Making Sense of the Sixties
Freedom, Brian Wilson, John Phillips, Arthur Lee, and Jim Morrison
“[The people’s] yoke became almost unbearable where it was, in fact, the least burdensome.”
—Alexis de Tocqueville, The Ancien Regime and the French Revolution
“Let’s just say I was testing the bounds of reality. I was curious to see what would happen. That’s all it was: curiosity.”
—Jim Morrison
Introduction: Making sense of the 60s through the concept of freedom
The concept of freedom links Arthur Lee and Love to the shared kaleidoscopic drama of the 1960s. More than that, the concept of freedom becomes the golden thematic thread running through the tapestry of this exhilarating and endlessly confusing decade, making sense of what seems at first glance to be a collage without meaning, a series of dots on the wall rather than a pointillist painting.
Perhaps Thomas Jefferson is to blame, with his troublesome adaptation of Locke in the Declaration of Independence, enumerating our rights to “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” The first two have hardly been uncontroversial, but the last is most quintessentially American and most open to interpretation.
How does one define such a freedom?
Freedom, in the American context, has always been determined by the eye of the beholder. It has meant very different things to very different groups of Americans; it is not too much to say that these differences over a seemingly innocuous common good have determined the whole history of the country, from the clash over States’ Rights versus Abolition that fuelled the American Civil War to the struggles over the Civil Rights movement one hundred years later.
More than any other people, Americans have venerated the concept of freedom; unbeknownst to them they have meant very different conceptual things by it, all the while using a seemingly innocent common word.
Rarely was this truer than during the divisive 1960s. And in a very real way, it was the relative (historically speaking) lenience of the era that led to the heated debate over what freedom actually meant. The sixties generation was, materially and socially, perhaps the least constrained in history. Yet, far from slaking their social thirst, many of the time came to perceive any restrictions placed upon their freedom (however defined) as intolerable.
That is not to say that there were not real monsters during that era (as is true for any other) that did threaten their hard-won liberty. This was true at both the macro and micro level. Vietnam really was horrendous, the Civil Rights struggle really did involve inalienable rights, and Brian Wilson really did have to throw off the shackles of his overbearing, tyrannical father to achieve a degree of creative liberty.
But more was going on here than that. For the sixties generation seemed to view their relative freedom (however differently they defined it) as a teaser; as the precursor to some elusive, more profound state of being that was being denied to them. Absolute freedom became the Nirvana — the unreachable goal — that both animated their anger and fired their collective imagination.
The formation of the counterculture itself was the result of a perfect storm of material well-being, demography, and a common youthful disdain for the conformism of the just-ended fifties. The baby boomers were surely the most affluent generation in centuries —certainly since the founding of the United States. Unimaginable economic prosperity allowed them to worry about broader concerns than their immediate economic and personal survival, as had been the fate of the Great Depression/World War II generation.
If the boomers were the richest generation in American history—making them an instant political and social force—their vast numbers cemented their status as an immediate counterforce to their elders in American life. Simply put, the unusual demographics of the postwar baby boom meant that the emerging youth culture could not be ignored, politically, commercially, or culturally. This outsized generation, its vast wealth, and a common (and characteristically youthful) desire to overturn what many saw as the turgid conformist world of their elders in the 1950s, were the three pillars underlying the youth movement and the potent counterculture it created.
This uniquely American fixation finds its locus in California – the California rhapsodized by Steinbeck and Muir and Chuck Berry. The ultimate canvas for the realization of endless freedoms: the furthest point west, with its God-given climate, where even middle-class workadaddies could live like Renaissance princes. It was almost inevitable that, ahead of the rest of the country, its impossibly blessed citizens would begin to look around, saying, “What now?”
Freedom As a Blessing and a Curse: The Beach Boys, The Mamas and the Papas, Love, and The Doors
During that time and at that place, a number of odd, tortured, charismatic souls came to learn a great deal about freedom: why it mattered, what it cost, how it can be abused. In the amber glow of the unbearably hopeful California of the 1960s, rock musicians and poets, at the cutting edge of their craft, celebrated in song the throwing off what they saw to be the conformist shackles of the country, embracing a radical creed that celebrated social, political, and personal freedom above all else.
