Happy New Year, all! Hoping to finish up the next instalment of my 2025 reading retrospective soon. In the meantime, here's what I was listening to in December:
By this point, I think I've read nearly every book on the Beatles that contains any worthwhile information (there are a zillion Beatles books out there, but only a small percentage really have anything of value to add to the conversation). This was one that I had neglected to get under my belt up until the start of the year.
For those who don't know, Pete Shotton was John Lennon's childhood best friend, and the two of them remained incredibly close up until the breakup of the Fab Four (or somewhere around there, I don't 100% remember. I read this in January). There is lots of fascinating insight Shotton's memoir offers, as he had a perspective very few did: he knew Lennon pre-fame, and got what mostly seemed to be an unguarded version of the famously-guarded musician. To wit, many of the stories here (especially concerning their teenage years) are pretty ribald and peppered with curse words and stories about bodily fluids that come from the nether-regions, which, again, is pretty rare for a tome concerning the Beatles. If you wish to know John Lennon's record for honking it in one day, you're in luck!
Two pretty infamous Beatle anecdotes originated from here, that you've probably heard by now if you care anything about the Mop Tops-- the groupwank sessions, of which Pete was a participant (I am weirdly proud to let you all know that despite not having read this book, I did know about that years before it made headlines recently-ish), and the allegation that John and the Beatles' manager Brian Epstein had some sort of sexual encounter on their oft-speculated-about trip to Barcelona together. The latter here spawned a well-regarded short film!
I would consider it essential Beatles reading, even if the information volunteered here doesn't have much to do with their creative process (although Shotton does claim he contributed a line to Eleanor Rigby) or artistry or history outside of what Shotton was privy to. If you want to see the most mythologized figures of 20th-century pop culture humanized, this is a good place to go.
Sick on You: The Disastrous Story of Britain's Great Lost Punk Band
By Andrew Matheson
2015
There are two books that I read this year that had the greatest impact on me; one is this one (and the other we won't be getting to in this instalment).
I had been meaning to listen to the Hollywood Brats' album for quite awhile, and finally did so at the start of this year. I was blown away. For my money, it's one of the best pure rock 'n roll albums ever recorded. The sound of that record is the sound I've always wanted to hear from rock music, Stones-influenced sleaze glammed out to the extreme. The New York Dolls, one of my favorite bands of all time, are the only other group who hit this sweet spot for me just as perfectly (the Dolls are often a point of comparison for the Brats, although in this book Matheson claimed they weren't influenced by them at all-- which I don't buy). Why did they just make one proper album? How did they presage the explosion of punk rock by a couple of years? Where did these guys come from, and where did they go?
The band's founder and frontman, Andrew Matheson, answers all these questions here with a vivid and hilarious narrative style. He walks us through the band's origins, when he arrived in the UK as a teenager armed with nothing but a wad of cash, some records and a guitar (which he was promptly semi-swindled out of). We follow the Hollywood Brats' struggle to exist in the first place, and after that, their struggle to not implode in on themselves. Young an' rowdy rock an' rollers who keep seeming to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, despite their talent. I won't spoil the many tales that comprise their journey, but I would be remiss not to mention the fact that Cliff Richard of all people lets the band stay in one of his mansions while he's not using it, and what ensues reads like a debauched episode of The Monkees on crack.
The Brat's album is phenomenal, but was released after their demise. Malcolm MacLaren tried to revive the group shortly after but Matheson turned him down, causing the impresario-in-training to focus his attention to his other going musical concern, the burgeoning Sex Pistols, whom the Brats influenced. The Clash and several other seminal punks took more than a few cues from the Brats, yet they remain relatively obscure unlike their peers in this sense such as the Velvet Underground, the Stooges and so forth-- a secret for those who want to seek it out. It's a shame.
A further shame is that Matheson passed in May of this year with little fanfare. The Brats' drummer Louis Sparks (maybe the heart of this book) also departed a few years back, and the sole piece of info I could find about that was his obituary on a crematorium website. The group sorta-reformed (and released a single) in 2019, but it looks like the story has come to an anti-climactic end. Do yourself a favor and listen to their album if you haven't. Keep Brat-dom alive, it deserves it.
Dead Man's Curve: The Rock 'n' Roll Life of Jan Berry
By Mark A. Moore
2021
I mentioned this book in another post, so I will reiterate: it's the definitive tome on Jan Berry and Jan & Dean in general. Exhaustively comprehensive, sometimes to a fault, it covers everything one should know about the massively-underrated pop duo and then some.
