Culture: The 2026 Sounds Of America For Our 250th

24:40And we had a female manager named Ginger Canzoneri. We had a female lawyer. We had female roadies. We were female. That's what it was.

24:56When we went in to do the album, We got to the 10th song and our producer Richard Goddard said, I feel like we're missing one song. And I really owe it to Charlotte because she said, Kathy played me a song that I think is really good and could be great for the Go-Go's. I was like, this is a Go-Go song. It has to go on the record because we needed one more song. And sure enough, it went on the record. Can't Stop the World. It was when I really felt like I was a part of this band. Can't stop the world Can't stop the world

25:38When we recorded the album, we had already been playing all the songs for a couple years. When we first heard the studio mix, they gave us the cassette tape or whatever it was, and we went out to the car and we were just like, this is horrible. We were horrified. It was like, this isn't us. This isn't punk. screaming and crying and cursing. We didn't understand what had happened to our punk sound. It was completely different than the live version. It was a lot more clean. You could hear everything. It didn't sound as powerful to us. But then it made sense. When we finally got on the radio, it was just like, this is all I ever wanted in my life because I started listening to the radio when I was like four years old.

26:20And Richard was 100 % right.

26:24Beauty and the Beat came out. In July 81, MTV would come around three weeks later. And I remember, you know, the Our Lips Are Sealed video. For me, that was so cool. You know, these band members, they had such great style. All my friends, you know, we all wanted to dress like the Go-Go's and be the Go-Go's. You know, if you're a 12-year-old girl, you're not going to be at a nightclub in Atlanta at 11 o 'clock at night. But if you turn on your TV, we're being beamed into people's living rooms. girls emulating us, coming to the shows, dressed like us. It was a lot. Gosh, if I think about my life, there's before Beauty and the Beat, I didn't know how to do the pony.

27:04I didn't know how to wear a miniskirt. I didn't know I could sling my bass so low. I didn't know that I could have a band. My name is Margaret Cho, and I am a comedian. Beauty and the Beat just made me feel like I was alive and that I was a girl and that I could do anything even though I was a girl. When I'm pre-teen or teen being told all these things I can't do, it felt like the Go-Go's were telling me and showing me all these things I could do. And I probably never would have started to play music or write or do anything if it hadn't been for Beauty and the Beat.

27:54It made me able to visualize what a woman in charge of her art could look like, what a woman could do in music. Not having to undercut their beauty or undercut their sexuality or power, they could just be and serve in all these capacities. And I really studied that. And I think that's one of the things that makes me a feminist, is being a lifelong fan of the Go-Go's.

28:28The thought that the Go-Go's did for people, what Susie Quatro did for me, that's been a source of great joy and pride for me. We broke the glass ceiling. I mean, I get in a lot of arguments over this. There's literally no other all-female band that went to number one on the charts, played their own instruments, and wrote their own songs. There's literally never been anyone else after all these years. So it's just astounding. I mean, we were just these teenage kids having fun. I wasn't sitting there making the record thinking, this is groundbreaking. It was more, this is just what was happening in our lives.

29:04And we were at the right place at the right time with this creative energy just engulfing us. When you think about 1978, forming the band and not knowing how to do anything, and by 1982 having the number one album in America, it was just fate that we all came into each other's lives.

29:28The Go-Go's debut album, Beauty and the Beat, has just been added to the National Recording Registry at the Library of Congress. We heard from bandmates Belinda Carlisle, Charlotte Caffey, Jane Whedland, Kathy Valentine, and drummer Gina Schock, plus author Lisa Whittington-Hill and comedian Margaret Cho. We have to take a quick break, but when we come back, why the Library of Congress is recognizing the radio broadcast of the Fight of the Century for its cultural and historical significance? That's coming up.

30:02On NPR's Wildcard Podcast, actor and director Danny McBride says he has finally aged into his looks. I'm lucky because even when I was 21, I looked like I was 50 years old. So now I look at pictures of me when I'm here like, I look older there somehow. This is weird. Watch or listen to that Wildcard conversation on the NPR app or on YouTube at NPR Wildcard. The fatal shooting of a teenager at a protest in Seattle has gone unsolved for six years. This is open in your face. How are there no answers? Our investigation has uncovered new evidence and witnesses who say they've never talked to police.

