RobKirkpatrick.com

If you live in the New York City area and are up early on Super Bowl Sunday, be sure to tune in to CBS 2 News Sunday at 7:45 AM to see my interview on 1969: The Year Everything Changed.

Speaking of TV, special thanks go out to Johnny V, who had me into the studio yesterday to tape a special half-hour segment of his show Beyond the Game. We talked Jets, Mets, and 1969. The show will air soon on White Plains Cable Television Channel 76. 

And speaking of Super Bowl Sunday…Steelers 24, Cardinals 17.

“A riveting look at a pivotal year.”–Booklist

“In this compelling account, Kirkpatrick treats the tumultuous events of 1969 with the skills of a journalist, a historian, a sociologist, and a sportswriter and manages to insert moments of lightness and triviality into his grand tour. He writes as easily about jazz-pop as about the rise of the American Indian Movement. He follows a harrowing chapter about the Manson family and the Zodiac Killer with a breathless report on the Amazin’ Mets.  Later he describes the surreal convergence of Game 4 of the World  Series with the National Moratorium Day against the Vietnam War….Nostalgic for some, revelatory for others, this is a worthy addition to the literature of the 1960s.”–Library Journal

“The subtitle of his new book, 1969: The Year Everything Changed, may sound hyperbolic, but Kirkpatrick makes a good case that it was a year of ‘landmark achievements, cataclysmic episodes and generation-defining events.’”–USA Today

“Yet for all of the decade’s landmark moments, the final year–1969–hasn’t received the attention it deserves. Just in time for its fortieth anniversary, the newly released 1969 is a compelling account of the historic year, covering politics, sports, civil rights, technology, and more. Written by Rob Kirkpatrick, 1969 explores the events, creations, and ideas that simultaneously brought the Sixties to a close and set the foundation for our country as it is today.”–History Channel Magazine Club

I was wondering why 1969 suddenly shot up on Amazon’s sales rankings today–I didn’t think my nephew’s YouTube channel had that much pull–but then I saw the great article that ran in USA Today (a day earlier than expected)!  It’s on the front page of the “Life” section and runs over onto page 2 with a picture of yours truly. (Todd Gitlin even took a bit of a shot at me, which I thought was way cool.)  Many thanks to Craig Wilson for his great piece.  You can read the article online at:

http://www.usatoday.com/life/books/news/2009-01-25-1969-book_N.htm

I even got a kick out of the teaser’s placement on the main “Life” page–just beneath Oprah, above the Coachella festival, and to the right of Kate Winslet…

-Rob

With Super Bowl XLIII just one week away, it’s a good time to look back to perhaps the biggest upset in American professional sports, which took place 40 years ago in Super Bowl III.

The Baltimore Colts came into Miami’s Orange Bowl on January 12, 1969, having compiled a 13-1 record in the 1968 regular season. In the playoffs, they’d knocked off the Minnesota Vikings 24-14 (the game wasn’t that close; Baltimore led 21-0 after 3 quarters) and then avenged their only loss of the season by destroying the Cleveland Browns 34-0 in the NFL championship game. 

The American Football League, an upstart league that began play at the beginning of the 1960s, sent the New York Jets to the Super Bowl in January 1969. New York had won a weak division in 1968 by going 11-3 and slipped by the Oakland Raiders 27-23 in the AFL championship.  

Jets QB Joe Namath had had an erratic season, throwing more interceptions than touchdowns.  Meanwhile, Colts QB Earl Morrall had stepped in for injured legend John Unitas and won the 1968 NFL MVP.  The NFL’s Green Bay Packers had destroyed the AFL champs in the first two championship matchups (35-10 over the Chiefs in SB I and 33-14 over the Raiders in SB II) and most folks assumed the results would be similar in Super Bowl III.  Not Namath. Eating up the spotlight, he famously outraged the Colts–and his own coach–by guaranteeing that the Jets would win Super Bowl III.

And the Jets made good on Namath’s guarantee–and shocked the pro sports world–by defeating the Colts 16-7. Although Namath was named the game’s MVP, the New York defense was really the story of the game in shutting out the feared Colts offense until late in the fourth quarter. By then, Colts coach Don Shula had relieved MVP Morrall, whom the Jets had rendered totally ineffective, with Unitas, who led his team to its only scoring drive.

The image of Namath leaving the field of the Orange Bowl with his finger raised to indicate his team was No. 1 is an iconic one from the era.  One interesting subplot to the game was that Namath neither threw a touchdown in the game nor attempted even one pass in the 4th quarter.  A free-throwing ”gunslinger” who had become the first quarterback to throw for 4,000 yards in a season, Namath reigned himself in for Super Bowl III and managed a conservative game plan that centered around the running game of Matt Snell and Emerson Boozer.

