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One of the great privileges of working
at History Hit and making films together
with our team at Timeline is the access
we get to extraordinary historical
locations like this one, Stonehenge. I'm
right in the middle of the stone circle
now. It is an absolutely extraordinary
place to visit. If you want to watch the
documentary like the one we're producing
here, go to historyhit.tv. It's like
Netflix for history and if you use the
code timeline when you check out, you'll
get a special introductory offer. See
you there.
Shot down on the battlefields of
Vietnam. You my enemy? My name is the
white people, not Viet Congs or Chinese
or Japanese.
He refused to step forward. He was
sentenced to five years in jail.
They took they stripped his title.
He gave young people the guts to come
out against the war.
The more I hear that song, it is a
masterpiece.
It does not have a coda. It doesn't have
a riff. It is a blues song. It is a pop
song. It is a jazz song. It is a folk
song.
1967 for me was the big fight for free
radio. You know, they called it the
summer of love but I missed out on
two-thirds of it cuz I was living the
life of a sailor on a pirate ship. I'm
Radio Caroline.
The thing about the
the scene and the summer of love itself,
which was a phenomenon. It was a moment.
It was the greatest flash mob in
history.
London was the hip center of the
universe in terms of bands, fashion, and
experimentation.
There were so many great clubs to choose
from.
There was the Bag O'Nails club. There's
a Speakeasy where all the groups used to
go. Cromwellian club was a big favorite.
So, we just used to head for the clubs.
I mean, one of the things I did on my
week off is I went to the UFO
in Tottenham Court Road.
And you go down into this basement.
And and there was all these really weird
light shows.
This is where Joe Boyd, the American
Spengali producer,
would book bands like the Soft Machine
and Pink Floyd. And they'd perform and
there'd be these light shows.
And a lot of LSD would be ingested and
it was really the sort of flowering of
the beautiful people. And I think there
was a period when when UFO was at its
height, there was this feeling that
anything is possible. It was the first
manifestation in
certainly in central London of
that ethos which became known as the
kind of
summer of love.
I mean, I was going to France. You know,
kids go to Thailand, you know, South
America now. Uh
but going to France was as big a trip in
those days. There were an interesting
group of English people there and one of
them's parents bought a house on the
harbor of Saint-Tropez. Of course,
Saint-Tropez was nothing then. It was
just a small fishing port. The first day
we were there, we saw Brigitte Bardot
with a leopard on a on a chain walking
through the street and we thought we'd
gone to heaven and died. We thought it
cannot get better than this.
Sprint into springtime with a Mustang
sport sprint sale at your Ford dealers.
Those days guys had cars, you know,
these big I mean, everybody loved the
Mustang. I mean, if you got one,
um your dad had money. So, the guys
would show off by driving up in these
red
engine red Ford Mustangs. Three new ways
to take the Mustang pledge. Your choice,
the Mustang hardtop, which is hard to
top. An optional full-width seat with
center armrest.
And so, we were all us girls were trying
to find guys who had Mustangs because in
the summertime, we could drive with the
hood down by the lake. So, I think it
was the feeling of going to the prom
um
and going with the guy I wanted to go
with.
Although, I
was quite bookish. So, in a sense, I
wasn't
I only appealed to the intellectuals and
the strange boys, you know, the really
the radicals and you know, people you
who did wouldn't have a Mustang because
it was like not on to own anything. And
these guys were like, I'm going to go
live in a commune. I'm like, not going
to have a job. And my father would say,
get him out of here.
I've always thought Ray Davies is a kind
of brilliant
character and
the Kinks were always extraordinary
they're always on their own.
You know, there was they were kind of
yes, you could fit them into sort of
being other things but actually they
were very much on their own and I
thought they were they were a
quintessentially British.
This, ladies and gentlemen, is London.
Swinging London it's been called.
Up in Church Street, Kensington, which
we used to go to a lot, there was Bus
Stop and there was Biba and they were
amazing. Clothes were hanging around and
the lights were dark and there were bits
of jewelry and scarves.