30:42Did police ever call you? Not once. Listen to We Keep Us Safe, a new true crime series on the Embedded Podcast from NPR. Of all the protests in the summer of 2020... For a moment there, it was utopia. ...one took a unique turn. Somebody over there, he's seen a lot of use of gun? This is the story of how violence came to occupy an anti-violence occupation in Seattle. Listen to We Keep Us Safe, a new true crime series on the Embedded podcast from NPR. This is 1A. I'm Jen White. On March 8th, 1971, Joe Frazier fought Muhammad Ali for the title of heavyweight champion. The fight of the century, as it became known, was about so much more than just boxing.

31:30It was a mainstream cultural event tied up in religion and politics. To tell this story, we start with someone who knew Muhammad Ali well. I am the greatest. Muhammad might have been what you call the package. He had the athleticism. He had the charm. He had the looks. This is the legend of Cassius Clay, the most beautiful fighter in the world today. He talks a great deal and brags indeedy of a muscular punch that's incredibly speedy. I'm Lonnie Ali, the wife of Muhammad Ali, and currently the interim CEO and president of the Muhammad Ali Center in Louisville, Kentucky. This brash young boxer is something to see, and the heavyweight championship is his destiny.

32:18He is the greatest. Boxing is not just about the fight. It is the lead-up to the fight. It's when you get to know the boxers and their backstories and you watch their entire career unfold to that championship bout. I am Rosie Perez. I am an activist and an actor, a writer, and I have been named the first lady of boxing because I am a boxing fanatic. It's an issue. This I predict, and I know the score. I'll be champ of the world in 64. In 1964, Muhammad Ali, at the time known as Cassius Clay, defeated Sonny Liston, won the heavyweight championship of the world. I am the king of the world. Hold it, hold it, hold it.

33:08I'm pretty. Hold it, you're not that pretty. I'm a mad man. I shook up the world. I shook up the world. My name is Mike Silver. I'm a boxing historian and author. At the time, the heavyweight championship of the world was the most important title in sports. He beat Sonny Liston to win the title. And then right after that, he announced that he had become a member of the Nation of Islam. My name is Lee Montville, and the title of my book is Sting Like a Bee. It wasn't like joining the overall Muslim faith. It was the black Muslim faith. And he would no longer have a slave name. He was no longer Cassius Clay.

33:46He would now be known as Muhammad Ali. He really saw this as a way to drop the cloak of slavery, where he was free to be himself, to be him. Coming out on the world stage as a Muslim and saying, do not call me Kashif Clay. My name is Muhammad Ali. Oh, my God. Let the drama begin. Talk about a telenovela. And that made him such a target, that just by itself. But he was also a great fighter. Oh my goodness. He had one of the best jabs in the heavyweight division, probably to date. He would dance around his opponents and just snap them with that intense, powerful, quick jab. He was a very, very smart fighter.

34:31He was almost untouchable. People used to say, can Muhammad Ali take a punch? Nobody really knew because he rarely was hit solidly. And he would win. And he would humiliate, humiliate his opponents. Here you had a great fighter who was frustrating a lot of people who wanted to see him be defeated. Playing the villain is a very, very smart angle because everyone hates a villain. So I don't think that he really cared if people liked him or not. What he cared about was selling tickets to a fight. I saw a wrestler once named Gorgeous George. He said, I'm going to nail it to bum. I'm too beautiful to be a wrestler.

35:08Look at my beautiful blonde hair. If he mess up this hair, I'll kill him. They hated Gorgeous George. They wanted him beat, but they paid$100 for ringside seats. I said, ooh, this is a good idea. Look, he's getting rich. So I start talking. I am the greatest. I cannot be beat. I'm too pretty to be a fighter. If you keep talking jab, you're falling fast. Now, keep in mind, Ali won the title before the Vietnam War really heated up. Muhammad Ali was a year and a half older than I was, and the draft was hanging over everybody's head. Of course, at 18, everybody had to register for the draft, which Ali did.

35:43but he was deferred because he failed the draft test. But when the Vietnam War really heated up, they reclassified him. And sure enough, Ali was called to the draft board to be sworn into the army in 1967. And he told the draft board that he would not serve because he was a Muslim minister. In this country, the United States of America, ministers are exempt from armed services. And when he was called to take the step forward, to be inducted, Ali refused to take that step forward. It has been said that I have two alternatives. Either go to jail or go to the army. But I would like to say that there is another alternative.

36:29And that alternative is justice.

