Protest Songs of the 70s

The Sixties and the Seventies were a complicated era. On the one hand it was the height of the Cold War. On the other hand, it was the height of the peace and love movement. It was an era in which the culture of America was being shaped from that point on. Feminism sparked in the 1970s, but so too did the punk movement. Before that rock ‘n’ roll had deviated into hippie music with artists singing about wearing flowers in one’s hair. The punks would spike their hair to look menacing in response to the flower people. The era was like a pendulum swinging back and forth—an action here being met by a reaction there, back and forth, on throughout the 1960s and 1970s.

When Kennedy was elected in 1960, the Cold War was underway and communism in Cuba was viewed as a threat by some—though not by all. 13 years later, when the Ramones formed in 1973, they reflected a lot of the angst of young people, who felt betrayed by the sell-out of rock ‘n’ roll for flower-power, hippie peace and love. The Ramones were edgy, punk and loud. “Havana Affair” was their 1976 satirical critique of American foreign policy over the preceding decade: “PT boat on the way to Havana
I used to make a living, man / Pickin' the banana / Now I'm a guide for the CIA / Hooray! for the USA / Sent to spy on a Cuban talent show / First stop, Havana go go! / I used to make a living, man / Pickin' the banana / Hooray! For Havana.” The song mocks the paranoia of the U.S. government and the idea that it is spying on a Cuban talent show in order to collect intelligence about what its enemies during the Cold War were doing. Like the Ramones’ song, there were many protest songs during the Sixties and Seventies that were written out of frustration with what the U.S. government was doing during the Cold War—whether that was attempting to assassinate Castro or propping up a puppet dictator in Vietnam, as Anderson points out. Some people, frustrated by the state of the U.S. government, found in punk the perfect expression of their anger and angst. Others went the opposite direction: they turned to expressions of peace and love to find their place and footing.
Scott McKenzie’s “San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair)” was the type of hippie love that some young people were turning to in response to the turmoil of the 1960s: “If you’re going to San Franciso, be sure to wear flowers in your hair,” were the words McKenzie crooned: the flower power generation was part of the anti-War movement—which had originated on colleges before deviating into the type of grungy, hippie, free love type of associations and manifestations that it would take on through artists like McKenzie and others. As Anderson notes “youthful activism was becoming a mainstay of the sixties, and that certainly was true as the first baby boomers arrived on college campuses for the fall semester” in 1964 one year following JFK’s murder. The situation would only get worse as Johnson would ramp up America’s presence in Vietnam following the Gulf of Tonkin incident. Students would find solace in the peace and love movement—i.e., the counter-culture that became Sixties culture thanks to songs like “San Francisco.” Not everyone was buying it though. The Sex Pistols, like the Ramones, formed in response to the sentimentality they saw corroding the young society. The Sex Pistols were blunt about where the West was heading: “There's no future / No future / No future for you” they sang in “God Save the Queen”—and it was exactly what the punk generation of the 1970s wanted to hear, having tired of the all the peace and love expressions.
The Sex Pistols were on the tail end of the British Invasion that really got going in the mid 1960s with the arrivals of the Beatles and Rolling Stones in the U.S. The Beatles were the ultimate crossover band: they started off in the same vein as Buddy Holly and ended up representing the turbulent times of the decade, growing out their beards and long hair like the other hippies. As Anderson notes, “by autumn 1964 crew cuts and culottes suddenly were being replaced by bangs and miniskirts: America was becoming sexy.” The Beatles had a lot to do with that. Their hit “I Want to Hold Your Hand” was full of the youthful, sexual, sentimental love that the hippies would embrace: “And when I touch you / I feel happy inside / It's such a feelin' that my love / I can't hide.” It was a nice distraction from the Cold War, the assassination, the anger, outrage and frustration. Love and pop songs made everything seem better. The young did not want to be part of the disintegration of the Old World that their parents seemed to be orchestrating. They wanted to reject it completely in many ways. The Doors were the ultimate expression of this total rejection. Their 1967 song “Hello, I Love You” was about sexual yearning for a woman passing on the sidewalk—the most trivial of all actions reducing Jim Morrison to rubble: “Hello, I love you Won't you tell me your name… Her arms are wicked and her legs are long When she moves my brain screams out this song.” Morrison’s goal was to open the doors of perception—and those doors opened on free love, drug culture, and rejection of the Establishment—i.e., the established order of society. Morrison was like a wrecking ball for the young generation, elevating lust and heat over order and brains. It all happened, however, as a result of Kennedy—everything could be traced back to that.
JFK thought he had popular support for addressing the Communist threat in Vietnam. He had looked at opinion polls which showed 60% favorability: so he “quietly increased U.S. advisers in South Vietnam from 1,600 in 1960 to 16,000 by 1963” (Anderson). This was the first phase of the escalation that would rip under Johnson and finally blow apart under Nixon. The pain that the Vietnam War caused was felt by John Fogerty of Creedence Clearwater Revival, who wrote “Wrote a Song for Everyone” about the giant messes that the world’s leaders seemed to always be getting their people into: “Saw the people standin' thousand years in chains. Somebody said it's diff'rent now, look, it's just the same. Pharoahs spin the message, 'round and 'round the truth. They could have saved a million people, How can I tell you?” Creedence, like many bands in 1969, were frustrated beyond words at the tragic turn American history had taken that decade: the assassinations of two Kennedys, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King had rocked the country, and Fogerty felt like there was nothing he could even say at this point to convey the bewilderment: “If you see the answer, now's the time to say. All I want, all I want is to get you down and pray.” It was the kind of spiritual message that many felt was missing now that so many had been silenced.
The four major assassinations of the 1960s were like the death of the American conscience—the American soul. The voices that had been most prominent had been silenced. All felt stupefied. Some retreated into a passive cocoon where they could sing of love and offer up their protest songs, following in the “spirit” they believed of MLK—not acting violent or countering violence with violence but rather countering the aggression of the government with hope and love. Others made fists and shouted angrily and broke the rules—they were the punks and they, like Malcolm X, understood that sometimes violence was necessary in order to counter those who were threatening your existence.
Works Cited
Anderson, Terry. The Sixties. Routledge, 1999.
Beatles. I Want to Hold Your Hand. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jenWdylTtzs
Creedence Clearwater Revival. Wrote a Song for Everyone, 1969.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2-fqdCKCMA
The Doors. Hello, I Love You. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8f1z-nHvt3c
McKenzie, Scott. San Francisco. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7I0vkKy504U
Ramones. Havana Affair, 1976. Retrieved from
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6UlXZxch-A
Sex Pistols. God Save the Queen. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvMxqcgBhWQ