Sixties - Memories

Born 1951, just what would you like to know?

 

Everyone can see what you wrote. I don't see your mistake.

Do you have questions about the sixties?

 

Sure. Lots of them. But remember "the sixties" in my opinion actually started in 1962 with the Cuban missile crisis between the U.S. and the Soviet Union and ended about 1974.

I remember when we thought the world would be destroyed in a nuclear holocaust, Beatlemania, etc.

But I have to go right now. Ask me something, I love to reminisce.

 

I'm back....

Here in the U.S. in the early sixties we were still basking in the end of World War Two. We emerged as one of the only major nations to be relatively unscathed and we enjoyed a growing economy. Our parents had lived through the great U.S. depression and most had served in WWII so they were very conformist and pro government. When President John F. Kennedy was assassinated the mood of the nation changed.

Doubt and mistrust began to grow and the younger generation started looking at the status quo and realized that something was wrong.
We only had three major TV networks but they were starting to show civil unrest (anti segregation marches, etc.), and the beginnings of the Vietnam War.

Young college students there had no access to the media, so the young began to communicate with music. Groups such as the Kingston Trio,[7]the Limeliters, Peter, Paul and Mary, Joan Baez,[8]the Highwaymen, Judy Collins, and the New Christy Minstrels began to record music with civic messages. Folk music began to be heard along side traditional rock and roll. Along side the Motown sound began, Surf Music, the Philadelphia sound, Pop, etc. So there was a lot of musical diversity at that time.

When Bob Dylan[9] started recording a new era in music began as he not only sang folk songs, but wrote them as well. At that time there were very few singers who wrote their own songs.

So Folk music was for a large part, political...the rest of rock not.
About 1964 the British invasion hit the U.S. This was when the U.S discovered that many British musicians had been listening to American blues music and had developed their own style based on American rock and roll and blues. Most of their music was of the popular variety but a few groups such as Eric Burdon and the Animals had a more serious understanding of what was going on.

The Beatles at this time, 1964, were good, and popular, but they were mostly a girl band singing love songs, guys listened to them but took groups like the Eric Burdon, the Yardbirds, Jefferson Airplane, Donovon, and The Byrds more seriously.

Music at that time was censored, so you had to "read between the lines" to understand what the groups were actually saying...which just made it more fun. Here is Peter, Paul, and Mary's I Dig Rock and Roll Music to give you some idea.

Anyway Hendrix and Sgt. Pepper blew the lid off the whole scene, if you know what I mean. It was obvious what groups were doing drugs.

Early concerts in my area were all at a local youth dance club up until 1970 or so. Major groups like Ike and Tina Turner, Simon and Garfunkel, etc. It cost a dollar to get in the door and all they had was a dance floor. They'd be abut a thousand kids...no adults were allowed. No police.
About this time larger venues also started, 1970 or so. You could see Led Zeppelin or the Doors for $5.00.

 

No Beatles concerts were almost impossible to get to. In the U.S there was only one place I could have seen them, that was in 1964 and I was only 13, so I couldn't make that one. They were just another girl band to me at the time. They basically stopped touring in 1965/66.

I did see George Harrison in the 70's.

Hippies, or Freaks as we called ourselves were pretty apolitical. The group I hung with didn't care too much for politics. We were more interested in living our lives to the full extent. I was in college from 69 to 73 so I had a student deferment from the draft and all I had to do was avoid flunking out of college to avoid going to Vietnam, although several of my friends and relatives did serve in Vietnam.
I was at a small radical college in Pennsylvania and we did have antiwar demonstrations, hari krisnas, the SDS, militant blacks, two town riots, stuff like that. But I avoided that stuff. I was too busy getting high and blending with the counter culture. The entire time was one continuous party. Always something going on day and night everyday.

I remember when we used to go to a Revolutionary War battlefield to party. Every Sunday morning. About 200/300 kids throwing Frisbee, flying kites, etc. So one day the state cops descended on us with about 20 or 30 cars and a helicopter. But that's another story.

 

Kennedy was the youngest elected U.S. president. He was a war hero, he had two young children and a lovely wife. They were the perfect American family. You have to realize that few people knew about his many love affairs, his health problems, and possible addiction to pain killers. American politicians at that time were protected by the press.
He represented change. He had tremendous charisma. His appearance on TV when running for president was probably what won him the election.

He had so much optimism it was contagious. The U.S felt it could do anything under his leadership and we felt like the light of the world. He fought against poverty, pledged that the U.S would go to the moon, faced down the U.S.S.R in Berlin and Cuba, started the Peace Corp, and realized we had no place if Vietnam. Lyndon Johnson was the president that really got us involved in Vietnam on a grad scale.
He's assassination was unbelievable.

The RedRooster had dance concerts every Saturday for about 7 years or so. Sometimes local groups, sometimes major recording artists. I can't remember all the major groups they had and there's no record on the net. That cost a dollar. In addition there were other local teenage dance clubs that had local groups or played records.

Major concerts were a hit or miss proposition for me. Although they may have only cost $5.00, that was a lot of money back then. Also there was so much going on.
I'd have to say Frank Zappa and the Mother's of Invention was pretty good, that was in the college gym, the stage was about a foot high and I was leaning on it about five feet from Zappa. Eric Burdon and War was really good, same gym....he did that was about a half hour long that I've never heard again. Jefferson Airplane was great. The first time I saw the Moody Blues they had trouble getting through Canadian customs, so they were about two hours late and were missing a lot of their equipment...so they played fro over three hours to make it up to us.

There was almost a riot when Leon Russell played because the police tried to throw out someone for something and Leon got mad. They pulled his mic and turned up the lights. Eventually he continued playing.

