Set in 1960s New York, the sexy, stylized and provocative AMC drama Mad Men follows the lives of the ruthlessly competitive men and women of Madison Avenue advertising, an ego-driven world where key players make an art of the sell.
This blog is dedicated to the 1960s and the era when Mad Men ruled the world and those creative sociopaths past and present conjured up compelling advertising to convince the world o material things they could not live without.
From politics to pop culture, the 60s offered an incredible array of sights, sounds and swingin' sensations. It was the decade of Batman, Bond, the Beatles, bongs, Barbarella, beatniks, beach bunnies and Bob Dylan. From the Rat Pack at the dawn of the decade to the Rolling Stones at its zenith, from Motown to monster movie magazines, from drive-ins to dope, the 60s offered something for jet setters, hippies, suburban kids, surfers, radicals and fun lovin' freaks alike. There were also the tragedies, like JFK, Bobby, MLK and Viet Nam, that still resonate and affect our world today. And let's not forget the sexual revolution underlying this tumultuous explosion of art and war.
"He who has a thing to sell and goes and whispers in a well is not so apt to get the dollars as he who climbs a tree and hollers."
Don Draper: Advertising is based on one thing: happiness. And do you know what happiness is? Happiness is the smell of a new car. It's freedom from fear. It's a billboard on the side of a road that screams with reassurance that whatever you're doing is OK. You are OK.
Name the two musical artists/groups that had the most number # 1 hits in the ’60s.
The Supremes
The Beatles
Excerpt from Frank Sinatra's Playboy Interview-1963
Playboy: Frank, in the 20 years since you left the Tommy Dorsey band to make your name as a solo singer, you’ve deepened and diversified your talents with a variety of concurrent careers in related fields. But so far, none of these aptitudes and activities has succeeded in eclipsing your gifts as a popular vocalist. So why don’t we begin by examining Sinatra, the singer?
Sinatra: OK, deal.
Playboy: Many explanations have been offered for your unique ability — apart from the subtleties of style and vocal equipment — to communicate the mood of a song to an audience. How would you define it?
Sinatra: I think it’s because I get an audience involved, personally involved in a song — because I’m involved myself. It’s not something I do deliberately; I can’t help myself. If the song is a lament at the loss of love, I get an ache in my gut. I feel the loss myself and I cry out the loneliness, the hurt and the pain that I feel.
Playboy: Doesn’t any good vocalist “feel” a song? Is there such a difference…
Sinatra: I don’t know what other singers feel when they articulate lyrics, but being an 18-karat manic-depressive and having lived a life of violent emotional contradictions, I have an over-acute capacity for sadness as well as elation. I know what the cat who wrote the song is trying to say. I’ve been there — and back. I guess the audience feels it along with me. They can’t help it. Sentimentality, after all, is an emotion common to all humanity.
Excerpt of Miles Davis' Interview in Playboy-1962
Playboy: Linked with your musical renown is your reputation for bad temper and rudeness to your audiences. Would you comment?
Davis: Why is it that people just have to have so much to say about me? It bugs me because I’m not that important. Some critic that didn’t have nothing else to do started this crap about I don’t announce numbers, I don’t look at the audience, I don’t bow or talk to people, I walk off the stage, and all that.
Look, man, all I am is a trumpet player. I only can do one thing — play my horn — and that’s what’s at the bottom of the whole mess. I ain’t no entertainer, and ain’t trying to be one. I am one thing, a musician. Most of what’s said about me is lies in the first place. Everything I do, I got a reason.
The reason I don’t announce numbers is because it’s not until the last instant I decide what’s maybe the best thing to play next. Besides, if people don’t recognize a number when we play it, what difference does it make?
Why I sometimes walk off the stand is because when it’s somebody else’s turn to solo, I ain’t going to just stand up there and be detracting from him. What am I going to stand up there for? I ain’t no model, and I don’t sing or dance, and I damn sure ain’t no Uncle Tom just to be up there grinning. Sometimes I go over by the piano or the drums and listen to what they’re doing. But if I don’t want to do that, I go in the wings and listen to the whole band until it’s the next turn for my horn.
Then they claim I ignore the audience while I’m playing. Man, when I’m working, I know the people are out there. But when I’m playing, I’m worrying about making my horn sound right.
And they bitch that I won’t talk to people when we go off after a set. That’s a damn lie. I talk plenty of times if everything’s going like it ought to and I feel right. But if I got my mind on something about my band or something else, well, hell, no, I don’t want to talk. When I’m working I’m concentrating. I bet you if I was a doctor sewing on some son of a bitch’s heart, they wouldn’t want me to talk.
Anybody wants to believe all this crap they hear about me, it’s their problem, not mine. Because, look, man, I like people. I love people! I’m not going around telling everybody that. I try to say that my way — with my horn. Look, when I was a boy, ten years old, I got a paper route and it got bigger than I could handle because my customers liked me so much. I just delivered papers the best I could and minded my business, the same way I play my horn now. But a lot of the people I meet now make me sick.
Playboy: What types of people do you find especially irritating?
Davis: Well, these people that’s always coming up bugging me until they get me to act like this crap they heard. They ask you things, you say what you think, and if it ain’t what they want to hear, then something’s wrong with you and they go away mad and think you don’t like them. I bet I have had that happen 500 times. In this last club I played, this newspaper reporter kept after me when I told him I didn’t have no more to say. He wasn’t satisfied with that. After the next set, he come up again, either drunk or playing drunk, and shoved into me. I told him to get the hell out of my way, and then he was fine — he went right out and wrote that. But he didn’t tell how it happened.
And I’m mad every time I run into the Jim Crow scene, I don’t care what form it takes. You can’t hardly play anywhere you don’t run into some of these cats full of prejudice. I don’t know how many I’ve told, “Look, you want me to talk to you and you’re prejudiced against me and all that. Why’n’t you go on back where you’re sitting and be prejudiced by yourself and leave me alone?” I have enough problems without trying to make them feel better. Then they go off and join the rest saying I’m such a big bastard.
I’ve got no plans of changing what I think. I don’t dig people in clubs who don’t pay the musicians respect. The average jazz musician today, if he’s making it, is just as trained as classical musicians. You ever see anybody go up bugging the classical musicians when they are on the job and trying to work?
Even in jazz — you look at the white bandleaders — if they don’t want anybody messing with them when they are working, you don’t hear anybody squawking. It’s just if a Negro is involved that there’s something wrong with him. My troubles started when I learned to play the trumpet and hadn’t learned to dance.
Betty Draper: Oh, we ran into this agency head. Apparently he’s courting Don. He gave me his card; asked me if I wanted to do any modeling.
Francine Hanson: Oh, that’s a heck of a line. What did Don say?
Betty: He basically said the man was trying to sleep with one of us and he didn’t like the idea of either.
