Yes It’s True: 1970 was the evil year the music died

EDITOR’S NOTE: The following is the second of a series of columns, extracted from a book never published, examining why those Fabulous Sixties, known for protest, free sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll, quickly faded into the dust heap of history.

A music history journalist not long ago said on a television special that in just one year America went from listening to Janis Joplin and Grace Slick in 1969 to listening to Carole King and Joni Mitchell in 1970, that it went in just a year from listening to Jimi Hendrix and the Doors to listening to James Taylor and the Carpenters.

Indeed. I hereby nominate 1970 as an evil year, when young Americans en masse took a hard turn from activism to self-absorption.

As suggested earlier, music seemed to drive the culture of rebellion in the years 1963-70. Most often, it led rather than followed. By 1970, however, these musical leaders were either abdicating their prominent roles, dying or breaking up.

Submitted for your approval:

• The Beatles, arguably the best known and beloved pop music icons of the era, called it quits in April 1970.
• Simon & Garfunkel, an intelligent dynamic folk rock duo that gave the world a lot to think about, released their worst album, “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” in the late spring of ’70 and then decided to go their separate ways.
• Frank Zappa disbanded the Mothers of Invention late in ’69 and the following year embarked on a horribly commercial period in which he had two ex-Turtles (Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan) running an obnoxious stage show. Though he occasionally demonstrated his expansive musical talents afterward, Zappa never recaptured his biting edge of musical satire.
• The Fugs, though not well known to most, cut their last album, the disappointing “Belle of Avenue A,” and faded into the sunset.
• Jimi Hendrix, the most astounding audio-visual experience of the period, died after reportedly choking on his own vomit.
• Janis Joplin, unquestioned queen of electric acid energy blues, died of a drug overdose.
• The Bonzo Dog Band, also unheralded, but on the cutting edge of pushing rock to new heights of parody and humor, disbanded.
• Jim Morrison and the Doors were still performing and recording, but Morrison’s brain had become so fried on drugs that he no longer was a force in the movement he helped create. Morrison died the following year.
• Bob Dylan, the largest folk rock icon of them all, hadn’t done squat for the movement since his motorcycle accident in 1967, and by 1970 was doing insipid TV shows with Johnny Cash and singing bad country songs on the album “Nashville Skyline.” Gord Wolotira once had taped to our college apartment wall one of Dylan’s most famous lyrics, “There are many here among us, who feel that life is but a joke.” Wasserman changed it in 1970 to “There are many here among us who feel that Bob Dylan is but a joke.”
• The Cream, which set underground music standards, was splitting up, with each of its three members going separate ways and winding up as members of mediocre, overhyped “super groups,” such as Blind Faith and Ginger Baker’s Air Force.
• Meanwhile, topping the music charts were syrupy Burt Bacharach songs like “Close to You” and the new wave of self-absorbed introspective “back to the earth” bittersweet soft rock, led by “Sweet Baby James” Taylor and Carole King.

The message was obvious: Forget about the problems of the world. You cannot solve them. Instead, look inside yourself and seek inner peace and seek warm and meaningful relationships with significant others.

The music, which had been so much a part of the march against war, racism and injustice, had radically changed course, all in the course of just a year.

As Jim Wasserman explains it:

If the pen is mightier than the sword, then an idea with lyrics and a beat behind it is mightier still than mere words on the printed page.

Music has long played a vital role in fueling passions and strengthening political movements. Songs like Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind” and Country Joe & the Fish’s “I Feel Like I’m Fixin’ to Die Rag” had been rallying cries for the anti-war movement, just as “We Shall Overcome” and “Eyes on the Prize” had inspired the civil rights movement. Even earlier ballads like “I’m Stickin’ with the Union” and “Joe Hill” strengthened the resolve of the union movement.

In my darkest moments of self doubt and despair, when the cops were taunting me in the Kent County jail, I had hummed Frank Zappa’s words, “There will come a time when every evil that we know will be an evil that we can rise above” over and over in my head like a mantra, closing my ears to any other sound.

So it was especially devastating on a personal level during the evil year of 1970, when the music died, when the groups that had inspired us either disbanded or started putting out commercial tripe. I vividly remember how despondent we both were the day I told Dave that (perhaps his favorite group) the Bonzo Dog Band had disbanded.

“Why did you have to tell me that?” he asked, his voice choking with as much emotion as I’ve ever heard from him.

It cannot be emphasized enough how devastating it was to the movement and to us personally when the Mothers, Bonzos and Fugs were replaced by the soft musings of Sweet Baby James Taylor and others of his ilk.