Contents
Preface to the Electronic Edition
Motion as metaphysics · Hermann Hesse's Narcissus and Goldmund · Henry Thoreau's Walden Pond · the passing of the sixties with sixties songs as repository of values
01 · Underground in the Fifties
Roots of sixties thought and behavior in the counterculture of the late 1950s · growing up during the Eisenhower-Nixon years · sputnik and the Russian menace · Norman Mailer, Herbert Marcuse, William Whyte, Paul Goodman, juvenile delinquents, James Dean, Caryl Chessman, Jack Kerouac's On the Road, Allen Ginsberg's "Howl," the beat generation · comedy and social criticism · Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament · rock-n-roll as revolution and subversion · Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, Little Richard
Protest in four major strains: nonviolent—Martin Luther King, Jr., civil rights, Vietnam, Pete Seeger, Phil Ochs, Tom Paxton, Broadside, Sing Out!, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Joan Baez, Bob Dylan · violent—Malcolm X, Weathermen, Black Panthers, Phil Ochs, the MC5's Kick Out the ]ams, the Jefferson Airplane's Volunteers · holy goof—Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Yippies, Procol Harum, Mothers of Invention · artist as social critic—Phil Ochs's Rehearsals for Retirement, the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper, the Kinks' Village Green Preservation Society, the Who's Tommy, Leonard Cohen, Simon and Gar- funkel's Bookends, Bob Dylan's John Wesley Harding
The yes behind the no · Woodstock · sixties romanticism · the Beatles' Magical Mystery Tour · experimentation and new experience · exploration of self, resistance to structure, feeling as understanding · poverty, love, small is beautiful
Search for a more humane, more flexible life style · dope, Aldous Huxley, Timothy Leary, the Jefferson Airplane's White Rabbit, the Beatles' "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" · sexual exploration, the Rolling Stones, the Beatles, the Doors, Stephen Stills, David Crosby · flower power · acid rock as the embodiment of the San Francisco hippie philosophy · black power and soul music · experiments in country life and country music, the Whole Earth Catalog · the Jefferson Starship, David Bowie, and future rock · experiments in novels, newspapers, light shows, and posters · independent record companies and progressive FM radio programming
05 · The Tug of Gravity: Co-Option, Absorption, and Shlock Rock
Capacity of Western society to absorb any and all alternatives · three tactics used by the power structure to deal with threats: the rub out, the buy-off, and imitation · susceptibility of rock to absorption · Dick Clark and shlock rock, bubble-gum music, Don Kirshner, Tony Orlando, the Carpenters, Muzak, the Monkees · Elvis Presley as paradigm of co-option · Bob Dylan and the walkout
06 · Vitiation from Within: Artiness, Absurdity and Excess
Attempt by rock music to turn itself into fine art · folk songs as poems: Paul Simon, Phil Ochs, Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen: the Beatles' transformations on Rubber Soul and Revolver, and art songs like "Eleanor Rigby" and "Strawberry Fields Forever" · Sgt. Pepper as art and the consequent changes in the Rolling Stones, Joan Baez, Cream, Procol Harum, and Blood, Sweat, and Tears · Van Dyke Parks's ambitious Song Cycle · artiness in late Paul Simon, the Jefferson Airplane, the Moody Blues, Phil Ochs, and Bob Dylan · rock and theater: the Doors, Tommy, Jesus Christ Superstar · Living Theater, guerrilla theater, street theater · the sixties sense of absurdity and Blow Up as a denial of the possibility of knowing · Dylan's sense of the absurd and the Beatles' · Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention · Yippies, Chicago Democratic convention, and trial of the Chicago Eight · the dangers of excess, demonstrations and causes, Janis Joplin, the Rolling Stones' concert at Altamont Speedway
07 · The Seventies: Looking Back, Looking Ahead
Slowing down of motion · Paul Simon's "American Tune" · the Who's Quadrophenia · the Rolling Stones' Some Girls · retrenchment and privacy · encapsulation of sixties values in private lives · reclaiming the past · Dylan and Rolling Thunder · eyeballing the future
