Judith L. DiGrazia
We call it, “United States History” yet so often it is dates, wars, heroes long dead, explanations abstract and difficult to relate to. It is a series of things that happened to other people in other times and it’s lacking that special something that would bring it to life for us all.
I decided to write this unit to try to add another aspect to the study of a very unique decade: the sixties. The historic perspective I wish to explore is one that did not become frozen in the pages of a history book. It is one that can be found for a quarter a play; on an oldies but goodies album; on WAPP on your FM dial; in private collections and record shops. It is the music of the sixties and it offers us a vehicle for bringing to life the feelings, events, and spirit of that decade. It is a bridge that unifies those who were a part of those times, those who were but children during those times, and those who missed those times altogether.
Besides being a lot of fun, rock, folk, and soul music teaches us about the sixties bringing,us vicariously to Woodstock, Berkely, Washington, and San Francisco. Where is the sixties child who actually stood outside the gates of Berkely in 1964 and again in 1969, at Columbia in 1968, at Montgomery in 1963, at Washington in 1963 and 1967, here, there and everywhere that the histories, interviews, and media recollections take us?
1
Even those of us who grew up and took part in the sixties couldn’t be everywhere and part of everything. So the music offers us an accurate record of the people and events of the times. In the very oldest sense they are the records of history, a common history of uncommon times.
I’ve chosen to do this because I can clearly remember how much I loved a particular history course which might have been just another dreary rehash of dates and events had it not been for a professor who obviously loved her subject and helped us all to love it too, by making it into a story that came alive in her class. I was, unfortunately, in college then and I recall thinking of all the other courses and all the young people for whom history is a requirement. I realized it didn’t have to be that way. For children with learning disabilities, “slow” learners, or hard to motivate youngsters this requirement can become a formidable burden. Since these are the kinds of students I work with, they are the ones I had most in mind when I wrote this. Music is such a universal language. It is probably the one thing more than anything that erases academic labels and gives all people an equal and common bond for communicating. I believe all levels of students would enjoy, benefit, and learn from this material.
This unit is meant to “unearth the cave.” As you and your students explore, you may expand the music, add to the issues, or adjust the lessons to suit your needs and concerns. My hope is, that after considering my arguments for incorporating music into the teaching of this era, you’ll agree that perhaps this material can provide us with an additional means for getting our students to relate to, enjoy, and understand that history is an all encompassing epic. It is not just a list of isolated dates highlighting wars and other events they find hard to imagine.
To understand history one must understand and examine the culture existing at the time. During the sixties, the largest segment of the population in the United States belonged to an age group categorized as “youth.” Prior to this time, the developmental stages were more rigidly broken down; preadolescence, adolescence, teen-age, adult. The teenage years were the time for “growing up;” after age 19, you were thought to be an adult albeit a young one. The sixties changed that, common threads brought different age groups together and it became clear that age did not dictate movement from one developmental stage to the next. Youth thought of themselves, and therefore accepted amongst their ranks, anyone from roughly the beginning of the teenage years to age thirty. It was a commonly believed notion that you couldn’t trust anyone over thirty. As Peter Gordon observes: “rock music was a major force behind the youth movement of the sixties, and was used by youth to express both their mass culture and their individuality.”
2
If we study the music of the sixties we will better understand why the counterculture formed, how the youth movement sustained itself as a cohesive group, and how it reacted and responded to what it saw happening in our country and the world.
To help us in defining the concept of “youth” it is useful to call upon Kenneth Kenniston who studied the youth of the sixties and wrote several important books on his observations. In 1971 he said, “we are witnessing today the emergence on a mass scale of a previously unrecognized state of life. . . youth,” which he defined further as a stage of life between adolescence and adulthood. Kenniston defined youth by codifying his observations of sixties youth into certain common patterns of behavior. He saw the central conflict of youth as the “tension between self and society.” He also noted that in addition to this tension, youth is characterized by the “refusal of socialization,” in which the individual rejects society after several adolescent attempts to fit into it. Finally, in youth great emphasis is placed on movement of any kind; adulthood is equated with stasis and death. The goal of youth is
to
move
; the direction is secondary.