Jan Berry is an unsung genius of 1960s music, so if you are unfamiliar with why I make such an assertion, I would point you in the direction of this book. You'll gain an appreciation for just how much the guy accomplished and pioneered in such a short window of time, starting with his professional-quality DIY recording studio he built in garage as a teenager.
Hank Williams: The Biography
By Colin Escott, with George Merritt and William MacEwen
1994
A captivating account of the life of one of country music's Mount Rushmore figures. Does a good job of separating fact from fiction, especially in regards to sanitized narratives that were pushed (predominantly) by Williams' ex-wife Audrey Sheppard after his death. Quite tragic overall, the man had some real demons and never seemed to be quite able to get it together long enough to reach stability (although this is well-known by now). I don't have too much to add here, really. If you're a fan of country this is an essential story, and if you're not I would wager you'll still find it a fascinating tale.
Ginger Geezer: The Life of Vivian Stanshall
By Lucian Randall and Chris Welch
2001
The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah band have been a favorite of mine for many years, and Vivian Stanshall was an artist like few others both within and outside of it. One of the great British figures of the 20th-century, his boundlessly creative and unique artistry gets the retrospective it deserves here. Much like the Hank Williams book mentioned above, this is a musician whose story ends in tragedy and who seemed rather tormented during his life. The book doesn't shy away from any of this, it's a warts-and-all portrait of Stanshall.
What I truly enjoyed about it is that it analyzed Stanshall the artist and human being on his own level and truly engaged with what he left the world, rather than treating him like some kind of wacky cartoon character or novelty act like many recollections of the man often do. Randall and Welch are clearly two people who had a sincere appreciation of Stanshall's body of work and his specialized place in the history of the performing arts.
Walt Disney: The Triumph of The American Imagination
By Neal Gabler
2001
When we hear the name "Walt Disney" nowadays, we don't really think of a person. We think of an entertainment company that is practically omniscient by this point. If we try to envision the man who bore that name, what we see is still not so much a human being but a symbol. Someone who was effectively turned into a mascot for themselves.
If you ask ten different people for their opinion on Walter Elias Disney, you will likely receive ten different points of view. He was "Uncle Walt", the jovial storyteller who wanted us to know that it was okay to believe in magic, because he was going to bring it to us. He was "Disney", the cold and calculating media conglomerate that easily vanquishes anyone who stands in its path to world domination. He was an innovator; a forward-thinker who was completely obsessed with the idea of progress and wanted the world to be its best self. He was a close-minded crank who eventually developed some stubborn and backward notions, seeming threatened by anything that he couldn't understand. He created a studio that was a haven for artists, a mecca with a "one-for-all and all-for-one attitude" where he worked hand-in-hand with creative talent to realize a shared vision. He was an unreachable boss who handled the idea of his staff unionizing disastrously and made enemies of many of them when they were forced by his own stubbornness to go on strike. He was a friend to everyone and wanted the whole world to be included in his whimsical fantasies, regardless of race or creed. He was a symbol of American imperialism whose works include racist and regressive moments dotted throughout.
What's the truth? How did this walking contradiction, who simultaneously represented the best of us and the worst of us, exist?
Author Neal Gabler pulled off quite a remarkable feat: he was granted completely unrestricted access to the Disney archives in order to write this biography, and Disney the company had absolutely no say over the final product. As a result, we get what has to be the most well-rounded, three-dimensional portrait of a guy who seems so impossible to pin down. Gabler's overarching theory, which I agree with, is that Walt Disney was a man who was hurt by the real world many times and consequently aimed to create a world of his own where everything would be just to his liking.
This results in Walt's most admirable qualities: the constant drive to blaze forward, to pioneer new technologies and take the medium of animation further than anyone could have possibly conceived of it going before. The care and craftsmanship he personally poured into projects such as Snow White, Fantasia and Steamboat Willie as he took each and every frame under his microscope a dozen times, made the impossible a reality, opened new horizons for artists and brought joy to countless people. It also resulted in his worst qualities: whenever an issue presented itself that seemed incongruous with his fantasy world, he wanted no part of it. He sided with some nasty characters during the Disney studio strike of 1941, and viewed the animators trying to get what they were owed as a personal betrayal. He named names during the McCarthy hearings after becoming paranoid that the entity of communism was gunning to take his studio away from him and would possess certain employees in its effort to do so. The most apt demonstration of this is when he wanted to create a movie that would promote racial equality and he personally went above-and-beyond to get its star, James Baskett, an Academy Award in 1948, a time when racism was even more deeply-ingrained into American society than it is today. His desire for harmony amongst mankind was genuine, yet he still viewed the world through the simplistic lens of the pop culture he was familiar with, offering a foolish view of what those who weren't white were like-- the resulting movie was Song of The South, an Uncle Tom-ish picture that is frequently cited as a symbol of everything backwards and bigoted about the Disney studio's body of work, attempting to treat the black characters as dignified but coming across as condescending.
