| The 1960s and Musical Millennialism
Black blues and white country/folk music had very similar origins in the South, coming from work songs and expressions of economic and emotional hardships. It's no surprise that they eventually began to merge.20 They were both likable to their listeners for the same reasons as well, "the funky down-home quality that enabled one to let go of his/her emotions and not feel self-conscious about it." 21 Musicians like Elvis Presley, Bill Haley and Chuck Berry realized this. They synthesized the two musical forms and along with a handful of wild, black R&B entertainers like Little Richard who scandalized white America, they created rock and roll. By the early '60s though, the revolutionary spirit of rock was all but used up and college students regarded it as dull and commercialized. They listened to unsynthesized, non-electric Folk music, which experienced a huge revival in the 1950s and early '60s. "Folk music was the domain of the college campus, and Rock 'n' Roll was still the province of high schools," as bands like the Beach Boys crooned about such adolescent subjects as cars and school loyalty. 22 Since the Depression, and because of the legacy of Woody Guthrie, Folk music was regarded as 'protest music' and in the early 1960s it was one of the few places in American culture where one could find anti-establishment lyrics.
The unprecedented radicalization of '60s youth was the result of two very different sources: the atomic bomb and civil rights, both of which represented different sides of the modern apocalyptic vision. The Cuban Missile Crisis, the confrontation that came closest to nuclear destruction in 1962, "exemplified the insanity of the cold war and the craziness of … the military-industrial complex," especially amongst young people. The Crisis "imbued the sixties generation with an apocalyptic cast of mind, a sense of the absurdity of politics and a suspicion of politicians," all of which would become key components in the ideology of the counterculture. Abbie Hoffman, countercultural provocateur and leader of the Yippies, remembered talking about the end of the world with a friend that year. Describing the scene, he said, "People crowded into bars. People emptied their savings accounts. Schools held daily air raid drills. The radio blared directions from civil defense officials … Many people were convinced that the end was at hand." 23 The atomic bomb resulted in the phenomenon of 'apocalyptic time' for the baby boom generation, prompting the brash and fearless way in which the counterculture confronted and antagonized society at large.
Civil rights also radicalized America's youth and infused the danger of world events with the hope of the millennium. The fight for civil rights was often presented as a moral or religious problem and numerous speeches and protests songs referenced 'the promised land', a place free from all pain, suffering and hardship. In the clearest instance of civil rights as a millennial movement, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s famous "I Have a Dream" speech imagines post-civil rights America as a glorious millennial kingdom based entirely on peace and brotherhood. "I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed… We will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children … will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!" 24
The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), one of the major players in the fight for civil rights, also viewed itself as a utopian venture: swearing off violence, keeping the organization as a leaderless democracy, and referring to itself as a 'beloved community'. The statement of purpose adopted at SNCC's founding meeting emphasized the religious and philosophical foundations of nonviolent direct action, "By appealing to conscience and standing on the moral nature of human existence, nonviolence nurtures the atmosphere in which reconciliation and justice become actual possibilities." 25
Addressing the same concerns as the civil rights movement was Bob Dylan, who was just beginning to emerge as a popular folk-singer at the time. Dylan idolized folk singer Woody Guthrie, who inspired him to write his own songs. In 1962's "Song for Woody", Dylan describes a world that, "looks like its dying," basically borrowing the apocalyptic undertones of Guthrie's Dust Bowl Ballads. 26 Dylan was clearly influenced not just by the music but also by apocalyptic message that had emerged earlier during the Depression. It's easy because of the context to interpret Dylan's subsequent songs, "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall" and "The Times They Are A-Changin'" (from 1963 and 1964 respectively), as being about the great change of civil rights. Although he covers these concerns in thick, often obtuse imagery there are a few clear references to Revelation. For instance, in "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall" he uses the same numerology that appears in Revelation several times, "I've walked and I've crawled on six crooked highways / I've stepped in the middle of seven sad forests / I've been out in front of a dozen dead oceans," corresponding to the twelve tribes of Israel, the imperfect number 6 associated with the devil and antichrist, and the perfect number 7 attributed to God and his works, including the plagues. The song mentions both Christ and Antichrist, "I met one man who was wounded in love / I met another man who was wounded with hatred," and its refrain recalls Noah's flood, God's first destruction of the world. 27