3
Rock music spoke directly to that youth that Kenniston described, and its effect was magnified by the fact that in the sixties more than half of the population fit into this category.
Young people have always been and continue to be rebellious at some point in time. But the sixties’ combination of a large segment of the population sharing common beliefs and feelings particularly in regard to such national issues as the Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War, backed by a force (rock music) which provided a means of expression, served to further unify and reinforce the feeling of alienation from mainstream American life that young people were feeling, and to give them the belief that they could possibly change things. In an article in
Rolling
Stone
, a magazine which carried a lot of credibility with the youth movement, Ralph Gleason said: “At no time in American history has youth possessed the strength it has now. Trained by music and linked by music, it has the power for good to change the world. This power for good carries the reverse, the power for evil.”
4
This observation may be the wisdom of hindsight since it was made in 1968, yet it certainly reinforced the belief that many young people still had.
This unit will survey the events that generated the critical issues for young people during the sixties, the feelings that were generated by those events, and the music that spoke to or about the feelings and events.
Part One:
Rebels
Without
a
Cause
:
Youth
in
the
Fifties
Just as it is essential to go back to the fifties and/or even the forties to be able to understand the sixties historically and sociologically, so it is that in order to understand the music of the sixties we must look back to the music of the fifties.
In the early fifties, singers like Rosemary Clooney, Patti Page, Nat “King” Cole, Frank Sinatra, and Frankie Lane were still very popular even with the young. Then a disc jockey named Alan Freed coined the phrase “Rock and Roll” for the black based rhythm and blues style music he was playing on his radio show; “The Moondog Rock and Roll Show” in Cleveland. He introduced artists like Fats Domino, Chuck Berry, and Little Richard and changed the face of broadcasting overnight. Rhythm and blues had long been popular with black artists but before Freed, they were unable to reach white audiences. Freed’s show became the most popular show in Cleveland and the rock and roll craze was born. But Freed was just beginning. He also organized the first live rock and roll concert showcasing the most popular groups of the times. When 25,000 fans tried to forced their way into a hall that could only hold 10,000, March 22, 1952 became the historic date of the first rock and roll riot.
Suddenly, groups sprang up trying to imitate the primarily black rock and roll sound. Spirits were high, the message was clear: make life one big party night and day. In fact, a Western Swing group called Bill Haley and the Comets, rode their 45 with that theme into stardom. The song was “Rock Around the Clock” and it reflected the feeling of the times. While Fats Domino “found his thrill on Blueberry Mill” and Little Richard sang of “Miss Molly who sure liked to ball” (which he claimed meant dance), Chuck Berry sang of the release rock and roll provided from such burdens as school and ended by saying, “Long live rock and roll!” Parents were clearly worried, and with good reason. For the first time teenagers had their own music. Styles of dress and hair changed, jive and bop talk became “in”, and it appeared that parents were losing control. Rock and roll was shaking the very foundations of “small town” American values.
Magazine articles appeared in which rock and roll music was condemned along with its stars as lascivious, suggestive, and immoral. In another attempt to capture the essence of the movement, rock and roll was described as “a vicarious sexual experience.”
5
Sex and rock and roll have often been linked and with good reason. In the fifties, sex was sacrosanct. Parents, as representatives of social authority were the major obstacles to contend with for young people. Sex was not open to discussion and certainly not flaunted in public. In their song, “Wake Up Little Suzie,” the Everly Brothers illustrate my point. The lyrics explain: “The movie wasn’t so hot/didn’t have much of a plot/we fell asleep/in the movies deep/ now our reputation is shot.” Obviously something quite innocent, yet as the song goes on to reveal their friends will tease them and say “Ooo-lala” but their biggest worry is: “What’re we gonna tell your momma/what’re we gonna tell your pop”? The implication was clearly that no matter how innocently it had happened, they would have an impossible time explaining it to Suzie’s Mom and Dad.
