The Sixties in Clichés

Why the sixties did NOT end on 31 December 1969

The following is a reply to 'After The Gold Rush', an article about music at the end of the sixties written by Martin Ruddock and published in UK music magazine 'Shindig' , issue 98 of of December 2019. The article is held together by clichés and half-truths, which have been recycled for decades now.

1 Tom Jones and May 68

One irrelevant ‘proof’ is the fact that Rolf Harris hit the no.1 spot with ‘Two Little Boys’ in December 1969. In the sixties, sales of all musical genres ended up in the same Charts. Since older and more conservative people also bought records, both the singles and long-playing charts would at times be most diverse. In this particular instance, Rolf Harris was preceded by The Archies’ ‘Sugar, Sugar’ for eight (!) weeks – not exactly an icon of sixties innovation. In the first few months of 1970, top hits were scored by the likes of Dana, Lee Marvin and The England World Cup Squad. Together, The Seekers, Jim Reeves, Ray Conniff and Elvis, held the top position in the long-player charts for 14 weeks. This is nothing new: during the Summer Of Love (1967), Engelbert Humperdinck’s ‘The Last Waltz’ reached no. 1 and stayed there for five weeks. Tom Jones was riding high in the French charts when the 1968 May Revolt was paralyzing the country for weeks on end. He was followed up by Aphrodite’s Child’s ‘Rand And Tears’.

2 Micro-scenes

According to Ruddock, “the dying days of 1969” saw the birth of a number of “micro scenes”, such as folk-rock, electronic, heavy blues, jazz – mentioning groups like Amon Düül, Can, Atomic Rooster, Black Sabbath and Slade. Now, all these “micro scenes” were present in the second half of the sixties – think Zappa / The Mothers of Invention, Ars Nova (1968), Blood Sweat &Tears, The Incredible String Band, The Soft Machine, The Nice, Pink Floyd, Velvet Underground, The Third Ear Band, Graham Bond… I must also mention Giles, Giles & Fripp – preferably the line-up with Judy Dyble! We didn’t have to wait till the end of the decade for ‘heavy blues’ either, think Ten Years After and Savoy Brown . The Jeff Beck Group did a great job too. Cherry Red have recently released two nice cd sets underlining the influence of classical music and avant-garde on pop music, going back as far as Joe Meek in the early sixties- and rightly so (‘I’d Love To Turn You On’ and ‘I Hear A New World’).

3 It's a gas

For every successful band ‘running out of gas’ (Jefferson Airplane) or ‘imploding’ because of personal problems (Moby Grape, a band that never went that far anyway), one can easily quote a dozen examples of ‘oldies’ bands who were in great shape – in fact, the author himself by names The Rolling Stones, The Who and The Kinks. And after their first tank was empty, the Airplane became a Starship, The Yardbirds morphed into Led Zeppelin and Renaissance, and the implosion of The Small Faces gave us The Faces and Humble Pie! Before the decade ended.

4 Death of Innocence

I have grown tired of the same old clichés about how Manson and Altamont stand for the ‘death of innocence’. Why are we always so eager to eat the diet that some media serve us? For every drug death in Frisco, one could quote successful examples of alternative living styles and schools – and not just in larger cities. Students for occupying the streets and workers were occupying their factories, common people were demonstrating in the streets for basic rights. To single and blow up out one particular event to explain history, is too easy.

5 Splitting

Some claims are really without any foundation. Did a large proportion of the music scene really ape The Beatles as they split and prepared for new lives as individuals? Did the scene multiply because people thought ‘If they can’t stay together, why should the rest of us?'. The examples that follow are not of groups that split with individuals going their own way, but on the contrary of groups that evolved: from Group X to Hawkwind, from Ambrose Slade to Slade. It is quite natural for an artist to seek new methods, outlets, materials and technologies. And as this is a business: new opportunities. It happens all the time: Graham Nash left The Hollies and the result was magnificent: The Hollies kept making nice records while Nash presented us with CSN(&Y).

6 The Long SIxties

The sixties are sometimes called the ‘Long Sixties’, a term coined to indicate that the era lasted longer than the decade. This is true for all movements, especially cultural and social ones. Cultural movements do not know physical boundaries or artificial time indicators such as a decade.

Musically speaking, I think the sixties ended when the format changed. Unparalleled in terms of creativity, sixties music still tended to be about well-crafted songs, small line-ups (three to five members) and a rather traditional set of instruments (guitars, drums, keys - plus horns for soul music). Notwithstanding all the creativity, sixties music was clearly a derivative of sources that had been around for a long time: Afro-American music (R&B, jazz, rock’n’roll, blues), one’s own forgotten heritage (e.g. English folk) and ancient and distant cultures (India) in the case of psych. Most groups tended to have a leader, usually the lead-singer (Jim Morrison, Mick Jagger) or the lead-guitarist (Clapton), with minor roles for bassists, drummers or pianists.

The new format included larger line-ups with a more varied set of instruments. Songs became compositions, and tended to be longer and more complex. The tempo was often slowed down and the volume turned up. Bassists and especially drummers now got their solo spot. These bands became stars in their own right, as bills with five or more groups doing twenty to forty minutes each were replaced by the Headliner and the Supporting Act. Influences that had remained on the sideline because of the compact format (the single), technological limitations (car radio, lightweight record players), the low cultural level op pop music, etc. – especially jazz, avant-garde and classical – could now be fully developed: pop became rock and was taken seriously (and was accepted by national radio), the LP replaced the single (people had more money to spend), and so further.

The roots became hazier or indirect. If Stones, Beatles and Kinks had developed from fifties American music, acts like Black Sabbath or Roxy Music did not have to travel back in time, re-discover their country’s musical heritage or explore exotic cultures. It had been done already and the results were right under their noses. Compare Deep Purple Mk I and MkII.

All this, of course, was a gradual process.

7 Mordbi

I was particularly struck by the use of a morbid vocabulary that relates sixties artists to disaster, death and graves. For example, The Flying Burrito Bros. and CSN&Y are called ‘survivors emerged from the dust’, not creative minds who develop their skills; not even phoenixes. Others are said to be ‘refugees’. The writer uses a number of verbs that suggest a fracture rather than a process: to sideline, keep up with the times, to implode, eclipsed, and so on.
The writer uses a most baroque language with tons of adjectives that do not add to clarity. What exactly does ‘the super-intense likes of Atomic Rooster’ really mean when translated into music terminology?

8 Angle

Finally: this fresco is painted without putting the music in a broader societal and culture perspective – no sixties music without a new attitude, hair styles, fashion, discotheques, generation gaps, marches against the Bomb, demonstrations against Vietnam, student revolts all over the place.
As society changed, so did the music. Regretfully, this angle is left out completely.