Concerts at that time were pretty lax. There was always MJ smoke everywhere. People high on everything imaginable and the police were basically clueless.

There was a local outdoor concert that was pretty good, but I don't remember much of it as there were grocery bags of chemicals around.
I went to Bull Island, the forgotten Woodstock. It was about as big as Woodstock people wise it turned into a free concert, 3 days long. We walked a couple miles to get to it as the roads were all blocked by cars and freaks. It descended into anarchy as it was poorly planned. Few porta johns, little water and food, no security. Most of the headliners pulled out. But Cheez and Chong showed up and I forget who else as drugs were everywhere. I got held up at gun point, but didn't have any money and someone else scared them off anyway. It rained, there was no drinkable water, I watched a food truck get raided and burned.....It was great!
Check this out.
The part about the guy getting mugged by three smack freaks was me. I couldn't copy it.

http://youtu.be/vQ815Efrk5E​

​

http://youtu.be/PRLC32Ixapc​

​

Here's another article.​

 

At that time drugs were mostly new to almost everyone. There was no reliable information about what they were or what they did. Being young we had become disillusioned with the adult culture. I believe we were the most educated generation to come along and we had high moral standards due to being indoctrinated by the adult culture that had survived WWII. TV and movies were censored and always projected high moral values. Here in the U.S with the assassination of JFK, Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King, the coming to light of civil rights violations, our increasing involvement in Vietnam, the ongoing Cold War, etc. So anyway, looking around we saw hypocrisy in society and didn't believe we were being told the truth about much of anything.

Drugs were an experiment and a social bonding of the counter culture movement. They were everywhere, all types. No one I knew ever made any money from selling or using drugs. There were no weapons involved, no turf wars, no attempt to rip anyone off. Heroin was the one drug avoided by almost everyone, no one ever tried to push Heroin on anyone. It was a no no. Every other drug, including prescription, would become available from time to time.

As far as aggression on drugs, I never trusted Heroin addicts. I can think of one that I knew, and I never trusted him. I never saw anyone become violent on drugs...alcohol yes, drugs no. My experience at Bull Island was not the norm. The three individuals that held me up appeared completely sober to me...I was much higher than they were. Even though I was held up at Bull Island we still felt mostly safe. You have to remember there were over 200,000 people there with no police or security, little water and food, and almost no sanitation, safety systems, or health care. The police stayed on the outskirts and didn't really come into the concert area. My "bad" experience is the only one I've heard of from that concert and we were there for 3 days. The incident lasted about 5 minutes.

I always felt completely safe at any concert I have ever attended.

I made it to the 20th reunion of Woodstock, the illegal Woodstock, as people just showed up without any permit being granted for a concert. I didn't even know the original Woodstock was taking place until after it was over.

http://youtu.be/g2wvhIZO8LE​

 

When I first entered college in 1969 there was a house inhabited by people about 2 years older than me. We called it the White house because it was painted white. This is where I met the first really "hippie" people. So in 69 they would have been about 20/21 or so. It was sort of a commune in that if you knew someone you could always crash there. Then it mysteriously burned down when everyone got kicked out , so then the Green house took over. It may have burnt down too, I forget.
Anyway I was about 18 when I first "Turned on" my wife was about 13, at the same time. In my area there were a few older freaks but we were about the leading edge. We knew just about everyone who got high in a ten mile radius at least by sight or association and partied with people from twenty or more miles around.

I started college in a dormitory but the entire floor I was staying on got thrown out except for me and one or two others after one semester because of too much mischief. They drank drank a lot and did stupid stuff. So the next term I moved into a room in the dorm with an older hippie dude we called Jay the Hippie. He was pretty cool and used to change his appearance every other week because he claimed the FBI was after him.

He eventually traveled to Jamaica, married someone there and I only saw him once after that.

So next term I left the dorm and moved into the third floor attic of this condemned house with two other guys. There were also about five or six others living in various other rooms. It was pretty cool, one dude and I were the main hippie types and the others were more like Fraternity rats. You never knew what would happen there. Once a guy was trying to shoot a cat in the entrance way and put a few bullet holes in the walls. From time to time we'd have keg parties on the front porch and all the little girls from the Junior High school across the street would come running over and we'd have to throw them off the porch so we wouldn't get in trouble for child molestation.

There was also a farm house and trailer that were sort of communes. We gave up the farm house after the fields surrounding it caught on fire two or three times and the local fire company got pissed. We used to trip on top of the silo, that was cool.

So, I'm just rambling here.....

Now remember the sixties hippie stuff actually happened in waves. It started on the West Coast and New York region and then moved around the country appearing at different times in different places. It seemed to me to be at its height from 1970 - 1973. When the Vietnam war ended it lost its intensity.

From 70 -73 you could probably travel around the whole country and find the same basic hippie things going on. I believe Europe was much the same. France had Mai 68, Germany had its protests, etc.

______________________​

​

No morphine. There were prescription Paris 400s?, but I don't know what was in them. Kodeine? You mean codeine? Codeine was available in over the counter cough medicines.

______________________​

In the U.S we had The Motion Picture Production Code which ran from 1938 to 1969. this was a list of dos and don't for movies and TV. Such as no nudity or implied nudity, no ridiculing of the clergy, no scenes of childbirth etc. Follow the link to see the whole list. The first usage was for Tarzan and His Mate in 1934. Underwater scenes of a nude Jane were cut from the film. I never saw those scenes until a few years ago.

http://youtu.be/IPrWCCPADNs​

​

Rock around the Clock according to Wikipedia had the lead song Rock Around the Clock edited out in some places as rock and roll was considered to be delinquent. It also appears it was heavily edited in the U.K.

But both of those moves were in the cinema before my time.