Purple Haze – Jimi Hendrix
Purple haze all in my brain
Lately things just don't seem the same
Actin' funny, but I don't know why
'Scuse me while I kiss the sky
Purple haze all around
Don't know if I'm comin' up or down
Am I happy or in misery?
Whatever it is that girl put a spell on me
Purple haze all in my eyes
Don't know if it's day or night
You got me blowin', blowin' my mind
Is it tomorrow, or just the end of time?
The Counterculture
Beats, Freaks and Hippies
Origins in the 1950s

The Beat generation
– Literature, art, music

Backlash to 1950s
consensus
– Rejection of mainstream
values
– Experimentation with
 Drugs
 Sex
 Eastern spirituality
Allen Ginsberg

Poet of the Beat
Generation

“Howl” an influential
poem

Openly acknowledged
homosexuality
“I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed
by madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at
dawn looking for an angry fix;
Angel-headed hipsters burning for the ancient
heavenly connection
to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night.”
-- From Howl by Allen Ginsberg
Jack Kerouac

Often on the outskirts of
mainstream

Traveled the nation and
chronicled experience of
Beat Generation
– On the Road

Became Buddhist
Bob Dylan

America’s Storyteller

Chronicled
dissatisfaction with
mainstream America

Many songs rerecorded as hits for
others
The Times They are A Changing
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 a-changin'.
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'.
The Great Freak Forward

Ken Kesey
– One Flew Over the
Cuckoo’s Nest

The Merry Pranksters

Cross-Country doped
up bus trip
– Chronicled by Tom
Wolfe
Timothy Leary and LSD

Harvard Professor
– Thrown out

Believed LSD or “Acid”
would lead to higher
consciousness

“Tune In, Turn On, Drop
Out”
Birth of the Hippies

Hippie: from “hip”

Youth movement

Rejection of mainstream
– Do no harm
– Drop out, Just Be
Janis Joplin

Moved from Texas to
California in 1960s

Blend of Blues and
Psychedelic Rock

Died of a drug overdose
in 1970
Piece of My Heart
Didn't I make you feel like you were the only man, yeah,
An' didn't I give you nearly everything that a woman possibly
can ?
Honey, you know I did!
And each time I tell myself that I, well I've just had enough,
But I'm gonna show you, baby, that a woman can be tough.
I said come on, come on, come on, come on and take it,
Take another little piece of my heart now, baby,
Break another little bit of my heart now, darling, yeah.
Hey! Have another little piece of my heart now, baby, yeah.
You know you got it if it makes you feel good,
Oh yes indeed.
All right!
The Diggers

Capitalism is ruining
society
– Money and private
property instruments of
the devil

Everything must be free
– Subverting society
– Free meals daily
Communes

Back to the land
movement

Self-sufficiency
– Away from hurtful
society

Largely a failure
– Disease and discord
San Francisco

The geographic center
of the counterculture

Haight-Ashbury district
– “Ground Zero”

Retains reputation as
“transgressive” city
Summer of Love

Summer 1967

A Human Be-In
– Call went out to hippies around
the country

Sex, Drugs and Rock & Roll
San Francisco
If you're going to San Francisco
Be sure to wear some flowers in your hair
If you're going to San Francisco
You're gonna meet some gentle people there
For those who come to San Francisco
Summertime will be a love-in there
In the streets of San Francisco
Gentle people with flowers in their hair
All across the nation such a strange vibration
People in motion
There's a whole generation with a new
explanation
People in motion people in motion
For those who come to San Francisco
Be sure to wear some flowers in your hair
If you come to San Francisco
Summertime will be a love-in there
If you come to San Francisco
Summertime will be a love-in there
Woodstock

Major music festival
– Upstate NY
– August 1969

Over 400,000 people

Poorly organized, but
nobody cared
Woodstock
Lyrics: Joni Mitchell Performed by: Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
Well, I came upon a child of God
He was walking along the road
And I asked him, Tell me, where are you going?
This he told me
Said, I'm going down to Yasgur's Farm,
Gonna join in a rock and roll band.
Got to get back to the land and set my soul free.
We are stardust, we are golden,
We are billion year old carbon,
And we got to get ourselves back to the garden.
Well, then can I roam beside you?
I have come to lose the smog,
And I feel myself a cog in somethin' turning.
And maybe it's the time of year,
Yes and maybe it's the time of man.
And I don't know who I am,
But life is for learning.
We are stardust, we are golden,
We are billion year old carbon,
And we got to get ourselves back to the garden.
By the time we got to Woodstock,
We were half a million strong
And everywhere was a song and a celebration.
And I dreamed I saw the bomber death planes
Riding shotgun in the sky,
Turning into butterflies
Above our nation.
We are stardust, we are golden,
We are caught in the devils bargain,
And we got to get ourselves back to the garden.
Where did they go?

The youth movements of the 1960s
thought they could change society – what
happened?

“Hippie”ness becomes mainstream

Vietnam/Watergate fatigue

They became parents/grandparents