The Frank Sinatra Riot: The moment youth culture was born
All culture is the product of youth culture in one way or another. Most of the great strides forward in the world of the arts have been made by the youth in revolt, and everything thereafter is a postscript that unfurls in the turmoil. Kids questioning what has gone before and clubbing together to try and tackle things on their own terms has been part of society since time immemorial, but the first period it very publicly roared to the forefront was thanks to Frank Sinatra.
Now, the established angle of the evolution of pop culture places Elvis Presley’s swivelling hips as the thrusting engine of youth trends, later solidified by otherworldly Beatlemania. Alas, long before this, Ol’ Blue Eyes inadvertently started a riot at the Paramount in New York City that signposted the future that lay ahead of the world.
It was December 30th, 1942, and the world was about to enter another year of the war. Not only were kids fearing the draft and premature death that all too easily followed, but they were wondering how the hell things had arrived at this point. Some tragic side step had clearly occurred in the progress of man, and the youth were almost duty-bound to question their conservative forefathers who had arrived at this hill.
These kids were taking solace in the rise of the radio, and one of the most loving voices on there was Sinatra’s. The printing press pushed his persuasion on further thanks to his charming, good looks and effortless sense of cool. To the youth, he seemed like he was marching to his own beat and that offered them a glimmer of hope, a glimpse at something different.
Sinatra had seen this, too. Prior to the concert, he had been a mere member of Harry James’ band. But after crisp recordings at the Hollywood Palladium showcased to him that he had the talent as well as the fandom, he decided to go it alone. So, as he approached the stage in New York that fateful night in 1942, it all hung in the balance. Solo singers were a rarity, and while he certainly had fans, talent, and appeal, huge question marks still remained about whether anyone would come to watch a young kid croon.
Before he even emerged from the wings, he heard it. “The sound that greeted me was absolutely deafening. It was a tremendous roar. Five thousand kids, stamping, yelling, screaming, applauding. I was scared stiff. I couldn’t move a muscle,” he later recalled. Worked up in an escapist frenzy, the youth present bandied together with a booming sense of pride and possibilities.
Radio personality Jack Benny was present as an older fellow somewhat out of the loop, and he recalled, “I thought the goddamned building was going to cave in. I never heard such a commotion… All this for a fellow I never heard of.” But the youth had, and that was the crux of the matter: Frank Sinatra was their own.
In fact, when Frank himself would reflect on the matter, he put his finger on the cause of his rampant fandom, telling Jeremy Arnold, “Perfectly simple: It was the war years and there was a great loneliness, and I was the boy in every corner drugstore, the boy who’d gone off drafted to the war. That’s all.” And even for the lads who remained, he was the hope that social mobility still offered them a chance.
This was even more apparent when he returned to the venue in 1944 after another two years of war and rampant drafts. This time, a queue far longer than the capacity gathered outside the theatre, and those who couldn’t get in kickstarted a riot. This was the flashpoint that signified pop culture had arrived. Disbelieving old folks asked, ‘People were rioting over a singer? Really?’ As though what was happening over in Europe was far less incredulous or absurd. The dichotomy was clear.
And it was clear to a lot of executives who had seen these two rampant gigs over the last couple of years, not just Jack Benny. ‘These fans love him so much they’re willing to riot it for him’, they figured, ‘then surely they’ll spend some loose change on him too’. So, almost overnight, it became clear to the music industry that 30-50-year-olds were no longer the target audience; youth culture was the future of all culture.
