End of an Era

It began with an assassination and it ended with an assassination. John F. Kennedy was murdered in 1963, and John Lennon was murdered in 1980. The time encompassed what is commonly referred to as “The Sixties,” which, I posit, started in the 1950s and ended at the dawn of the 1980s. Here’s the reasoning: The spirit of the 60s began with the Civil Rights Movement – boycotts in the South; the Freedom Riders; sit-ins; the murders of children in churches and the other infamous, brutal murders in retaliation to the movement for rights, – which started in earnest in the 50s. The 1970s saw the culmination of the Vietnam War, the rise of the anti-war movement, SDS and student unrest, Women’s Liberation, the mind-altering drug scene well entrenched, and the burst of creative energy and music pinnacles that all but died by 1980; the dawn of disco.

Nonetheless, it was an incredible short span of time that presaged and in fact cemented major changes in our culture and society. Some of these shifts in thinking and behavior transformed what had been the accepted ways and norms for centuries before, others reflected a realization that humanity, a certain portion of it at least, experiences heightened times of creative artistic expression during certain periods of time. From an historical perspective it seems to come in spurts, for reasons that can only be speculated. Perhaps such times of artistic creativity are intertwined with politico-socio and cultural changes, and perhaps each drives the other. This seemed to be the case with that time we call The Sixties.

Rock ‘n Roll shook things up in the mid-Fifties – simple melodies, heavy beat and vapid lyrics – and at the same time there was a renewed interest in folk music by contemporary artists who added new expressions to the old base of protest, and sometimes prayerful, music. What RnR lacked – meaningful lyrics; songs about something – the new folk music had in abundance. Rock and folk began to overlap and blend as the war in Vietnam took hold and young men faced the draft. A nation’s attention turned to its young men, and families with eligible sons and brothers, and more and more the music became about what was happening in the country and its impacts on the citizenry. The music became a commentary on the times, and a loud expression of questioning and discontent, dissent and rebellion. Music’s heroes caught the essence and the spirit of what younger people were feeling, and used music as a way to inform, stir and unite. There was a rebellion going on in parts of the country and in some of its citizenry, and the music became a focal point and a sound track to the events of the time: JFK, MLK, Malcolm X, LBJ’s terrible lie, Nixon’s madness, 1968 in Chicago, ’69 at Woodstock, and a renewed drive toward expanding civil rights for all excluded segments of society. The music and the times were inextricably intertwined.

Maybe what we incorrectly label The Sixties, covered a span of 25 years: 1955 to 1980. These were the times of fundamental transformation from how we believed, thought and behaved, and its repercussions are with us today, thirty years later. Sure there were events and stirrings in the country before the 1950s upon which later events would arise and were the results of. Ending segregation and bestowing full citizenship on women and minorities had antecedents in earlier times and struggled over decades to reach fruition, but the apex and turning point of these movements did not happen until the Sixties. The war ended ignominiously in the Seventies. Peoples’ thinking changed during these dynamic times, the effects of which are felt today, though we pay it less mind because what had been new ideas about culture have become commonplace. And that’s progress. And, yes, progress and regression often seem to be in constant conflict. That just seems to be the way people, societies, are. We progress incrementally; much to the frustration of those who want to move faster toward completing the goals that arose half a century ago.

An era bracketed by two deaths. One man represented a dream of a new kingdom, and new and vibrant Camelot on the hill that would replace the old way of doing things. Like all dreams it was largely fantasy, a concocted chimera to dazzle and eventually manipulate, and like such dreams … it sounded good to a people who wanted change. The other man’s premature death, the other John, signaled the end of the dream. He told us this plainly. The Dream is Over. No more Beatles or belief that things do not change. No more reliance on icons and false images, and identification with saviors or heroes for your hopes and expectations. Believe in yourselves, he told us at the end. That’s what he was going to do. He was going to find out who he actually was, what kind of person he was, once detached from habitual beliefs. I think he wanted us to know there was a better way and that we have to find it on our own. Or as Dylan said, “Don’t trust leaders, watch your parking meters.” It was, all in all, a hell of an era.