"The Times They Are A-Changin'" is more obviously about the cause of civil rights, though it is still framed in fears of the apocalypse. Dylan once again references the image of the flood while he appeals to all congressmen, senators, writers and critics to heed his call to change with the times. The fourth verse predicts the millennial student movement and generational conflict that would emerge at the end of the decade and tells all mothers and fathers, "Don't criticize / What you can't understand / Your sons and your daughters / Are beyond your command." 28 This sentiment became an important rallying cry for the millennial visions of 1960s youth. It is also an example of the kinds of cryptic messages that regularly appear in apocalyptic movements, intended to be understood only be believers, that started with one of the very first apocalyptic texts, the book of Daniel in the Old Testament. "O my Lord, what shall be the end of these things? And he said, Go thy way, Daniel: for the words are closed up and sealed till the time of the end." 29
Dylan's influence was immediate: Barry McGuire rode into the Top 40 pop charts a year later with "Eve of Destruction", which aped not only the 'protest folk' format but also Dylan's apocalyptic imagery. McGuire's focus is also on civil rights, he similarly references senators and congressmen as he sings against a spare accompaniment of drums, acoustic folk guitar and harmonic. He starts the song with a gruff but tuneful voice similar to Dylan's, but by the time he reaches the end he's practically snarling the song's coda, "Tell me over and over and over again, my friend / You don't believe we're on the eve of destruction." 30
Many of the ideas and symbols of the civil rights movement filtered north and infiltrated the student movement of the New Left which was just beginning to take shape. Many of the students who had been active in the civil rights campaign during their summers gradually came to join the student and anti-war movements. They brought their millennial ideology with them when they formed Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), basing it on the model of SNCC. Similarly, students and hippies joined communes and other utopian ventures reminiscent of various medieval and 19th century sects like the Shakers. Founded in 1774, the Shakers preached across New England and separated themselves into communal, celibate settlements that they considered to be the heavenly realm. The Shakers became so successful that there is still a community today: one house containing eight Shakers in Maine. 31 The hippies based many of their communes on the model of these 19th century millennial sects but hoped to join together in a secular revolution that would topple the current society and all the corrupt ways of past. The communes would offer a working model of an alternative society, a harmonious new secular civilization based on the same ideals as the promised millennial kingdom: love and brotherhood. By creating a utopic world in miniature, the hippies hoped they could bring about the millennial transformation all on their own. Under the threat of atomic annihilation, "it seemed imperative to give birth to something new now, to create a space right here in which life might thrive, love might grow, and people might come together in a kind of holy communion." 32
The soundtrack to their revolution was Rock and Roll, which had been revitalized and redeemed by the Beatles in 1964. As the Beatles' music matured so did their audience, and as they flirted with drugs and other aspects of the counterculture so did their audience. Rock music experienced a serious renaissance because of the influx of new talent brought on by the British Invasion and the new ideas that resulted in psychedelic music. The Beatles, Rolling Stones and the Beach Boys locked together in a fierce international musical competition, each trying to find the 'new' sound first, to improve and expand beyond the others. One of their goals was to purge rock music of its country and blues roots and bring it into the realm of high art, although the Stones would return to those roots later in the decade.
The Beatles finally achieved this goal in 1967 with Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and led rock into the realm of psychedelia, music that was impressionistic, experimental and informed by the experience of LSD. The final track of the album, "A Day in the Life", ends with an epic, dissonant orchestral buildup. Exhilarating and nightmarish, the instruments are slightly out of tune and the entire orchestra sounds on the verge of total destruction. A solitary echoing chord played simultaneously on three pianos closes the chaos and seems to stretch onto infinity, lasting for an entire minute. 33 The effect on Abbie Hoffman was immense, when he heard that final chord, "it was as though the millennium was at hand." He heard endless hope and joy in that chord, "You can dance forever. That's the Beatles' message." 34
Max Frost & the Troopers' "Shape of Things To Come" is a clear demonstration of the way the Beatles' musical explorations, Dylan's symbolism and the civil right's movement's ideas affected the suburban white youth of the north. The radical politics of the student movement were also joining together with the cultural revolution of the hippies. The Troopers were a one-hit garage band that managed to score big, reaching number 22 on the pop charts with their proto-psychedelic tune about the coming transformation of society. 35 The song promises that big changes are coming, "When tomorrow is today / The bells may toll for some / But nothing can change the shape of things to come." The vocals are delivered in a hopeful but slightly threatening tone: a promise for the believers but a clear threat for the secular powers in charge of the world. Although they lack the disaster elements and biblical symbolism of Dylan, they still leave the details of their new utopian future rather vague, "There are new dreams / Crowdin' out old realities / There's revolution / Sweepin' in like a fresh new breeze." 36