An interesting comparison can be made to Brett Favre’s 2008 season as Jets QB. Given the keys to the city and invested with the hopes of a woeful frachise that has had little to cheer about since its victory in Super Bowl III, Favre looked to have the Jets headed for the playoffs after successive road wins over the Patriots and the previously unbeaten Titans.  New York sat at 8-3 in late November, and fans of the J-E-T-S were talking Super Bowl once again.

Big Apple fans are not easily pleased, though, even in the best of times. On 66 WFAN radio in New York, many callers (and hosts) were complaining that Brett Favre was not the same freewheeling, gunslinging quarterback they’d been fantasizing about when he signed with the Jets shortly before the beginning of the season.  But with little time to pick up his new team’s offensive scheme, he stayed conservative for most of the season and focused on short, high-percentage passes while relying on the team’s ground attack.  Sound familiar?

Bet then in cold and rainy Week 13 contest at the Meadowlands, Jay Cutler and the Denver Broncos shocked Favre and the Jets 34-17. It was all down hill from there for Gang Green. Under the heading of “Be Careful What You Wish For,” Favre began to take more chances, throwing the risky passes that had always defined his style of play. But the 39-year-old quarterback who was born 10 months after Namath’s Super Bowl triumph began to show his age.  He threw just 2 touchdowns and 9 interceptions as the Jets went 1-4 down the stretch and failed to qualify for the postseason.

As passers, Namath and Favre were cut from the same mold. But they will be remembered very differently by New York football fans. Namath won a Super Bowl by keeping his own game in check. Favre couldn’t take his team to the Super Bowl because, in the end, he tried to play too much like Namath.

***

As the publicity for my 1969 book begins, one of the most enjoyable interviews I’m bound to have was with my 13-year-old nephew (and future Connecticut School of Broadcasting student) Cameron Wallace, who invited me to appear on his YouTube channel to discuss 1969: The Year Everything Changed.  Check out it and let him know what you think about his interviewing skills: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v60StxbP6Q4&feature=channel 

-Rob

So I did my first live interview yesterday! I talked to Lionel of “The Lionel Show” on Air America. Lionel is crazy!  I mean that in a good way, and I couldn’t have asked for a more enthusiastic host.  As I was on hold waiting to “go live,” I was looking at the show’s web site and read the following description:

“This will be the greatest LIONEL SHOW ever. Why? You’ll see. Rob Kirkpatrick, author of ‘1969′ joins the show. Amazing. Kirkpatrick notes  inter alia “In 1969, man landed on the moon. The Cinderella stories of Joe Namath’s Jets and the ‘Miracle Mets’ captivated sports fans. Students across the nation took over college campuses, and demonstrators battled police in the People’s Park riots and during the ‘Days if Rage.’ It was the year of the artificial heart transplant and the first computer network connection. The Manson family an the cryptic Zodiac Killer terrorized the country. Shall I go on?”

The “greatest LIONEL SHOW ever”?  No pressure!  Well, okay, full disclosure: The day’s show also featured some pretty smart-sounding guests, including global economist Maria Fiori Ramirez, journalist Shira Toeplitz from Roll Call, and authors Amy Chua (Days of Empire) and Kitty Burns Florey (Script and Scribble). So I was merely one small part of the Greatest. Lionel Show. Ever.  (I prefer to think of myself as the eye candy for the day’s lineup…)

It being my first live spot, I was a little rattled but tried my best not to show it. I couldn’t think of the word I needed to describe what television does to today’s generation of viewers–until last night, when someone I went to the movies with used it in conversation, and I said, “Desensitize! That’s the word I was looking for this morning!” And when Lionel asked me what the square root of 69 was, I was trying so hard to focus that I didn’t even see the punch line coming. But thankfully, Lionel talked me through most of the show.  He said when he got the book he had an “Ah!” moment – as in, Ah, look at all the memorable events that all happened within one 12-month span – and that’s exactly the type of reaction I was going for when I wrote it. Thanks again to Lionel and his producer for having me on!

And soon after the interview, one of my publicists at Skyhorse Publishing informed me that she’d booked a spot for me on CBS-2 television here in New York on the morning of Super Bowl Sunday.  More on this next week!