They celebrated freedom as the magic elixir, essential for pursuing the unconventional to reach the truly creative. In the end, they had to sacrifice a great deal to attain it, choosing to uphold freedom despite constant pressures from family, friends, producers, and the establishment (be it entertainment or political) to just go along with things as they were. For each in their own way was aiming at the Greek notion of praxis, the unity of thought and action. Thinking freely was only the first step; a man had to act on these thoughts to be truly worthwhile.
Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys, John Phillips of the Mamas and the Papas, Arthur Lee of Love, and Jim Morrison of the Doors all wrote about this developing creed as they had already internalized its glittering possibilities. Brian had thrown off the restraints of his domineering father, and had taken creative control of his band. His version of freedom above all else was about the freedom to pursue artistic creativity, to control the direction his genius took him.
John, in pursuit of still-taboo sexual freedoms, unapologetically abandoned his wife and family to embrace a doctrine of free love, to which he gave a surprisingly socially acceptable voice. Arthur, the one for whom freedom was ultimately mental and moral, refusing even to be bound by an ideology of freedom, rose above it all—if only temporarily—to seek perspective and illumination. And Jim, “the hippie Dionysus,” seemed to write about and personally embody both the excesses and hopes of a wholly alternative way to live, reveling in freedom as anarchy. Emboldened by his particular new take on the common theme of freedom — be it creative, sexual, personal or anarchic — each shot across the artistic sky like a meteor.
In the mid to late ‘60’s, in the specific milieu of a California, then at the cutting edge of the ongoing freedom experiment, and in the specific time of the youth movement, the frontline displaying freedom’s manifold benefits and perils, all four managed to harness freedom to create masterworks — Pet Sounds, If You Can Believe Your Eyes and Ears, Forever Changes, and The Doors—different than anything heard before.
Brian was the first to break from convention, fighting both his producer father and the other members of the Beach Boys — including his brothers and his particularly malevolent cousin — to seize control of his own artistic destiny.
Having won that battle, he was under constant and immense pressure from Capitol records not to innovate, to keep producing the pleasant surf music that had made the group famous and Capitol rich, to give the people an endless supply of more of the same. It took great moral courage — especially for a man not naturally possessed of such strength — to turn his back on both his family and his employers, but Brian, at great psychic cost and with everything on the line, persevered.
Pet Sounds, the result of his declaration of artistic independence, is commonly thought one of the greatest records ever made. But in its beauty, Pet Sounds is a lament for the loss of a simpler and purer time: the idealized Eisenhower era of Brian’s dreams. Freedom may have been in short supply, but life was simple, understandable, and comfortable.
For Wilson is not so much ambivalent about freedom as homesick. There is real irony in that he worked so hard and took on all comers to break the mold of pop songcraft and employ the most sophisticated production ever seen so he could write an album’s worth of paeans to simpler times. “Wouldn’t it Be Nice,” “Caroline No,” “I Know There’s an Answer,” and “That’s Not Me,” are songs written by an adult who is using his freedom to recreate an idealized childhood.
The tension that makes it all work is that Brian’s missing and missed adolescence sat smack dab in the middle of the supposedly repressive 1950s. The greatness of Pet Sounds lies in aurally overlaying the 50s and the 60s; without the more socially radical decade Brian would not have had the freedom to make a record celebrating the simplicity of bygone days. In its musical and thematic complexity, Pet Sounds towers above the recordings of its time.
John Phillips and the Mamas and the Papas came next. Their debut album, If You Can Believe Your Eyes and Ears, seemingly safely introduced much of mainstream America to the hippie ethos. On the surface, Phillips’ efforts are the most conventional of the four, and also the most saleable. Irresistibly catchy, commercially widely acceptable, and beautifully arranged, songs such as “California Dreamin’,” “Got a Feelin’,” “Go Where You Wanna Go,” and “Straight Shooter” remain staples of oldies radio stations, 50-plus years on.