And these these wonderful colors, these
aubergines and quite a lot of pinks, if
I remember rightly. Very some acid
colors. I I think we broke a lot of zips
in that Biba trying things on. A lot of
them were very small.
But it was great fun. It was just like
nowhere you'd shopped before ever and it
was completely brilliant. When Mary
Quant invades new realms of fashion,
bright young girls are interested and so
is the national press. Mary Quant had a
had a boutique on the King's Road. Mary
Quant's the clothes were expensive. They
weren't cheap.
But very, very important, very
revolutionary. The mini skirt was the
most famous thing and also became a
you know, a celebrity in her own right.
Suddenly, there's this idea that there's
a kind of meeting point between fashion
and music and art.
I wore mini skirts even though my mother
I mean,
my mother would say to me, don't go out
looking like that. And I guess she must
have been terrified, you know, because
to her, I didn't have any clothes on.
How did Twiggy strike you? Very
refreshing. And her clothes? Adorable.
She was extraordinary looking. I mean,
she you know, I there was nothing that
ever looked like Twiggy before. She was
a working class shop girl. She was kind
of out of worldly, you know, but she was
she she was a gamin.
She's quite boyish looking. I used to
have a Saturday job at a hairdresser's
where my sister worked and Justin's
brother worked. My parents were like,
no. You're supposed to have hair and
it's bouffant and it's puffed out like
that and you aren't going around with
your hair cut short and big eyes and
looking like
a superannuated five-year-old, which is
what Twiggy looked like when we think
you think back on it now.
Taylor, Firebird is a stallion. Brando,
you disgust me. Elizabeth Taylor. Have
you ever been collared and dragged out
into the street and thrashed by a naked
woman?
Marlon Brando. I SWEAR I'LL KILL YOU.
REFLECTIONS in a golden eye.
We had tons of movie star magazines. I
mean, it was all about Liz Taylor. Liz
Taylor, Liz Taylor. And the hair,
the eyes, the lipstick. Reflections in a
golden eye stars the Elizabeth Taylor
who showed the world what a woman really
is. I grew up in Chicago when the
Playboy Mansion was there and Hugh
Hefner had started whole bunny thing.
So, that was also a look. It's the hair.
Hair, hair,
tits out to there, lips, and be a Bond
girl.
What's a nice girl like you doing in a
place like this? Bond is back. And then
you add on top of it being a black
woman, so we had to sort of
sort of recalibrate that through our own
experience and our own
kind of examples, which would have been
the Supremes and Diana Ross, basically.
I mean, the Supremes were actually
uh a black girl
hot
incredible group who could really sing
and Berry Gordy just kept ironing them
out, ironing them out, you know, pull
ruffling the sheets, pressing them,
pushing them down, throwing bleach on
them.
This is really a show tune, yeah. You
can hear it. You can definitely hear
this on Broadway and in nightclubs and
everything else. But, it's kind of it's
celebrating the the new hip culture the
the new hip young culture, you know, the
happening.
In 1967, Prime Minister Harold Wilson
applied for UK entry into the European
Economic Community.
NASA celebrated Surveyor 3, the first
unmanned landing on the moon.
You couldn't not be a Marvin Gaye fan.
The talent of people that came out of
Motown, there's never been anything
anything to touch that anywhere
in the world since.
Tamla was very much part of the music I
loved, but with that pop infusion.
And I just thought this is the most
incredible music. White people felt
comfortable singing soulish type songs
and black people felt comfortable
singing more pop. So, it was starting to
the cuz the Supremes were starting to
sing pop, the Temptations were starting
to sing pop.
Um and so, right before the '70s when
everything switched around, but this was
so you could see this starting to open
up.
Now, at this point, we are going to
leave Golden Gate Park to go into
the Haight-Ashbury district of San
Francisco.
I would say that the last 18 months has
seen a tremendous increase of the
so-called hippie.