Gabler's biography is the definitive word on Disney as far as I'm concerned-- the research was clearly exhaustive and it comes across in the detailed final product. Yet it's not merely a mechanical reciting of the events that happened that happened throughout Disney's lifetime; it manages to be an engrossing, living and breathing portrayal of a man who poured his blood, sweat and tears into creating a kinder world for himself to live in, yet often failed to establish meaningful connections with the people around him in doing so, frequently shutting himself off in the bubble that world he had constructed allowed him to stay in.
This is it for part one! Part two will be up... I dunno. Soon I hope. I'm busy!
My first-ever job-- one that I worked from the age of 15 into my early 20s-- was in retail. This leaves one with rather strong opinions on holiday music, since you are exposed to it nonstop for the final two months of the year. There are some tunes I never want to hear again and feel just slightly violent whenever they get played, there are some I still manage to enjoy after that whole ordeal, and there are several overlooked gems that I had always wished the radio stations would end up playing even once in a while, rather than sticking to the same rotation of two dozen hits that's been set in stone for 40-odd years.
To wit! I've created a playlist of my wintertime staples. It wound up pretty damn long, so I thought I'd walk all zero of my readers on here through a couple of the highlights. The full playlist (via Spotify) will be embedded at the bottom of this post.
Santa Noah's Holiday Classix
Father Christmas - The Kinks
Kicking off the festivities is none other than the Kinks, who sought to remind the world that they were the original punks with this high-energy, offbeat Christmas story about getting mugged while dressed as Santa Claus. Dave Davies once lamented that he wished the Ramones had covered this one. What coulda been...
The Chanukah Song - Adam Sandler
This one's always been near and dear to me. Growing up Jewish, the holiday season always had sort of a weird undercurrent to it at school. Throughout elementary grades (and to a bit of a lesser extent, middle school), I was one of the few Jewish kids in the vicinity, so I always wound up feeling a little alienated seeing all the fesitivities happening there come December-- like I had somehow lost a contest where the prize was Top Holiday, simply by being born. Rubbing salt in the wound, all of the specials and movies I looked forward to watching each December-- A Charlie Brown Christmas, How The Grinch Stole Christmas, The Year Without A Santa Clause-- guess what they weren't about! There weren't even any Hanukkah (this is how I spell it) songs, as far as little-kid-me could tell.
Until my Dad showed me this one.
From the very first verse, it seemed like Sandler was extending an olive branch to me directly:
Hannukkah is the Festival of Lights
Instead of one day of presents, we get eight crazy nights
But when you feel like the only kid in town without a Christmas tree
Here's a list of people who are Jewish, just like you and me
Merry Christmas (I Don't Want To Fight Tonight) - The Ramones
Speaking of the Ramones and Christmas songs, they have one of their own! Penned by Joey, it evokes his signature bittersweet vibes, optimistic about a tough situation. I've always felt that Joey Ramone was one of the most beautiful songwriters; he could capture emotions that felt so real to me, grounded in the grimy reality of the world while remaining eternally romantic, that very few others can touch for my money.
Snowblind - Black Sabbath
What? This song's about playing in the snow, right?
Ding Dong, Ding Dong - George Harrison
Every December without fail, the Wonderful Christmastime vs. War Is Over (If You Want It) debate rages on. It's a moot point, though, as George came forth with the best Solo Beatle Holiday Tune. (The two aforementioned songs, as well as an entry from Ringo, are all featured in the full version of the playlist-- bottom of the post, in case you forgot!)
Christmas At Ground Zero - "Weird Al" Yankovic
Let's go for two mild Christmas song takes in a row-- I've always felt that this was the superior Weird Al Christmas song.
Snow Miser/Heat Miser - Snow Mister/Heat Miser
An all-time favorite for me. Love these two crazy dudes!
Vince Guaraldi's melancholy, jazzy music perfectly captured the tone of Peanuts, and there are several of his Snoopy Symphonies present in the full version of this playlist. I'm choosing Linus & Lucy as the one to represent them all here, as it has to be the definitive cut off of A Charlie Brown Christmas' soundtrack.
Christmas - The Who
One of the best offerings off of the Who's magnum opus (or one of their magnum opuses, at least), questioning how a deaf, dumb and blind pinball aficionado can celebrate Jesus' birthday properly. This one is a true tour de force that displays the bombastic scale you'd expect when you hear the term "rock opera". It's all over the place, it's chaos, it's rock and roll, it's phenomenal, it's the Who.