John Lennon's 1971 solo hit "Imagine" is one of the very few songs that does explain itself. With a beautiful piano melody, soft strings and a lazy jazz beat, former Beatle Lennon pleads with people to create a completely secular millennial paradise. The end of the Christian religion is one of its necessary prerequisites, "Imagine there's no heaven / It's easy if you try / No hell below us / Above us only sky." 37 Lennon asks for a world with no gods, nations, possessions, or classes, where everyone is equal, an idea that recalls a secular version of the Spiritual Franciscans, a group who swore off worldly possessions to live in total poverty like the earliest Christians. They believed that when the last days came the Catholic Church in Rome would be destroyed and replaced with their own Franciscan order. They would then lead humanity into an Age of the Spirit, an expanded vision of the millennial kingdom of Christ that was interpreted as the sabbath of mankind, where spiritual concerns would take precedence over all material ones. 38
By the end of the 1960s, the radical politics of SDS and the social revolt of the hippie counterculture had become indistinguishable. A singular youth movement was emerging, the various factions fusing into one epic horde dedicated to changing society and ending the war in Vietnam. At the time, America was intensely divided and it seemed as though a second American Revolution could happen at any time. The Atlantic even spoke of the youth movement as "a cultural force that signals … the probably beginnings of a new millennium." 39 This sentiment wasn't lost on the revolutionaries themselves, as former SDSer and current professor at Columbia University, Todd Gitlin, explains, "The contending forces labored under a cloud of impending doom, or salvation, or both. Everything could be lost, everything could be gained… Each round [of protests] was an approximation of apocalypse, in the original meaning: a revelation of the way things actually stand." 40 The young protestors underwent enormous repression and violence from police and other authority figures, which led them to believe that America was not the wonderland of freedom it claimed. Gitlin explains that a countercultural identity began to emerge from the meeting place of drugs, sex, pop music and radical politics. According to Gitlin, the music was a major part of that identity and the songs embraced by protestors were a large part of their inspiration: Martha and Vandellas' "Dancing in the Streets" from 1964 and the Rolling Stones' "Street Fighting Man" from 1968, both continued the Beatles' message of "you can dance forever" but suffused it with the protest imagery of chaos in the streets. 41
By 1970, even the Turtles were convinced that the end of the world was near. In 1967 the band hit number one on the charts with the lightweight pop ditty "Happy Together", but three years later they abandoned their happy love songs in favor of a cover of McGuire's "Eve of Destruction." They lightened the song considerably, emphasizing its beat and replacing McGuire's gruff voice with soaring harmonies and sparkling guitars. The idea of the apocalypse was so prevalent by the end of the '60s that it was pop, no longer a fringe idea but a marketable part of the popular consciousness and it remained that way forever after. Thoroughly secularized and integrated into mainstream culture, apocalypticism was as accessible to the vast multitudes of the populace as a movie or a hit pop song was. Rock and roll had made such a comeback that it had effectively replaced God in the lives of the Baby Boomers: it was their source of inspiration and moral knowledge. It was only natural that it should be brimming with the same types of apocalyptic fantasies as traditional Christianity. 42
________________ 20 Harrington, Joe S. Sonic Cool: The Life and Death of Rock 'n' Roll. 14. WI: Hal Leonard Corporation, 2002. 21 Harrinton, 41. 22 Harrinton, 158. 23 Raskin, Jonah. For the Hell of It: The Life and Times of Abbie Hoffman, 45. University of California Press, 1996. 24 King, Martin Luther, Jr. "I Have a Dream." Lincoln Memorial, Washington D.C. 28 August 1963. 25 Anonymous, "MLK Papers - About King", The Martin Luther King, Jr. Encylopedia. <link>, 2002. 26 Dylan, Bob. "Song To Woody", Bob Dylan, 1962. 27 Dylan, Bob. "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall", Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, 1963. 28 Dylan, Bob. "The Times They are A-Changin'", The Times They are A-Changin', 1964. 29 Daniel, 12:8-9. 30 McGuire, Barry. "Eve of Destruction", Eve of Destruction, 1965. 31 Baumgartner, Frederic J. Longing for the End: A History of Millennialism in Western Civilization, 161-162. NY: Palgrave, 1999. 32 Raskin, 45. 33 Unterberger, Richie. "Day in the Life", All Music Guide, <link>, March 1, 2004. 34 Raskin, 110. 35 Anonymous. "Max Frost & The Troopers: Chart Positions", All Music Guide, <link>, December 11, 2003. 36 Frost, Max and the Troopers. "Shape of Things to Come", Shape of Things to Come, 1968. 37 Lennon, John. "Imagine", Imagine, 1971. 38 Cohn. Pursuit, 109-111. 39 Gitlin, Todd. The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage, 347. NY: Bantam Books, 1987. 40 Gitlin, 287. 41 Gitlin, 345-346. 42 Harrington, 156. |