In an effort to make amends to guitarfool, I would like to re-paste the non-political aspects of the Reagan thread back up here. This is
not an attempt to start the political debate here in General Topics. Rather, it is to bring the Beach Boys on-topic elements of the discussion back where they belong. Since I bear a good amount of responsibility in sending the thread to The Sandbox, I feel it is my responsibility to bring what was truly enlightening and crucial information to The Beach Boys history back where it belongs. I will try to get the important stuff back and credit the appropriate people but my apologies if I skip anything:
Rocky Raccoon:
Actually all it does is make it more baffling to me as Reagan had banned the Beach Boys from performing in Washington.
guitarfool2002:
Others can do it better, but let me give the semi-abridged version:
A lot of this was blown waaayyyy out of proportion. Leave it to the political scholars to argue that one on the how's and why's, but the version(s) some in this thread are reading isn't 100% accurate.
Ronald Reagan didn't ban the Beach Boys from anything. They played the show in 1981 and again in 1984. That should be the end of the story. But here's the rest:
James Watt was Reagan's Secretary Of The Interior, a cabinet position. One of his duties was to oversee the national parks and facilities, including the concerts held on those grounds. In 1981, The Beach Boys played. In 1982, The Grass Roots played, and Watt's office received complaints about drug use, assaults, and an increase in people treated for drug- and alcohol-related health emergencies and injuries that day. A group of a few hundred people there staged a smoke-in supporting legalizing pot at the show.
Watt is/was an unabashed conservative - apart from hearing reports of both the usual booze-fueled idiots and intoxicated concertgoers making it hard for families to enjoy the show, his solution was to write a memo in late 1982 about "attracting families" and offering "patriotic and inspirational" entertainment at the July 4th concerts in the future, in response and reaction to the complaint and the stats he received about intoxication and assaults at the Grass Roots show. It was his response - agree or disagree, he wanted to make the concert more family friendly in response to complaints on his desk.
According to Watt, he or his staff never mentioned the Beach Boys by name, never banned them or anyone, and says when he wrote that memo, the Beach Boys had not been booked for the concert that next year (1983). What turned into a media firestorm which saw him being called out and his resignation being demanded was based on hearsay and lies, and the assumption he "meant" The Beach Boys despite not naming them because they played in 1981 - ignoring The Grass Roots concert completely. Again, Watt claims his memo (the one reported on in the news of the day) did not mention the Beach Boys, they had not been booked for the 1983 show, and he was responding to the happenings at the 1982 concert where the BB's did not play. And he was almost publicly destroyed once the rock community picked this up from the print media, I believe the Washington Post ran the initial story in print.
Now going through the how's and why's that memo got turned into headlines saying Watt "banned" the Beach Boys from the DC concerts and in this thread how Reagan "banned" the Beach Boys...that's getting into political stuff, left-versus-right, and I don't wanna go there...here.
So what happened? Watt was publicly made a scapegoat, you see footage of him accepting a "foot in the mouth" award from Reagan in the "American Band" video along with a completely phony news voiceover describing the so-called "facts" of the story, along with video of the BB's hanging out with Ron and Nancy Reagan. It was a horrible PR move to alienate a few million potential voters in the year before an election year, especially with a band as American as the BB's, and Reagan and his advisers were trying to smooth things out by becoming strong champions and friends of the Beach Boys as "America's Band". That's politics, right and left. Whether the band goes along with it is their right as a citizen to believe what they choose. If Mike liked hanging with the Reagans, if he found them nice people or whatever else, that's his business. Don't hold it against the music if you don't like Reagan.
What the Reagan White House did with the BB's is called damage control; politics is nasty and they have to protect the guys at the top by throwing underlings under the bus, making scapegoats out of names the general public barely knows.
Am I defending James Watt? Whatever one wants to think - I'm just offering up his version of the story, which I think is crucial to telling the whole story for the sake of history. Maybe Watt is covering his own a**, again judge for yourself after reading more on this.
But Reagan didn't ban anything, let's set that straight and bust the myth, and it would appear the guy who got blamed for it didn't ban anything either, despite news reports which created the firestorm.
If anyone has more insider info or can clarify any points above, please do!
I'm asking everyone with an interest in this story to re-think what they've heard about it because going way back to 1983, what was and has been reported between the BB's, Watt, and Reagan, is NOT 100% true and it should be noted in the history.
Some articles from 1983 suggest the Beach Boys played the July 4th DC show "last year"...and backed up by Andrew's concert list, they were in St. Louis July 4th 1982 playing a Freedom Fest. They were not in DC and Missouri at the same time. Again, The Grass Roots played DC July 4th in 1982, not the BB's...and the reports of the day ignored that, suggesting there were two shows in DC that day...it's really quite a mess, and simply not true. Very sloppy journalism.