The Lonely Jew on Christmas - Kyle Broflovski
Many fond memories of sneak-watching South Park episodes with my middle school friends on the school laptops that were provided to us so we could do schoolwork or something stupid like that. As you might have guessed after reading my reminiscing about Sandler's tune earlier on, this one hit home for me the first time I heard it at age 12 or so.
Run Rudolph Run - Chuck Berry.
Like I mentioned before, there are a couple of radio-approved holiday staples that I still enjoy, even after being waterboarded with them for half a decade at the drug store. This is one of them! Chuck Berry's the best.
Don't Eat The Yellow Snow - Frank Zappa
Sage advice.
Merry Xmas Everybody - Slade
An online friend of mine and I often find our conversations turn to saying "Slade is underrated" back and forth. Hear for yourself!
Unwrap You At Christmas - The Monkees
The Monkees' (also underrated! I have a six-hour playlist of Monkee cuts that is too overwhelming to ever do an entry on here) final studio album (in 2018, believe it or not) was a Christmas record. It's not, y'know, their most memorable stuff, but it's fun. Unwrap You At Christmas is a highlight, about getting naked.
Don't Be A Jerk (It's Christmas) - SpongeBob SquarePants
SpongeBob goes Spector (the Ronettes and the Crystals are well-represented in the full playlist), with this shimmering, jingling ode to what makes Mr. SquarePants such an endearing character-- his earnest commitment to trying to be his best self in spite of all the everything. God bless 'im.
White Christmas - The Chesterfield Kings
The princes of the 80s garage-rock revival put their own Ramones-revved spin on a classic. Bing shoulda tried it this way.
As you might have surmised from my previous entry on here, I've been compiling a collection of Li'l Abner strips, attempting to get the complete run in my always-expanding digital comics stash-- and I've been working my way through the later years recently. I hadn't seen a whole lot of this latter-period material prior to all of this, namely because... well, things went downhill, quality-wise, as Al Capp grew progressively more interested in merely using his allotted space within the funny pages to do little more than whine about The Kids These Days.
You might be wondering why I'm doing all this, despite being so critical of Capp the man-- I believe that in its heyday, Li'l Abner was one of the finest comic strips ever produced. And while the late 1960s-onward were certainly its downswing, there are some glimmers of what the strip once was here and there, some laugh-out-loud funny moments that remind you this used to be some of the best comedic writing of its time. Hence why I wish to put the comic's entire run under my technological belt, rather than solely its golden-age material (also, I have diagnosed OCD and it compels me to do time-consuming completionist stuff like this any time I'm interested in something).
Here are a couple of strips I've just stumbled across, that can serve as supplementary material of sorts to The Ballad of John & Abner: more Beatles mentions in the strip! This time our comics come from 1967, arguably the height of the Fabs' power. The fabled Summer of Love was in full swing, and Sgt. Pepper taught his band to play during it, resulting in the Beatles producing the definitive document of the times. Shortly after, they were chosen to represent all of Britain in the monumental Our World broadcast, the first multi-satellite telecast that was shown live throughout a good chunk of the planet. For the occasion they penned one of the most popular anthems of the psychedelic era, All You Need is Love. It was John, Paul, George and Ringo's world, and we were just living in it (I mean, I wasn't, by virtue of being incredibly-not-alive. My parents hadn't even been born yet).
Sgt. Pepper's came out in May, and so too did this handful of Li'l Abner strips that kicked off a larger storyline.
(As always, click on each image for a significantly-better look.)
Like the "I Wanna Hold Your Ham" storyline we looked at in Part One, the Beatles' presence is rather fleeting, merely the impetus for a larger narrative. Naturally, we must over-analyze it.
For starters, this is the first time in Li'l Abner history that the Beatles were mentioned by name. In Abner's two prior brushes with Beatlemania, Ringo was referred to as "Him" and the other three merited no specific mention at all. There was a quote (that I can't find right now) from, I believe, Fred Hembeck, that was to the effect of "all the old-guard celebrities seemed to know about the Beatles was that they said 'yeah yeah yeah' and one of them was called 'Ringo'". His adage seems to ring true in the AbnerVerse-- in the prior Beatle storyline, Ringo was the only one to get a specific caricature (two others are shown from behind); John, Paul and George have been upgraded to that status this time around, but Ringo is seemingly depicted as their leader.
