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    music of the mid '80s.

    In the late '60s, America benefitted from one of the longest periods of

    peace-time prosperity in the history of the country and simultaneously

    dominated the pecking order of nations.  In those days, pop music was ruled

    by rock.  And rock was the music of rebellion, the soundtrack of a generation

    bent on stepping beyond the boundaries of the traditional and tasting the

    forbidden.

    Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young championed the rights of young men

    to grow long hair as "a freedom flag" against ensconced authority. The

    Beatles expressed views that flew in the face of established institutions.  The

    fabulous foursome followed a Maharishi instead of a conventional church.

    John Lennon and Yoko Ono lay naked in a bed and threatened to stay there

    until the older generation ended the war in Viet Nam.  The Lennons and

    many of their supporters wanted to wipe away the  boundaries of custom.

    Like the birds with full bellies, they were determined to taste something new.

    The phenomenon of the well-fed, adventurous bird showed up in even

    more subtle ways. To succeed, a rock 'n' roller had to be a young man on his

    own, totally free of parents and family, a rebel who had bailed out of his

    childhood home and become a vagabond, roaming the countryside in the

    company of other young men like himself--his band.  The ideal rocker was a

    hero who had cut himself loose from the old, smothering ways.

    There was one cardinal rule for rock interviews:  never mention the

    existence of your father and mother.  Admitting that you had once been tied

    to apron strings could instantly kill your appeal.92

    Then in the early '80s, the pop world was seized by a phenomenon of

    such proportions that it staggered even the star-makers.  Up to that point the

    biggest-selling LP of all time had come from rock guitarist/singer Peter

    Frampton, who in the late '70s sold a gargantuan fourteen million copies of

    Frampton Comes Alive.  But in 1983, another singer made Frampton's fourteen

      angement of the American psyche with particular clarity in the pop

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