Rock and Roll made the already existing communication gap even broader. It was not the lyrics that parents were upset with. It was the subtle yet constant message that the music projected to them. It was the feeling that their children were being snatched away from them by an “alien” force and that that force (rock and roll) was undermining the very foundation of America, the family unit.
When we frame the discussion of this music, it must be emphasized that in that time, “old” values and norms were still dominant in America. Since things are so explicit today, it may come as a shock to young people to find that in 1953, society objected to the use of the word “virgin” in Otto Preminger’s movie, “The Moon is Blue.” Adults saw rock and roll as an intrusion on their control over their children and an invitation to become juvenile delinquents. Basically they saw the music as a belligerent confrontation with society. Teenagers did not share this view. They didn’t view rock and roll as either a cheap thrill or the basis for a revolution at all. It was, instead, an outlet that provided them with good feelings in a repressive environment. Best of all, it was their own.
Rock and roll did not produce delinquents; it did challenge the norms and acceptable institutions and offer vivid images and wild adventures to teenagers. It gave teenage rebels something to identify with. It also held out a safe means to be defiant, adventuresome, and united with an identifiable community of peers apart from the acceptable norms of society for middle class kids. Those who had always found school a burden could hear Chuck Berry sing “School Days” and suddenly rise from being the dummies who couldn’t get along in school to being the in-crowd who’d always known what Chuck was saying, school was a drag. “Sweet Little Sixteen” really rocked the dress code by having the girl in the song wear tight dresses, lipstick, and high heeled shoes at night.
Rock and roll broke down other barriers as well. Rebellious teens or greasers as they were known then always had a crowd. But what about straight looking guys with glasses? They were usually the squares until Buddy Holly became a rock and roll idol, glasses and all. He is also credited with bringing another change to the music. His songs returned to the subtle art of implication rather than full disclosure of what happened to his characters. An example of this is “Peggy Sue.” In his lyrics he sings: “If you knew Peggy Sue/then you’d know why I feel blue/ about Peggy/my Peggy Sue.” We never know why he’s sad or what will become of him or Peggy Sue. It is characteristic of Holly to leave something to his audience’s imagination. I mention him because he was a tremendous influence on later greats such as the Beatles, Kinks, and Hollies (who took his name) but also, because he was a phenomenon in his time. He didn’t look like a rock and roll idol; he was more acceptable to parents than his own idol, Elvis, yet he was a major influence on the rock and roll movement. Although he said that seeing Elvis changed his style forever, he never really adopted the raw sexuality that Elvis made famous.
The story of Elvis is well documented. He was the consummate idol of the fifties and the person later rock stars would strive to be bigger than. Only the Beatles would be. Elvis was the revolutionary force that really took rock and roll outside of the American mainstream and made the break with parental control complete. It was said of Elvis that when people heard his records they couldn’t tell if he was black or white. When he appeared on the “Ed Sullivan Show” his movements were so blatantly sexual that the cameramen were ordered to show him only from the waist up. He was, in fact, the answer to Sam Phillips’ dreams. Sam Phillips was the owner of the “Memphis Recording Service” for Negro singers who had no place to go. In his heart he knew black artists were limited in their ability for lasting fame with the primarily white consumers of rock and roll. So he wished he could find a white man with the black sound. He found that man in Elvis Presley and the rest is history.
The importance of these people and their music was that they were able to verbalize the feelings of teenagers in the fifties and unify them in their rebellion against the status quo. And yet, in the end, rock and roll would be controlled, toned down, and in its final form become unacceptable to teenagers. This was the result of a string of coincidences that enabled record companies to clean up and control rock and roll. It might never have happened were it not for the deaths of Buddy Holly, Richie Valens, and the Big Bopper in the same plane crash; the drafting of Elvis; the arrest of Chuck Berry; the rejection of Jerry Lee Lewis for marrying his young cousin; and the loss of Little Richard to religion. With all the major stars gone or neutralized, rock and roll was brought under control and made more acceptable to parents. Memory, however, is a powerful thing. The images and impressions these musical greats had burned into the minds and souls of teenagers would not only resurface in the music of the sixties, but those who had been teens would be college age and together with the sixties, teens would once again break away from mainstream American culture and develop a counter-culture of their own.