While syndication deadlines mean Capp certainly could not have been directly reacting to Sgt. Pepper here (newspaper comic strips are submitted several weeks before date of publication), the writing was certainly on the wall: whenever he was devising these strips, they were poised to become even bigger than ever. The mammoth Ed Sullivan shows that had launched them into superstardom had aired just over two years prior, and their legend had only seemed to snowball from there, rather than show any signs of waning (the most recent Beatles album, by this point in the timeline, had been Revolver, for a frame of reference).
So what I'm getting at is that it seems all this finally forced Al Capp to learn their names.
While 1967 was a year of artistic progress for the Beatles, it was a year of regression for Li'l Abner. The vast majority of the storylines were thinly-veiled soapboxes for Al Capp to rant about his ever-growing hatred of the times' youth. He had seemingly successfully completed his transition from "sharp, biting satirist of society" to "guy yelling at kids to get off his lawn". The year's inaugural storyline-- as well as quite possibly the most infamous one of this era of Abner-- is emblematic of the change.
We are introduced to Joanie Phoanie (technically, we were introduced to her on New Year's Eve of 1966), an unkempt, long-haired female folk singer. It was a very unsubtle parody of Joan Baez, despite not looking very much like her (a factor Capp would try to use to his advantage before long). Several other figureheads of the countercultural movement appear in cartoon form throughout the proceedings as well. The sole joke that is repeated ad nauseum during this (fairly long!) series is "they criticize capitalism yet they make money from their songs! Hypocrites!!" Capp, via his omniscience over the tale, repeatedly suggests Joanie donate her money to the vaguely-defined "poor" (orphans? Let's say orphans. Sure, why not), possibly forgetting that he was almost certainly worth significantly more than Baez by that point in time, and didn't seem particularly inclined to follow his own advice.
Looks like Dylan has joined the fold-- one would have expected him to have been the primary target of such a series, right? Again, it was 1967!
This storyline might not have been all that noteworthy, had Joan Baez herself not taken notice of it:
“The whole thing is disgusting. He can say anything about me-- that is his right and privilege-- but he takes a jab at the whole protest movement, students and everyone he can get his hands on... Either out of ignorance or malice, he has made being against the war and for peace equal to being for communism, the Viet Cong and narcotics.”
This seemed to be just what Capp wanted-- a fight! A chance to play the provocateur once more like in the old days, and score some publicity out of it while he was there. For his reaction, I shall quote liberally from Michael Schumacher and Denis Kitchen's Al Capp: A Life To The Contrary, the definitive biography of all things Capp and Abner:
Asked for his response, Capp shrugged off Baez’s statements. He had never listened to her records, he claimed, and he had no idea what she looked like. Joanie Phoanie was grotesque—six feet tall and large-boned, with long, straight blond hair; she wore a perpetually dazed expression, as if she were lost in the corridors of her own ego. If Baez remotely resembled Joanie Phoanie, Capp said, he felt sorry for her.
“I’ve never seen Joan Baez but I understand that she’s a rather slight brunette, and Joanie Phoanie is a big, virile blonde,” Capp told Newsweek magazine. “If Joanie Phoanie looks like any singer, she looks like Nelson Eddy.”
In its coverage, Time magazine ridiculed Baez’s sensitivity, quoting Capp’s counterpunch to her objections to the strip—“She should remember that protest singers don’t own protest. When she protests about others’ rights to protest, she is killing the whole racket”—and noting that, like Joanie Phoanie, Baez was earning a bundle of money plying her trade. Time claimed she was earning $8,500 at each of her stops on her current tour of Japan; Baez countered that it was $5,000 an appearance.
Like most satire, Capp’s was fueled by anger, resentment, and even sorrow. Behind his savage commentary lay contempt for antiwar activists that grew with the escalation of the war itself. Capp supported the war effort, and he was damned if he was going to remain silent while young Americans lost their lives in defense of the very rights the protesters were demanding.
His own son was of draft age. Kim, much more liberal than his father, had no enthusiasm for joining the fighting but, as he would later remember, Capp “told me he wouldn’t do a damn thing to get me out of it.” He had no objection, he said, to Kim’s staying out of Vietnam, as long as he did so legally.
Capp’s ridicule of Baez was consistent with his scorn for all young people who demanded the benefits of a free country as if it were their birthright.
“Joan Baez refuses to pay her taxes because of the war effort,” he pointed out, “but she travels all over the world guarded by a passport which means something because the armed might of this country is behind it. A helluva lot of kids are in uniform so Joan Baez can travel on that passport."
The Joanie Phoanie story ran to its conclusion, without retraction, though the syndicate did convince Capp to soften his originals in five of the daily strips, taking a slight edge off his commentary.