In America, the young people were
beginning to rebel against their '50s
style parents.
It just wasn't cool to be concerned
about college or a profession.
Suddenly, these things called hippies
emerged, you know, and they were
you know, they just
they weren't conforming.
I think maybe especially shocking were
the guys who when you look back on it
now, were taking a lot of feminine
values. The philosophy
that they brought with them and that was
engendered right in that place was that
everything would be free.
It was a mini utopia.
It completely freaked out so many
American families. They just couldn't
deal with it.
When they had kids who suddenly wore
weird clothes or let let their hair grow
long, have left school college, looking
strange or with a weird looking
boyfriend or girlfriend or something
like that.
People got locked up, you know, because
the parents could not handle
the idea that everything they worked for
to establish their toehold in the
American dream
is being thrown away by their son who
was joining the three kids and jumping
in the VW van and going to
Haight-Ashbury. There is no family so
busy but that it can come together in
the evening for a dinner date which will
give its members something to look back
upon with happiness.
Somebody who came to Britain, I noticed
long-haired people I knew and kids with
earrings, gold earrings and
shoulder-length hair
going home and having a drink with their
dad in the pub who had a short
haircut and
it was very relaxed. One's parents
didn't really I mean, they might have
objected, but they they were more
accommodating, I think, because they
didn't perceive it in the same way as
the Americans did. They didn't perceive
it as a threat at all. They just
thought, "Oh, it's it's a phase he's
going through. This is uh this is the
teenage years, you know, and he wants to
express himself."
But, the difference about '67 and I
think the thing that makes it such a
unique year and a year that's still to
this day
gets right-wing politicians
steam coming out of their ears, you
know, they feel it's like that's where
everything went wrong
is because of LSD. And I mean, drugs has
to be mentioned as being a part of it
cuz people's consciousness was expanded
by by, you know, marijuana and and to a
certain extent LSD. Paul, how often have
you taken LSD?
Uh four times.
I don't know what everyone's so angry
about. You know, when Paul McCartney
acknowledged taking it, you know, it was
blown up in all the newspapers. Shock,
horror. You know, they busted the Stones
and there was a huge trial.
And there was a feeling of alarm among
powers that be that things were getting
out of control, that young people were
going off in a dangerous direction which
nobody could understand.
And it did have to do with drugs, but it
also had to do with dress, it had to do
with music and
most important, it did have to do with
that sense
that you could change things.
And young people felt they could and in
fact did.
1967 for me was the big fight for free
radio. You know, they call it the summer
of love, but I missed out on two-thirds
of it cuz I was living the life of a
sailor on a pirate ship on Radio
Caroline.
I was already in the media by then and
I'd been into this
guy called Ronan O'Rahilly, this
revolutionary idea of blasting out pop
music from a ship in international
waters, which already sounded very
glamorous. I defy anybody, I mean,
anybody in my generation. We were avid
listeners to Radio Caroline. I mean, you
forget BBC. That was
it was old old people's stuff.
So, it was the only place you could
actually hear all this new music.
Of course, we all had our little
transistors radios that that were, you
know, another wonderful thing that you
could have cuz you had portable music.
You know, I'd listen to Radio Caroline
on that and it would come
it would come and go with it was like
the waves breaking sometimes and then,
you know, but you you stuck with it cuz
you admired them.
They were doing something for us, it
felt, against them. You know, in America
you had thousands of commercial
stations. We didn't have many in this
country. We only had the BBC who had
this idea of what was good for us and
what we should hear and more
importantly, what we're not supposed to
hear. People like Johnny Walker, you
know, great great DJs and they would mix
the stuff up. You know, you'd have Sam
and Dave and Arthur Conley followed by
um I don't know, Cream or something. You
know, they didn't sort of separate it
out because it was all great music and
it was all happening at the time. And he
would do something so I thought was very
romantic.