Phillips worked with what seemed to be the standard, straightforward lyrical pop trope of love lost, focusing on catchy single tracks rather than, as was the case for the others, the totality of the album being the crowning artistic statement.
The Mamas and the Papas, with their gorgeous contrapuntal harmonies, were unpretentiously about singles and not concept albums, with an added dose of baroque sophistication thrown in, just enough to make it all seem rather daring. One of the shrewdest celebrity businessmen of the era, Phillips fully embraced the commercial possibilities of the singer-songwriter era, rather more than the political implications of what he was doing.
However, John was in reality, and without meaning to be, perhaps a greater intellectual threat than the obviously out-there Arthur Lee and the way-beyond-the-pale Jim Morrison. For in 1966, Phillips was the great popularizer of the hippie movement, the bridge between two worlds, seemingly safe enough for mass acceptance, but daring enough to speak for the new California lifestyle, celebrating freedom and a decisive social and sexual break with the past. John might not set as many critics’ hearts aflutter, but it would be him and not Lee whose bohemianism would chime from diner jukeboxes and car radios on Main Street.
But John’s seemingly innocuous lyrics were coded cries for help; his band was in absolute chaos having pursued the supposedly sunny doctrine of free love they advanced in so easygoing a fashion. In reality the Mamas and the Papas more aptly resembled a tragedy by Sophocles, and were poster children for excess.
Only a collective without a basic insight into human nature could have thought they would continue to thrive with a group dynamic based on John writing songs about his stunningly beautiful wife (Michelle) cheating on him with his best friend and the group’s lead male voice (Denny Doherty), who in turn was being fruitlessly pursued by the group’s undoubted star (Mama Cass). This one had nitroglycerine written all over it.
John’s songs, evoking a whimsical, charming, slightly sad defense of free love, made such a daring creed seem more acceptable to the masses; what it really spoke of was a man trying to convince himself that the pain that he felt because of all this was somehow the remnant of his repressive past, rather than the sane rage of a jilted husband not enjoying himself nearly so much as he let on.
Beyond being beautiful and accessible, If You Believe Your Eyes and Ears brought the hippie lifestyle, then just an interesting aberration, to the attention of Middle America in the same way there were specialized tours of the hippie enclave of Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco, allowing tourists to view the alternative lifestyle goings-on from the safety of a bus. It was also important because lost in the lush tunes and catchy baroque production lay a clue to the contradictions that would destroy the experiment in freedom. For freedom without moderation, without a moral compass, might be a wild and eye-opening ride. But it was surely not one that could be sustained.
Following the saga of Forever Changes came Jim Morrison and The Doors, Lee’s stablemates at Elektra Records, who were perhaps the fitting and (il)logical conclusion to the California bands’ experiments with freedom in the 1960s. For despite eye-catching theatrics and a genuinely enigmatic frontman, The Doors never really recaptured the magic of their first self-titled album. Songs such as “Break on Through,” “Crystal Ship,” “Take It As It Comes,” and the Oedipal drama, “The End,” were both the height of the band’s self-conscious experimentation, as well as indicators of the intellectual and anarchic excess that would lead to their rapid decline.
Indeed, every album thereafter was just slightly less great than the one before (until L.A. Woman), putting Morrison and the movement on a glide path to artistic and personal decay. As probably the most overtly sexual band of their time (before the Rolling Stones really got out there), Morrison, like a lot of good-looking white frontmen, had the sense to pick up on the advantages of pinching lyrical and vocal tropes from great African-American blues singers. What Morrison added to the standard mix, beyond his undeniable charisma, was the exciting hint that somehow there was something philosophically and cosmically significant about trying to get a girl out of her clothes.
