Keira WitherKay wrote:
I watched the doccie on hippies on history channel that aired about a week ago , cool look at that era and how lsd inspired the grateful dead and other acid rock of the era , some cool clips of woodstock too . Not all music but really interesting none the less , wish i was there ? must have been an exciting time to be young and in the states of course .
I think it was, but only for a while. Not many hippies really stayed the distance - a lot of them had their bohemian fun and then got married, got 9 to 5s, cut their hair, grew up (?), went to work in a suit and tie, got a mortgage.... (maybe not in that order). Not all hippies were as devoted to the cause as Wavy Gravy. If there was a "cause".
Joe Boyd (who was THERE and also remembers)
At the height of the decade, we remained optimistic in a way that today is impossible to imagine. For me, the contrast between spring and autumn '67 in London planted the first doubts. The violence at Altamont eroded optimism for many; Charles Manson and the descent of Haight Ashbury into squalor relieved us of a lot more. The discovery that American fighter pilots could machine-gun Vietnamese farmers for sport whilst listening to Dylan and Hendrix on cockpit headphones finished off what remained for me.
For me the 60s musical legacy is a strong one, but I'm not sure about the rest. It was a time when a lot of snake oil was peddled. I think there was a period of hope and optimism, but that may well have been fuelled by the economic conditions that prevailed at the time. Boyd notes in the same book (White Bicycles, ISBN 1-85242-910-0) that
In the sixties we had surpluses of both money and time.
Friends of mine lived comfortably in Greenwich Village, Harvard Square, Bayswater.... and were, by current standards, broke. Yet they survived on occasional coffee-house gigs or part time work. Today, urbanites must feverishly maximise their economic potential just to maintain a small flat in Hoboken, Hackney... or Bellville. The economy of the sixties cut us a lot of slack, leaving time to travel, take drugs, write songs and rethink the universe.
It was a dream. It didn't last. I think that for a while it was a fun ride. A lot of the hippies ended up working for IBM or flipping burgers. It was an extended gap year for most of the people having fun at that time. I think it was a time that promised much but delivered rather less.
