The Four Seasons - "December 1963 (Oh, What a Night)"

 

This song is about sex. The restorative power of sex. The mind-boggling effect of sex. The hypnotic transformation that occurs when two post-teens languidly intertwine barely a month after JFK gets assassinated. Like a magic bullet, this song shot straight to #1 in 1976.

"December 1963 (Oh, What a Night)" was written by Bob Gaudio and Judy Parker, who eventually married. Reportedly Gaudio came up with the idea when thinking about the beginning of his attachment to Parker. This explains why the song is cautiously unspecific. I know times were different and Carnal Knowledge and Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice were out there, but I assume Parker would not have appreciated having the particulars of their congress expressed to hordes of teenagers. 

Tell me a joke about "December 1963 (Oh, What a Night)," ChatGPT.

How does "December 1963 (Oh, What a Night)" manage its budget? It carefully counts its notes and keeps the beat – financial planning with a catchy rhythm!

Feel free to tweak this or come up with your own spin on the theme. Enjoy the humor!

Well, you be you. Or the sum of your averages.

Despite being from the perspective of one man, three of the Four Seasons take turns singing lead on "December 1963." Drummer Gerry Polci handles the verses, usual lead singer Frankie Valli handles one of the song's two bridges, and late bassist Don Ciccone handles the other, falsetto-y bridge. I suppose that set-up could have provided a multi-perspective, Rashomon-type of artistic venture, but they only had three and a half minutes to work with.

The events of the song take place in a different musical time when record buyers were snatching up things like "Dominique" by the Singing Nun and "There! I've Said It Again" by Bobby Vinton. But "December 1963" is set to a sturdy pop-disco beat -- in fact, it's one of the earliest examples I can recall of a non-R&B group crossing over to disco floors.

It matters. Part of the piano-driven allure of "December 1963" is its embrace of sexual liberation, and everyone knows disco and Metal Machine Music were far more suited for that purpose. After all, 1963 also saw the publication of Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique. It took only another 12 years to raise the prospect that nerdy white boys could feel the rapture of the moment. Developments are ongoing.

Back in November 1975, when "December 1963" was recorded, there weren't a lot of mainstream pop songs that addressed the onset of lustful feelings. "Afternoon Delight" was still a few months off from being released and about 10 years before anybody outside Marin County knew what they were really talking about. Even the implied libidinousness of Led Zeppelin had to get past those banshee lead vocals, and besides by 1975 Led Zep were in full druid mode.

But even though the details are indistinct, there's no doubt what "December 1963" was about. Gaudio himself had turned 21 in November 1963. I don't have to tell you how American men act between the ages of 19 and 21. I will anyway: they're hormonally lopsided idiots. Getting spruced up and going to Hoboken in search of the illicit thrills of liquor and lust were just what they did in those days.

You'll note the singer(s) "didn't even know her name." This was against societal norms in 1963, when it was proper to at least get a surname before coitus. The totally anonymous bop wouldn't penetrate the mainstream until the hippies had their love-ins, hopefully in the vicinity of a free clinic, and identity was optional. The singer(s) does/do not clarify if he/they ever knew the name of his/their big score.

Perhaps the anonymity informs the implied melancholy of "December 1963," which is both notable and non-existent. It gets back to the whole JFK thing. By definition, "late December 1963" suggests the event could have happened no sooner than December 16 and no later than New Year's Eve. You'd think if it happened on Christmas or New Year's Eve the song would have mentioned that instead of "late December 1963." You could probably count out Christmas Eve too since everyone's so busy on that day. So we're talking about an event that could only have taken place between December 16 and 23 or December 26 to 30. I'll see if the county assessor has any records.

The point is, America was still reeling from the terrible events in Dallas the previous month. It was the US's biggest political assassination of the century. You couldn't just bandage it up and hope for a moonwalk. You had to process the whole thing. We've got apps for that now, but back then we just had priests and martinis.

For that reason, it's always been a little hard for me to buy that the guy was so swept away by emotion and cravings that he could overlook the communal bummer of the era, hit the hot spots, and get super-laid. But who knows -- maybe that's the whole point. We were so deranged with grief that we acted out our most aggressive instincts and sought irreplaceable joys in the dingy motel rooms and back seats of the time with people we hadn't bothered to introduce ourselves to.

Now that's what I call national healing.