Dick Clark, perhaps best-known as the host of TV’s “American Bandstand,” has played perennial deejay to American youth for four decades. Dubbed “America’s oldest living teenager,” Clark, at 65, still merits the sobriquet, not only because of his preternaturally youthful appearance but because of the steady finger he has kept on the pulse of the nation’s popular culture. On “American Bandstand,” Clark hosted the TV debuts of artists ranging from Buddy Holly and Chuck Berry to Aretha Franklin and Madonna. He is a prolific producer of TV and radio programming and inveterate master of ceremonies of everything from game shows to “New Year’s Rockin’ Eve.”
Q: What’s your image of American youth right now?
A: Unfortunately, there is no such thing as youth anymore. We’ve lost all the innocence and the purity through the media. You’re responsible. I’m responsible. Parents are responsible. Movies are responsible. Teachers are responsible. The whole world got old. And kids were carried along, mainly because of the advancement in communications.
Q: What are we losing in that sense? We talk about kids being much more sophisticated now than they were 10 years ago, let alone 30 years ago.
A: I think back to when I got married. I was 22 years old in 1951. Chronologically, that was OK to get married at 21 or 22. You did that. You got out of school and you got married. Fairly normal. I think of how old I was emotionally and culturally as compared with a 21- or 22-year-old of the ’90s. I was like a 15-year-old.
Q: In what areas were you so innocent?
A: Oh, we just lived in that almost make-believe world. The United States was the good guy, always in the white hat. We had no feet of clay. Politicians were honest, allegedly. You got married. You had a two-car garage, if you could afford it. And you raised two or three children and that was the dream.
Q: Is that dream basically gone?
A: I think the basics are still there. We all want to find somebody to fall in love with and share our lives with and, for the most part, raise a family and be comfortable and accepted by our colleagues and contemporaries. Nothing of that nature ever changes over hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years. Those are basic things.
But how to get there? What’s important to you? I lived through the generation of kids in the ’60s who wanted to save the world and the environment and be good to mankind. And, then, all of the sudden, somewhere in the ’70s and ’80s, they turned the clock around and said, “What’s in it for me? What are my health benefits? What do I get when I retire? etc. etc.” There have been a lot of difficult machinations going on.
Q: So, you’ve seen kids go from being innocents to being altruists to being me-first mercenary types. Where are they now? For example, some parents are concerned that even kids in upper-middle-class high schools now are running around wearing gangsta rap-style clothes.
A: Where do things start? They always start with the very poor and underprivileged or the very rich. So fashion–lipstick, no lipstick, piercing, no piercing–all that stuff has come down through the ages from the poor and the rich kids. And pretty soon, everybody in the middle who goes to K-Mart is swept in.
Q: In terms of gangsta rap, how do you think this sort of criminal element came into our music? These kids are running around “tagging” things with spray paint. Did rock take a wrong turn somewhere along the line?
A: Well, music of all kinds, going back hundreds of years, has been the spreading of the word of what’s going on. It is a reflection of the society in which we live now. The point is, if you don’t like the lyrics to gangsta rap, then go clean up the urban neighborhoods and make their lives better.
Q: You mention the ’50s and how innocent a time it was. Now we’re seeing ’50s icons and ’50s-style ads on TV. There’s a real sort of yearning for that. Do you worry at all that what we’re seeing right now is a kind of hearkening back to a world that was more orderly? I mean, when you introduced rock ‘n’ roll on “American Bandstand” that scared a lot of people to death.
A: Yes. It was a very, very volatile period of time, full of potential censorship and much criticism. Now, they look at it as the good old days. That’s pretty funny.
Q: Vogue is something you’ve always had your finger on, it seems. Whether it’s TV or music or you name it, you seem to have had an uncanny ability to scent trends and act on them very swiftly and early. What do you think is in vogue culturally in America right now?
A: Unfortunately, it’s not a pretty picture. We’re into the glorification of the ultraordinary or below ordinary. You see it in fashion, morals and conversation, the use of words. Grammar has fallen by the wayside. I watch television. I listen to people talk. I was brought up, not with immaculate, but pretty good grammar. And I can remember my mother saying, “Don’t ever say, `me and him.’ ” I don’t.
Q: On “American Bandstand” you were one of the first people to regularly feature black entertainers on TV.
A: They were on as entertainers from the minute the show went on. The kids didn’t begin to participate (as dancers) until about 1956 or 1957, when we began to integrate the show.
Q: Was that a controversial thing at the time?
A: No. We just did it. Nobody said anything about it and it happened. It’s one of the wonderful little side benefits of having a show a lot of people watched.
Q: Before then, didn’t black teens ever come by saying they’d like to be on the show?
A: Well, in the early ’50s they would and they’d be turned away. Or discouraged. There was never anything terribly overt; they just weren’t encouraged.
Q: Looking at the cultural phenomenon of music and books and movies, compared to that exciting time in the ’50s when integration was happening, do you think we seem to be drifting apart again racially?
A: I think we’re closer to one another than we’ve been.
There’s a poster in my office. It says, “Help save the youth of America. Don’t buy Negro records.” That’s the kind of posters we ran into in the early ’60s, late ’50s.
Thirty-five years is not a long time historically speaking. We’ve made some good progress. Whether there’s a retrenchment, whether people are saying, “Oh, minorities are getting too many breaks; take it back.”–you can make whatever argument you want. I prefer to think that we’re getting closer and working more as a unit.
Q: You look fabulous, and, no matter how old your fans are, they always notice it. What is the secret Mr. Clark?
A: The secret’s very simple. It’s an old line: You select your parents very carefully. The other thing is doing what you like and staying excited.