He would ask the listeners to park their
cars on the coastline
and flash their headlights out to sea so
he could see them. I always thought that
was a
I think the whole of
to me radio is a very romantic thing. I
mean, there were huge numbers of records
that may not have been hits at all.
Groups and artists we may not have heard
of
were it not for pirate radio.
There were huge marches, thousands of
teenagers would descend on Trafalgar
Square. There was a massive
Offences Act, which would become legal
just a minute past midnight on the 14th
of August, 1967. And Radio Caroline was
the only station that said, "We're going
to defy the government and keep on
broadcasting."
I think so many of these things which
were played out very playfully in
Britain
with fashion, with demonstrations, with
rebellion
and were kind of
amusing and they were entertaining and
they made for a very lively arts, music,
fashion, design
scene. In America,
they were deadly serious and they were
much more threatening to the status quo
and much more unsettling
to authority and uh
and the stakes seemed to be much higher.
Promises of the Great Society
have been shot down on the battlefields
of Vietnam.
You know, what Johnson called the Great
Society,
it was meant to be great for everyone.
It wasn't meant to just be great for the
middle-aged generation who got you know,
who survived the
Second World War, gone through that. It
was meant to be great for their
children, too. And yet, you had this
this entire generation who
were threatened by the war, they could
have been drafted, they had that hanging
over them and it didn't make any sense
to them. It wasn't this noble fight the
World War II was.
The giant protests
were
not only not even so much the soldiers
as their mothers.
Because what the hell is my boy doing in
Vietnam?
Television news was full of the latest
no real surprise that most of us were
kind of dreaming and searching for a
faith that things would get better. We
didn't know the suffering that
the soldiers on our side went through.
We didn't know
what they had inflicted as well on the
on the Vietcong. We didn't know any of
those things.
We just knew that we were being sent to
war by old guys.
Were there any Americans who thought the
Americans were going to win the war?
So, what are you doing in the jungle?
I still remember his name. His name was
Richard Panaman. He was like the class,
I guess, clown and always happy.
And he went to Vietnam.
And he stepped on a landmine and he was
killed.
And it resonated through our school.
When you think about how many thousands
of young American lives are sacrificed
for that war and really
what was it all about? We had no say in
it at all. Just for us a bunch of old
people who were saying you got to go.
Uh, if you didn't want to go, you either
went to jail like Muhammad Ali or
you went to Canada. The thing about Ali
was that he was very articulate. So, in
spite of the fact that he was threatened
with actually 5 years imprisonment,
which is what he could have been for
refusing the draft.
Um, he gave very impassioned and very
articulate speech as to why he wouldn't
fight and didn't want to fight because
um, he did not regard uh, the Vietnamese
North Vietnamese and the Vietcong as his
enemy. You my enemy? My enemy is the
white people, not the Vietcong or the
Chinese or Japanese. Yes, I'll just no
comment on my boxing religion induction.
No comments on whatever, nothing. He
refused to step forward. He was
sentenced to 5 years in jail.
They took They stripped his title.
While he was waiting for the Supreme
Court to decide his case, he spent his
time going to colleges, talked all over
the country. He gave young people the
guts to come out against the war.
I remember Muhammad Ali said,
"No Vietcong ever called me a [ __ ]
So, why am I going to go and fight him?
I'm not going to fight him."
So, they took away his belt, his status,
and he got convicted.
'67 was the turning point where
huge swaths of America
went, "Wait a minute.
What are we doing?"
You know, Muhammad Ali opened their
eyes.
"What have we got against these
Vietnamese? Why are we killing them?"
And also he was a great athlete. He was
very beautiful as well. So, you know,
all of these things sort of welded
together.
Um, because we were little kids, he was
in his prime, he was fighting, and he
won every fight. So, he would you know,
if you're a little child and you're
sitting there and some guy comes on the
ring and says,
"I told him a lie. I'm going to get him
in five." And then you get him in five.
You sitting there as a little kid going,
"Yeah." You know, so he meant
an awful lot to us and his point of view
is very important to us.
