The Point

Last updated: 27 June 2022.

Rock Stars, Revolutionaries and the Myth of the Sixties

Gary Fraser

‘Come together’

Two discourses informed the politics of the 1960s. The first was opposition to the Vietnam War and the second a series of social movements in America and throughout the Western World which included the demand for civil rights by African Americans, followed by the birth of the women’s movement and then the gay rights movement. What happened was a revolution in human rights and the accomplishment of a political project which had started with the European Enlightenment. Young people, especially students, were the lifeblood of these new social movements and by 1968 the movements had united into one amorphous mass ubiquitously labelled the ‘counter-culture’.

The counter-culture transformed the arts, particularly popular music and film. In the mid-60s, beginning with Bob Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited and then culminating in the Beatles Sgt Pepper, rock music went through its golden period. We should also note the transformations in other music, especially music associated with black artists. Jazz is just one example, where artists such as Miles Davis, John Coltrane and Ornette Coleman changed the structure of jazz; called free jazz it seemed to, unconsciously perhaps, represent the chaos of the changing times and the innate anger and frustration of the black artist.

‘You say you want a revolution’

Revolution was the word of the counter-culture. ‘Everybody knows the revolution is coming’ said rock musician Neil Young. According to the great beat poet Gill Scott Heron, ‘the revolution will not be televised’. ‘One solution, revolution’ was a regular cry of the Black Panthers. Meanwhile, an excited John Lennon sang, ‘we better get the revolution on right away’ in his anthem Power To The People. The word ‘revolution’ seemed to catch the spirit of what was taking place in the streets and college campuses across America. As early as 1966 there were signs that the anti-war protests, which had sprung up at university campuses were merging with anti-racist and feminist movements. By the end of 66 the revolution was heating up. Yet, during this crucial period the aristocracy of rock music were notably absent from politics.

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Gay Marriage and Religious Fundamentalism

Sean Robertson looks at the role of religion in modern day morality.

This summer, the Scottish Government announced that it would be passing a bill through Parliament legalising same sex marriage. For most forward thinking people in a modern society like Scotland this would have been viewed as a sensible and uncontroversial move. For the vast majority of Scots sexual behaviour between consensual adults should be none of their, or the state’s, business, and gay relationships, including marriage, should be afforded the same legal protections as their heterosexual counterparts.

It beggars belief then, when self- styled moral guardians of the modern world, like the Catholic Church in Scotland and the literalist Presbyterians in the ‘Scotland for Marriage’ campaign attempt to derail progress because of their own outdated religious beliefs and force the majority to accept these beliefs as their own:  Nobody is to be allowed to enter into a gay marriage because a minority of particularly fundamentalist religionists don’t like it.

American Christian lobbyists have also fought tooth and nail to prevent ‘ Evolution through Natural Selection’ being taught as an evidence based part of the science syllabus in US schools, and in some states, schools must give equal attention to the creationist view that the world was created in a matter of days, less than ten thousand years ago, by God.

These debates between the modern day and the past have brought into focus the role of religion today.  Does society require institutions such as the Catholic or Protestant churches, Islamic or Jewish faiths, as moral compasses? Should society give an equal voice to all religious belief when formulating laws, providing public services or setting educational curricula, for example?

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