A Look Back at the Lows and Highs of 1969

Photos by Henry Diltz/courtesy of Rhino Entertainment

It was, to borrow from an immortal piece of literature, both the best of times and the worst of times. Like the decade it capped, 1969 was a year of great highs—Woodstock, the first man on the moon, Led Zeppelin, The Stooges, Tommy, Abbey Road, Easy Rider. But it was also a year of shattered myths, disillusion and disappointment—Vietnam, Altamont, Brian Jones.

Of course, none of this was surprising. The '60s had been a tumultuous time to begin with, one that saw a seismic shift in both culture and consciousness. From the Beatles to the Kennedys, from the cold war to heated conflicts, integration to exploitation, it was by far, the most monumental period in modern history. How, then, would its final 12 months have been any different?

[Above: Crosby, Stills and Nash at Woodstock]

They wouldn’t, and indeed, 1969 proved to be both the end of a fabled decade and the entry into another era altogether. Not as revered a year as 1967, when Sgt. Pepper, Monterey and the Haight marked milestones of illumination and enlightenment, 1969 was not only summed up progress to this point, but also glimpsed ahead up a trail that had already forked off into completely disparate directions. Woodstock, CSNY and Abbey Road represented the last gasp of the hippie dream, a myth that had already been shattered in the drug-addled embers of the Summer of Love two years before. It was a year where past and present gave way to the future, negating any clear cut divide. The Beatles’ slow meltdown accelerated through the travesty that became Let It Be, Altamont turned into a rude awakening to the realities of mob rule, and the steady toll of ‘60s casualties, precipitated by Brian Jones’ drowning in his own swimming pool, was ready to begin. The Manson’s family’s grisly murders of Sharon Tate and other members of the Hollywood elite in the hills above Los Angeles on the night of Aug. 9 showed how those sunny spires of the ‘60s, the Beatles and the Beach Boys, were now being mutated into grotesque symbols of perversion and rage.

Peace and violence were forever at odds. On June 18, members of New York’s homosexual community staked their claim for civil rights, only to be brutalized in the bloody Stonewall Riots. John Lennon and Yoko Ono staged their much-ridiculed Bed-Ins for peace in Amsterdam and Toronto while protesters rallied by the hundreds of thousands in the streets of the world’s capitols to urge an end to the Vietnam War. Finding himself under siege, President Richard Nixon desperately appealed to the so-called Silent Majority to support his stands. The trial of the so-called Chicago Eight, charged with instigating unrest at the Democratic Convention the year before, commenced in September, leaving the real criminals—Mayor Dailey, the cops and their political cronies—unscathed. To add insult to literal injury, the draft was reinstated in December. Meanwhile, overseas, heroes and villains—Golda Meir, Moammar Qaddafil, Yasser Arafat among them—ascended to history’s hierarchy.

There may have been no clearer example of this now unstoppable passage from idealism to extremism than through the trajectory dramatized in the film Easy Rider. Loosely based on the personalities of Byrds protagonists Roger McGuinn and David Crosby, it followed the journey of two disillusioned bikers who use the proceeds of a drug deal to indulge their hedonistic fantasies one final time before retreating into retirement. Ultimately the dream turns ugly, and then is terminated entirely when the pair is plowed down by shotgun-wielding rednecks.

[Above: The Who at Woodstock]

It was a graphic illustration of the slow change that had now begun to accelerate ‘60s broached the ‘70s. The ever-controversial and defiant Smothers Brothers were canceled by CBS after refusing to submit an episode to the network for review, only to be replaced a week later by the innocuously idiotic Hee Haw. Silliness of different sorts was forged when Monty Python made its bow on the BBC and Sesame Street launched America’s original incarnation of public television. The Saturday Evening Post gave way to Penthouse. The most unlikely underdogs also triumphed; Nixon was inaugurated in January, John Wayne finally won an Oscar and the much-derided Mets clinched the World Series.

Meanwhile, in music, the old guard made a final encore. On Jan. 30, the Beatles made their final public appearance on the roof of their Apple offices, only to have their concert cut short by disapproving police. Elvis Presley, buoyed by a TV comeback special the year before, scored two of his biggest hits, “Suspicious Minds” and “In The Ghetto,” after being absent from the charts most of the decade. Bob Dylan, the patron saint of new ideals and imagination, made his much-anticipated first public appearance at Britain’s Isle of Wight festival following a motorcycle mishap three years earlier. Garbed in white and with his hair shorn short, he affirmed his God-like mantra even while turning his back on his role as the bohemian pied piper with the messianic following. Likewise, both the Airplane and the Dead, iconoclastic symbols of indulgence and experimentation, were now veering into different terrain, the former via the vehement rebellion of Volunteers, the latter with the heartland harmonies of Workingman’s Dead.

The Stones mined their menace with Let It Bleed, The Who perfected the rock opera conceit with Tommy and The Band established the template for Americana with Music From Big Pink. Still, the biggest debut of the year was struck with Led Zeppelin’s eponymous offering, a prelude to the uncompromising edge of a heavy metal future. Suddenly it seemed that the Age of Aquarius had become an era of angst and aggression, and the idyllic ‘60s had now taken their final, frenetic bow.