06/07/2007

Sgt. Pepper, the Summer of *#%@

By Tom Carr
Record-Eagle staff writer
tcarr@
record-eagle.com

Read Tom's past columns here

Everybody's reminiscing about the Summer of Love and the monumental Beatles album "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band” since this summer is the 40th anniversary of both.

I'm 48 now, so with some pretty simple math you can see I wasn't in the thick of the action on these momentous occasions.

At that point, I was more into the Monkees, often known as the Pre-fab Four.

Still, I had seen the Beatles' movie "Help!” at the matinee and liked several of their songs and was becoming a fan.

About the only thing I knew of Sgt. Pepper at first was I enjoyed looking at all the people in the colorful picture on the cover.

As for the Summer of Love, where the hippie counterculture gained national attention because of people converging on the Haight-Ashbury district in San Francisco, I didn't know what that was yet. I was just a kid in the suburbs of Detroit.

I didn't know what a hippie was yet either, but I'd soon find out. There was a home in my neighborhood where the parents took an extended vacation and their eldest son stayed there by himself, with a whole bunch of hippies.

My friends and sibs and I thought they were cool. They dressed in a way that pushed the envelope at the time, though I don't think people had started saying push the envelope yet.

Then one day an ice-cream truck came through the neighborhood without any jingly tunes and driving a little faster than normal.

It stopped at the hippie house and my brother and I ran in to get some change from our mom.

We ran back out and went up to the door of the truck. It was another hippie driving and I think he was absent for the part of training where they discussed customer relations.

No sooner had I held out my quarters and nickels and started to tell him I wanted a ...

"Get the *#%@ outta here!” he said.

Someone came out of the house and the driver gave him a package (pushed him an envelope?) and we backed away with our hair standing on end.

I guess he only sold ice cream to hippies.

As for Sgt. Pepper, I don't know if it's really the greatest album of all time, as many people say, though I agree it broke ground.

But I do know we've never seen anything like the Beatles since. The band is loved by my kids, my kids' friends and my friends' kids.

I'm glad I lived through that era and I realize that no "American Idol” could ever find someone to equal the excitement they created with everything they did.

Probably the only thing that creates anything even close to that kind of excitement now is "Harry Potter.”

And while there was a cheesy Saturday morning cartoon of the Fab Four, I'm kind of glad they were around before the days of Happy Meal toys.

Regarding the Summer of Love, I don't know if it left as large a legacy. But I still love summer despite the angry ice cream man, if that's something.