They burned their albums.
Posted on 08/05/2017 9:02:24 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
For the baby-boomer generation (or at least the counterculture segment within it) the summer of 1967 became known as The Summer of Love.
Actually, most of us boomers never experienced it. Certainly, 1967 wasn't a blissful, carefree summer of love for the hundreds of thousands of Americans serving in Vietnam.
It didn't feel much like love in my hometown of Detroit either. Fifty years ago this week, on July 23, 1967 (a Sunday, as it is this year), deadly riots erupted in the Motor City. They lasted through Friday, July 28, when, with help from the National Guard (including Detroit Tigers' second baseman Dick McAuliffe), the mayhem expired. During that week, my friend Rick was scheduled to lay down some violin tracks at a music studio downtown. His dad asked me to accompany them to the inner city. When we knocked on the door of the studio, an unsmiling middle-aged African-American man looked at three nervous white guys and drily told us that they weren't going to set anyone on fire that evening.
The actual Summer of Love took place in the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood of San Francisco. It had become a spontaneous hedonistic mecca for 100,000 hippies. A "summer of drugs, sex, and rock 'n' roll" would have been a more accurate description. Showing the proverbial power of the pen, writers managed to glamorize and mythologize a prolonged session of debauched self-indulgence. They portrayed hormonally charged young people taking the path of least resistance and luxuriating in sensual pleasures as something supposedly idealistic — loftier and nobler than the war in Vietnam and the economic struggle for the supposedly "almighty" dollar. The counterculture embraced the Summer of Love as its nirvana.
Whatever thrills the hippies at Haight-Ashbury might have had then, the legacy of the summer of '67 is far from glorious. Drugs, sex, and rock 'n' roll is hardly a formula for generational excellence. Think of "the greatest generation" that found the inner strength and character to prevail in the existential conflict of World War II: Would they have achieved such heroic heights had their priorities been to tune out the world and pursue ease and pleasure? Not a chance.
The Summer of Love romanticized unromantic sexual liaisons. Casual sex "liberated" men and women from commitment. It turned the life-affirming act of procreation into a life-cheapening pastime of recreation.
I'm sure many baby-boomers smile at the recollection of youthful flings in those days, but there was a dark side to unleashing the human libido. Millions of American families have fractured as a result of a man's or woman's addiction to the intense but transitory thrills of sexual pursuits. In doing so, they have inflicted incalculable emotional damage on millions of innocent children. Millions more children were never even born, because baby-boomers didn't want their pleasure-seeking lifestyles to be hampered by such weighty responsibilities.
Drugs? The tragedy of lives blunted and sometimes prematurely ended by drug usage has grown since the Summer of Love. You can supply your own statistics, anecdotes, and headlines. For me, the bottom-line issue is: How did our society get so spiritually anemic that millions of our compatriots still fall for the wicked illusion that happiness can be bought, then ingested, inhaled, or injected?
Rock 'n' roll? Here I'm ambivalent. 1967 was a fertile year for exciting, creative music — ranging from the Beatles' "Sgt. Pepper's" album to the beguiling West Coast sound of The Doors and Jefferson Airplane. The music was great, but it often wasn't innocent. The Doors evoked oedipal imagery. My wife loved the Airplane's "White Rabbit," not realizing until I explained to her in the '80s that it was a drug song. The Grass Roots' captured the essence of the Summer of Love with their paean to immaturity and irresponsibility, Let's Live For Today:
"By chasing after money / And dreams that can't come true / I'm glad that we are different / We've better things to do / May others plan their future/ I'm busy loving you ..."
Bottom line on the rock 'n' roll aspect of the Summer of Love: Sonically enchanting tunes conveyed distinctly countercultural messages into many pliable minds.
If you are old enough to remember the Summer of Love, I hope you emerged unscathed and have happy memories of it. If you are younger, you didn't miss anything except some fantastic music, and you didn't really miss that, because it's all available today. As for real, genuine love – not the hollow Summer of Love counterfeit – it dwells within you (see Luke 17:21).
“Who Needs The Peace Corps?” - Frank Zappa
What’s there to live for?
Who needs the peace corps?
