THE 1960s - A golden decade (Life For Me in the 1960s)

Member Name: GentleGenius

Product:	Life For Me in the 1960s
Date:	18/10/08 (904 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Fun, laughter, music, social enlightnment, the feel-good-factor

Disadvantages: It all began to go downhill at the end

This is part I of a two-section piece, the second of which will follow within the next few days. The purpose of the two-section piece is to talk about my own perceptions of what was happening whilst growing up through what I feel are two very important decades in modern history - the 1960s and the 1970s. Today's instalment concentrates on the 1960s, and my 1970s offerings will follow in due course as the second part.

The first mood I caught from the 1960s was a musical one, whereby the rock & roll of the 1950s was floundering, and everybody was wondering what, if anything, would take its place. The music charts were crowded with teen high school soppy ballads and twangy guitar instrumentals, which formed a stepping stone between the 1950s rock'n'rollers and all that was to follow, during what most people over a certain age view as the most golden decade in popular history.

It seemed that society was becoming more tolerant of things which had previously been viewed as decadent at best, and disgusting at worst - the first I remember of these things was, in 1960, the lifting of the 30-year long ban on D H Lawrence's erotic novel, Lady Chatterley's Lover. Sex as a subject had always been (and in some circles still was for quite a long time to come) rather taboo, and I feel that the court's decision to at long last allow this novel on our bookshop shelves, served as a major contribution towards changing sexual attitudes. Another very important breakthrough was, in 1961, the birth control pill was made available via the NHS to all women in the UK. This was a landmark development, as for the first time in everyday society, it was an open acknowledgement that women could have sex for enjoyment and not just for reproductive purposes.

Amongst various other areas of law-relaxation, the House of Lords in 1965 voted to abolish hanging in the UK, and in 1967 homosexuality between consenting males was no longer a criminal offence. These were two well-intended examples of many inroads towards creating a more flexible and tolerant society under Harold Wilson's Labour government which was voted into power in 1964. Former British PM Harold MacMillan's "you've never had it so good" statement to the British public in the post-WW2 1950s boom was suddenly a reality, and the 1960s saw the emergence of the working-class hero, together with almost full employment. There were major leaps forward in technology which kept Britain's manufacturing industry rolling along, more and more motorways were being built, and a massive programme of slum clearance was underway in our inner cities. The idea was to build a bright, new, forward-thinking modern Britain for everybody to enjoy, regardless of their so-called "status" in society. Everything was opening up - new houses were being built with huge, picture windows that let in lots of light - which to me is one of the most significant things of the 1960s, in that it aligned with the general opening up of people's minds across the nation.

In 1962/1963 and in the nicest possible way, all hell broke loose when four young long-haired Liverpudlians took the UK and the world by storm. The Beatles began as any other pop group, yet they seemed to have a certain something about them which captured the public's attention in a way no other youth idols had previously quite managed, at least not to such a great extent. Whole hosts of young people up and down the country were inspired to take up music and form pop groups of their own, some of which were successful and some not. There was so, so, so much talent around in the 1960s, and pop music evolved into a golden legacy, rather than a passing and throwaway fad. Stadiums all over the world were filled with screaming girls, hysterical over the mop-top heroes, and other bands (such as The Rolling Stones) followed sometimes in their footsteps, and sometimes side by side. Of course there were many more extremely good pop performers to emerge from both Britain and America during the 1960s, but at the time The Beatles ruled the roost, with The Rolling Stones following very close to them in 2nd place. Many of the 1960s musical groups - The Small Faces, The Yardbirds, The Spencer Davis Group, Manfred Mann (to name just a few) were strongly influenced by both early blues and 1940s/1950s R & B music, and their crowd following were largely Mods. The 1960s saw the birth of Motown music, and the doo-wop/R&B of the 1950s evolved into black soul, giving us all those superb singers/performers like Otis Redding, Aretha Franklin, James Brown....to mention just a few. A growling young American folk singer/songwriter/poet - Bob Dylan - blew our minds with his profound statements and observations, and teenyboppers danced in local youth clubs to bubble-gum music such as The 1910 Fruitgum Company's "Simon Says".