Part Two:
The
Folk Revival
and the Civil Rights Movement
In the early sixties, rock and roll as a form for rebellion was dead. “Schlock Rock,” formula songs with carefully cultivated teen idols like Fabian, Tommy Sands, Pat Bo ne, Neil Sedaka, and Frankie Avalon, had taken its place. Even the black sound that would later resurface as “Soul” was formulated and promoted by Motown Records. (Nonetheless, the true soul of such greats as Ray Charles and B.B. King
would
influence people like James Brown, Wilson Pickett, and Sly and the Family Stone. Much later it would also influence Jimmy Hendrix and Janis Joplin.)
The teens of the fifties had become the college age generation of the sixties. They were not at all happy with the world their parents were preparing to pass on to them. They were to be a group for whom awareness and consciousness raising were the primary goals in life. They sought not just to live life but to experience it in every sense. They cringed at the injustices they saw particularly in the Civil Rights Movement and later in the Vietnam War. Most of all they had that heady belief that is a part of being young—they believed they had the power to change things, to make them better. They reached back in their search for expression to a very old, very American grassroots form of protest: the folksong.
The folk song had been used for many years as a medium for telling stories, making social commentary, and communicating the hopes and concerns of people. They were easy to play, requiring just a rudimentary grasp of music and an acoustic guitar. The messages they delivered were timeless so it was not surprising that they would appeal to college age people who had lost the ability to identify with or express themselves through rock and roll.
In the early sixties a young man from a small town in Minnesota, changed his name to Bob Dylan, packed his bags and headed off to Greenwich Village, the beat center of New York City. It was a place he could thrive in and within reach of one of folk music’s legends, Woody Guthrie. Bob Dylan was a natural folk singer who idolized Guthrie. His early works are greatly influenced by Guthrie. Dylan would become one of the most important singer/songwriters of the times. He would also outgrow the simple folksong as the times did too. He would pioneer a new blend which came to be known as folk-rock.
In the early sixties though, the simple folk song had its place. It had always been associated with various forms of protest such as labor movements and poor peoples protest so it was not surprising that the old folk song “We Shall Overcome” became the anthem of the Civil Rights Movement. This simple song contained no threats, no warnings of violent overthrows, just an unshakeable belief that “we shall overcome someday.”
Indeed, this was the mood of the early sixties. The promise of a new frontier for the American people. The challenge of J.F.K. was to the youth of our nation to get involved. There was an underlying feeling that things that were wrong could be righted, if only enough people were made aware. “Folk protest, while rejecting certain bourgeois norms, remained within the social structure, sought but did not offer solutions, and did not attempt to break loose.”
6
Therefore as you’re teaching about the inequalities that existed racially and economically you find songs such as Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind” or “Yellow is the Color” poignant aids in communicating the feelings of the times. When Peter, Paul and Mary sang “If I had a Hammer” their intent was not to smash the system but to “hammer out justice/hammer out freedom/hammer out love between my brothers and sisters all over this land.” Phil Ochs “There But for Fortune” points out examples like “the prisoner who’s life has gone stale” and doesn’t have the solution but rather says “there but for fortune go you/go I/you or I.” The almost religious reference to hope, fate and the wish for justice are timeless themes which appear over and over in the early songs of the movement. The songs offer hope, pointed out sufferings and questioned the way things were. The song “All My Trials” paints a life of bitter disappointment and sorrow yet offers the only things that gives people the courage to go on, the belief that “all my trials Lord/soon be over.”
