough to be slightly concerning through the sexy. Her pulling-it-askew bikini evokes Raquel Welch on the poster for One Million Years B.C. from the same year, 1966, a great year for womankind’s conquering of the male race, if “Foxey Lady” being recorded in December as the culminating exhibition of dominance is any evidence. Cher will do “Ol’ Man River” that same year. The old guard and the new guard are cross-pollinating; the world of the Great American Songbook is not entirely withered away. It is still alive and brimming with relevance. What is new and therefore inherently relevant is not only infiltrating the lives of the past’s vanguards but converting them to the new hep-ness. Look at the track listing of Julie London’s final ever album, released in 1969: “Louie Louie”. “Mighty Quinn”. “Stoned Soul Picnic”. “Light My Fire”. Richard Goldstein was right in his presentation — Morrison is not only the new standards, he is the new standard! He is the new Al Jolson, and all those rock stars were: not in an offensive manner, but always to be emulated, yet they themselves were emulators, and perhaps proof that something entirely unique, even new could be made from such behavior, something as ethically questionable as it is influential! The spell of youth is powerful and owes everything to those that came before it, for they are most susceptible to its allure! Even stoic torch singers are reduced to cougars when confronted with that poetry, that facial structure! (As I said previously, Morrison was never and will never be my type, but you catch my drift.)

Meanwhile, Traffic are doing ten-minute-long renditions of “Feeling Good” at the Fillmore West. Good on those boys. And as their hard-hitting spin psychs through my speakers as I write, my mind is resembling a cork board of sorts, with crossed lines of different candy colors connecting perfectly posed black-and-white photos, as it often does. I would never dare make my house look as such; the up-there does the job. Right now I am focusing on a photo of the Shangri-La’s, the early-sixties girl-group with their helmet-like hairdos and leather pantsuits and poofy blouses, and the pretty line connecting the foursome directly to an album cover by Cher. Perhaps it is her contemplative look on her early self-titled or The Sonny Side of Cher, or the earnest smile on All I Really Want To Do, or the titanous goddess on With Love, or the achingly human performer, taking a solemn breath as she adjusts the luscious beads draped from her neck in the green room mirror on Backstage. Whatever the photo, there is a slight dash about the ‘E’ in her name — a subtle detail that dropped away sometime in the mid-seventies and never came back, for it was not needed again — the world knew how to pronounce her name.

The line is there because the five women were all in their own ways queens of melodrama. They have become cultural staples of excess for their respective ‘eras’ they were more active in: “Leader of the Pack” for the death-obsessed sixties making space for the new youth-problem with nagging fingers, the holy trinity of “Gypsys, Tramps and Thieves”, “Dark Lady”, and “Half-Breed” for the new gospel of the strange seventies. Tales of tragic boyfriend death, tales of niche feminine hardship — two sides of a foil-wrapped chocolate coin. American culture would gobble up the prize-snack like big fish do little ones, then stomp on the balled-up wad of gold left behind for good measure before leaving it to the street, relics of ‘different times’ only to be mentioned if a joke was to be made. Yet a new mini-genre of conceptual pop-songs was taking shape from the electric reflection of the burning sun, not yet unified but brimming with loose threads to be knotted together. They aren’t showtunes, and they aren’t exactly ‘mini-operas’, as Pete Townshend’s “A Quick One, While He’s Away” would be in 1966, but each holds its own little story to tell, a character for whoever was singing to morph themselves into, others to meet in whatever offbeat sliver of existence was being profiled. James Dean-ian fates, run-ins with cruel fortune-tellers, and feeling the weight of generational burdens to the extent of balladry are not common life occurrences in the suburbian, pop-consuming States, after all; from good-bad New York City to sunny-babe Los Angeles, Americans crave excitement and exoticism, as much as they may not like to admit it these days.