Baez, who would say that she never really intended to sue Al Capp, dropped the issue. Capp moved on as well, though he continued to take occasional potshots at her long after the Joanie Phoanie continuity had faded from readers’ memories. She was, he quipped, “the greatest war-time singer since Tokyo Rose” and “in the same Olympic league as such thinkers as Jane Fonda.”
Capp took the ball Baez lobbed in his direction and ran with it, repeatedly offering his views on things she had said and done, while claiming he had little-to-no knowledge of who she was. It sounds as though he never truly got over this feud-- brief in reality, but seemingly one that lasted to the end of Capp's days in his mind (he would pass in 1979).
Thanks for including this helpful note from yourself, Al!
1965 was a pretty good year for four musicians named John, Paul, George and Ringo. The previous year, they had ascended that fabled Toppermost of The Poppermost when they conquered the United States, spreading Beatlemania throughout the globe once and for all with a little help from their hit singles, albums, and even a successful film vehicle. Lest anyone think the Fabs a fad, '65 proved all the more fruitful: another movie (this time in color!), an animated series, more lucrative tours, more no. 1 singles, and two proper studio LP efforts that pointed towards a future that would send them even further into the stratosphere. Simply put, it was a nice time to be a Beatle.
If 1965 gave the (rapidly shedding their) Mop-Tops a reason to Feel Fine (yes, I know that one came out in '64), it was a good deal shakier for a cartoonist named Al Capp. Since 1934, Capp had been enormously successful thanks to his syndicated comic strip Li'l Abner, featuring a proto-Springfieldian wide cast of colorful characters, and sharp "take no prisoners" satirical commentary. The strip focused on the hillbilly haven of Dogpatch and its most famous residents, the Yokum clan, as they jumped from storyline to storyline sending up whatever was going on the culture and pop culture of the day.
Nowadays it might be hard to conceive of the celebrity Capp enjoyed, considering newspaper cartoonists don't tend to get a whole lot of exposure in a world where nobody buys newspapers anymore-- in his heyday, though, Capp was a bonafide household name, perhaps the second-most-famous cartoonist alive after Walt Disney. Everybody read the papers back then, as the radio was the only other place one could really get their breaking news-- and when they inevitably needed a break from that news they turned to the funny pages. Characters like Popeye, Barney Google, Mutt and Jeff and Smokey Stover were the SpongeBobs and Homer Simpsons of their time; all that's changed is the medium. Successful syndicated strips produced capital-I Icons, beloved by all and incredibly lucrative, spawning toys, spin-off cartoons and even live-action films, hit records, gas masks and whatever else a person might have needed.
For a solid period of time, Capp and Abner were the ones to beat. Li'l Abner's readership was so high and its cultural presence so vast that one could make a legitimate argument it was possibly the most popular American comic strip up until the late 1950s or so. There were live-action films (two, to be precise), a successful Broadway musical, and theatrical animated shorts. It spawned an entire holiday that still somewhat-persists today, and it adorned the cover of Life Magazine (again, such a feat might not mean much to us today, but it would have been a huge deal at the time). A contest to design a character for the strip was judged by the likes of Frank Sinatra, Salvador Dali and Boris Karloff. There was a theme park (although curiously, this was established in the waning days of the strip's success). Charlie Chaplin and John Steinbeck wrote forewords to book collections of the comic, and the latter nominated Capp for the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1953. John Updike deemed Capp "the best satirist since Laurence Sterne", and declared that Abner's "richness of social and philosophical commentary approached the Voltairean". Amongst the fanbase were also Al Hirschfeld, Ralph Bakshi, Harpo Marx, Shel Silverstein and Queen Elizabeth. Time Magazine dubbed Capp the modern-day successor to Mark Twain (an accolade that would frequently be bestowed upon him during his career).
And of course, there was the Shmoo, a merchandising behemoth that could be described as the Minions of its day.
You may by now be wondering what any of this has to do with the Beatles, or even my claim that 1965 was a tricky year for Al Capp. I went on this tangent to give you a sense of scope; I feel as though just about anybody alive nowadays has at least an inkling of how huge the Beatles were in 1965, as they are still huge today. You might have needed a crash-course of the popularity of Li'l Abner back when it was a going concern, however, because it is not particularly well-remembered in 2025. Why is that?
Back to 1965, and Capp. Li'l Abner had just entered its third decade, and a couple of cracks in the armor were apparent. Charles Schulz was the hot new-ish cartoonist in town, and his creation Peanuts was rapidly closing in on surpassing Abner's popularity. Pouring salt in the wound, he had invoked Capp's ire years prior, by publicly commenting that he felt it was a "mistake" to have the strip's two lead characters, the eponymous Abner and his reluctant crush Daisy Mae, marry in a 1952 storyline, arguing that it hurt the strip's premise too much. To make matters worse, it seemed as though Schulz was merely stating a fairly common opinion-- the strip had jumped the shark before the term existed.