The folk revival brought with it the return to music as a medium for communicating a message. Songwriters such as Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger, Tom Paxton and Woody Guthrie catalogued the times in their songs. People like Odetta, Buffy St. Marie, Joan Baez, Richie Havens, and Peter, Paul and Mary helped carry the message to the primarily older, college age portion of the youth movement. This was the segment that was more politically active. They appreciated folk music, intellectualized it and believed that if everyone worked together things could change— nonviolently. This view parallels that of Martin Luther King and the non-violent portion of the Civil Rights Movement. Nineteen-sixty-three was a year that radically changed the mood of the entire country. The Kennedy assassination left the country in shock, the optimism disappeared and the question of violence as a means of change brought mixed responses. Bob Dylan really seemed to have captured the mood with his song “The Times They Are A Changin’.” When he invited: “Come gather around people wherever you roam / and admit that the waters around you have grown / and accept it that soon you’ll be drenched to the bone / if your time to you is worth savin’ / then you’d better start swimmin; or you’ll sink like a stone / For the times / they are a changin’,” he was issuing more than just an invitation. This song had a foreboding tone to it. In his remaining verses he makes it clear that it is up to the youth of this country to change things. The success of that song pushed Dylan to the front of the folk-protest movement. But shortly after two things were going to alter Dylan’s role. The first was Bob Dylan’s decision that politics were not worthwhile and that a person had to change as an individual before he could change the world. The second was the British Invasion led by the Beatles. Dylan was not the only musician affected by the Beatles arrival. Prior to their arrival in 1964, an American group, the Beach Boys had parlayed clean harmonies with simple lyrics about surf, girls and cars to create the fantasy known as the California Myth. The popularity of the Beach Boys made California the rock capital of the nation. It also contributed to the further alienation of youth from the reality of life that mainstream America offered.
Part Three:
Origins
of
the
Counterculture of Youth
Some of the most prized values of the group which came to be thought of as the counterculture were a deep respect for freedom and individual integrity, and a faithfullness to experience and pleasure. The music of the Beach Boys spoke to these needs and created a fantasy for them to exist in. But even the Beach Boys could not shatter the air of despair that held the country after the Kennedy Assassination. Something new, old, different yet the same was needed. That something was the Beatles.
The Beatles revived much of the early rock and roll sound of Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly and Elvis in a new exciting way. Their wittiness and unabashed faith in themselves reaffirmed young people’s beliefs in themselves as well. The Beatles represented a complete and entirely “youthful change in clothes, hair styles, social customs and music.” They re-established rock music as the unifying force of the youth movement.
The arrival of the Beatles has been called a “pop explosion.” According to Greil Marcus in
The
Rolling
Stone
Illustrated
History
of
Rock
and
Roll
, “a pop explosion is an irresistible cultural explosion that cuts across lines of class and race, and most crucially, divides society itself by age. The energy for that explosion comes from a deep but unfocused unrest in Society, usually felt in the general rebelliousness of youth. Enormous energy finds a object in a pop explosion and that energy is focused on, organized by, and released by a single, holisitic, cultural entity.”
7
The Beatles led the way for other British groups and fads to flood the American market. Initially their popularity can be traced in large part to their optimistic view of life. However this quality was not what gave the Beatles their staying power through all the tumultous times that followed. They were however, able to reflect the times and more importantly, the feelings of youth during those times.
Whereas the Beach Boys made an important contribution to the development of the counterculture, they failed to reflect the changing attitudes of youth as they saw America becoming more involved in Vietnam and less responsive to their needs and concerns.
Artists such as Jimi Hendrix in “If Six Was Nine” spoke to the need to be individuals and reject the values of the establishment. Bob Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone” illustrates the ideal alienated individual. Other groups such as the Doors, Who, Kinks, and the Rolling Stones epitomized the mood of alienation that was prevalent at this time. No longer were young people feeling society had shut them out, rather they felt united in their decision to reject society and as a community of youth, share their own values.
Part Four:
The Anti War Movement
This feeling of united alienation was further heightened by our country’s growing involvement in the Vietnam War. The War deepened and widened the chasm between the counterculture and the establishment.
The Youth International Party (Yippies), the SDS, Eugene McCarthy, student strikes, marches, protests and riots became outgrowths of the terribly strong feelings against the war.
