Preface to the Second Edition

Preface 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

1 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

2 The Angry No 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 Jams, 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 Garfunkel's Bookends, Bob Dylan's John Wesley Harding

3 The Transcendent Yes 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

4 Alternative Life Styles 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, th 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

5 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

6 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

7 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

Suggested Recordings

Index