But the interview I’m really looking forward to is the one I’ll be doing with my 13-year-old nephew. He asked me if he could interview me for his YouTube channel; he said he wants to talk to me about my book and also my thoughts on the Super Bowl.  (The kid recognizes a true Renaissance man when he sees one.) He said he’d “prefer” to do our interview today because that’s when he’s “most available”–but out of consideration for my busy schedule, he said we could do his spot “V.I.A.” telephone.

What’s better than that?

-Rob

Well, it’s on as of tomorrow, when I do “The Lionel Show” on Air America tomorrow at 10 AM EST as the beginning of my “virtual” publicity tour for 1969: The Year Everything Changed. For those who can’t or don’t know how to tune into this show in their markets, you can still access a live online stream at http://airamerica.com/lionel.

Things get really busy next week when I do “The Thom Hartman Show,” also nationally syndicated on Air America, along with the “Ralph Bailey Show” on KNZR in Bakersfield, CA, “Growing Older” (it is a perfect book for Boomers!) on WKYU-FM/PBS in Bowling Green, KY, “Gary O’Brien and Friends” on WDWS in Champaign, IL, and “Beyond the Game” on White Plains (NY) Cable TV.  Also that week, USA Today is due to run Craig Wilson’s piece on the book.  

My publicists are in the process of booking more dates, but so far the interest we’ve received across the nation has been exciting.

President Barack Obama took office today, forty years to the day that Richard Nixon did in 1969. Few would compare these two men, yet there is a fundamental similarity to the circumstances under which they both came to office–namely, both successfully campaigned against a war left over from the opposing Party.

In his inaugural address, Nixon had declared, “The greatest honor history can bestow is the title of peacemaker.” But it was a title that would elude him, and thanks to Watergate, the Vietnam War would outlast Nixon’s own term in office. His Vietnam policy had been schizophrenic; he began withdrawing troops while simultaneously escalating the air war with covert operations against targets in Cambodia–part of his strategy to “win the peace.”

In his address today, President Obama said, “We will begin to responsibly leave Iraq to its people, and forge a hard-earned peace in Afghanistan.” Note the familiar resonance in the last part of that sentence. I do agree that the Iraq War was launched on a false premise sold to the American people and that it diverted attention from Afghanistan. But I can’t help be struck by the rhetorical similarities. Having previously stated his plan to escalate military action in the nation that had harbored Al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden (he outlined “more troops, more helicopters…” in his July 14 op-ed for the New York Times), Obama sounds as if he plans to win the peace in Afghanistan.

The hawkish message in some passages of the address were surprising, especially as he began by observing, “On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear unity of purpose over conflict and discord.” (Translation: ”You voted for me, the peacemaker, not the other guy, the hawk.”)  He went on to say, “We will not apologize for our way of life, nor will we waver in its defense, and for those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you now that our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken; you cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you.”

We’ve also heard this type of language before–from George W. Bush in the days following 9/11. Let’s hope Obama proceeds with a clearer vision and unity of purpose than did W.

***

I admittedly approached this last election with a sense of being jaded. A lot of the enthusiasm, if not outright euphoria, that many of my friends and colleagues felt for Obama reminded me of how it was for me in 1992. I’m still glad that Bill Clinton unseated George Bush the First (although the son would only ennoble the father by comparison) and proved that the Republicans did not have a monopoly on the White House (as it had seemed back then) but Clinton did not prove the agent of change that he had vowed to be. Forget about Monicagate, which as far as I’m concerned is a matter for the Clinton family. I’m talking about things like his signing legislation in 1999 that paved the way for financial deregulation.

During this past election, I kept wanting something more from Obama. I wanted to hear how he was going to effect the changes–or simply Change with a captial C–that he promised. Come the fall, his pop culture profile had become nearly messianic; this was the person who would send everyone to college, bring health care to all, feed the hungry, clothe the poor, drive the Moors from the Holy Land…well, maybe not that last thing; especially not that last thing. But I wanted to know how he was going to do what I heard he was going to do, and although he proved himself one of the best public speakers in recent memory, I found his specifics lacking. Then again, in 21st century politics and the era of the meta-campaign, candidates are judged more on their ability to convey a message–to stay “on message,” is the code phrase–than in demonstrating how they will make manifest this message.

Interestingly, the person that Obama has designated to be his Secretary of State is Hillary Clinton…the same person whose world-stage credentials Obama himself mocked during primary season. So call me jaded, but I’m still looking for how our 44th president is going to move us away from politics as usual.