Once again the music gave them the means by which to immortalize the feelings better than any monument could. Once more Dylan’s pen was a mighty sword as he wrote “Masters of War” and “With God on Our Side” both of which sharply condemned those who hid behind a respectable facade while setting in motion the death machines of war. Jefferson Airplane’s album “Volunteers” in 1969 culminated a year (1968) which saw two more assassinations (R. Kennedy and M. L. King), the Tet offensive and the war in the streets of Chicago, U.S.A. during the Democratic National Convention.
While the Airplane felt a revolution was imminent, other singers followed Dylan’s lead in recording songs such as: Phil Ochs “I Ain’t Marching Anymore” and “Is There Anybody Here,” Barry McGuire’s “The Eve of Destruction,” Buffy Ste. Marie’s “The Universal Soldier,” and John Lennon’s “All We Are Saying is Give Peace a Chance.”
The violence grew in direct proportion to the realization that not only were individuals powerless to stop the war, groups were as well. It became clear that only the President would stop it when he decided he was ready to. The realization caused many people to give up on the American political system as absurd and insane. This feeling that the system was insane reaffirmed the countercultures’ sanity and therefore validated their ideas. Some groups responded to this through black humor such as Country Joe and the Fish in their song “I-Feel-Like ‘I’m-Fixin’ To-Die-Rag.” One verse cajoled: “Come on Mothers throughout the land / Pack off your boys to Vietnam / Come on Fathers, don’t hesitate / Send your sons off before its too late / Be the first ones on your block / to have your boy come home in a box.” Other groups such as the Jefferson Airplane preached a complete replacement of the American System as the only answer to the craziness.
Although it seemed for a while that that revolution was indeed around the corner, it never materialized. Besides being too beset with fractures within the movement, youth made a strategic mistake when it counted on rock music to help create that revolution. Just as in the fifties rock and roll was neutralized and controlled by the industry that had helped spawn it so too would the establishment be in a position to neutralize and cause the demise of enough of the counterculture to weaken and disable its potential for power.
How sadly ironic that the very establishment that was being rejected by the counterculture was needed by them to popularize their music and could be the force that obliterated the legitimacy of large portions of that culture just by making them acceptable to the general masses (thereby giving such movements as the hippies, the appearance of a fad).
The realizations were too much for the counterculture to cope with unaided. Thus began the widespread acceptance of the belief that society was sick and needed to be completely changed. However it was now pretty apparent that the counterculture would not be able to affect that change. The only answer was escape.
Part Five:
The
Counterculture
and
Drugs
There were only two viable means for escaping the depressing reality of mainstream American society: death and drugs. In overwhelming numbers, the counterculture turned to the latter. Drugs became the new way youth could sustain its optimistic hope for change. They allowed not only an escape from the harsh realities of life but an unprecedented opportunity for self exploration.
Drugs were not entirely new to the youth movement. They had been experimented with and even disguised in songs such as Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine Man” and the Association’s “Along Comes Mary” earlier in the sixties. The increased popularity of all kinds of drugs further expanded the gap between the generations in the 60’s. Drug use enjoyed a very positive image in the late sixties. It represented the ultimate freedom to do whatever felt good.
By 1967 song writers had responded to this new wave of drug popularity with “psychedelic” music. Jimi Hendrix’s “Purple Haze,” the Beatles “Sgt. Peeppers” album, Jefferson Airplane’s “Surrealistic Pillow” and the Cream’s “Disreali Gears” are but a few of the albums that attempted to recreate the LSD experience.
All over America stoned or flipped out young people closed their eyes, turned up their stereo’s and heard people like John Lennon tell them to: “Picture yourself on a boat on a river / with plasticine trees and marmalade skies. . .” or Jim Hendrix ask: “Are you experienced”? The drug experience particularly the mind expanding ones like LSD, mescaline, peyote and other sacred mushrooms gave youth a feeling of power that mainstream society denied them.
Not all drug songs were of the mind expanding variety. In 1965 Dave Van Ronk, a folksinger from Greenwich Village sang about “Cocaine (Going All Around My Brain),” Sly and the Family Stone offered to “take you higher” presumably via smoke; the Rolling Stones mocked acceptable mainstream abuse of prescription drugs in “Mother’s Little Helper” and Steppenwolf promised a “Magic Carpet Ride” to any little girl who was interested.