36:34When he decided not to join the Vietnam War and they labeled him as a draft dodger, then he really became a villain. People like to say he dodged the draft. He never dodged the draft. He faced it. He went to court and he paid a price. He was immediately stripped of the title by every boxing organization. He was vilified in the press as unpatriotic, and he was sentenced to five years in prison. But he was appealing the sentence. While all this was happening, while his title was stripped from him, the boxing commissions said, we need a new heavyweight champion. Joe Frazier beat everybody he fought.

37:15And so he had become the heavyweight champ because Muhammad Ali was barred from boxing. Smoking Joe Frazier. He was a dynamic fighter. He did do the hard work to become champion. And he was a brawler, but he was also somebody who was a smart fighter because you had to know when to throw that left hook. And he knew when to throw that left hook. At the same time, Ali said, I am the real heavyweight champion, not Joe Frazier. He felt he was still the heavyweight champion because he never lost it in the ring. And there was a Supreme Court appeal that was coming down the road, which was why he wasn't in jail.

37:55So he had been out of boxing. He hadn't had a professional prize fight for three and a half years. Being out of the ring for any amount of time is a gamble for a fighter. It's called ring rust. And for three years, it was unheard of. But there has never been another fighter who had the belief system that Muhammad Ali had. He still believed he could be champion. And you can't underestimate that. When Ali got the license to fight and defeated the two top-ranking heavyweights, they announced that Joe Frazier and Muhammad Ali would fight on March 8, 1971, in Madison Square Garden. two undefeated heavyweight champions, both with a legitimate claim to the heavyweight championship.

38:41Had no politics, no religion ever entered into this fight, it would have been considered one of the greatest matches in boxing history. But you had this other incredible dimension. I represent a lot of things and I don't even know it's so many. I don't know who's for me and who's not. And I represent everybody who's pulling for me. Why are they pulling for you? They want me to win and prove all the authorities wrong for giving my title to a pretender. Ali once again was not afraid to be the villain, and in selling the fight, he called Joe the white man's champion. Muhammad made it look as if he was the champion of the underdog, the oppressed, while Joe represented the white establishment, which was probably extremely unfair on Muhammad's part.

39:28I think he went too far. And I think he probably knows he went too far afterwards. Here's another Black man degrading another Black man. It was really, really unfortunate. And I say that with a heavy heart because I love Muhammad Ali, but I also loved Joe Frazier. But if you know boxing, it's called the hurt business for a reason, not just physically, but emotionally. They will hurt you. And he hurt Joe Frazier even before Joe Frazier stepped into that ring. And Joe Frazier just wanted to fight. What do you say, Joe? What do you say to that? I tell you, that's about a bunch of noise, that's all.

40:05My predicted fight wouldn't go the distance. I'll stop it. Stop me. You. There's nothing like a big fight to get your juices going. Oh, let's talk about the night of the fight. Can we talk about the night of the fight? So exciting. Only 20 ,055 people were at the fight, myself and my brother were two of them who watched that fight in person. The electricity in the air was incredible. Ten minutes before the fight, you'd be just like dizzy, you know? The diamonds were out. The furs were out. You had people there like Burt Lancaster, aka Hunker Hunker Burning Love. You had Paul Bistreis and Babs.

40:46Brooklyn Zone was there at the fight. Everybody was there. Billionaires, millionaires. I mean, Frank Sinatra, for God's sake, who was beloved by America, he had to get a press pass to get in there. Of course, he was taking photographs, too, as a result of that. But there wasn't a ticket to be had. Everybody in America, I think, had their eyes on Madison Square Garden that night. You had theaters connected to what was called closed-circuit television, and the fight would be beamed into these theaters. It wasn't on home television. You had to get your money up and go to someplace that was showing it.

41:22And the promoters insisted we will not even have a radio broadcast of the fight. What they did have was the mutual broadcasting, the network, the radio, had summaries at the end of each round. So if you weren't able to buy a ticket, you listened to the summary on the radio. Under the order of the court, we are allowed to give only 50-word summaries between rounds. We cannot give you any other information. Everybody was glued. We were sitting in the kitchen, listening to the little radio box that was up on the shelf above the sink. This is Charles King with Van Patrick. Van, the big moment may be near.

41:56When they walked into the ring, everybody was on their feet. You couldn't sit down. Mohammed wore high white boxing shoes with several red tassels on each. Smoking Joe wore a short-length green robe tied with a yellow sash.

42:16And boy, when that bell rang, you know, all right, here we go. It's on.

