My exposure to what is now called "Classic Rock" began at an early age. A negative age, even. I was in the womb when my parents saw Bob Dylan perform live in 1988 (did the song "Sara" have anything to do with the untraditional spelling of my Hebrew-esque name? My cousin Ramona is definitely named after The Ramones, so).
I grew up listening to my Dad's favorite music: solo acts like Cat Stevens, Arlo Guthrie, and Neil Young were in heavy rotation on Dad's record player and tape decks. The dynamic rock of 70s groups like The Who, Led Zeppelin, and Pink Floyd dominated the car stereo on trips to soccer practice or play rehearsals.
The transition from the picket-fenced suburban norm to a more diversified, tolerant world happened very quickly in the 1960s. My parents were in elementary school during this time of progress and revolution, but they still hang on to fractured memories and slivers of their personal experience in the context of history.
The music transformed from shoo-boppin' doo wop to a rapidly evolving whirlwind of rock and roll. From The Beatles' fame grew branches of artists in different genres: pop, R&B, folk, and rock. Those who listened to the new, underground music on FM radio were the progressive generation who believed in social change and world peace. New artists like Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, and Arlo Guthrie spoke to the frustrations of the liberal-minded. Anger at current political situations fueled the development of a peace-and-love counterculture, and the harrowing 1968 assassinations of RFK and Martin Luther King Jr., the riots that erupted that year at the Democratic National Convention, and the anxieties of the Vietnam War were what lit the youth on fire.
Music, art, and protests were forms of expression for young people. Hippies, young college students, and the socially-minded Americans in between developed a counterculture that promoted peace, love, and freedom from politics in the form of music, art, sexual liberation, drugs, protests, and festivals that were a culmination of all of these things. Woodstock was such a festival.
Inspired by the success of the preceding Monterey Pop Festival in 1967, the Newport Folk Festival (where Dylan infamously "went electric" in 1965), and other such music festivals, the idea for Woodstock was born. Little did the organizers know just how historic an event it would become.
I never really identified with music from the late 60s and 70s until recently. Triggered by an obsession with Joni Mitchell and an interest in the women's liberation movement, I started asking my dad for mixes of his favorite tunes from that time period. Many were familiar, but I found new meaning in Dylan's lyrics, new appreciation for Hendrix's guitar, and a new desire for more music by women.
My parents and I spent the past week vacationing at a family resort in the Poconos. This isn't exactly prime vacationing time for families, so our time was spent with several groups from retirement communities. Despite the slow pace at which the days crawled, the trivia games led by resort staff focused on music, television, and movies from the 40s to the present. Hearing older people reminisce about the 50s, 60s, and 70s made me ache to learn more about our country's past. The trip was perfectly capped off with a trip to the museum at Bethel Woods, where the spectacle that is Woodstock took place.
I'm eager to continue learning about Bob Dylan and Joan Baez, the women's liberation movement (still have to read that Playboy expose that ignited Gloria Steinem's career!), Coretta Scott King, the Kennedys, the Stonewall Inn riots and the birth of LGBTQ support, FM radio and underground music, Haight-Ashbury, communes... THERE IS SO MUCH TO LEARN.
PEACE AND MUSIC.
Sara
