{"id":14116,"date":"2018-10-27T00:08:40","date_gmt":"2018-10-27T00:08:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=14116"},"modified":"2018-10-28T00:10:54","modified_gmt":"2018-10-28T00:10:54","slug":"in-the-turmoil-of-1968-music-failed-to-seize-the-moment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/in-the-turmoil-of-1968-music-failed-to-seize-the-moment\/","title":{"rendered":"In the turmoil of 1968, music failed to seize the moment"},"content":{"rendered":"

Alan Williams<\/a>, University of Massachusetts Lowell<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

While the first half of 1968 was a series of explosive moments \u2013 the Tet Offensive<\/a>, Paris protests<\/a>, the assassinations of MLK<\/a> and RFK<\/a>, the Chicago Democratic National Convention riots<\/a> \u2013 the second half seemed like a car wreck in slow motion. <\/p>\n

The pace of the news cycle slowed to a crawl, the shock and surprise followed by the dull inevitability of events already set into motion.<\/p>\n

The music of 1968 mirrored its historical moment. <\/p>\n

The trends and styles of the previous year \u2013 the psychedelic rock born of the Summer of Love<\/a>, the empowerment of Aretha Franklin\u2019s demand for \u201cRespect<\/a>,\u201d a rainbow coalition of black and white artists collaborating \u2013 passed into instant obsolescence, creating a vacuum waiting to be filled. <\/p>\n

The three pillars of 1960s pop music \u2013 Bob Dylan, the Beatles and the Motown hit machine \u2013 certainly didn\u2019t rise to the occasion. Each put out music that was adrift and directionless, and each would lose its momentum and see its influence wane. <\/p>\n

Drifter\u2019s escape<\/h2>\n

In the last days of 1967, Bob Dylan quietly released \u201cJohn Wesley Harding<\/a>.\u201d <\/p>\n

The prior year, Dylan had been in a motorcycle accident<\/a>, and his condition was shrouded in mystery. An 18-month period of silence followed, during which Dylan wrote and recorded \u201cJohn Wesley Harding\u201d with a trio of Nashville musicians. <\/p>\n

But the long-awaited album contained none of the piercing anger, wit or wordplay of his white-hot classics \u201cBringing It All Back Home<\/a>,\u201d \u201cHighway 61 Revisted<\/a>\u201d and the 1966 double-album set \u201cBlonde On Blonde<\/a>.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cJohn Wesley Harding\u201d lacked the incisive social commentary of tracks like \u201cSubterranean Homesick Blues<\/a>\u201d (\u201cYou don\u2019t need a weatherman \/ To know which way the wind blows\u201d) or the razor sharp character studies found in songs such as \u201cLike a Rolling Stone<\/a>\u201d (\u201cNobody\u2019s ever taught you how to live out on the street \/ And now you\u2019re gonna have to get used to it\u201d). <\/p>\n

Instead, Dylan wove perplexing parables couched in biblical imagery in songs such as \u201cI Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine<\/a>\u201d and \u201cAll Along the Watchtower<\/a>,\u201d in which he sang, \u201cOutside in the cold distance, a wild cat did growl. Two riders were approaching; the wind began to howl.\u201d <\/p>\n

The album\u2019s darkly mysterious nature set an ominous tone for the year to come.<\/p>\n

The forlorn four<\/h2>\n

Like Dylan, the Beatles seemed to be in the midst of an existential crisis.<\/p>\n

Following the death of their manager, Brian Epstein<\/a>, in 1967, the Beatles headed to India, where they studied transcendental meditation with Indian guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi<\/a>. When they reconvened in London a few months later, they were no longer bright-eyed youths but four disillusioned men seeking answers and finding none.<\/p>\n

After the tumultuous events of the first half of 1968, the group returned to the airwaves with an anthem to the power of positive thinking.<\/p>\n

\n \"\"
\n George Harrison and John Lennon sit on rocks by a river in Rishikesh, India, where they studied transcendental meditation in 1968.<\/span>
\n AP Photo<\/a><\/span>
\n <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Released in September of that year, the single \u201cHey Jude<\/a>\u201d sat atop the charts for months. The song\u2019s first half urged the listener to take a sad song and make it better, while the second half \u2013 four minutes of nonsense chanting, slowly fading into infinity \u2013 offered only the notion that \u201cthough we may be lost, we are all lost together,\u201d a hymn for a community that defined itself more by grief and resignation than by a belief in a better future.<\/p>\n

