A New Chapter: a nice bunch of lads but not exactly Sukarno’s cup of tea

The Beatles music is “a form of mental disease”.

>Sukarno

As I laid back into my soft sofa at Star Live in Kemang, watching a neatly dressed bunch of lads reeling off covers of old Beatles songs, I found myself thinking: what was it about the Beatles that Sukarno hated so much?

I mean music as innocuous as this? Seriously. WTF!

In fact, Sukarno was so irked by the sounds of the Fab Four that he actually took polices to ban their music in Indonesia and take measures against anyone who followed their fashion sensibilities.

Incredibly, the police were instructed to stop any male and test that their trousers weren’t too tight!

The way they did this was by trying to insert a soya sauce bottle into the trousers.

If they couldn’t do this, the trousers were deemed too tight and then they were promptly cut in public, so that the person looked like they were wearing shorts!

Hahaha!

In a similar vein, Sukarno also condemned miniskirts. But they weren’t cut in public or things might really have gotten out of hand!

On a more serious note, any Indonesian musicians who had the nerve to join the Beatles’ bandwagon risked arrest and even imprisonment. The members of Koes Plus were notably jailed for a while.

Thankfully though, time moves on and attitudes change.

Indonesia’s current President Joko Widodo, in sharp contrast to Sukarno, is an avowed metalhead and was in the news for attending the concert given by dinosaur rockers Deep Purple in Solo at the weekend.

And there are not one but at least TWO Beatles tribute bands in Indonesia.

Poor old Sukarno. He would be turning in his grave if he knew!