January 26, 2009

• If You Remember the Sixties You Weren’t There?

  If you remember the ’60s, as the joke goes, you weren’t there. It was the perfect storm of sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll. A hippie haze of happy days. And a few not-so-happy days.
  
  Dozens of books have been written about the decade, but 40 years later, author Rob Kirkpatrick has narrowed it all down to one epic year: 1969.

  The subtitle of his new book, 1969: The Year Everything Changed (Skyhorse Publishing, 288 pp., $24.95), may sound hyperbolic, but Kirkpatrick makes a good case that it was a year “of landmark achievements, cataclysmic episodes and generation-defining events.”

  “A lot of people talk about 1967 as ‘The Summer of Love’ and 1968 as ‘The Year the Dream Died,’ but there wasn’t one book about 1969. It fills a gap,” says Kirkpatrick, 41, who was 1 year old when rain fell on the throngs of rock fans at Woodstock.

  1968 had seen the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy. Then came 1969, which Kirkpatrick calls “a year of extremes.” It was a tumultuous time when it seemed as if history were being made almost every day:

  The top ten songs of 1965 were incredible…does anyone know them? All classics.

  1. (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction – Rolling Stones
  2. Like A Rolling Stone – Bob Dylan
  3. In The Midnight Hour – Wilson Pickett
  4. Papa’s Got A Brand New Bag – James Brown
  5. My Generation – The Who
  6. Mr. Tambourine Man – Byrds / Bob Dylan
  7. Yesterday – Beatles
  8. The Sounds Of Silence – Simon & Garfunkel
  9. Ticket To Ride – Beatles
  10. The Tracks Of My Tears – Miracles

  • 5:52 pm
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