Highlights of an era that transformed everything America, the Baby Boomer generation.
On July 20, 1969, American astronauts Neil Armstrong (1930-2012) and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin (1930-) became the first humans ever to land on the moon. About six-and-a-half hours later, Armstrong became the first person to walk on the moon.
Just one month later, the Woodstock Music Festival began on August 15, 1969, as half a million people waited on a dairy farm in Bethel, New York, for the three-day music festival to start. Billed as “An Aquarian Experience: 3 Days of Peace and Music,” the epic event would later be known simply as Woodstock and become synonymous with the counterculture movement of the 1960s. This event, however, put a punctuation mark on all things 60’s.
The birth pains of a transitional new normal began.
SINGER SONGWRITER 1970’s
In the late 1960’s, America was young, but drama fatigued.
The county needed to catch its breath. For popular music, 1970 was Laurel Canyon, California. Says Vanity Fair: The scene was more metaphorical than geographical. Nearly everyone who was there was, at one time or another, stoned; nobody remembers everything the same way. What is undeniably true is that in the early 1970s some of the most melodic, atmospheric, and subtly political American popular music was written by residents of, or those associated with, Laurel Canyon—including Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, David Crosby, Stephen Stills, Graham Nash, Chris Hillman, Roger McGuinn, J. D. Souther, Judee Sill, the Mamas and the Papas, Carole King, the Eagles, Richie Furay (in Buffalo Springfield and Poco), and many more. They made music together. They took drugs together, formed bands together, broke up those bands, and formed other bands. Many of them slept with each other. The music was mislabeled “soft rock” or “folk rock,” especially in the Northeast, where critics panned it as granola-infused hippie music—too “mellow” and too white. But in truth, it was an amalgam of influences that included blues, rock and roll, jazz, Latin, country and western, psychedelia, bluegrass, and folk. It certainly was a forerunner of today’s “Americana.”
The Female Lead – A 70’s darling
A new divorce culture
Change also advanced in the rural south. Divorce had previously been a Hollywood phenomenon until the late 1960’s. Yet, Tammy Wynette topped the county music charts during this period with a song titled the same.
GENERATION-LONG THEMES
Dad the “Dunce”
The genius dad of the 1950’s segued (beginning in the 1970’s) into the likes of Homer Simpson, Archie Bunker, and Phil of Modern Family.
Disco Fever
Computer Age is born
The 1990’s
and one of a kinds
CAN FINALLY REST
In 1969 the Baby Boomer generation rushed onto the scene and literally sucked up all of the oxygen in the room.
Mick Jagger turned 76 on July 26, 2019
When the clock strikes midnight January 1, 2020, the completion of generational change will happen once again, as it always does every fifty years or so.
We leave you where we began. A much older James Taylor and Carole King sing “You can close your eyes” to a generation fifty years in the making.