Hippy Soundtrack?

Hi Roy,

I was 23 back in '69 and by then I'd already done my stint at hitch-hiking across the USA and back, working at a few places along the way. By '69 I was finishing college in the UK, ready to come to Australia in 1970. So for me it was:

Any Early Dylan stuff
The Incredible String Band (now what was that album??....)
Definitely Alice's Restaurant too

and...um..... geez I was there... you're not supposed to be able to remember it are you? It was 40 years ago, I'm not that strong on what happened 40 minutes ago....

The hippie thing sort of spread out in ripples too, depending on what part of which country you lived in. It's been said before that for many people the 60s of legend didn't happen in their location until the 70's. Certainly, my years of long hair, strange substances, and tie-dyed girlfriends happened in the 70s.

Cheers,

Chris

Hitchhiking. That's something you never see anymore, at least around here. Once in a great while I'll see someone with a sign for some far away place. I did a bit of it as a youth. It was accepted and done. Seems almost far-fetched now.

Fun topic, Roy.
First that came to mind were:

For What It's Worth Buffalo Springfield
Everyday People Sly Stone
White Rabbit Jefferson Airplane
Ball of Confusion The Temptations
Get Together The Youngbloods
even pop ditties like:
One Tin Soldier The Original Caste
:)

Edit: 12 in 69.

Well, I have to agree with Chris....
I was born in November of 1969, so I just made it as a 60's baby.
My ma was 17 and my dad was 18; Teenagers in 69....
My dad was anything BUT a hippy though!
He was a greaser at that time, with rosewater in his pomadour, levis, engineer boots, white t-shirts with
Lucky Strike (non-filters) rolled up in his sleeve, and a 65 Royal Bobcat GTO.
(Kinda like Wheatly from the movie 'Hollywood Knights')

This was in the suburbs just south of Chicago, so it wasn't like we were out of touch.

Looking at their 67-69 high school yearbooks, the boys all had short hair yet.... looked mostly like you would think
the early to mid 60's styles would look.
Girls still wore dresses and had copious amounts of hairspray in their hair.

By the early 70's though, the hippy 'thing' had gone mainstream and guys had long hair and girls wore jeans,
and there were beaded doors and candles and incense and strobe lights and fuzzy feet and bright colors everywhere and Bic Bannana Ball Point pens, and it seemed like every day was a party.... in a very warm, laid back and friendly way :D

The first songs I can remember were from 74/75 when I was 4/5 years old.
My favs were: Yakety Yak by the Coasters, Don't Eat the Yellow Snow by Frank Zappa, The Cover of the Rolling Stone by Dr. Hook, and my ma had given me her Beach Boys & Jan and Dean albums to play on my new record player along with one of my still fav albums: Beatles 65.

It was a great time.
I often talk about the early 70's with my dad (to get a more grown-up spin on it), and he agrees with my
childhood feelings of what it was like.... and that there will probably never be another time like it.

Ken

ps - here's a pic of my parents at our place in Park Forest.... so it had to be about 73 or so.
Complete with 8-track player :P

Ken, maybe it took longer for social trends to evolve back then?

You do have to love the role(s) that music played in it all. Music, since I could hear it well, is like a soundtrack to my life. I can't think of my aunts and uncles that lived the Hippy lifestyle for a while without thinking of some of these songs. I also can't hear these songs without thinking of them. It brought folks together. (Monterey, Woodstock, etc) Later on in life, certain songs can bring me back to high school, college, early years with my wife, etc.

I can't listen to Hendrix without thinking "Woodstock", but I can't connect Hippies to Jimi Hendrix. I can connect Bob Dylan to folk music and Greenwich Village, but I can't connect Bob Dylan to Hippies either. Strange? Memories are partially emotional. If something is enough to make you remember it for life, I guess that's how it does it.

Man, I'm bummed. A hawk landed on my car and all's I could get was one lousy pic from upstairs. Flew away before I could get one from closer.

I digress.

Chicago and the Chicagoland area may be a wonderful and modern locale....
Still, it's in the center of the country.... Populated by salt-of-the-earth type midwesterners.
The hippy thing happened in the 60's on the west coast (I'm guessing) (As most trends start on one of the coasts in The States, usually)
That's when you actually had to 'drop out' to be a part of it, and most 'drop outs' headed to the west to be a
part of 'it'.
So, probably it took a few years to reach Chicago.... but by that time, the true hippy culture was already dead.
It had been absorbed by the pop culture by then.

Still, the early 70's had a wonderful spirit to them.

And in the early 80's, I used to go spend the summers at my aunt and uncles farm.
They were probably the closest thing to true hippies that I ever came.
The were vegitarians, and listened to great 'classic rock' music.
Those were such great times for me :D

And then, I married a neo-hippy girl.... so, it's always been around (since the 60's)
And maybe better than the original form :wink:

Hopefully we'll hear from some other people from the coasts and from other countries who were old enough to remember it better than my 2 months in the 60's!

Ken

ps - great shot of the hawk!

I was 12 back in '69, but I'd already had a tranny (that's old-fashioned slang for "transistor radio" for you youngsters!) glued to my ear for about 6 years, ever since hearing the Beatles. Looking back, my favourite bands back then were the bands I grew up listening to on the radio: Beatles, Stones, Who, Kinks, Hollies, Manfred Mann, Small Faces, Move, Supremes, Four Tops, etc.