And of course, for all his reading of French structuralists and European existentialists, there wasn’t. Morrison was good at railing at the weaknesses of late-60’s American culture; like most of the hippie movement he was far less adept at putting something in its place. The whole thing, both the band and the counterculture, began to collapse, as anarchy as an idea became merely an apologia for hedonism (and the resulting tragedies) and not the clarion call of a movement ready to storm the Establishment bastions. For freedom without moderation rather quickly becomes some form of self-defeating narcissism; aesthetic decline was not far behind. Morrison’s death by probable heroin overdose in Paris fifty years ago was the end of the party.
Part of the movement’s problem was that, as is the case with our four protagonists, everyone meant rather different things by freedom: for Brian it was about controlling his own personal creativity; for John, it centered on a more unfettered sexuality; for Arthur, the personal taking center stage over social and political mind control; for Jim, the triumph of (as the nineteenth-century Russian nihilists put it) “terrible, total, nothingism.”
Yet these very real struggles are not primarily about the same thing. This intellectual incoherence—this very American confusion of thinking that everyone innately meant the same thing when the word ‘freedom’ was thrown forth as a battle cry—doomed the more messianic vision of the concept to failure.
For neither any of our protagonists personally, nor the creed of freedom they espoused, proved sustainable. This was not due to bad luck, or even the beguiling myth of rock star as doomed sage; rather their tragic stories flow directly out of the contradictions that lay at the heart of what they believed and the actions that flowed from their philosophy. The concept of freedom is precious beyond rubies. It can be used, as in the case of each of the four, to create masterpieces.
But to pretend this has no cost, or that other values—like moderation, prudence, inner peace, and security—are not sacrificed along the way is to be hopelessly naïve. For Brian it brought unbearable pressures that led to drug-induced psychosis. For John it led to the collective destruction of his band, his marriage, his family, and himself. For Arthur it led to an agonizing drug-fuelled decline. For Jim it led to his death.
The ancients understood this dynamic very well. Adhering to the view that all attributes were Janus-faced, having creative and destructive properties, they felt that any value believed in to the exclusion of all others quickly becomes a faux religion, a god whose powers will turn on its worshippers, resulting in madness and death, once moderation is lost.
Assessing the Baby Boomers
But if the sixties did not produce the greatest generation in American history, nor did the baby-boomers’ questing after some purer form of freedom lead to the decline and fall of Western civilization, either. The excesses of Morrison and company certainly did lead to a social and political backlash, and is part of the explanation for the rise of the political right in the wake of their utopian failures.
But nor did they strive entirely in vain, either. Creative freedom is now more prized than it was before the Sixties era. Sexual freedom was dramatically extended in what has always been a puritanical country. The personal freedom Arthur cherished is now fought for by both the American left as well as the Jeffersonian and libertarian right. And while Morrison would, typically, say the American lifestyle remains provincial and unenlightened, it is a charge certainly open to question, in a world full of Persian Ayatollahs, Chinese communists, and Isis fanatics everywhere. Rather, the soft power generated by the attractiveness of American society is perhaps our last, best, foreign policy tool.
However, it remains easy to be unkind to the children of the sixties. For their gigantic steps forward were balanced all too often by personal and collective hedonism, narcissism, irresponsibility, and a pretentious serial unseriousness, which blighted accomplishments and marred the social experiment then going on around the idea of freedom, leading to its demise as well as the profound political and social backlash that found its ultimate expression in Reaganism.
But for all its obvious and many flaws, this beguiling vision of a freedom without limits binds the rest of us to this long-ago decade and is the thread providing the narrative that actually makes sense of it. In upholding the doctrine of freedom, the children of the ‘60s accomplished much. Civil rights, women’s rights, the ending of a disastrous war, as well as some of the greatest music ever created, all flowed naturally from the expansion of freedom that the decade made such a tantalizing possibility.
Fantastic! I am fascinated, borderline obsessed with the 60’s and Laurel Canyon. Another guilty pleasure is Mad Men, they are accurate, for the most part, with the historical fiction of that decade.