Well, the Vietnam War was a huge shadow
over which every young man faced, you
know, you could be drafted. And that's
absolutely terrifying. So, I think that
the the the hippie movement was a huge
product of that. Certainly that was the
golden age of the San Francisco hate
ashbury scene. And
for that brief period,
it was a kind of it seemed like a sort
of wonderland, but I think the
wonderland was tempered by the fact that
it it was by its it had to be escapist
because there was such a horrible fear
of Vietnam.
On the one level you can talk about all
the social changes,
sexual revolution,
anti-war protests and everything, but
meanwhile,
huge business was being done
with the sale of LPs.
The album was a statement. You know,
before it would be that you know, you'd
write your hit single and then you'd do
a bunch of blues songs and live. And now
it got to the point where bands were
writing enough material to fill an
entire album and making their own
statements and making and and so, you
know, the album, the artwork, the sleeve
notes, the lyric sheet, all that stuff
became very very important.
We'd all
gather and and sit around the the stereo
and listen to the whole album in
silence. There was obviously a certain
amount of competition, you know, who'd
get the album first, whatever it
happened to be next, you know, the new
Jimi Hendrix album.
Chas Chandler of The Animals
had seen him play in America. Said,
"I'll be your manager." Brought him to
the UK, got him on Track Records, which
was The Who's label.
Um,
and
got him to be heard by
the peer group.
By all accounts,
as soon as he arrived, he was an
absolute sensation. Played in front of
Eric Clapton and Eric Clapton sort of
right, "That's it. It's over. You know,
there's nobody like this." Played in
front of Pete Townshend, couldn't
believe it, you know. And so, all these
guitar gods had suddenly, you know, had
to sort of doff their cap to this
incredible guy.
And he developed here, you know. So,
early songs like Hey Joe, you know, the
first album Are You Experienced, all
these things, it was it was developed in
Britain. So, Jimi Hendrix was kind of
introduced to the superstar straight
away cuz everyone wanted to
figure out this incredible talent he had
with guitar. And I mean, you know, you
could have regarded him as a threat
because he was so much better than
everybody else.
Being a DJ at Radio Caroline, we'd do
these Radio Caroline disco nights on
land. We did one at the Wimbledon
Palais, another one was the Chislehurst
Caves. They'd put a little stage in
there and a disco system and they had a
stage with a PA and bands used to play.
And in fact, Jimi Hendrix
played his first ever gig,
uh, I think I'm right in saying it, in
the Chislehurst Caves.
I used to go to skating rink a lot. And
Groovin' was what you skated to. So, you
put your skates on, rental skates, and
then they would put Groovin' on. And it
was a good thing. You could glide in
your skates. And if you had a boyfriend,
you could do like these two things to
Groovin'. It was all deeply corny, but
it was a good skating song, so it was
really nice.
Young Rascals are a great American band
and and
uh, and they came up with a record that
called Groovin'.
Groovin' on a a Sunday afternoon. What a
perfect pop record that was.
The Beatles had achieved huge success
with Sergeant Pepper and were now caught
up in the emotion of the time and how to
achieve spirituality. It meant catching
a train to Bangor, North Wales.
And in 1967, they made the first UK
color TV transmission.
I've got an announcement to make. It's
about sir.
Well, sir, we'd all like to thank you
very much for everything you've done for
us.
And we'd like to give you a little
present to remember us by.
Go on, Babs. You mean MISS PEG?
BABS.
THE TIME HAS come
for closing books and long last looks my
stare.
And as I leave,
I know that I am leaving my best friend.
Interestingly enough, the song that
topped the charts in 1967 was Lulu, um,
To Sir, with Love, which came from the
score of this film in the same name. It
was a small Sidney Poitier film, partly
because it was filmed in London. So, it
wouldn't have been
it wasn't a huge huge mainstream film,
but the song was. To get to Billboard
top 100 or to be in the number one, that
means everybody was buying you. Not just
people who would have been to Lulu's
music. Everybody was buying this.