The 1960s at street level, was all about popular culture and experimentation - this extended into the areas of art, photography, fashion, the media - wherever you turned your head, something new and exciting was happening. The very early 1960s saw the beatniks wearing sloppy jumpers, tight calf-length "slacks" - the men wore straight trousers with pointed-toe shoes and the girls backcombed their hair into a high "beehive" style. Later we saw the emergence of the Mods, who wore parka jackets, and rode scooters - their arch-enemies were the leather-clad biker Rockers, and in the mid-60s these two tribes would create havoc in British seaside towns, fighting on the beaches with one another. Probably the most controversial (at the time) fashion of the 1960s was the mini skirt, designed by Mary Quant. As we travelled in time through the 60s, the hemlines got higher and higher and by the end of the decade, a mini skirt was little more than a wide belt. Narrow trouser bottoms gradually turned into bellbottoms (re-named flares in the 1970s), and as the skirt lengths shortened with the passage of time, so the trouser flares expanded. Hipster skirts and trousers were widely worn in the mid-60s, together with shiny metallic crocheted dresses for the girls, that had a pattern of holes cut out of the middle. Kinky boots were worn in all weathers and seasons, and it was "in" to be stick-thin.

Over the pond in the USA, the hippie culture was born, and 1967 was hailed as the "Summer Of Love". The ideology of hippies was one of peace, tolerance, freedom, awareness and love. These hippies were mostly middle-class American youths who had become very disillusioned with the materialistic way of life of the western world, and, led by gurus such as Timothy Leary, they invited people to join them with the slogan "turn on, tune in, drop out" - hallucinogenic drug use and psychedelic music being the artistic driving force. Communes of young people who had chosen to opt out of society sprung up all over the USA. It all began in San Francisco, then spread across the USA. The hippie influence made a profound mark on British society too, and with The Beatles setting an early example with their music moving away from straight pop into experimentation, growing their hair, using psychedelic drugs for recreation and spending time meditating with Indian yogi and philosopher Maharashi Mahesh, a large chunk of British youths followed suit - they grew their hair, painted their faces, wore Indian cotton, kaftans, afghan coats, tie-dyed grandad vests, danced naked at rock festivals and dropped a lot of acid.

Many peace protests and demonstrations took place across Europe and the USA during the 1960s, culminating in John Lennon's and Yoko Ono's 1969 "bed-in" where the couple spent four days in bed as a statement against all wars, particularly the Vietnam War.

Of course there is always a backlash to any kind of movement in society (the 1960s movements mostly revolving around youth), and towards the end of the decade, we saw the emergence of skinheads, a rather violent and unpleasant bunch of young people - though with hindsight they seem comparatively harmless when held up next to some of today's feral teen gangs. The skinheads, like their predecessor Mods and Rockers, made a hobby of travelling to seaside towns at Bank Holidays, and creating havoc. With sawn-off jeans, bovver boots, braces, Ben Sherman shirts and shaved heads, these scowling and foul mouthed youths were the complete antithesis of the peaceful and loving (albeit stoned!) long-haired hippies.

Cinema took some huge leaps forward during the 1960s, firstly with the emergence of the "angry young man" films that were inspired by and rode on the back of the 1960 release of "Saturday Night & Sunday Morning", starring Albert Finney. A lot of these types of films dealt with social issues prevailing at the time, many being kitchen-sink type dramas with powerful story lines. The 60s also saw James Bond films packing the cinemas full, and other films such as "Blow Up" and Roman Polanski's "Repulsion" had a slightly surreal flavour, travelling down the "art noir" route. The Beatles too made a couple of films, and in 1967 John Lennon introduced us to his Private Gripeweed character in the movie "How I Won The War". Musical theatre offered the entertainment world gems such as "The Sound Of Music", "Half A Sixpence", and in 1968 the hippie musical "Hair" opened on New York's Broadway and in London's West End. "Oh Calcutta" opened on Broadway in 1969, and together with "Hair", rode high on the 1960s sexual revolution, both shocking the more conservative-minded with on-stage nudity and sex scenes.

Television began broadcasting to the masses in the 1950s, but it was the 1960s which saw TV really establish itself as the leading form of entertainment worldwide. As with cinema, music, architecture and fashion, experimentation was the name of the game and especially in the mid-60s, various programmes such as "The Prisoner" and "The Avengers" which were decidedly offbeat, had a wide cult following. It to me did seem that TV programme offerings were much more varied in the 1960s (and the 1970s too) than at any time since, and even though we only had ITV and BBC, with BBC2 starting in 1964, there was something for everybody. The televising of offbeat and avant garde plays added fuel to the mood of society which was one of questioning social values, together with hard-hitting documentaries such as "Cathy Come Home". On the lighter side, quiz shows really took off big time, as did pop music programmes such as Top Of The Pops and Ready Steady Go. For myself and my friends, probably the most atmospheric TV from the 1960s was the adverts - they were very unsophisticated held up next to those of today, but they had an innocent charm which was all their own. Also, 1960s TV treated us to a plethora of drama series, sitcoms, children's and sports programmes,....many of which have become all-time classics, and in 1969 the world sat agog, glued to their TV sets, watching the first men walk on the moon.

