When Rock 'n' Roll Shut Boston Down
“Never was anything great achieved without danger.”― Niccolo Machiavelli
“Over my dead body will there be another rock show in the Boston Arena.”-Paul Brown, Manager, Boston Arena
65 years ago today, WINS disc jockey Alan Freed brought his “Big Beat Show”…his rock ‘n’ roll circus…to Boston…to the Boston Arena1…for a concert that featured Buddy Holly & the Crickets, Chuck Berry, Jo-anne Campbell and Jerry Lee Lewis. Freed is famous for being one of the biggest proponents of the new rock ‘n’ roll sound…some say he coined the term…playing the music on the airwaves and taking it live into the town halls. The line-up for the show was ridiculous (as were all of Freed’s productions), featuring three of a handful of legends that were responsible for blowing up the charts with a-wop-bop-a-loo-bop, a-lop-bam-boom. Freed packed in a 6000+- crowd into the arena that night to present a rockin’ eve.
What happened next…well, what exactly happened during the show is shrouded in mystery. But sometime during Jerry Lee Lewis banging out Great Balls Of Fire, the concert was stopped by the police. There were reports of a stabbing. There were reports of a riot. There was talk of narcotics being sold and spread around. Whatever was going down, The Killer slapping his piano with his feet, singing an anthem of his generation, set off enough chaos (or fear of chaos) to cause the Boston police to shut down the rock ‘n’ roll event and go after Freed.
The mayor flat out banned concerts in Boston (it would be 6 years until the city finally ended the ban, with a Beatles show in 1964). The police and politicians attacked Freed in the press, saying he had incited a riot from the stage. Freed sued the Boston Police saying that they never wanted a rock show in the first place…that a police sergeant came up to him before the show sneering, “We don't like your type of music. There are nothing but hoods in here…” that the police were unnecessarily brutal to the crowd of kids. And the city of Boston threw an indictment at Freed…using anarchy laws from the 19th century around the destruction of city property.
All in the name of rock ‘n’ roll.
Freed resigned from WINS saying that he felt the station did not support him around the aftermath of the Boston show. Because of the money lost around the concert, the ending run of The Big Beat Show was cancelled. The charges against Freed were eventually dropped, but the damage had already been done2. Just 65 years ago today, the power of rock was still too much for the establishment.
JAMES BROWN LIVE: Boston Garden, April 5, 1968
We are going back to Boston…a live show a decade after (to the month) of Alan Freed’s Big Beat Show. A day after Martin Luther King was shot, James Brown played a city that, like many cities in the US at that moment, was full of tension and outrage. Brown was asked to play the show to calm things down (how is that for a crazy ending to the Freed story)…and his resultant performance was one that only a legend like he could deliver. The video linked to the headline above is a fantastic multi-camera shoot of the concert, with Brown in peak form, with a killer band, playing with the heaviness of the moment in his mind…taking the stage as a leader. There was even a documentary made about the concert…and you can take a deep dive and watch it as well: The Night James Brown Saved Boston. Happy Birthday James Brown!
The final contributions Brian Jones made to The Rolling Stones
“By the time work had commenced on 1968’s Beggars Banquet, Jones was already faded into the background. Keith Richards played almost all of the guitar parts on the album, with Jones covering occasional Mellotron, sitar, and harmonica. One of the only exceptions was his slide guitar line for ‘No Expectations’, which Jagger later recalled fondly. “That’s Brian playing [the slide guitar]. We were sitting around in a circle on the floor, singing and playing, recording with open mikes,” Jagger told Rolling Stone in 1995. “That was the last time I remember Brian really being totally involved in something that was really worth doing. But it wasn’t the final time that Jones appeared on a Rolling Stones album….”
Whaam! Blam! and Roy Lichtenstein’s stamps
I stopped in my tracks as I walked into the post office and saw the Roy Lichtenstein stamps. They are a wonder. Now WE CAN ALL OWN a Roy Lichtenstein…and send one via a letter to a friend! Excited to see the new doc, WHAAM! BLAM! Roy Lichtenstein and the Art of Appropriation.
Mike Tyson Opens Up About His Encounters With Psychedelics
“Psychedelics is an enhancement more than a de-enhancement. It allows you to go in that realm of just comfortability, relaxedness, and preparation to reach your highest level. It's just an amazing feeling,” said Mr Tyson.
Is Environmental Activism in the Hands of Experimental Musicians?
The answer: OF COURSE!!!!
SHADES
By: Aleda Shirley
It takes more than a door painted blue
to keep the ghosts away. All you have to do
is live long enough and they will come.
Beside the interstate the old road still ran,
though it ended abruptly in a field of sage and mist.
That road seemed like the future: an emptiness
that could turn, at any moment, into beauty.
I stopped in a small town in Oklahoma—
a liquor store in a bad neighborhood,
old men and teenagers standing around out front,
a radio crackling in the dry wind.
Did the old men come this far and stop?
Smoke from their cigarettes disappeared an instant later.
In the darkness nothing was visible but the darkness.
By dawn the road was the color of silk
gone orchid or violet when tilted to the light,
the trees on the side of the road permanently twisted
from the wind off the plains. On that leg they bent
toward me. I stood some distance from the car and felt
the dry air whipping my skirt around my legs.
I realize I’d forgotten too little about my life,
that there was in sleep and inattention a kind of salvation
and I wanted to be saved because I no longer believed
any one place was different from any other.
Being haunted means you never feel wholly abandoned,
and as I drove past the blinded diners and the shells of old trucks,
I gathered it close to me, all of it, and went on.
Now the Northeastern University's Ice Rink on St. Alphonsus Street
Some of the info used for today’s newsletter was taken from https://www.motherlode.tv/bostonrock/chapter3.html