Sidney Poitier had an unbelievable year
in 1967. He made To Sir, with Love,
Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, and In the
Heat of the Night.
We're all pretty sure you're something,
Virgil. Virgil, that's a funny name for
a boy that comes from Philadelphia. What
do they call you up there?
They call me Mr. Tibbs. MR. TIBBS? WELL,
MR. WOOD, TAKE MR. TIBBS. TAKE HIM DOWN
TO THE DEPOT and I mean boy, like now.
To see In the Heat of the Night
about a racist Southern cop,
a redneck, having to deal with this very
educated black man who comes down and
solves the crime. And he has to work
with this guy who's like educated 3,000
times above anything Rod Steiger could
be. It was a big movie. It was a big
movie. YOU CAN GET
JAMES BROWN
INVENTED EVERYTHING.
Let me just
say that even before he was born he
invented stuff. Nobody has touched cold
sweat. They had people who have
attempted to touch cold sweat.
There have been people who have come
close to cold sweat. That was the
mothership. That was the the foundation
record. You kind of underestimate the
significance of James Brown who invented
funk.
Is it Sly Stone? Is it James Brown? I
think it's James Brown.
Intriguing enough, although there was
this
movement towards um
peace and love and understanding. It It
coincided with with quite a lot of
international conflicts.
Um the Six-Day War began in Israel.
Which again was a was a fairly
unpleasant um period. The Six-Day War
was a you know huge headline news and
obviously um
you were aware of the impact it was
going to have on changing you know the
borders and politics in the Middle East.
Again, I mean we weren't really that
politically involved but you knew this
was obviously a momentous event really.
Israel was extremely important for us.
But I think the Six-Day War began to
change that a bit.
Because Israel began to take territory.
And that was something
that went against our own idea of what
it Israel was.
And we were caught up in Vietnam, too.
Every black kid on planet Earth loves
Stevie and I was made to love her. It
was just beautiful. It was a song you
danced to at your prom. It was the song
of the summer. It was a great great
great song.
This was the Ed Sullivan show and that
was the big showcase. Like Saturday
night the Palladium. It was massive. If
you got on that show,
you cracked open everything. And Ed
Sullivan was like this waxwork who had
been around for sort of like 50 years
and he would come out and he'd go, "No.
It's
the Doors."
They said they wanted him to take out
the line about getting high.
Jim Morrison cheered, "Yeah, okay, we'll
do that."
And then when it came to the live show,
he sang about getting high. Fantastic.
I think the Doors are a very symbolic of
the darkness that was at the heart of
the most interesting American music of
1967.
It was a demarcation
and it was indication of the demarcation
of our youth. The the the whole thing
that we've been brought up in and the
whole thing we've been brought to
respect, it was over over over.
The Mamas and the Papas were another
band that captured the whole California
vibe. Their harmonies were were
marvelous, classic. I mean never like
the Beach Boys with girls. I mean who
didn't want to go to California because
of California Dreaming? Who You couldn't
not want to go there. I was desperate to
get there. I was desperate to go to
Monterey.
Lou Adler and Andrew Oldham put on the
Monterey Pop Festival with a little help
from the Mamas and Papas. Well, this is
John Phillips of the Mamas and Papas.
And I'd like to talk to Dion. I had no
idea that the Monterey Pop Festival was
going to happen but I wished I could
have been there.
Uh
to see Otis Redding. I mean one of my
big idols, one of my heroes of the 1960s
was Otis Redding. Have been
loving you
too long
to stop now.
For him to go to Monterey was really
what
catapulted Otis Redding
to becoming as famous as he did. Otis
Redding
in my mind, I think probably is the
greatest soul singer of all time. I just
love his voice. It was the year he did
it did Monterey and it was the year he
did I've been loving you too long at
Monterey which is again one of the most
beautiful songs.