The likes of Cherilyn Sarkisian and Mary Weiss-and-company are not ever listed in histories of rock-oratories or rock-operas, regardless of the impact these songs have left on those who hear them. The Shangri-Las never had a concept album, though they were more of a concept group than anything — the concept being exquisite young things ravaged by leather-pants androgyny, motorcycle-riding boyfriends, and whispers of transporting firearms across state lines. Purely novelty-driven approaches towards “Leader of the Pack” have rendered them an oddity instead of an American cultural staple and placed the song on many ‘worst-songs-ever’ publications, which is a bit unfortunate given their influential real-life roles as independent, tough girls in a man’s world. Cher’s entire career, in retrospect, also appears conceptual in chunks, with each of the distinct phases of her diverse and illustrious career somehow suiting her and her bombastic personality so perfectly — not one feels forced, regardless of the sonic or style trends of whatever the day happens to be. She was, and still is, an utterly unique one-woman show. Yet despite the acclaim she has obtained — including a worthy entry into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame — she is still known best for her personality than the contents of her songs. Instead of the label ‘genius’ — one assigned much too much and yet is rarely assigned to creative women— she gets that of ‘diva’, which feels dehumanizing, as it assigns her no interests beyond the material, neglects the sheer talent that defines her work, especially her mostly-forgotten sixties solo catalog.

It is telling that these ladies don’t get much of a mention in current attempts at establishing ‘canons’ of popular music that are more general, despite “I Got You Babe”’s crucial role at karaoke night and the legacy of the Shangri-La’s gritty street-girl swagger. If rock and roll is poetry — which it very much is and always will be — then women are certainly not discredited from relevant talent as it stands: Joni Mitchell, Joan Baez, et al. But what about the songwriters who didn’t sing their own songs, or had others overtake their own versions? How many randomly selected people on the street could tell you how much they loved Anthony Newley’s work without naming any of his hits? What about the women who sang amazing songs, but did not happen to write them? Covering ‘the standards’ is considered a relic of a pale-starched past, regardless of the importance of the black singers and songwriters who created and honored them to the shaping rock and roll, the importance of black American oral traditions — the passing on of codes wrapped in bushels of ingenious creativity — in shaping popular music as we know it. Perhaps society views those women vocalists who channeled the poetry of others similarly to the American Songbook — relics of an age of record sleeves boasting glorious mono, now relegated to dusty crates in skeezy Salvation Army Surpluses, regardless of Julie London’s digging through the Basement Tapes and use of the word ‘mire’. It is a bias that has effected everyone from the likes of Marianne Faithfull — who only gained credibility for her music after shredding her voice — to the vast majority of black female vocalists and girl-groups, and it is always unfair. The power of a song to communicate a story, no matter how many decades its been or how seemingly corny they may seem to a modern audience far removed from such history, is something beautiful, something to have faith in. One Stefani Germanotta sure holds that passion still, and with Tony Bennett himself in tow for a number of excellent collaborations, though in the span of her ever-evolving, very Cher-like career, Lady Gaga’s earnest tributes to the American Songbook are seemingly regarded as footnotes, even novelties. And it’s a shame — we need concise voices, timeless voices, both in text and on stereos, more than ever. Poetry in whatever form it may take is a way of connecting with culture, to ‘ground’ yourself in what is important to your daily intake of particles and atoms through the heights it can take you. Without this grounding and the communities it can form, Americans are directionless, confused, apathetic about art and often dumb of its power.

This is a surface-level rumination on the issue, however, and there is still hope. Nina’s version of “Feeling Good” still prevails popularly, even receiving a proper music video four or so years ago, directed by Sara Lacombe. It is not exactly the same fairytale of New York outlined earlier, but nonetheless kin in spirit: a young black girl goes through a day in the life — family dinner with sun streaming in through the window, a wooden swing in the front yard, a relaxing bath dashed with rose petals — while her grown counterpart dances with hurricane force through a courtyard, by train tracks, across gray asphalt. Here the beauty of the ordinary is a force that cannot be defeated. The motions of life, fueled by the poetry of birdcalls and wind through budding branches and art, are something that cannot be interrupted and ought to be celebrated. Good and peace triumph over evil, every time, especially if you’re hep to the jive.