We are, frankly, no longer in an era in which music and television go hand in hand. It seems like the Video Music Awards are the only time you see music on the channel whose name used to mean “Music Television.” This is partially just because television is becoming less prominent and relevant in its own way. This is particularly true when it comes to young people, who have always been the ones who propelled music into popularity, the ones who put the “pop” in “pop music,” if you will. The new vanguard of music is the streaming wars, and when you want a music video, you watch it on YouTube. This just makes sense, from a practical perspective. Why watch, or listen, to the music that is being given to you, when getting the exact song, or video, you want is just a click away?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qVmKAkIKqPU
This is a somewhat new development, though. If you are of a certain age, you remember a time when Total Request Live was seemingly ubiquitous. It was the place for teenagers to hear the hit songs they wanted. They hung out in the crowd and screamed and professed their love for the N’Syncs and Backstreet Boys of the world. Carson Daly was the face of teenage fanaticism, or at least the conduit for it, being that he was, you know, not a teenager. This show lasted for a decade. In the United Kingdom, they had Top of the Pops, which did something vaguely similar. However, both of these shows were just following in the footsteps of the show that made pop music, and the interests of teenagers, into a television phenomenon. This show is American Bandstand.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GifYwVOGjI
There is a decent enough chance you don’t have any real memory of American Bandstand. It aired its final episode Oct. 7, 1989, buried on the then-relatively new USA Network. However, for a long time, American Bandstand was there for teenagers looking for access to popular music, and for a chance to see the bands they loved. It began its run, in the sense we think of it, in September 1952, and moved to ABC, and a national audience, in 1957. MTV didn’t even exist until 1981. While you might have to stretch a bit to call American Bandstand the inventor of anything MTV did, the show empirically revolutionized the relationship between music and television.
The premise of the show was simple. It played Top 40 music and teenagers danced. Sometimes the teenagers talked about music. A musician would show up and lip-sync while their songs played. From the beginning, guys like Jerry Lee Lewis, who have become legends, appeared on the show. More notably, given the atmosphere in the country at the time, people like Fats Domino and Chuck Berry were “performing” all the way back into the ‘50s. Yes, Elvis appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1956, but that had a slightly stodgy feeling to it, as iconic and notable as it was. American Bandstand felt more democratic, more in touch with its core audience.
The context of the period, at least in the early days of the show, is always important to keep in mind when discussing American Bandstand. Otherwise, you might wonder why you should care about a bunch of teenagers dancing on TV for an hour in the afternoon. In 1955, three years after the show premiered locally in Philadelphia, the film The Blackboard Jungle included the song “Rock Around the Clock” on the soundtrack. People went nuts. Teenagers loved it, adults feared it. It’s a cycle that has repeated a million times since then, but rock music, and pop music, were edgy at the time. American Bandstand was helping to normalize this brand of music, but also were giving teenagers something that other, stodgier media outlets would not.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7HT-hT29nI
Teenagers, as a whole, fit into this whole narrative, as well. The ‘50s was the “birth” of the teenager, as you may have heard. Teenagers were not asked to take on as many “adult” responsibilities as they used to. People complain about the juvenile nature of 20-somethings these days, but a couple generations ago, it was the teenager in that spotlight. This is where “teen angst” movies like Rebel Without a Cause were finding their foothold. While pop culture caters to the teenager these days, that was not the case back then. It was a new niche, one that American Bandstand hit. That’s why it became so successful. It was on the vanguard. It was television for teenagers, and a place where race and gender lines were not as clearly drawn as in other areas of culture.
Of course, any discussion of American Bandstand can’t be had without mention of its iconic host, Dick Clark. Clark was neither the show’s first host, nor the last. Originally, a guy named Bob Horn hosted the show, but he got into some legal trouble involving drunk driving and had to be replaced. Clark stepped into the role in 1956, and held it until 1989, when David Hirsch took over for the short-lived USA version. They called Clark “the world’s oldest teenager,” a name that became increasingly amusing as he went from a guy in his 20s to a thoroughly middle-aged man over the 30-plus years he hosted the show. He was congenial and clean-cut. There was nothing inherently untoward about him, except, of course, his connection to the devil’s music. He was made for being a TV host, which is why he also hosted Pyramid and decades of New Year’s Eve celebrations.
However, despite looking like a particularly charming insurance salesman, Clark was able to connect with the teenagers in his audience, and in the studio. Paul Anka, who was a huge star in the early days of the show, but is probably best remembered now for that Treehouse of Horror segment he’s in, said Clark invented youth culture. Hank Ballard, who wrote Chubby Checker’s hit “The Twist,” said he was bigger than the president. Clark was the predecessor of Carson Daly. There would be no Carson Daly without Dick Clark, and don’t hold that against Dick Clark.
Clark could not remain on the bleeding edge of music forever, though. Eventually, rock music was no longer taboo, and teenagers were well-established entities in pop culture. As previously mentioned, MTV came around in 1981. By that point, too, American Bandstand had been on for so long that there were probably teenagers who saw it as their parents’ show, which would therefore make it anathema to everything they stood for as cool, edgy teenagers. That’s why its end was inevitable, but its run is still unprecedented in this country, and its influence shall never be forgotten.
Modern teenagers were born into a world that never had American Bandstand. It’s an artifact of an era they may not even care about. With each passing year, it gets less and less likely that teenagers will even have any awareness of who Dick Clark is, and what he did. However, at a time when people didn’t care about teenagers, Dick Clark and American Bandstand did. The show pushed the culture forward, and changed the face of popular music. Teenagers owe the musical world they live in today to Clark and company. Everybody who was ever a teenager, from 1957 on, does.