So I think Otis, you know, absolutely
integral to the uh the story of 1967.
Not least because it was still quite a
segregated time and Otis had the the
foresight to cross over into the
predominantly white hippie culture.
The showmanship, the flair. I mean
British groups all had this sense of
showmanship whereas Americans were like
seriously playing the blues solo.
And and in way the first
manifestation of this was Monterey.
When all these groups that were sort of
legendary in America cuz they were been
famous in Britain
were brought for the first time.
But the Animals were they were a
raw British blues band who
got involved in the early days of the
American hippie scene.
It was so competitive really. The groups
they they'd be real friends when they
met each other but my word that they did
not, you know, try to outdo each other.
Well, I made this documentary about Jimi
Hendrix and I have Pete Townshend
talking about backstage
at Monterey.
Where basically Hendrix says, "I'm not
going to follow you guys.
You're too good on stage." And Townshend
says, "Well, I'm not following you.
You're way better than us." And finally
Hendrix says, "Well, look, I'm warning
you.
If I follow you,
I'm going to pull out all the stops."
And so the Who go on stage and
Townshend, you know, smashes his guitar
and and the Americans had never seen
anything like it. And then out comes
Hendrix.
As the climax of his set, burns his
guitar on stage.
In a way Monterey, you see
so many things being presented to the
mass American audience for the first
time. You know, this English flamboyance
in the form of the Who, this
transatlantic weird blend
um of Hendrix and the show
and and Otis and Janis. I mean all of
these together in one place in one
weekend in 1967.
It was amazing.
Janis Joplin was
completely wild. You know, she'd come
through Austin, Texas. She had been uh
you know, been in trouble at school in
various ways and then she she you know,
showed up in San Francisco and and had
the most incredible voice of you know,
kind of the best
the best blues voice you could have find
in a white woman.
These three days in June were as tense
as the all the music of 1967.
The importance of the music because it
was so central to the culture, I'd say
it was the most important art form in
Britain and America at the time is that
it
galvanized and unified people and made
people feel hopeful and positive and
capable of dealing with whatever was
being thrown their way. Which in
America, the big thing was Vietnam and
in in Britain, the big thing was
breaking away from the former war
generation.
It was about class thing, a social thing
and you could break through and do what
you dreamed of doing without having had
a very privileged background.
Suddenly there was a whole turnabout and
aristocrats wanted to employ working
class people because of the Beatles,
because of the Stones, because of that
whole movement.
You know, in that period in the '60s,
there was a feeling that we could do
anything. If you were young and you had
ambition and you had drive, you could
get out there and do whatever you
wanted.
It gave us all
a moment in the sun to think that maybe
just maybe if we did this and not that,
then things would be a lot better.
I mean, it was all about love.
And it's a shame now people are kind of
shy and embarrassed to talk about love.
But then, it became known as the summer
of love.
If we want to talk about 1967, we have
to talk about Jefferson Airplane. We
have to talk about White Rabbit.
Masterpiece.
White Rabbit is a movie. It's a novel.
It's an opera. It is the darkness that
was about to come.
One pill makes you larger
and one pill makes you small. Jefferson
Airplane were very much a product of the
politics of the time.
They were a strident
revolutionary band born of the
Haight-Ashbury scene.
And even when you have songs like
Somebody to Love and White Rabbit,
there's a there's an edge of darkness
there. I mean, lot of people didn't I
think realize what White Rabbit was
about.
Um otherwise, it wouldn't have got
airplay. We didn't know that the madness
was coming. A lot of madness was coming
down. We didn't know that. But Grace
Slick and the Airplane actually told us
in so many ways that there was a dark
side to this. And it was the other side
of the summer of love. It was the other
side. She said it was coming. They said
it was coming.
And it came.
As the fighting raged on for years, the
U.S. military continued the bombing of
Vietnam and civil rights battles would
escalate to cities across America. We
will not tolerate lawlessness. Murder
and arson
have nothing to do with civil rights.
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