Rock ‘n’ Roll: Message Time

ROCK ‘N’ ROLL

The Eastern world it is explodin’, Violence flarin’, and bullets loadin’. You’re old enough to kill, but not for votin’ . . . If the button is pushed, there’s no runnin’ away. There’ll be no one to save, with the world in a grave . . . Ah, you don’t believe we’re on the eve of destruction.

Get the message? Several million teen-agers do — so loud and clear that Eve of Destruction, as sung by Barry McGuire, is right at the top of the best seller charts. With a dozen more songs of protest snapping close behind, it heralds a radical change for rock ‘n’ roll. Suddenly, the shaggy ones are high on a soapbox. Tackling everything from the Peace Corps to the P.T.A., foreign policy to domestic morality, they are sniping away in the name of “folk rock” —big-beat music with big-message lyrics. Where once teen-agers were too busy frugging to pay much heed to lyrics, most of which were unintelligible banshee wails anyway, they now listen with ears cocked and brows furrowed. The rallying cry is no longer “I wanna hold your hand,” but “I wanna change the world.”

That such ticklish themes as Viet Nam and integration are now the lyrical concern of the impressionable young has caused alarm in some quarters. Attempts to impose a blanket ban on Eve of Destruction have failed, but on grounds of taste many radio stations have decided on their own not to play it. Says Los Angeles’ Disk Jockey Bob Eubanks: “How do you think the enemy will feel with a tune like that No. 1 in America?” Some rock jockeys play it safe by allotting equal air time to The Dawn of Correction, an “answer song” intoned by the Spokesmen:

The Western world has a common dedication, To keep free people from Red domination. Maybe you can’t vote, boy, but man your battle stations, Or there’ll be no need for votin’ infuture generations.

“A Decaying Everywhere.” Author of Eve of Destruction and 30 other “songs of our times” is P. F. Sloan, 19, who allows that his inspiration comes from being “bugged most of the time.” A graduate of the breezy West Coast “surf sound,” Sloan traded in his sneakers and sweatshirt for black leather boots and a Hans Brinker cap this spring, set out “to say what I feel,” that is, an impression of “a decaying everywhere.” Says he: “Society is so confused. There are triple roadblocks and detours wherever you go, and no one knows which road to travel.” Viet Nam? “I know we have to stay there, but I don’t know why particularly.” The Bomb? “It’s like a cloud hanging over me all the time.”

Other recent Sloan songs are studies in alienation: This Mornin’ (“I seem to be existin’ in a world that will not listen”), Child of Our Times (“They’ll try to make hypocrisy your heredity, so choose your views most carefully”). Underneath the shroud of gloom, claims Sloan, an “instant solution” is there for the probing: “If the world is full of hate, we have to change it to love.”

Honest & Real. Folk rock owes its origins to Bob Dylan, 24, folk music’s most celebrated contemporary composer. Much to the despair of the folk purists, Dylan first bridged the gap between folk and rock six months ago by adding a thumping big beat to the elliptical verses of his Subterranean Homesick Blues. He followed with his biggest folk-rock hit, Like a Rolling Stone, and the big-beat groups were quick to latch on to his songs, most notably It Ain’t Me, Babe by the Turtles and Mr. Tambourine Man by the Byrds. Booed during a performance at this year’s Newport Folk Festival for his big beat, Dylan philosophized: “It’s all music; no more, no less.”

Sonny Bono, 25, and his wife Chér, 19, say it is all love: “I love Chér and Chér loves me and that’s our image.” With four singles and one LP high on the bestseller charts, they are the reigning sweethearts of folk rock. Their costumes, faithfully imitated by their followers, are pop art with pockets: Chér in wildly striped bell-bottom slacks, Sonny in shaggy bobcat and possum fur vests. In the face of adult censure, they join hands and sing I Got You, Babe: “They say your hair’s too long. But I don’t care. With you I can’t do wrong.” When the manager of a Los Angeles restaurant recently asked them to leave because their appearance disturbed the customers, Sonny rushed home to the piano in his garage and dashed off a reprisal:

Why do they care about the clothes I wear . . . If that’s the fare I have to pay to be free, Then baby, laugh at me . . . And I’ll pray for you, and do all the things That the Man upstairs says to do.

By last week, Laugh at Me was selling at the hot clip of 5,500 copies a day. Why? “Maybe it’s because we’re honest and real,” says Sonny.

Clearing the Skin. The East Coast extension of folk rock is represented by the husband and wife songwriting team of Cynthia Weil, 24, and Barry Mann, 26. Their latest effort, We Gotta Get Out of This Place, recorded by the Animals, expresses a hoped-for freedom from the boredom of meaningless work. In Home of the Brave, they speak out for the right to wear long hair:

The P.T.A. and all of the mothers say he oughta look like the others . . Why won’t they try to understand him, Why won’t you let him be what he wants to be?

Cynthia, a Sarah Lawrence College graduate, who with her composer husband will make $100,000 in royalties this year, contends that message songs have taken hold because “the kids are much brighter now, a little more In. They really want to rebel, and maybe we can help them as human beings.”

Not all the rewards of message songs are spiritual. Lou Adler, president of Dunhill Records, has noticed a “beautiful change” in his prize songwriter, P. F. Sloan. “Phil’s complexion was very bad,” he says. “He had acne all over his face. Now it’s cleared up—perhaps because his mind has cleared up.”