An article from April 1983...April 1983, three months away from July 4th...says Al was unsure whether the Beach Boys would even be in DC on the 4th that year ('83), as issues were being worked out for them to play the 4th in Manhattan. So when Watt says the BB's had not been booked as of late 1982 when he wrote the memo, it would appear he was right: They had not been booked by April 1983 either, because Manhattan wanted them, according to Al! They ended up playing July 4th 1983 in Atlantic City, NJ, not Manhattan after all.
So the suggestion that Watt or his office banned the Beach Boys when they weren't even considered when he wrote the memo in late '82, and had another show in the works months later so they couldn't confirm the 7/4/83 date even then...it would seem to be false. So they came back in 1984.
If anyone should have been upset, it was the Grass Roots and their fans.
FYI on The Beach Boys and political events around this time (late 70's, 80's):
Jan. 21, 1977 they played at a Jimmy Carter inaugural concert
March 9, 1980 they played a campaign benefit concert for George Bush Sr., running in the Republican primaries against Ronald Reagan.
Jan. 19, 1981 they played at one of the Reagan-Bush inaugural concerts
Jan. 19, 1985 they played the second Reagan-Bush inaugural
Jan. 18, 1989 they played the inauguration for George Bush Sr.
Watt is/was not exactly a sympathetic figure, he had a habit of sometimes putting his foot in his mouth offending both allies and foes with things he said, yet this guy was basically ruined by words he never said directly and actions he never took. His own bosses in the Reagan administration didn't even back him up after the media version of the story became more accepted than what actually happened. They took the side of the mass media, and saw an opportunity to harvest votes, so they hung this guy out to dry...and maybe that was the plan all along, as all presidents do and have done when they have a staffer creating bad publicity around elections.
The fact that a mass media can run an incorrect and inaccurate story again and again so often that it becomes the truth instead of the actual "truth" is a sad commentary on that part of life, of course it's nothing unusual with that crowd.
Again, despite 99% of the reports and stories we have read on the case since 1983, no one banned the Beach Boys.
Ed Roach:
I can't believe, with all of the research various people around here do, and with the fact that it was President Reagan who cleared the way for Dennis' body to be buried at sea, that nobody has mentioned that Dennis was the original connection to the Reagan family...
Back when Ron was merely the Governor of California, his daughter Patti Davis rented an apartment from me in Santa Monica. This building, just about 10 blocks up the road from Brother Studios, came to have an interesting life almost of its own during the seventies. Painted in a way that resembled The Beverly Hills Hotel up on Sunset, people often referred to it as The Beverly Hills West. And, while there were just about a dozen apartments, every one of them was inhabited by some of the most unique interesting characters of the sixties, and one of these was Reagan's daughter Patti Davis!
Patti was a great looking woman/child when she came to us; she was working in a restaurant up the street from us where all the help had to be performers. So Patti's friends from work, (girls like Rickie Lee Jones & Katey Sagal), joined in with our little misfit gang, and Patti mingled with my friends from work, people like Dennis & Brian, and eventually Bernie Leadon, who would whisked her away from us to Topanga Canyon. Eventually my family & I joined them up there in Topanga as the seventies drew to a close....
You can read quite a bit more about this in Patti's autobiography; I love how she describes our building, "I was finally living someplace I liked, where all the tenants were my age; everyone smoked grass and played their stereos too loud."* She goes quite a bit into her 'friendship' with Dennis, and this is an element of Ron and Nancy's connection to the Boys that shouldn't be overlooked.
Dr. Tim:
Despite some efforts to suggest that James Watt himself did not personally ban the BB from playing the Mall, he still gets the blame properly since he clearly said it was "rock bands" such as the BB and Grassroots who attracted the "wrong element". Recall that he went on to say, as this article notes:
Starting in 1980, the Beach Boys and the Grass Roots headlined July 4th concerts on the National Mall, the great strip of land dotted by monuments in downtown Washington, D.C. But in a Washington Post interview published in April 1983, Secretary of the Interior James Watt let slip that the Beach Boys would not be invited back that year. In Watt’s opinion, the concerts had attracted “the wrong element.” He told the newspaper, “We’re trying to have an impact for wholesomeness. July 4th will be a [traditional ceremony] for the family and for solid, clean American lives. We’re not going to encourage drug abuse and alcoholism as was done in past years.” Instead, Watt said, that the celebration would be headlined by military bands … and Vegas crooner Wayne Newton.
