The 1960s started with jungle drums, soaring guitar solos, and a bass line like a freight train. I got on board at the earliest opportunity. It didn't much matter where the train was headed -- bound for glory or bound for hell. One was just as good as the other, as long as it was bound for someplace. Someplace other than where I was at.
It wouldn't be accurate to say we thought the journey would last forever. Most of us weren't thinking at all. Still, no one would have predicted that the '60s would end in just a few short years. They died young. Bled out into the mud of Vietnam, on a balcony in Memphis, in a Los Angeles hotel kitchen, and on a college campus in Ohio.
Eras, like the Gay Nineties or the Roaring Twenties, don't follow precise calendar designations. If you had to put your finger on the very moment the 1960s began, it would have to be Feb. 9, 1964, with the Beatles' first appearance on the "Ed Sullivan Show." It was like the shot heard 'round the world. Before that time, we lived in an age permeated with dread and an underlying specter of doom. The age that followed was characterized by what can only be described as defiant joy.
In the 1950s, we Boomers cut our teeth on duck and cover drills and threats of what the bomb could, and would, do to our little lives in the blink of an eye. Throughout that decade, and on into the beginning of the next, the pressure ratcheted up. There was Castro and creeping communism. Sputnik was a big deal. If the Russians could fly something over our heads then they could certainly drop a bomb on us from up there. We had no defense against that.
Our elders tried to placate us with music from "heartthrobs" -- Fabian and a bunch of guys named Bobby. They stood on stage, finger-popping, and singing ballads while decked in jackets and ties. We weren't buying any of it. Buddy Holly was dead.
The Bay of Pigs, Cuban missile crisis, and JFK's death did nothing to brighten our spirits. We began dabbling in folk music, which can be dreary in its own right with songs of sorrow and death. It didn't help.
And then, in the deepest winter of our despair, we turned on the TV and saw the four lads from Liverpool. They were as bright and colorful as anybody could be -- on a black & white TV set. It was like an oppressive weight being lifted. I know not everyone felt it, but those who did felt it most profoundly. The world saw the Beatles and the world changed. The pressure valves spun opened and we screamed. It was a jail break on a national scale. We reached for the sky and, like Icarus, some of us reached too high.
"The only ones who truly know where the edge is are those who have gone over it."
-- Hunter S. Thompson
We put Hunter's theory to the test. We danced out on every limb, skated figure-eights where the ice was thinnest, found the tipping point by trial and error. Some of our numbers went over the edge and we took note, but it didn't stop us from pushing the boundaries. It was a dangerous age. Every wire was hot and the current could be lethal.
Although there were millions of Baby Boomers coming of age, not everyone got on board. Most just stayed in line and did what they were told. They got straight jobs with draft deferments, married well, and melded into the system. Some bought lava lamps, Bee Gees albums, and tie-dye T-shirts. They wore the shirts to the company picnics on the weekend. Really shook up the squares.
In all fairness, I might have sold out to The System as well, but The System never made me a serious offer. Not even a low ball. They did offer me a temporary position in the late '60s, but only as cannon fodder.
There were posers in our ranks, as well. Sonny Bono is an interesting case. It's not so much that a rock star can't go on to be a congressman, just not a Republican congressman. The manner of his death casts shade on his credentials, as well. No respectable rock star dies by skiing into a tree at a tony resort. Rock stars die in plane crashes, floating in the pool after the party is over, or choking to death on vomit. Sonny isn't in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and I think that's for the best.
And while we're on the subject, let's pooch kick the Bee Gees out of the Hall as well. Any entertainers who can throw over rock 'n' roll and embrace disco so easily were never true believers in the first place.
Peter Max -- an ad man -- worked up some graphics during the Flower Power era. He made quite a splash, but those of us who were in the water knew he never even got wet.
In general, contemporary art of the day was a disappointment. Kids were being prosecuted and jailed for minor offenses -- simple possession of marijuana equals five years in prison. We were rounded up and sent to die in a senseless and immoral jungle war while our cities were going up in flames. In the major museums and galleries of the day were paintings of soup cans, thin abstractions, and minimalist creations. Somewhere there was a disconnect. The most relevant art was being done on posters and album covers. I'll put Robert Crumb up against any artist from that era.
The year 1968 was the beginning of the end. The moon is in the seventh house several hours every day and Jupiter aligns with Mars once or twice a year. Despite the rosy optimism of the song, the Age of Aquarius started off badly and it went downhill from there.
January brought the Tet Offensive. We had been told for years we were winning the Vietnam War. We were told as much after Tet, but few, beyond the WWII vets manning the bar stools in American Legion Posts, believed it anymore.
April saw the assassination of Martin Luther King. The freedom marches would continue, but absent was the grace and dignity he brought to the endeavor.
I took Bobby Kennedy's death pretty hard. I guess I'd seen in him a possible end to the war -- a bridging of the generation gap. I'm not sure how the latter would have worked. Perhaps music was the key; I would have played my father some Stones, maybe Sympathy for the Devil. He would have played me some Julius La Rosa ... well, maybe that one was a bridge too far.
In August's Democratic Convention, Mayor Richard Daley sent more than 20,000 uniformed thugs into the streets of Chicago to deal with 10,000 peaceful demonstrators. Overkill would be the opposition's weapon of choice.
In November we witnessed the resurrection of Richard Nixon. What good can you say about a man when even his friends don't like him?
In December it got personal. I was drafted.
Things got no better in 1969 -- the Manson Family, Altamont, Kent State, Yoko Ono. It became harder and harder for the '60s generation to keep the faith. In 1971, Carol King released her "Tapestry" album. The choices were now heavy metal, soft rock, or disco. The '60s generation had officially thrown in the towel. Even the true believers had to admit the train had reached the end of the tracks.
David Malcolm Rose, a longtime Hot Springs resident, was born and raised in Woodstock, N.Y., ground zero for the 1960s.
Editorial on 08/16/2019