Revenge of the Nerds

When Rock 'n' Roll Got Glasses

I was 12 years old and squinting at the chalk board from the back of the classroom when my Mother, tipped off by the school nurse, hauled me off to an ophthalmologist one afternoon to get fitted for glasses.

“You must be missing a lot of lessons,” said the doctor, pronouncing my myopia quite extensive. “I want you to make extra sure that you’re seeing well with the lenses I give you. OK? Because you are going to have to wear glasses all the time.”

KABOOM.

If the onset of puberty was not mortifying enough, the idea that I was being condemned to a lifetime of poor eyesight and “assistive devices” landed on me like a neutron bomb. Overnight I went from being friendly and outgoing to silent and withdrawn. From wanting to lip sync Beatles tunes into fake microphones with my classmates to standing aside and letting others take my place. How could you shake your hair and not lose your glasses?

Of course, it was my Father’s fault. He had passed his gene for nearsightedness on to me like a secret note palmed under a table. My Mother became fond of saying that “boys don’t make passes at girls who wear glasses,” and my parents had had a laugh about that. Maybe she thought she was being trendy quoting Dorothy Parker? Maybe they felt relieved?

1972.

This being the 1960s, glasses had yet to become a “fashion statement” and contact lenses were not yet available. Nor did I see anyone I thought was cool wearing glasses in magazines or on stage. Perhaps I noticed Roger McGuinn’s half-lense Granny glasses (were those fake?) or that both Peter, of Peter and Gordon, and Chad, of Chad and Jeremy, wore heavy framed, “intellectual” spectacles in their folk duos. But what for? To make then look “safe” to the record buying public? To fake a prosperity far from the hardscrabble life that Brits still led, 20 years after the war? To me, they looked nerdy and uncool. If Mick Jagger were to appear in glasses on stage it would totally blow his image. And I liked his image.