My Music Library - 1969

1969. It was the year that not only marked the end of the 60's in a literal sense, but heralded the cultural end as well. The Summer of Love seemed a distant memory as the Manson "family" went on the rampage in California. While there was Woodstock, there was also Altamont.

Events that happened this year would affect the world for years to come.

Nixon declared the Nixon Doctrine, stating that the United States expected its Asian allies to take care of their own military defense. In essence, it heralded a long, slow, bloody fade to our involvement in Vietnam.

Yasser Arafat was elected the leader of the PLO. Muammar al-Gaddafi, a captain in the Libyan Army, staged a coup and ousted Libya's King. Rupert Murdoch expanded his media empire by purchasing the largest selling British Sunday newspaper, The News of the World. Serious border clashes occurred between the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China, raising the specter of a Sino-Soviet War.

These events weren't all bad. The first message was sent over ARPANET, the forerunner of the Internet. UNIX, the language of computer servers for decades was born. It would later give rise to Mac OS and Linux.

Monty Python's Flying Circus and Sesame Street premiered and gave people a reason to watch PBS.

My favorite part was Apollo 11 landing on the Moon. For a moment, the world held its collective breath as Neil Armstrong took his "giant leap for mankind."

In the music world, Noel Redding finally had enough of Jimi Hendrix and the hysteria surrounding the scene and quit the band.

Creedence Clearwater Revival, known henceforth as CCR, released not 1, not 2, but 3 albums! They even played Woodstock, but they didn't go on until 3 AM because The Grateful Dead had jammed far past their scheduled set time. By this time, most of the audience had passed out from exhaustion.

The Beatles released Abbey Road, their last great album. In fact, it was the last album they recorded as 1970's Let It Be was recorded several months before the Abbey Road sessions. Their last live performance was on the rooftop of Apple HQ in January, before it was broken up by police (U2 would do something similar for the "Where The Streets Have No Name" video). The Beatles had already begun to go their separate ways as business decisions, personal lives, and creative differences drove the Fab 4 into the Mad 4.

The Doors hit bottom with The Soft Parade. For some reason, they thought it would be a good idea to add horns and aim for a more commercial sound. Morrisson was pretty much drunk all the time at this point. Except for the single, “Touch Me,” and the title track, a transcript of an acid trip if there ever was one, the album sucks (well, “Shaman’s Blues” was ok). In fact, it was painful to go back and listen to it for this post.

Morrisson's drinking and rock god status had finally taken its toll artistically and turned him into a piece of crap. It all culminated in the Miami Incident. Something must've clicked in his head at this point. In the few shows the band did several months later, Morrisson ditched the rock god persona for a more laid back performer. The wild shaman antics were replaced by a sober man on a bar stool. Leather pants were ditched for jeans, t-shirt, and a beard.

Pink Floyd released the two record Ummagumma? Yeah. WTF? The first record was live material while the second record was “experimental” studio material. Each band member wrote material to comprise 1/4 of the record and, except for Gilmour’s piece, performed it by themselves. Waters’ “Grantchester Meadows” is a nice acoustic piece while “Several Species of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together in a Cave and Grooving with a Pict” is funny. Gilmour’s “The Narrow Way” is a good psychedelic rock song. But “Sysyphus” (Wright) and “The Grand Vizier’s Garden Party” (Mason) come across as self-indulgent dreck.

Led Zeppelin heralded the coming of the 70's with their eponymous debut. It all started with the first track off the album, "Good Times Bad Times."

"In the days of my youth I was told what it means to be a man.
Now I've reached that age I try to do all those things the best I can."

That bit of verse became the battle cry of every teenage male and set the tone for the next decade to come.

The album and it's follow up, II, was a mix of blues covers and hard rock numbers with even the occasional ballad (before 80's metal bands made them suck) thrown in for good measure.

While hard rock had its foundation in the Blues, where musicians went with it from there was another matter. While Hendrix was cooking out on the astral plane, Led Zeppelin was firmly rooted, digging in the dirt here on Earth. In fact, Led Zeppelin's sound was forging something heretofore unheard of: Heavy Metal.

Page, Plant, Bonham and Jones. You know them and what they delivered. I won't go on about them any further right now.

But my favorite album of the year was Tommy by The Who. You've know the story. No need to rehash it, right? It was more than "that deaf, dumb and blind kid sure plays a mean pinball." Then again, pinball? We journey with Tommy from his traumatized upbringing to his eventual spiritual awakening. It was ambitious in its undertaking and, somehow, the band pulls it off. The album launched the band into greatness. The fact that they didn't rely on an orchestra to back them probably helped. Audiences were amazed that four musicians could make so much music on stage.

1969 revealed that the rock world was now in transition. The 60's were fading and the 70's were coming. Some bands adapted. Others didn't and faded away.

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DED