Think I’ll just DROP OUT
I’ll go to Frisco
Buy a wig & sleep
On Owsley’s floor
Walked past the wig store
Danced at the Fillmore
I’m completely stoned
I’m hippy & I’m trippy
I’m a gypsy on my own
I’ll stay a week & get the crabs &
Take a bus back home
I’m really just a phony
But forgive me
‘Cause I’m stoned
Every town must have a place
Where phony hippies meet
Psychedelic dungeons
Popping up on every street
GO TO SAN FRANCISCO . . .
How I love ya, How I love ya
How I love ya, How I love ya Frisco!
How I love ya, How I love ya
How I love ya, How I love ya
Oh, my hair is getting good in the back!
Every town must have a place
Where phony hippies meet
Psychedelic dungeons
Popping up on every street
GO TO SAN FRANCISCO . . .
Hotcha!
First I’ll buy some beads
And then perhaps a leather band
To go around my head
Some feathers and bells
And a book of Indian lore
I will ask the Chamber Of Commerce
How to get to Haight Street
And smoke an awful lot of dope
I will wander around barefoot
I will have a psychedelic gleam in my eye at all times
I will love everyone
I will love the police as they kick the .... out of me on the street
I will sleep . . .
I will, I will go to a house
That’s, that’s what I will do
I will go to a house
Where there’s a rock & roll band
‘Cause the groups all live together
And I will join a rock & roll band
I will be their road manager
And I will stay there with them
And I will get the crabs
But I won’t care
Because . . .
Mixed memories of 1967. The music was groovy. The violence turned me towards conservatism. Antifa and #BLM got nothing on the rioters of 1967.
A summer of protest perhaps, but for a youth that had lost moorings. If the war was wrong in one way, the domestic hedonism was wrong in another. Maybe the hawks and doves deserved one another, both lost in sin.
If you can remember it, you weren’t there.
That was ironic. They denounced the "man" and materialism, yet those bums went to the "man" to beg for money. Going into stores, asking for leftovers. Begging on the streets. They were hypocrites then and now.
Think of "the greatest generation" that found the inner strength and character to prevail in the existential conflict of World War II
Also ironic since it was the "greatest generation" that gave us the "worst generation." The trash described in the article were the offspring of the "greatest" generation.
1972 Forever!
"...sex, drugs, rock n' roll..."
“The Doors evoked oedipal imagery.”
People were outraged when the Beatles sang “I want to Hold Your Hand” but by the time Jim Morrison sang, “Mother, I Want to ____________You,” nobody raised an eyebrow.
“Also ironic since it was the “greatest generation” that gave us the “worst generation.” The trash described in the article were the offspring of the “greatest” generation. “
—
You skipped a generation——they also contributed to producing some Boomers.
.
But where did this so called greatest generation affirm its source of greatness? If it was in itself per FDR rather than in God, well yes! It burned its seed corn.
People were outraged when the Beatles sang “I want to Hold Your Hand”
??????
“The Doors evoked oedipal imagery.”
And today, people get all bent out of shape over hip-hop lyrics.
“The End” wasn’t played on Top 40 stations.
Today that Hip-Hop crap is at the Top of the Charts.
I was there, and survived it. Survive isn't the proper word, as guys I knew survived Vietnam with various injuries. All the accounts of the Summer of Love in SF are true. I watched free ad-hoc concerts in Haight-Ashbury by Jefferson Airplane, Grateful Dead and other groups, all free. While watching, people would share wine and dope with strangers. They'd tell you of houses in the neighborhood to drop in on and get free dope. While walking among hippies sitting on the Panhandle green (block south of Haight Street) listening to the bands play, you'd see various naked or topless women. Easy to share wine and kisses and more with women.
I also remember the black riots in the summer of 1967. Much of it confined to the Fillmore District a couple miles away, National Guard firing shotguns to quell the rioting. Didn't affect Haight-Ashbury much. Later on, I got drafted but soon got a medical deferment due to a leg injury, disappointed my Dad who was career military.
And met my future wife who rescued me from drugs and set me straight. I owe my success in life to her. Helped that she was a Republican, didn't drink or smoke and spoke common sense into me, got me to switch from Democrat to Republican.
They burned their albums.
You aren’t really straight till you know Jesus. You’re only another kind of crooked.
Are song lyrics only bad if they are played on Top 40 stations?
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