10/25/2014
Rolling Stones Cast Spell On Ten-Year-Old Boy
By Stephen Jay Morris
Everybody got teary-eyed nostalgic when the 50th year anniversary of the Beatles’ appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. On that evening, you’d have thought that space aliens had landed on the White House lawn. I was 9 years old then and just didn’t get it. My sister sat, spellbound, watching the show on our 1950’s era, Zenith T.V. This singing group seemed to have had a hypnotic effect on adolescent girls to implement some devious, Soviet plot. They were sporting funny hairdos in the same style as Moe Stooge, and their songs sounded like sugar-coated, Everly Brothers with a little Buddy Holly thrown in: Teenybopper music! It was February 9. That Sunday came and went. I still wasn’t a Rock and Roll fan.
Then, on October 25, a Sunday night, I became one. The world in the mid 60s was sanitized and overprotective of impressionable American white youth. There was a protective yoke around us against the evils of communism, homosexuality, and beards. Family night was on Sunday and Ed Sullivan was wholesome, family entertainment. I sat through acrobatics, animal acts, opera, and unfunny comics in nice suits and clean-cut hair.
Then, it happened! The curtain rose to reveal five guys with long hair, wearing suits. Except for the lead singer; he sported a casual-looking sweatshirt with the sleeves pushed up. His face looked like that of a Cockney street urchin ready to kick a bobby in the arse. They sang, “Time Is On My Side.” This was an absolute proclamation, one that they still perform today, in the year of our Lord, 2014. Mick Jagger was so ugly that he was the most beautiful dude I’d ever seen. What do I mean by that? He was saying to the world, “You don’t have to be handsome to sing this type of music!” I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand up and my head swaying to the ballad. My dad saw this and, in the middle of the performance, ordered me out of the room. But it was too late…I was contaminated and I wanted more. Me with my old transistor radio, found the rock station, and I was a fan for life.
At the time, I did not know who wrote, “Time Is On My Side.” It didn’t matter to me, but later, when I bought the Stones’ albums, I was curious where this wonderful music had come from. That was the first song I looked into and discovered that Jerry Ragovoy had written it under a fake name, Norman Meade. Recently, I heard another version performed by Irma Thomas. It sounded like an old gospel by a Southern Baptist Church choir. The “Devil’s Music?” Tell that to Jesus and he will slap your stupid face!
That night changed my whole life. If it hadn’t been for Ed Sullivan, I would be dead in Vietnam.
STONES!!!!!
