Today’s Lecture
– British Invasion
• Origins of the
• Music of the
Counterculture
Counterculture
• The Counterculture
– Philosophy
– Notable People
– Locations
• Music and the
1960s
– Folk Music
– Anti-war Protest Music
– Acid Rock
– Woodstock
• Backlash
Origins
• 1950s culture
– Post-war baby boom
– Post-war affluence
– Conformity
– Normalising of higher education
• Cold War policy/ The Beat Movement/ Civil
Rights Movement/ Student Movement
– Disillusionment/ diminished trust in authority/
rebellion
Music and the 1960s
• The British Invasion
– The Beatles
• African American
Music
– Civil Rights protest
music
• Sam Cooke
– Motown
• Commercial Music
– Beach Boys
Philosophy
• Sexual liberation
• Experimentation with Drugs
– Timothy Leary/ Acid Tests/ LSD
• Against traditional authority
• ‘Summer
of Love’
(1967)
• Anti-war/ anti-nuclear/ peace
• ‘Hippies’/ ‘drop-outs’/ ‘draft
dodgers’/ ‘flower children’
• Environmentalism
Notable People
• Timothy Leary
• Ken Kesey & the Merry Pranksters
• Bob Dylan/ Joan Baez/ Woody Guthrie
• The Beat Poets
• Alan Ginsburg/ Neal Cassady/ Jack
Kerouac/ William Burroughs
• Abbie Hoffman & Jerry
Rubin
• John Lennon & Yoko Ono
• Charles Manson
Locations
• San Francisco
– Haight Ashbury
– Berkeley
• New York
• Brooklyn
• Greenwich Village
• London
• Communes
Music of the Counterculture
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Bob Dylan
Woody Guthrie
Grateful Dead
The Beatles
The Rolling Stones
Peter, Paul and Mary
Joan Baez
Jimmy Hendrix
Credence Clearwater
•
•
•
•
•
•
Revival
Country Joe McDonald
Crosby, Stills, Nash and
Young
Pete Seeger
Velvet Underground
Jefferson Airplane/
Starship
Scott McKenzie
Folk Music
• Bob Dylan
• The Beatles
• Joan Baez
• Scott McKenzie
• Jimmy Hendrix • Woody Guthrie
Come gather 'round 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 better start swimmin‘/ Or you'll sink like a stone/ For the times they
are a-changin'.
Come writers and critics/ Who prophesize with your pen/ And keep your eyes wide/ The
chance won't come again/ And don't speak too soon/ For the wheel's still in spin/ And there's
no tellin' who/ That it's namin‘/ For the loser now/ Will be later to win/ For the times they are
a-changin'.
Come senators, congressmen/ Please heed the call/ Don't stand in the doorway/ Don't block
up the hall/ For he that gets hurt/ Will be he who has stalled/ There's a battle outside/ And it
is ragin‘/ It'll soon shake your windows/ And rattle your walls/ For the times they are achangin'.
Come mothers and fathers/ Throughout the land/ And don't criticize/ What you can't
understand/ Your sons and your daughters/ Are beyond your command/ Your old road is/
Rapidly agin‘/ Please get out of the new one/ If you can't lend your hand/ For the times they
are a-changin'.
The line it is drawn/ The curse it is cast/ The slow one now/ Will later be fast/ As the present
now/ Will later be past/ The order is/ Rapidly fadin‘/ And the first one now/ Will later be last/
For the times they are a-changin'.
Anti-War
Protest Music
• Country Joe
McDonald
• Pete Seeger
• John Lennon
•
•
•
•
Phil Ochs
Bill Frederick
Edwin Starr
Neil Young
Well, come on all of you, big strong men/ Uncle Sam needs your help again/ He's got
himself in a terrible jam/ Way down yonder in Vietnam/ So put down your books and
pick up a gun/ We're gonna have a whole lotta fun.
Chorus And it's one, two, three/ What are we fighting for?/Don't ask me, I don't give a
damn/ Next stop is Vietnam/ And it's five, six, seven/ Open up the pearly gates/ Well
there ain't no time to wonder why/ Whoopee! we're all gonna die.
Well, come on generals, let's move fast/ Your big chance has come at last/ Now you can
go out and get those reds/ 'Cause the only good commie is the one that's dead/ And you
know that peace can only be won/ When we've blown 'em all to kingdom come.
Chorus
Come on Wall Street, don't be slow/ Why man, this is war a-go-go/ There's plenty good
money to be made/ By supplying the Army with the tools of its trade/ But just hope and
pray that if they drop the bomb/ They drop it on the Viet Cong.
Chorus
Come on mothers throughout the land/ Pack your boys off to Vietnam/ Come on fathers,
and don't hesitate/ To send your sons off before it's too late/ And you can be the first
ones in your block/ To have your boy come home in a box.
Psychedelic/
Acid Rock
• 1965 Newport
Folk Festival –
Bob Dylan
• Jefferson Airplane
• The Beatles
• Grateful Dead
• Led Zeppelin
• The Beach Boys
(Pet Sounds)
• Pink Floyd
One pill makes you larger/ And one pill makes you small/ And the ones
that mother gives you/ Don't do anything at all/ Go ask Alice When she's
ten feet tall.
And if you go chasing rabbits/ And you know you're going to fall/ Tell
'em a hookah smoking caterpillar/ Has given you the call/ Call Alice
When she was just small.
When the men on the chessboard/ Get up and tell you where to go/
And you've just had some kind of mushroom/ And your mind is moving
low/ Go ask Alice I think she'll know.
When logic and proportion/ Have fallen sloppy dead/ And the White
Knight is talking backwards/ And the Red Queen's "off with her head!“/
Remember what the dormouse said/ "Feed your head. Feed your head"
Woodstock Festival
• Three-day music festival
– Aug 1969: Upstate NY
• Logistical disaster
– Last minute change in venue
– 186,000 advance tickets/ 400,000
showed up – free concert
– Miles of traffic jams
• Media Coverage – initially
negative, shift to positive over
the course of the festival
• “Victory of Peace and Love” –
Site owner Max Yasgur
• Jimi Hendrix – National Anthem
Backlash
• Drugs
• Violence and selfindulgence
• August 1969: Manson
murders
• White Album/ Helter
Skelter
• 6th December 1969:
Altamont Free Concert
• Rolling Stones/ Hells Angels
Music as Protest; Music as History
• Black Lives Matter/ Gay marriage/ Abortion rights
Killer Mike: Reagan
“They declared the war on drugs like a war on terror/ But all it really did was let the police
terrorize whoever/ But mostly black boys, but they would call us "niggers“/ And lay us on our
belly, while they fingers on they triggers”.
Kendrick Lamar: The Blacker the Berry
“So don't matter how much I say I like to preach with the Panthers/ Or tell Georgia State
"Marcus Garvey got all the answers“… So why did I weep when Trayvon Martin was in the street
when gang banging make me kill a nigga blacker than me?/ Hypocrite!”
B. Dolan: Which Side Are You On?
“I’m on the side of poor people getting organized/I’m on the side of Choice where it is in short
supply/I’m on the side of those the system doesn’t authorize/L-G-B-T We are on the side of
Pride, Justice and Equality”.
Guante: Fireworks
“If they really want to stop teenage pregnancy/ If they really want abortions to end/ If they
really gave a damn about STDs/ They'd make every school offer comprehensive sex ed./Instead
they tell us natural isn't natural/ Wait until you're married even if you're incompatible/ Oops,
too late oh well/ You want that warm feeling inside?/ Just wait for hell”
Beyoncé: Formation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrCHz1gwzTo
Next week…
American Woman
Women’s America and Women’s Rights