The firestorm that erupted must have taken Watt, not the hippest of dudes, by surprise, particularly when two of the people rushing to the Beach Boys’ defense were First Lady Nancy Reagan and White House Chief of Staff Michael Deaver. One day after his interview appeared in the Post, Watt emerged from a White House meeting carrying a plaster foot with a hole in it — a trophy given to him personally by President Ronald Reagan — and met the press. Watt said the First Lady had told him “that the Beach Boys were fans of hers, and her children had grown up with them, and they’re fine, outstanding people, and there should be no intention to indicate that they cause problems, which I agree with.” This seems to be the opposite of what Watt had meant when he lumped the Beach Boys in with “rock bands attracting the wrong element.” About 50 arrests had been made for disorderly conduct and assault in 1982, but most were related to the annual day-long marijuana “smoke-in” on the Mall that coincided with the concert.
Read more: Rock 101: The Beach Boys vs. James Watt
http://wnew.radio.com/2010/06/29/rock-101-the-beach-boys-vs-james-watt/#ixzz1ljN6EFilThe Wikipedia article on Watt confirms this too.
So maybe Watt didn't know the Beach Boys from the Beach Towels, and didn't himself issue a specific ban or disinvite to them. But he clearly decided that someone like Wayne Newton and a parade of military bands were what he had in mind for Mall shows, and said so. That's why he got the heat.
[PS: Now over to the Record Room and their thread entitled "Wait! Wayne Newton Is Cooler than Bob Dylan! That SSMB guy is a DUMBASS!"]
guitarfool:
Dr. Tim, you've recapped the story adding a few more quotes but I guess I'm the one doing the suggesting:
The "firestorm" over Watt and the Beach Boys was based entirely on what people thought he "meant" or how they read into his comments. You can read between the lines all you want and try to find the hidden meaning, but if you want to take the man at his word, he never once mentioned "The Beach Boys" by name, he or those on his staff at the Interior Dept. never banned the Beach Boys or mentioned them by name.
At the time he wrote the original memo (November 1982), at the time he booked Wayne Newton and the US Army Blues Band for the 4th concert in 1983, and at the time the Washington Post printed comments from him which led to the "firestorm" - again *not* mentioning the Beach Boys in his words - the band WAS NOT BOOKED FOR THE JULY 4th SHOW! As you'll read in my earier post, Al Jardine in the middle of this, when asked if they'd do the show, said they were in talks to play the 4th in Manhattan, and they ended up booking a gig in Atlantic City that year for their 4th festivities.
The Beach Boys did not play in 1982, there is no indication, or no proof, that they were considering playing 1983 in DC, and Watt mentions this specifically.
If folks want to take the words and the story out of context, feel free but it's not accurate. And even if you dislike Watt and many do, there is something wrong about hanging a man with his own words which he *never said*. It's not accurate.
Think what you want, the facts of this are a man got publicly destroyed based on something he didn't say. His comments were on the Grass Roots show in 1982, his reaction and proposal to hire Newton was a follow-up to the complaints he received about that specific show.
That's the truth.
Dr. Tim:
Agreed Ronald Reagan had nothing to do with it, contrary to what the OP stated. With you that far. (All along I thought he and Nancy interceded for the BB because of Mike's prior campaigning; I did not know the Patti Davis story - thanks Ed!).
And - probably - agreed that Watt may well not have had the BB in mind when he spoke - or even knew who they were. I will also accept he wasn't doing the booking of acts himself. But he was a blowhard, and he DID weigh in about rock groups bringing in the wrong element, though - and thus the Post, and others, figured he had to mean the BB and the Grassroots. Certainly the White House thought so, like it or not.
PS: and this didn't get him fired. His wisecrack about minorities and " a cripple" did that for him.
guitarfool:
Yes, this Beach Boys incident specifically did not get him fired, and Watt was a blowhard whose comments on other matters did cause problems for the Reagan administration...it was adding fuel to the fire that was building around him. Eventually all that fuel build a big enough fire where he had to go. As I mentioned earlier, he did have a bad habit of putting his foot in his mouth.
It got to the point where his bosses didn't back him up, and that as mentioned earlier was "damage control" practiced by every White House.
The fact that the Washington Post figured he "had to mean" something is what caused the problem. It seemed like all the media ran with what he had to mean, despite him not saying it and never naming the Beach Boys. Read through the other media reports on the story from 1983 onward: They go as far as to put words in his mouth, again printing outright lies and half-truths, and creating another Beach Boys myth that the band had been "banned". It became a cause celebre among rock journalists and radio DJ's (wnew included), who called for Watt's dismissal after the Post article.
It actually worked out for The Beach Boys and Reagan himself in the 1984 election - it was a massive amount of free publicity and good vibrations for both sides, and the Boys played 1984 in DC. Reagan may have gotten untold thousands of votes out of it for the '84 election.
Watt was reacting to the fans at the Grass Roots show, the concert they played in 1982 - if Watt had specifically stated that his memo was about incidents he heard complaints about at that 1982 concert, none of this would have happened.
Again, it's about setting the record straight, whether the characters involved were blowhards or not.
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