The double album that followed in late November \u2013 officially titled \u201cThe Beatles<\/a>,\u201d but forever referred to as the \u201cWhite Album\u201d \u2013 brought together splintered fragments of the group\u2019s experiences. It contained none of the audacious discovery and very little of the exuberance found in their previous work. <\/p>\n

The track \u201cRevolution #1<\/a>\u201d was the Beatles\u2019 most direct engagement with the politics of the moment. But it was decidedly ambivalent, arriving at the muddled confusion of \u201ccount me out in.\u201d It seemed to urge the listener to take up arms, even as the lyrics urged acceptance: \u201cDon\u2019t you know it\u2019s gonna be alright.\u201d<\/p>\n

The widening racial divide<\/h2>\n

In the mid-1960s, Detroit\u2019s Motown Records had issued a string of singles that rivaled the Beatles for chart supremacy. <\/p>\n

But with Detroit in flames during the riots of 1967<\/a>, the label lost its mojo: The upbeat cheer of the Motown sound was at odds with the violence erupting just a few blocks from the studio. <\/p>\n

In 1968, the label\u2019s two biggest acts \u2013 The Temptations<\/a> and The Supremes<\/a> \u2013 barely managed to make the charts, and the few releases that did were dim shadows of earlier brilliance. <\/p>\n

The events of 1968 would even more directly effect Stax records, Motown\u2019s biggest rival. <\/p>\n

Based in Memphis, Tennessee, Stax artists like Otis Redding and Sam and Dave<\/a> proudly wore their rough edges and black identity, unlike the polished acts Motown fashioned for The Ed Sullivan Show. <\/p>\n

Redding, however, died in a plane crash in December 1967 \u2013 an ominous portent for the new year.<\/p>\n

On the night of Dr. King\u2019s assassination, just a few blocks from the Stax offices and studio, its legendary integrated house band, Booker T and the MGs<\/a>, came face-to-face with the racial divisions their very existence had defied. <\/p>\n

Fearing for the lives of the two white members, the musicians and staff formed a caravan to escort them safely out of a neighborhood soon engulfed in flames. Though the band continued to work together for another year, the bubble had burst<\/a>: A community fell apart, and the hits dried up.<\/p>\n

James Brown was one of the first stars to directly address the year\u2019s racial tumult in his music, issuing \u201cSay it Loud (I\u2019m Black and I\u2019m Proud)<\/a>\u201d in the late summer of 1968. <\/p>\n

For a moment, he would bridge the gap between black and white, soul and pop, famously holding Boston together with a concert performed<\/a> the day after King\u2019s assassination. <\/p>\n

This night, however, would prove the high water mark for Brown, whose increasingly political music caused him to lose much of his white audience, relegating him to the niche of soul music.<\/p>\n

Sly Stone met a similar fate. His 1968 breakout hit, \u201cDance to the Music<\/a>,\u201d featured a multiracial band of men and women, creating a musical rainbow coalition.<\/p>\n

\n \"\"
\n In the 1970s, Sly Stone seemed to succumb to cynicism.<\/span>
\n AP Photo<\/a><\/span>
\n <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

But within a year, Sly\u2019s message became considerably less rosy. His 1969 album \u201cStand!<\/a>\u201d contained the song \u201cDon\u2019t Call Me Nigger, (Whitey)<\/a>\u201d while his 1971 follow-up, \u201cThere\u2019s a Riot Going On<\/a>,\u201d depicted a dystopian view of the future. Like Brown, he would fade from the mainstream.<\/p>\n

After the hopeful days of Swinging London<\/a> and the Summer of Love, the events of 1968 triggered classic fight or flight responses. <\/p>\n

A few musicians metaphorically took to the streets. <\/p>\n

But most fled for cover, going back to the land or looking to God. <\/p>\n

Compared to the more radically charged music of 1969, the resigned hymns of 1970, and the escapist fare that dominated the following decades, 1968 serves as a kind of still point, an extended moment of hesitation after a gunshot, just before the fight-or-flight reflex kicks in.\"The<\/p>\n

Alan Williams<\/a>, Chair of Music Department, University of Massachusetts Lowell<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Alan Williams, University of Massachusetts Lowell While the first half of 1968 was a series of explosive moments \u2013 the Tet Offensive, Paris protests, the assassinations of MLK and RFK, the Chicago Democratic National Convention riots \u2013 the second half seemed like a car wreck in slow motion. The pace of the news cycle slowed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":14111,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[293],"tags":[4531,4229,3140,2034,53,3138,5354],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14116"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14116"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14116\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14117,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14116\/revisions\/14117"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14111"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}