It transpired 50 summers ago, this June, the grand daddy of rock festivals, two years before Woodstock, in what became known as the Summer of Love. Your humble correspondent was on the scene. Some high school friends and I drove up from Los Angeles along Pacific Coast Highway. I can still call up olfactory memories of patchouli, sandalwood incense, not to mention the aroma of what was variously known as cannabis sativa, marijuana, reefer, tea, Miss Green, Mary Jane, pot, weed, grass, pacalolo (Hawaiian term), loco weed, and just plain dope. But my friends and I, students at an all-boys Catholic high school that enforced a strict dress code, were fairly straight: we partook of no orgies, smoked no dope, and slept in a motel. The wild stuff came later in our lives, when we were better able to handle it.
I have in my hand the program book of the Festival, in mint condition. Do I hear $1,000? On the first page there is a quotation from Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice:
How sweet the moon-light sleeps upon this bank! Here we sit and let the sounds of music creep in our ears; soft stillness and the night, become the touches of sweet harmony.
Ah yes, I remember it well, the "sweet harmony" of the whining feedback of Jimi Hendrix's Fender Stratocaster plugged into his towering Marshall amps and the "soft stillness" of the The Who smashing their instruments to pieces. Not to be outdone, Jimi lit his Strat on fire with lighter fluid. The image is burned into my memory. It shocked my working-class frugality. I used to baby my Fender Mustang and I once got mad at a girl for placing a coke can on my Fender Deluxe Reverb amp.
On the last page of the programme book, a more fitting quotation: the lyrics of Dylan's The Times They Are A'Changin', perhaps the numero uno '60s anthem to youth and social ferment. (Click on the link; great piano version. Live 1964 guitar version.) Were the utopian fantasies of the '60s just a load of rubbish? Mostly, but not entirely. "Lately it occurs to me, what a long strange trip it's been."
The Who, My Generation. I hope I die before I get old."
Mamas and Papas, California Dreamin'
Mamas and Papas, I Call Your Name
Jefferson Airplane, Somebody to Love
Janis Joplin, Down on Me
Otis Redding, Try a Little Tenderness
Scott MacKenzie, San Francisco
Ah Bill, my old friend and fellow music lovers...I love this article to pieces, what a perfectly polished bit of writing ...my only complaint is that it's too short, I wanted MORE !.....and I say this .....I would trade any 4 or 5 of my concerts of the time to have been there in Montery.....( remember, in those days, there was always at least 3 bands on single night's bill, many times 4 or 5 ....so it's a fair trade!)
I will always think to be born at exactly the time we were was to have the best of all worlds .....and at the very top of that bestness is our music ....damn damn damn ....amazing music .....and those concerts ....for 3 bucks up to as much as 10/15 dollars for a festival, you got to see the cream (heh, little play on words there) of a vast and varied assembly of groups....from Motown to hard rock, from folk rock to acid rock, and the much scorned soft rock, ( unless it was late at night with your lover ...heh) huge talents spread their notes across the country speaking to an entire generation....most of us can name the tune in less than 4 bars.....
....I know music helps define each era, from about the 1890s or so, but the 60s .....it was a time when if we were inarticulate, the music said it for us ...it was that underlying ribbon of music that ran through our lives....our radios and record players blasted it out, at the beach, out of a car, and pouring from our windows, the advent of FM underground radio kicked it all up a notch in the mid 60s'ish, stuff that AM radio wouldn't or couldn't touch now had an outlet ....YAYAYAYA .....the only people who used headphones were the techs in the studios ...whether recording or DJs ....we shared our music with the world ...(whether they wanted to hear it or not) we didn't live in our own heads with the music, like this headphone wearing generation....
....I think, like the low tech sound of an LP, it was the technology of the times ( or lack thereof) that contributed to the excitement of our music....with the advancement of technology, came a smoothness, a controlled quality of the music that also killed the raw excitement, and wild character of the music of the 60s....
.....Last summer, the kids next door, all in their mid 20s, had their living room window open ....and while I was doing the dishes, I was treated to their rendition of "Sounds of Silence" ...a cappela... and they ALL knew the tune, and ALL the words ...cause they was raised right ! ...*cough* ....anyway, it was ever so nice to know that our music is living on in younger generations......
Posted by: sally shoaf | Sunday, June 18, 2017 at 10:52 AM
Dear old Sally I shall bend to your demand and dig up some more in the same vein from my archives. So stay tuned.
Your writing above approximates to the swerving, mad onrush of Kerouac. Yes, our generation had and has a special relation to its music. Our music became the sound track of our lives, in a way that was not possible for our parents, and this because of such technological developments as the transistor. We took those little transistor radios everywhere, to the beach, on our bikes . . .
I still have all the old LPs in excellent condition with their jackets and their liners too. No scratches.
Yes it does warm the heart that the young are glomming onto a lot of what moved us back in the day. No surprise. Our music had meaning: it came from the heart and spoke to the soul about things that matter. It was idealistic. It was a music of engagement with life: neither the escapism of lounge-lizard crooners like Sinatra nor the vile hip-hop horseshit of the rappers. Am I being fair?
Are we generational chauvinists? Mebbe so . . .
Anyway, here is an S & G tune that I'll bet you can still relate to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKlSVNxLB-A
Posted by: BV | Sunday, June 18, 2017 at 12:04 PM
and Bill, therein lies the philosopher, your paragraph starting "Yes it does warm the heart" captures that whole once world......our music had meaning .....plus, you could understand most of the words ...and those words were important ....above and beyond the usual purile words of young love, we spoke of people standing together ....one can't help but wonder how many of us are left ....not just in body, but how many of us are still clinging to the idea that we should care for each other, that we should "love one another right now" ...
I have often said I never grew up .....the values that I held dear in my youth, I still hold dear......impractical as they may be, and often are...
Posted by: sally shoaf | Sunday, June 18, 2017 at 01:44 PM