-Rob

This is pretty cool. I did a phone interview with USA Today–it’s slated to run on 1/27, I’ll post a link to the story when it appears–but in the meantime, here’s a quick synopsis/review that the History Channel Magazine featured in its e-newsletter to subscribers this week:

“The 1960s were symbolic of change, creativity, experimentation, and the perserverance of the human spirit. And in many ways, the ‘culture wars’ of the 21st century began in the Sixties. Yet for all the decade’s landmark moments, the final year–1969–hasn’t received the attention it deserves….Just in time for its fortieth anniversary, the newly released 1969 is a compelling account of the historic year, covering politics, sports, civil rights, music, technology, and more. Written by Rob Kirkpatrick, 1969 explores the events, creations, and ideas that simultaneously brought the Sixties to a close and set the foundation for the country as it is today.”

Hey, I’ll take “compelling account” anyday!

- Rob

Ron Asheton, guitarist of the legendary Stooges (see THE SOUNDS OF ‘69, below) passed away on January 6 at the age of 60. Yahoo! Music did an excellent story on Asheton, remembering, “True, the early Stooges got most of their notoriety due to frotman Iggy’s outrageuous onstage antics…but it was Asheton’s sledge (and sludge) hammer lead guitar (and on Raw Power, bass) that served as the sonic battering ram for the Stooges’ music, from the anarchy-r-us wah-wah pedal on ‘1969′ and the hellbent chords of ‘[I Wanna Be Your] Dog’ to the thnderstruck riffs of ‘TV Eye’ and ‘Loose.’”  You can read the story, plus see a rare concert clip of The Stooges from 1970, at: http://new.music.yahoo.com/blogs/stopthepresses/11495/ron-asheton-prince-of-power/

Imagine a band releasing not one, not two, but three classic albums all in one year. That’s what Creedence Clearwater Revival did in 1969 with Bayou Country (“Born on the Bayou,” “Proud Mary”), Green River (title track, “Bad Moon Rising”), and Willy and the Poor Boys (“Down on the Corner,” “Fortunate Son”), all critical and commercial successes for CCR. Hell, the band could have released a greatest hits album of songs all released in 1969. . .and for good measure, they also began the recording sessions for Cosmo’s Factory, maybe their greatest album. Compare that with how long it took Axl Rose to put the finishing touches on Chinese Democracy.

Perhaps even more impressive than CCR’s string of success was the output from a group that took the U.S. by storm with two albums and a North American tour that saw them move from opening act to headliners for good. Forty years ago this week, Led Zeppelin released its debut album and introduced heavy metal to America and the rest of the world. As I argue in my 1969 book, although acid-rock power trios like Cream and the Jimi Hendrix Experience had paved the way for the electrified blues of heavy metal, Led Zeppelin took things to the next level, adding not just volume but a sexualized sturm und drang that spoke to music fans at the end of the decade, post–Flower Power. Even the cover of the group debut album Led Zeppelin—a rendering of the 1937 Hindenburg crash—announced the onset and onslaught of something big and new. Greg Kot writes on RollingStone.com, “The image did a pretty good job of encapsulating the music inside: sex, catastrophe and things blowing up. . . .Jimmy Page’s guitar pounces from the speakers, fat with menace; John Bonham’s kick drum swings with anvil force; Robert Plant rambles on about the perils of manhood. Hard rock would never been the same.” And it was only the beginning: Led Zeppelin II, released nine months later, further refined their sound and included their biggest hit single, “Whole Lotta Love.” You can read up on the groups 1969 tour of the States at: http://ledzeppelin.com/timeline/1969.

One of the things that inspired me to write my book was the incredible amount of classic albums that came out that year. We’re talking Abbey Road, Aoxomoxoa, Blind Faith, Crosby, Stills & Nash, Johnny Cash at San Quentin, Let It Bleed, Nashville Skyline, Santana, Stand!, Tommy, The Velvet Underground, and Volunteers. On Dusty in Memphis, Dusty Springfield sang more soulfully than a white girl from England should ever be able to (think Amy Winehouse minus the drama…) while Isaac Hayes’ Hot Buttered Soul helped move R&B into ’70s funk. Iggy Pop and the Stooges’ first release, along with Kick Out the Jams from MC5, pretty much invented punk rock. Neil Young’s Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, his first album with Crazy Horse, launched a future generation of grunge and alt-country rockers, and the Allman Brothers gave us the first “southern rock” record. The inital offerings from King Crimson and Yes and the seminal Jethro Tull disc Stand Up pioneered progressive rock, while ’70s shock and glam acts Alice Cooper and Mott the Hoople first appeared on vinyl that year, too.

America was changing, and in 1969 popular music changed forever.

COMING UP: Keep checking back as I begin my “virtual” publicity tour later this month.