Can Easy-Listening Music Cause Mass Suicide?

Since the Deaths of 11 rock-'n'-roll fans at a 1979 concert by The Who, some observers have made rock music itself the culprit for the tragedy. While the practice of "festival seating"--a first-come, first-seated system that encourages stampeding--was clearly at the root of that horror in Cincinnati, many social critics have professed to find a "death orientation" in the music as well.

The fullest treatment of that idea is contained in a recent book by John G. Fuller called Are the Kids All Right? The Rock Generation and Its Hidden Death Wish! Fuller, the author of such highly regarded books as We Almost Lost Detroit and The Poison That Fell from the Sky, suggests that many rock stars beam out their secret cravings for the grave through their amplifiers and that hard rock--which he characterizes as "the throbbing fustigation that enveloped body tissues as well as ears at metasonic levels"--literally hypnotizes young people into acts of wanton self-destruction.

Critics such as Robert Palmer of The New York Times have already questioned Fuller's thesis on many points. How, for example, does such a theory explain the Cincinnati deaths, which occurred before the Who concert had even begun? (Fuller explains that the suicidal Who fans had mesmerized themselves at home by listening to such songs as Won't Get Fooled Again.) Rock's defenders are also certain to be furious over Fuller's gratuitous remarks about the private lives of musicians: The late Janis Joplin, for instance, is described as displaying "all the symptoms of a nymphomaniac but with very few of the qualities that would make her attractive to a man."

The issue is so volatile that debate is sure to be fierce--but this controversy may be nothing compared with one that's certain to follow. Not one but two forthcoming books suggest that another recent American tragedy--the deaths of 113 people at a Kansas City Hyatt Regency Hotel "tea dance" in July 1981--was, in fact, consciously engineered by death cultists who have infiltrated the easy-listening-music scene.

Many horrified American wondered, in the aftermath of the Kansas City affair, how the lilting strains of such supposedly harmless music could result in such a grisly scene. The image of giant walkways swaying under the weight of hundreds of dancers was a mystifying one, but, perhaps, now, in the wake of Fuller's revelations about rock 'n' roll, we can finally uncover the truth about easy listening. In doing so, we must face strange and amazing rumors about some of America's best-loved bandleaders.

Two recent tell-all biographies claim that (continued on page 225) Easy-Listening Music (continued from page 125) elderly conductors Lester Lanin and Guy Lombardo used their orchestras for a sinister purpose--to induce death by schmaltz.

One of those startling books, called Lester Lanin: Puppeteer of Death, is currently unavailable outside South Korea. Its perceptions must remain, for now, untranslated. But the Lombardo book--Guy, Guy, What on Earth Went Down, Guy?--paints a dark portrait of the late bandleader, a portrait decidedly at odds with the public image of a portly, cheerful Mr. Auld Lang Syne.

Co-authors Tommy Consuelo and Albert Silverman come straight to the point: "In the last years of Guy Lombardo's life." they charge, "he became completely entranced by doomsday cults. Eventually, he could only think of one thing: creating mass carnage on New Year's Eve. 'Ringing out the old,' he used to call it." Consuelo, offering little hard proof beyond what he calls "a fellow's intuition about these things," says that Lombardo was constantly tinkering with his arrangement of Auld Lang Syne in order to provoke self-immolation among his listeners. Worried that his Royal Canadians alone could not inspire enough deaths, the authors claim, Lombardo personally trained dozens of small murder-bent music squads, or "combos," then dispatched them to various union halls, country clubs and Jewish community centers throughout the United States and Canada.

Consuelo, the inside source for Guy, Guy, What on Earth Went Down, Guy? has been characterized in some quarters as a "disgruntled former manicurist" to the plump bandleader, and the book's emphasis on nails and nail care does weigh down the narrative. In a recent interview, however, I asked Consuelo to focus on the mass-death aspects of the Lombardo story.

"Every day with him was mass death." Consuelo said. "Little by little, this wonderful man turned into this . . . reprehensible snail! Toward the end, he'd just stick out his little pink hand and point to a jagged nail and say, 'Trim the rough shit there.' 'Beg pardon? "Trim the rough shit there"?' How long have I been in this business--what, 17 years?--to have Lombardo stick out his finger like the pasha of Arabin or something and favor me with filth like that?"

When I urged him to zero in one Lombardo's demonic fantasies, the slender and wide-eyed Consuelo became highly agitated, at several points actually bouncing up and down on his banquette. "Can't ta-alk," he finally said in a singsong voice, clenching his teeth so that no one could read his lips. Watching him fidget, I suspected that he'd been seen by a Lombardo henchman and was terribly scared of retaliation--but it turned out he was simply trying to avoid an ex-friend at a nearby table, whom he called "the most boring white person in Manhattan."

Realizing that Consuelo was insensitive to the macabre aspects of Lombardo's mellow sound, I went on to interview his collaborator, referred to by Consuelo as "Mr. Serious Chrome Dome." Silverman, a former Barnard College professor, had published two controversial books before Guy came out: Zap-Ins, Cosmic Komix and the Whole Groovy Schmear appeared in 1979, and Laughing at the Void: The Shecky Greene Story came out the following year. Silverman is noted for placing himself in competition with the subjects of his books, as if he secretly felt they were unworthy of his attention. When asked about Lombardo, he became extremely abusive toward his subject. "Lombardo was the neo-American doofus in extremis," he said. He then flung off his glasses and shouted accusations at Lombardo--mainly that he "rubbed his mother's feet in a pretty funny way," "ate lots of pie" and was "from out of town." This display of rage frightened other members of Silverman's therapy group (thanks again for letting me attend, Dr. Sheckner), and he was asked to leave, at which point he refused to discuss Lombardo any further.

Other than offer an example of his prose style, Silverman's outburst served little purpose--and it certainly didn't provide any clues for understanding the tormented psyche of Lombardo the artist.

There was just one move left to make. Only through direct participation could I learn the truth about easy listening.

Overcoming all my nagging fears--I'm the wrong age, I don't have the right clothes, everyone will make fun of me--I attended a tea dance. I watched as the aging "teaheads" pepped themselves up with concoctions of alcohol and fruit juice. I puzzled over their jargon--such words as gavotte and hotsytotsy, such phrases as "Pardon my dust" and "Swing and sway with Sammy Kaye" form a language that's virtually airtight.

Let there be no false suspense about it. The music itself--to an impartial listener--is a terrifyingly seductive death call. The way every melody is buried in layers of strings. The way once-lively songs are rouged and whitened with the musical equivalent of embalmer's makeup. The stately, hypnotic pace and the frozen smiles of the elderly dancers. Most of all, the way the bandleaders hark back dreamily to the "good old days," as if the present and the future held nothing but grief and ruin. It all adds up to an image system in which dancers are lured to the Great Shimmering Chord, the promise of a death no more threatening than Muzak. "Step into this world of soothing refrains," the music says. "Step away from the world of break-ins, ghetto blasters and bleeding Popes. Come--Begin the Beguine once and for all . . . drift out on the Ebb Tide . . . S' Wonderful."

I stayed and listened until the suicide tug became too insidious; like Keats. I was already "half in love with easeful death." The only antidote was a blast of early Stones from the car radio. Keith Richards' guitar pumped fresh blood into my weakened tissues and I felt the spark inside me quicken again. And yet, as I drove away from the American Legion hall, still gasping for breath, I couldn't help wondering about the dancers still swinging and swaying inside the hall--would they survive their flirtation with the void or follow the lead of their musical idols and waltz into eternity?