I certainly didn't know anything about heavy rock / acid rock / psychedelic rock back then, unless there was a single in the charts that could be classified as "cross-over" like See Emily Play or Hey Joe. I didn't get into Dylan till the mid-70's, really.

It would be about '73 (16 years old) that I started growing my hair, listening to late-night radio and discovering new music; around then I was more into T Rex, Slade, Bowie, Mott The Hoople, Rod & The Faces etc. I was a bit of a late developer musically....most of the music I'm into now, I only got into in my late 20's or so.

I still love the music I grew up listening to....but for me, the best rock music came out between about 68 and 74. Funnily enough, that co-incides exactly with (again, IMO) the Stones' peak period - between "Let It Bleed" and "It's Only Rock'n'Roll." I'm not saying the music of those years hasn't been equalled or even improved upon - just that, as a whole, they were pretty much my favourite years.

:D :D :D

Vic

I still love the music I grew up listening to....but for me, the best rock music came out between about 68 and 74. Funnily enough, that co-incides exactly with (again, IMO) the Stones' peak period - between "Let It Bleed" and "It's Only Rock'n'Roll." I'm not saying the music of those years hasn't been equalled or even improved upon - just that, as a whole, they were pretty much my favourite years.

I've got to agree with that for the Rolling Stones era, except maybe to include Beggar's Banquet a year earlier. I go back and forth on that one and can't find my CD anywhere.

Did you have any of the hippie movement we're speaking of, or was that mainly a North American thing? I know longer hair for men became the norm for rock stars and such, but was always curious if you guys had just the hair movement or did the whole Hippie idealism thing make roots over there too.

Good question Roy.... I was left wondering the same thing after reading Vic's post.

Years and years ago, I had read 'A Saucerful of Secrets' about Pink Floyd.
There was a part in the book where 'The Pink Floyd' (w/Syd Barrett) go to San Francisco.
They were pretty excited to go, as they seemed to feel that San Francisco was the epicenter of all the
psychedelic stuff that was happening at the time.... And they felt that they were a psychedelic band influenced
primarily by the scene happining in Frisco.
They were all let down by what they experienced there though, and thought that it was by far a heavier and better
version of it going on back in England.... that here they thought that they were trying to imitate and keep up with
the San Francisco scene, and discovered that they had surpassed it.

Just recently I picked up Eric Claptons autobiography, and the Cream era saw him going to Frisco as well.
He also didn't care for the Frisco thing.
Though interestingly enough, he didn't seem to think that Cream was a psychedelic band....
More that he thought there were all these different bands from different places that were just doing their thing, and they
all somehow seemed to move in a similar direction.

Now, I really don't know for sure, though it seems to me that over in England, they had a psychedelic movement....
With all the colors and clothes and light shows and stuff like that, but what they lacked (and why they ultimately thought that the American version was watered down) was the contrasting 'earthiness' that went with the hippy movement.

Just my thoughts on it.... very interested in seeing this thread develop (%

Ken

I think the back-to-the-land thing is borrowed from the Native American culture. That, and we still were very much a farming country back then. Kind of easy to get to the land when it was so abundant and dirt was still dirt cheap. I think the psychedelic stuff was more city and college happenings.

I also imagine that it's quite impossible to classify hippies as one sub-culture. I was too young, but I'm pretty certain that interviewing a few Hippies for the Monterey Pop Festival did not capture and image of tham that was all encapsulating. Yes, the Hippies I knew and know still (believe it or not) did like their mind-enhancements and some still do, but it was not a defining aspect for some as it was for others. I think that anyone living with a dozen people in a two roomer somewhere near Haight-Ashbury might have a totally different perspective on that era than the ones who actually did go back to the land.

I also think, getting back to music, that the back-to-the-land subculture of the Hippie subculture was probably more folk based in musical tastes than the 'Frisco scene. The Grateful Dead might be the best bridge between the two worlds.

I do think that's why my song selections are probably more Earthy than some others. I hear psychedellia and I think city clubs, not country communes. I was around the back-to-the-land sect.

Roy I'm not sure hippies living off the land followed any American Indian culture, they were just anti estsablishment and wanted to do the exact opposite of what everyone else did. So if everyone else was living in homes going to 9-5 jobs they'd live off the land and answer to only themselves. They didn't need money, jobs or the man to survive they'd do it on their own.

But that was a small percentage of "Hippies" pretty much anyone with long hair was called a Hippie back then and not every Hippy was into the live off the land move to a commune lifestyle.

I was 12 back in '69, but I'd already had a tranny (that's old-fashioned slang for "transistor radio" for you youngsters!)

I was thinking something else entirely... :oops: :lol:

In 1969, I was -15. Music wasn't really very interesting for me at that age. :roll:

In 1969, I was -15. Music wasn't really very interesting for me at that age. :roll:
Holy Crud! You were born when I was in college! <feeling ooolllllllddddddddddd>

OK, so you were not part of that sect and in a different country. What music comes on and makes you think "Hippy", if any?

I think this song epitomizes the Hippy thing for me . . .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SB2tYYYlwMc

Can you pick out Bill Clinton . . . playing guitar?

. . . and this one too . . .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSJ3aJ2FjhE