Panels from 1957's "L'l Ab'r", a Harvey Kurtzman and Will Elder spoof of Abner that appeared in Trump Magazine and re-iterated criticisms of the strip that were becoming more and more common-- Abner and Daisy Mae's marriage was a bad decision and the strip was growing stale.
Capp was a fine example of "could dish it out but not take it", full of witty barbs but never too keen to be on the receiving end of them. He would brush off Peanuts whenever he was asked about it, insisting he didn't see the appeal or think it was all that great-- calculated indifference to seem unbothered (this is diplomatic by Capp's standards, it must be noted). But it must have stung to see the one who called him out surpass him in the public's eye as the new decade started to truly come into its own and form an identity distinct from the previous ones, ones where Capp flourished.
To be a successful syndicated cartoonist at that point in time was to have your finger on the pulse-- doubly-so the case when your strip is as focused on social satire as Li'l Abner was. Was Al Capp slipping? Was his lauded ability to be in tune with the zeitgest and call everything for what it was on the fritz? Perhaps the thought crossed his mind. He would have to shape up if he wanted to continue his reign as the Dostoyevsky of The Comics (another frequent point of comparison). The 60s were clearly going to be a different beast-- how would he approach them?
Combatively, as was his nature-- although while once Capp was combative on the side of The People, picking targets and skewering them in ways that resonated with the average reader, it now seemed more and more like he was combatting The People themselves. The youth culture that was emerging seemed to disgust the once-outspokenly-liberal Capp. Their long hair, their protests, their love of that Snoopy comic that belonged to that upstart cartoonist who dared to talk out of turn about my comic.
Their goddamned rock and roll music.
In December of 1965, Capp gave an interview to PlayBoy that seemed to announce a new Al Capp. One who was getting fed up with the way things were changing:
"I haven’t changed. Liberalism has. The liberal fought for welfare. It began as compulsory Christianity; it has degenerated into something maudlin and mindless. Under today’s corruption of welfare, any slut capable of impregnation is encouraged to produce bastards without end—for which she is given welfare checks without end. A woman who has proven herself an unfit driver has her license taken away; yet the unfit mother is given unbridled license to continue to produce children doomed to lovelessness and neglect from the moment they are born. And society is doomed to support them, to cure their dope addiction, to jail them, or to terminate their terrible little lives because we will not take away from the unfit the license to reproduce."
Not quite "Happiness is A Warm Puppy". He waxes philosophical a bit more about the changing cultural landscape, as he sees it:
"Change is often called 'decay'. Our moral values are changing, that’s all. I think the most shocking thing I ever saw in my life—I couldn’t have been more than 10 or 11 years old—was a woman smoking. I was positive I’d seen my first prostitute. But a few years later my grandmothers was sending me out for packs of cigarettes. I remember when the sight of a woman’s calf was enough to snap a man’s mind. Yet today parents proudly watch their little drum-majorette daughters parading half naked down Main Street."
And, of course, some not-so-subtle digs at the present-day comics-reading audience, the kind who just loved Peanuts, but couldn't seem to appreciate his work to his liking anymore:
"I am puzzled that anyone regards Li’l Abner as any sort of hero at all. The size of his feet is heroic, but not much else about him. A hero is modest; Abner is vain. A hero’s wife adores him; Abner’s wife deplores him. A hero is innocent; Abner is merely ignorant. Maybe that’s it: Maybe it’s his ignorance the public admires. The scope of his ignorance is heroic. And when ignorance triumphs over intellect, we all feel personally more secure. English humorists, as in Tom Jones, used class as the yardstick of ignorance. Americans are apt to use geography. Dogpatch, because it is so far removed from the centers of culture, is accepted as a Fort Knox of ignorance. And the ignorant are accepted as Fort Knoxes of goodness, mainly because they aren’t smart enough to be rotten."
This was just a sneak preview of the delights that were to come. Capp would end 1965 with a storyline about S.W.I.N.E. (Students Wildly Indignant about Nearly Everything), a group of unwashed and unkempt teenagers who invade the strip so they can complain about social justice issues and-- gasp! -- interrupt the annual Sadie Hawkins' Day storyline. Not too hard to glean where Capp's head was at by that point in time.
For all of Capp's anger towards the youth culture of 1965, and how it was changing everything from the way it was before, one might wonder: did he have any thoughts on the Beatles? As it turns out, yes-- first, very briefly in July and August of 1964.
