Welcome to From Insults to Respect. Today we consider the experience of being booed, along with some suggestions on how to handle it. We begin with a rather famous booing example.

Getting Booed at Madison Square Garden

For those of us growing up in the 1950’s and 60’s, Ricky Nelson was a teenage idol. Some would, at the time, have picked Elvis Presley as the teenage idol, but for me, Ricky was right up there with Elvis,

My generation first got to know Ricky when he was 8 years old as one of the stars of the TV series, The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet. In 1957, upon turning 17, he began his long and successful career as a popular recording artist.

Ricky placed 53 songs on the Billboard Hot 100 between 1957 and 1973, including  “Travelin’ Man” (#1), “Poor Little Fool” (#1), “Teenage Idol” (#5), and “Hello Mary Lou” (#9). He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on January 21, 1987.

As you can imagine, Ricky was used to warm and wild applause when he performed. But then, on October 15, 1971, many of the early rock stars, including Chuck Berry, George Harrison, John Lennon, and Little Richard, as well as Ricky, joined together to put on a concert at Madison Square Garden, billed as “The Garden Party.” When it was Ricky’s turn to perform, he chose to play The Rolling Stones’ “Honky Tonk Women,” and the crowd began to boo. Those at the concert reported that the booing was not directed to Ricky’s performance, but rather, to police who were dealing with some disturbance. Nevertheless, Ricky thought the booing was directed at him because he no longer looked like a teenager and his hair had grown long; or perhaps it was because he chose to play a song that was not one of his own earlier hits.

Adding to Ricky’s embarrassment of being booed, the press had written up the event in a rather cold hearted manner, stating he had been booed off stage. Ricky, in an interview available on YouTube, said that for a period after being booed it was like a dark cloud in the back of his mind. How did he handle this? Did he deny his feelings and try to escape from giving any thought to it, kinda like Linus does in the following cartoon:

In contrast to Linus’s technique, Ricky, in addition to recognizing he had been having waves of feeling blue, he began to write about the experience. Eventually, he placed those words into a song titled “Garden Party,” which reached #6 on the Billboard Hot 100 and #1 on the Billboard Adult Contemporary chart and was certified as a gold single.

Let’s take a quick look at a few of its lyrics:

I went to a garden party
To reminisce with my old friends
A chance to share old memories
And play our songs again

When I got to the garden party
They all knew my name
No one recognized me
I didn’t look the same

But it’s all right now
I learned my lesson well
You see ya can’t please everyone
So ya got to please yourself

……

Played them all the old songs
Thought that’s why they came
No one heard the music
We didn’t look the same

I said hello to “Mary Lou”
She belongs to me
When I sang a song about a honky-tonk
It was time to leave

……

Ricky’s First Draft of Garden Party Lyrics

If you gotta play at garden parties
I wish you a lotta luck
But if memories were all I sang
I rather drive a truck

But it’s all right now
I learned my lesson well
You see, ya can’t please everyone
So ya got to please yourself

Ricky Is Not the only Rock Star to Be Booed

Bob Dylan, after having great success writing and performing Woody Guthrie-influenced folk music, began in 1965 introducing some rock & roll songs into his sets. His folk fans were not at all happy about this, and their boos were unmerciful. Nevertheless, Bob kept playing the music he wanted to play, and he eventually found a new, much larger, audience that loved his new material. Eventually he impressed the Nobel Prize Committee so much that its members awarded him their prize for literature.

Lest you think the Beatles, arguably the greatest rock & roll band ever, somehow managed to escape the experience of being booed, think again. By 1966, they were far and away the most popular band in history, and then John Lennon, during an interview, in an off the cuff comment, stated, “We’re more popular than Jesus.” This led to people threatening to kill the band members, and newscasts showed people flinging Beatle albums into fires. John eventually apologized, and soon after, the Beatles recorded several number one hit singles and the enormously popular album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, considered by many the greatest album ever.

What Can We Learn From These Booing Experiences?

Some people who experience a booing experience come to think it is the end of the world, and they will never recover from their feelings of rejection. To each of them, I want to suggest that, as these three stories of rock & roll stars suggest, there is at least a chance that you will recover. Just keeping that possibility alive can be enormously helpful.

The technique involves writing over the course of four days, for a minimum of 15 minutes at each sitting, about something that has led to your challenging emotional experience. As you do so, make sure you include not only what happened, but also what you felt when it happened, and how you now feel about what happened.  Include your deepest emotions and thoughts about what occurred. Really let go and explore your feelings and thoughts about it. As you do so, recall the sensory experience of these feelings, not just the words that define the experience. In your writing, you might tie this experience to your childhood, your relationship with your parents, people you have loved or love now, or even your career.  Explore, as well, how this experience is related to whom you would like to become, whom you have been in the past, or whom you are now.

Bob has an interesting approach to coming up with songs that are interesting to both himself and his audience. As he explains on one of his Theme Time Radio Hour shows, whenever he wants to come up with new material, he goes out into the world and sees what people are talking about. If the topic is something that has captured their interest, and if it is of interest to him as well, he soon finds himself writing a song about it. Of course, he adds a little creative flair to it, and this seems to work for him. Like Bob, I have found that when I think about what to write for new posts, listening to what others are currently talking about with interest can be helpful.

As for the Beatles, the lesson here might be that if you offend some folks during your effort to connect with an audience, perhaps a humble apology might help to ease some of the anger. Then, get on with doing your best to come up with fresh, interesting new material.

Bob DylanFeeling RejectedGetting booedRicky NelsonThe Beatles