42:37Very interesting about that broadcast. These two broadcasters kept referring to Ali as Cassius Clay. We are reading these reports from UPI, from AP, and from Reuters. And it's a funny thing. In the round summaries, they will call him Muhammad Ali in one sentence, and the next one will be Cassius Clay. Well, Cassius Clay using his left jab, often like a long spear, at the edge in the sixth round. Everyone thought that Ali was going to win this easily. especially in the earlier rounds. He was fantastic. He was dynamic. He was just popping Joe Frazier like, you know, and his head was going back like a Pez dispenser head.

43:20Frazier kept bowling in, taking shots on his head in order to pound body blows that did not seem to upset Cassius Clay. And then I think it was about the eighth round, you saw the ring rust become apparent in Ali, and Joe Frazier took full advantage of that. Frazier pressed the attack and took the eighth round, part of which Clay devoted to clowning, which Fitz surprised. Frazier landed most of the blows. And then you had that 11th round where Ali almost went down. Frazier staggered. Muhammad Ali with a thundering left hook. After two minutes of the 11th round and Muhammad almost went down. He hits him with a left hook and Ali staggers.

44:05That left hook changed the fight. There was no bounce in Ali's legs as the bell clanged. And then Ali coming back in the 14th round. Muhammad Ali had the edge in the 14th round, landing punches off the top of Frazier's head as Frazier took punches in an effort to get inside and land a big wallet. We've got one more round to go at Madison Square Garden. In the 15th, Joe Frazier drops Muhammad Ali flat on the canvas. Frazier dropped Ali with a left hook to the jaw. Ali got up at the count of four but had to take the mandatory eight count and Ali's right jaw was swollen and the right side of his face had ballooned.

44:46His jaw may have been broken. When you watch that 15th round, it's pretty amazing that he got back up. Frazier pounded away at the swollen jaw. Ali was staggered as the fight ended a very big round for Frazier, and Joe Frazier has outpointed Muhammad Ali tonight and retained the heavyweight championship of the world at Madison Square Garden. I assumed Muhammad was going to win because Muhammad always won. And to see him defeated was crushing. I was devastated that Muhammad Ali lost. And the haters were so excited. Yeah, that's what he gets. What do you mean that's what he gets? Because he stood up for his beliefs?

45:28you may not agree with them, but this is America, people. We can agree to disagree. And that started the rivalry. Well, yeah. I mean, they fought two more times, and Ali won the two more times. But neither of them had the luster that this fight had. This fight had a total question mark above it because they were both unbeaten. And regardless of all the things he said, Muhammad had a great deal of respect for Joe Frazier as a fighter. And the reason I know that is because Muhammad had a little artistic talent and he used to always draw these pictures of him in a boxing ring. The only other person he ever put in that ring across from him was Joe Frazier.

46:15And he drew that picture more than a thousand times. That fight of the century changed both men, and it changed the world of boxing. Boxing is a reflection of the society that surrounds it. It wouldn't have been as powerful if it wasn't for boxing. It's a man-o-o-sport. It really also tells you that sometimes when you take a stand, you may get knocked down, like Ali did, but he got back up, and he kept fighting. That's what boxing means to me. Life is going to knock you down, no matter how hard you work and do everything right. But the true champions get back up and keep fighting. Who knocked a crack in the Liberty Bell?

46:59Ali! Ali! Who really gave that bell a smack? Ali!

47:08Muhammad Ali died 10 years ago today. We just heard the story of the fight of the century, Muhammad Ali's first fight against Joe Frazier on March 8, 1971. We heard from Lani Ali, Rosie Perez, Mike Silver, and Lee Montville. You've been listening to excerpts of our annual Sounds of America series. You can hear the full stories and more about this year's and past honorees from the Library of Congress' National Recording Registry at the 1A.org. Special thanks to Rachel Stolci, as well as Melissa Wudzinski, Elena Finkelstein, and Brett Sonker. The Sounds of America is produced by Jenny Cataldo of Accompany Studios.

47:48Today's 1A producer was Michael Falero with help from Alexandra Botee and John Ryan. And this program comes to you from WAMU, part of American University in Washington, distributed by NPR. I'm Jen White. Thanks for listening. Have a great weekend and a happy fourth. This is 1A.

48:45Transcription by CastingWords Download the latest episode and subscribe at schwab.com slash oninvesting or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Jesse Thorne. This week on Bullseye, Craig Ferguson on his love of all things American, including you, New York City. People have their own little things, but they somehow think New York is not America as the rest of America. But I feel the opposite. I think it's full on America. That's Bullseye. Find us in the NPR app at MaximumFun.org or wherever you get your podcasts.