Being a year prior to the apparent start of Capp's shift into Old Man Crank mode, the riffing on the Beatles here isn't particularly pointed-- hell, you could even call it gentle. Abner, without his knowledge, has a little transmitter radio embedded into his tooth by a mysterious figure. Said figure uses it to blare a Beatles parody, "I Wanna Hold Your Ham", into Abner's head 24/7. At first, Abner is delighted to hear the song, as he seems to be a devout fan of "thet glorious moosic", but eventually, hearing it 24/7 grates on him a little (maybe he isn't a true fan after all...)
Click on each strip for a (much) better look at it.
The mysterious figure then begins using this form of torture to force Abner to do his bidding, which entails leaving Daisy Mae and shacking up with his sister instead, typical Li'l Abner plot fare. The Beatles parody basically becomes a footnote to the story, but I believe it was the first time they were mentioned in the strip, so I felt it was worth a mention.
In August-to-September of 1965, we get another Beatles storyline, this time with the Fabs (still unnamed) themselves taking a much more prominent role in the proceedings. On a faraway island, Abner and Daisy Mae come across an American secret agent who bears a striking resemblance to Ringo Starr. His plan is to infiltrate the Beatles and convince their teenage fanbase to help stimulate the American economy.
Again, click on each strip for a better look.
Once more, by Capp's standards, this isn't too harsh towards its apparent targets-- but one does have to wonder, given where it appeared in the timeline of Capp's life and political leanings, whether anything can be read into the storyline's assertion that the Beatles' arrival in America had apparently caused its youth to abandon their own economy.
The Capp-Beatles crossover saga doesn't end here! In 1969, Abner's pappy met John Lennon and Yoko Ono in person at long last(?), during one of their famous Bed-Ins For Peace. Capp had slid even further to the right politically by this point, and his star had fallen all the more (whether this had anything to do with his politics or not you can argue amongst yourselves, preferably away from me), so it was an optimal time for the publicity-hungry curmudgeon to make a prominent public appearance somewhere where the cameras were sure to be rolling.
True to form, Capp is on the attack from the second he shows up. Although he is obviously opposed to John and Yoko politically, he seems to have little interest in discussing that aspect of things with them, but rather just repeatedly tries (and fails) to get a rise out of them with personal insults (most of which are geared towards Yoko), talking about "defecating" on the floor of their home, and by interrupting the two of them (again, especially Yoko) every time they start talking. It serves as possibly the most concise summarization of where Capp was at this point in his life-- wanting positive PR, but choosing to go about it by scolding two of the most popular figures of the time. Wanting to be viewed as an edgy provocateur as he was in his heyday, but being met with a mix of pity and scorn that just seemed to anger him further.
At the end of their encounter, Lennon tried to lighten the mood by singing a riff on The Ballad of John And Yoko, ending with "they're gonna crucify Capp!" He didn't know it then, but he was correct.
Al Capp continued on in this vein. He made more Li'l Abner comics ranting about hippies and the youth of America and everything they held dear, such as Joan Baez and (of course) Charles Schulz. He began a rather bizarre side-hustle where he toured college campuses and berated the students, which was negatively received in general, even by many of those who agreed with him politically, wondering why on earth he was making himself this miserable. Even William F. Buckley opined that it was a bit much: "I think Mr. Capp, as undeniably hilarious as he is, might be a more effective advocate if he varied his technique a bit and eased the doses of ridicule he administers... his is a cause that needs persuasive advocates, and it is unfortunate that he dissipates the moral cogency of his position by overkill which at times borders on vulgarity.”
In 1971, Capp was accused of exposing himself to four female students at the University of Alabama. In 1972, similar charges led to him being arrested. After Capp's death, further allegations surfaced-- he reportedly tried to force himself on Grace Kelly, and in Goldie Hawn's memoir she accused him of indecent exposure and berating her when she turned down his advances, when she was 19 years old. Allegations have continued to come out throughout the years, as recently as 2019, when Jean Kilbourne described Capp repeatedly groping and harassing her when she worked for him in the 1960s.
In 1977, Li'l Abner ceased publication, seemingly in the middle of a storyline. Its readership had dwindled substantially. Strips like Garfield, Cathy and (the very un-latter-day-Capp-like) Doonesbury became the new favorites of readers... and, of course, Peanuts was by then firmly entrenched as the world's most popular syndicated strip, a title it would hold until Schulz's passing and probably continues to hold. The Beatles, to date, are the highest-selling musical act of all time.
Capp died two years later. In her diary just a few years before, his wife Catherine dubbed him "the worst creature I ever could have spent my life with".
A 1970 parody of Li'l Abner from National Lampoon, by Doug Kenney and Bill Dubay.
