A Sobering Note : Stanford Band Swears Off the Beer and Doughnuts
There will be no traditional beer-and-doughnuts breakfast for the Stanford Band on Saturday morning.
For the first time in recent memory, seasoned observers say, the Leland Stanford Jr. University Marching Band will perform sober at the Big Game football clash with UC Berkeley.
Barred from the football field Nov. 5 after an “accumulation of problems,” the banned band won a reprieve Wednesday when members promised Stanford Athletics Director Andy Geiger that they would swear off alcohol before game performances for the remainder of the football season.
Recent band “problems” at football games have included the formation of foul words on the field, an “insulting and lewd” half-time show at the USC game and an incident following another game when half a dozen members urinated on the field.
In a statement released by the university, Geiger said the abstinence pledge, along with the formation of an advisory committee to review the band’s upcoming half-time shows, will let the band concentrate “on its own special brand of music and humor but with more self-control.”
Geiger also gave his approval for the band to perform on Nov. 29 in Tokyo in a game against the University of Arizona and on Dec. 27 in the Gator Bowl against Clemson.
Although most of the 150-member band agreed with Geiger that more discipline was needed, the nature of Wednesday’s decision left many irate.
“They basically backed us into a corner and said, ‘Don’t drink,’ ” explained assistant band manager Todd Olson as the band readied itself for a show. “What really peeved us was being told what to do--we are student-run. We had worked out guidelines, and then they imposed a unilateral decision.”
“They never gave us a chance to prove ourselves,” chimed in a 7-foot, green-fabric tree--sophomore Carole Sams, the band mascot. Peeping through oversized Elton John sunglasses, she declared: “They’re taking away our freedom.”
Stanford’s free-form, free-wheeling band has been the target of frequent attack and controversy for its outrageous behavior and half-time high jinks ever since students took over the band in 1963. That year the “truly incomparables,” as they are called, formally donned the official red blazer, black pants, sunglasses, floppy white-cloth hat and ugly-tie uniform and dropped all pretense of marching.
“We’re completely different from Big 10 bands,” said Arthur P. Barnes, a professor of music at Stanford who has been the band’s faculty adviser since 1963. “Those are exquisite machines. You have to have a rather clone-like mind. We’ve devolved into the world’s largest rock ‘n’ roll band.”
Raised Hackles
More spit than polish, the band’s full-tilt run-and-scatter formations have raised many a hackle over the years at opposing schools, in the administration and among some alumni.
In past years, former President Jimmy Carter’s hemorrhoids, President Reagan’s cancerous nose, premarital sex, marijuana, cocaine, Idi Amin and the death of Chairman Mao have all been the subject of irreverent half-time shows.
Rickshaws, pink tutus, plungers, beer kegs, vacuum cleaners and bird cages have all been improbable props and instruments for the band’s on-field festivities. There have also been such recurring sophomoric stunts as band members dropping their pants (with shorts underneath, to be sure) and phallic symbol formations (euphemistically referred to as Hoover towers after the school’s most prominent physical landmark). They have been banned from TV several times.
“I don’t know why I still have my job,” said Barnes, who has no disciplinary control over the band. “The time was overdue for something to be done.”
“They’re awful,” said USC band director Arthur C. Bartner. “You can’t really call them a band. It’s sad they get all this notoriety. We are everything they are not. We march in a very distinctive, military style. They hate that.”
Stanford is not the only renegade band in the land. Ivy League bands have also long eschewed lock-step half-time shows in favor of sexual double entendre spell-outs and satire. In 1981, league officials clamped down and ordered bands to clean up their acts.
In 1980, similar complaints about obscenity and tastelessness led Stanford President Donald Kennedy to order a review of the band’s programs before games.
The incomparabales’ uncontested low point came at the 1982 Big Game when the band rushed onto the field in the final seconds after it appeared Stanford was certain to win. Stanford, leading 20 to 19, kicked off, and as the last seconds wound down, the Cal team, weaving through a chaos of football players and band members, managed an astounding series of lateral passes, and despite an end zone collision with Stanford trombone player Gary Tyrell, scored the winning touchdown. A year of undeserved ignominy and ridicule followed, as even a long Sports Illustrated article concluded that the band was not responsible for Stanford’s loss.
Exactly why Geiger moved for the first time ever to suspend the band remains a mystery.
“What the band did this year is not that different than what they did in the past,” said Hal Mickelson, for many years the bombastic voice of the band whose overblown delivery parodied serious band announcers.
“He just kind of woke up one night and said this is as far as we can go,” athletic department spokesman Steve Raczynski said of Geiger’s decision.
Geiger did not return phone calls to offer his view.
Robert Byers, an ex-band member and for the last 10 years official photographer of the band’s exploits, blames the suspension on a communications breakdown.
“No one was aware of how serious the athletic department was considering things,” he said. “There was no indication of impending doom.”
In Byers’ view the band has “changed dramatically in recent years.”
“It’s so conservative now. It’s just a few jerks who hurt the band,” he said.
Shocked by the suspension but undaunted, the Stanford Marching Unit Thinkers (SMUT) plotted into the wee hours one day this week, brainstorming for the Big Game show. Beer flowed freely inside the cavernous brick building that band members call their campus home--it used to house the ROTC firing range.
What they were up to will have to remain secret until Saturday, but well-placed sources said that you can be sure they’ll all be little angels.