The issue of drugs not only broadened the gap between youth and the establishment, it solidified the young’s sense of belonging to their own community. This youth community questioned everything society held sacred so it was not surprising that even the love songs of this period would illustrate a change in attitude.
In the 50’s and early 60’s people in songs lost their loves, had broken hearts, were lonely and were often traumatized by the love experience. From the mid 60’s on, that all changed. Again, the leading group to establish this change was the Beatles. In 1965 they released an album “Help” that was the soundtrack to a movie by the same name. Songs from that album like “The Night Before,” “Help” and “Ticket to Ride” showed that love was a matter of choice, need not be permanent and that women also had feelings about relationships. A new group “The Mamas and the Papas” explored this new love song on their album “If You Can Believe Your Eyes and Ears.” Male/female relationships were further explored in songs like “Different Drum,” ”A Man and a Women,” “Honky Tonk Woman,” “Both Sides Now” and “I Can’t See You Anymore.”
Since sex is a natural part of male/female relationships it also became a subject for songs such as the Troggs’ “Wild Thing,” the Doors’ “Light My Fire,” Jimi Hendrix’s “Fire” and “Foxy Lady” and the Stones’ “Lets Spend the Night Together.” Although media attention to these songs served to make them further issues of the generation gap, these songs did serve to loosen America’s norms regarding male/female relationships. They also helped people to reevaluate their feelings about relationships and promote greater equality in relationships between the sexes.
Part Six:
Two
Festival
s—
Woodstock
and
Altamont
Nineteen-sixty-nine was another landmark year in the 60’s. The Beatles broke up and decided to pursue their own interests. Bob Dylan returned to the “Nashville Skyline” and his own interests. Jefferson Airplane was wracked with internal havoc. The SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) split into four groups, each bent on pursuing its own interests. So it seemed that, just as in the late fifties, parents would triumph over evil (youth) again and everyone could get on with life.
Then came summer and 300,000 to 500,000 of the unsinkable youth culture showed they weren’t through yet by turning a farmer named Yasgur into the proud owner of a new nation: The Woodstock Nation. Originally scheduled as a three day music festival where people could hear the best groups of their generation for a price, the promoters realized they’d attracted an uncontrollably huge crowd and proclaimed it a free concert.
Despite everyone’s fears, all went quite well all things considered. The festival did feature the most popular groups of the 60’s and some new groups like Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young got together as a result of the festival.
For the establishment, particularly parents, the weekend was a nightmare. Not only did the kids get along well, they shared everything including drugs, sex, sleeping and bathing facilities. There was a lot of love at Woodstock; it seemed the culmination of the best of what the counterculture had stood for. It was also sad because it truly was the last great gathering of the youth movement. Both a movie and a soundtrack were made of the Festival and except for memories, they are all that remains.
Because Woodstock went so well, there has been the temptation to recreate it. Several others have tried and failed in different degrees. One of the most tragic failures occurred in December of 1969.
The Rolling Stones decided to give a free concert at Altamont Raceway in California. The concert would feature several groups but the main feature would be the Stones. At the last minute, the Stones decided to hire the Hell’s Angels for security guards at the concert and pay them for their services with beer. Altamont turned out to be the name associated with violence just as Woodstock is with love. Not only did everything that could go wrong, go wrong but it too was all preserved and captured on tape. The concert was riddled with ironies but the most unreal one came as Mick Jagger watched horrified while the Angels murdered Meridith Hunter for insulting one of them as Jagger sang “Sympathy for the Devil”.
The two festivals, Woodstock and Altamont are a fitting ending to this unit on the music of the 60’s. They illustrated all the counterculture hoped to be as well as all it could be. Perhaps they gave the counterculture much to ponder because the movement turned into itself and eventually assimilated into mainstream America.
Now there are historic accounts available in books, newspapers, and magazines or for a quarter a play; on WAPP on your FM dial; in private collections or record shops you can listen to the most vivid, valid histories on record: the music.
