Mark Litke playing the bass drum in 1967. This photo was on the cover of the band’s recruitment pamphlet for many years.
I was drawn to the clusters of students promoting free speech organizations, civil rights groups, and upcoming teach-ins opposing the Vietnam War. The more traditional student body clubs and organizations were of little interest to me at the time … until curiosity got the better of me as I walked by a recruiting table for the Cal Marching Band. There was a very large poster listing the band’s upcoming activities. And one date in bold letters immediately caught my eye—September 26: ED SULLIVAN SHOW.
Before arriving at Berkeley, I had received recruitment postcards (remember those?) from the Cal Band. Although I had played drums for a time in high school, I decided that a university marching band was not going to be my thing. But the idea of appearing on the Ed Sullivan show? Where the Beatles had blown our collective minds just the year before! Where half the U.S. population tuned in every Sunday night! Now THAT was intriguing. “Yes,” I was told by the band’s enthusiastic recruiters, “We’re going to THE Ed Sullivan Show.”
“Where do I sign?!”
“A shared love of music and mutual respect kept the band together through turbulent and challenging periods. And, there was a joy in bonding with friends over simple things, like trying to outperform that pathetic marching band over at Stanford during the Big Game.” — Mark Litke
I would stay with the band for the next three years, graduating from cymbals, to tenor drum, to bass drum. But not because I was still starstruck. The Cal Band could be easily dismissed in those days as just a spirit group, the antithesis of more serious-minded endeavors at Berkeley in the 1960s. But members of the band were soon among my closest friends. Some shared my political and social views, others did not. There would be the occasional internal strife within the band as the campus was roiled by violent anti-war protests, tear gas attacks, the national guard occupation. But a shared love of music and mutual respect kept the band together through turbulent and challenging periods. And, there was a joy in bonding with friends over simple things, like trying to outperform that pathetic marching band over at Stanford during the Big Game.
Letting curiosity get the better of me would ultimately come to define my undergraduate years at Cal. I drifted from pre-med to sociology to English literature and, finally, to journalism. After my Berkeley days, I went on to a career in broadcast journalism. I eventually became the Chief Asia Correspondent for ABC News, based for three decades in Tokyo and Hong Kong. Curiosity leads one to a lot of interesting places.
But as remarkable as those journalistic years were, they never crowded out my fond memories of life at Berkeley — the academics, the explorations, the struggles, the protests … and, yes, the Cal Band.
Mark Litke today