Interior decorating and home furnishing designs weren't exempt from change and experimentation. A typical mid-1960s living room would have been decorated in bright colours such as purple and orange - carpet, wallpaper and curtain patterns were semi-abstract with bold angles and striking lines, and you were nobody in the modern world unless you had a lava lamp bubbling away on your coffee table. G-Plan furniture was all the range, and the rounded edges on tables, chairs etc. so popular in previous decades, became sharp and angled.....plus most homes had a picture hanging on the wall of the "green Indian lady". That all sounds rather tacky - maybe even repulsive - but at the time it was the height of good taste and modernism.

Looking once more at teenage culture, the 1960s saw the birth of the rock festival, which was largely a hippie invention and a celebration of the coming of the Age of Aquarius. The first major event was the Monterey Pop Festival in June 1967. Hippies from all over the USA gathered to watch acts such as Quicksilver Messenger Service, Jimi Hendrix, Canned Heat, Janis Joplin with Big Brother & The Holding Company, Ravi Shankar, Moby Grape, Jefferson Airplane and many other icons from the 1960s West Coast music explosion. In August 1969, Max Yasgur allowed his farm in Bethel, New York State, to be used for the Woodstock Festival of Music & Arts. The organisers of the festival anticipated there would be around 150,000 people attending, but as it happened, over 500,000 turned up. The facilities which had been arranged for a much smaller audience were stretched beyond their limits, and on top of that there were long spells during the festival of torrential rain which turned Yasgur's farm into a quagmire. Despite the rain and the lack of facilities, the festival-goers were well behaved and enjoyed three days of love, peace and music. Despite a few drug casualties, the Woodstock Festival seemed to seal off and epitomise what the 1960s were all about, but later in December 1969, the demise of the hippie dream began when, at the Altamont Speedway Festival in California, several deaths occurred - the most publicised, being the fatal stabbing of a young man during The Rolling Stones' performance of Sympathy For The Devil. On the recommendation of the band Grateful Dead, The Rolling Stones hired a group of Hell's Angels as their bodyguards. Mick Jagger's on-stage pleas for the violence to stop were ignored, and 18 year old Meredith Hunter was stabbed five times, just a few feet away from the stage. The dream was turning sour!

Of course not all of the 1960s was peace, love, fun and flowers. Ian Brady and Moira Hindley were both charged with the torture and murder of several children on the Yorkshire Moors, and a school in the tiny village of Aberfan in Wales was swamped by a landslide from a nearby coalmine - several pupils and teachers lost their lives in this tragedy. In November 1963 the world was shocked by the assassination of President John F Kennedy, and civil rights leader Martin Luther King was shot dead in 1968 during a speech. Students across the USA burned their Vietnam War draft cards, and the political wing of the hippies (yippies) staged mostly peaceful demonstrations against the war, with the Ohio National Guard shooting four student protestors dead at Kent State University. In 1969, Charles Manson was given life imprisonment for, together with his amassed "family", committing several murders at their commune in Death Valley, California. The horrors of the Vietnam War were shown worldwide on people's TV screens, and ex Beatles' fans in America's bible belt burned effigies of the "fab four" after John Lennon had claimed that The Beatles were more popular than Jesus.

Rather sadly, the 1960s drew to a close on a cloud of mostly socio-political uncertainty, but nevertheless and viewed as a whole, what a startling, fun-filled and expansive era it was to have lived through.

Well the above is only the tip of a very big iceberg of my own view of the 1960s. I know that I have omitted a tremendous amount, and there are very many influential people and events from the 1960s which truly deserve mentioning, but if I don't stop now, this piece would ramble on and on and would probably take me the rest of my life to type.

So, with memories of flowers in my hair I shall close down, and thanks for reading everyone! Part II is now in progress, and will take us on a trip through the 1970s.

Summary: I am so fortunate to have lived through such a mind-blowing decade