Counterculture Kaleidoscope: Musical and Cultural Perspectives on Late Sixties San Francisco

6. Helter Skelter: Lessons from the End of the Counterculture

Chapter Six Helter Skelter Lessons from the End of the Counterculture In 1968, a relatively new band named Steppenwolf released their ‹rst album and earned huge popularity with the album’s hit track, “Born to Be Wild.” Taking advantage of the spotlight , the band quickly released their second album that same year, Steppenwolf the Second, featuring the song “Magic Carpet Ride.” Both songs exuded a kind of hybridity, evidenced not just by their crossover appeal with both underground music audiences and Top 40 radio listeners, but in the multiplicity built into the songs themselves. What was happening in Steppenwolf ’s music was also happening in the music of several other more established bands.1 It wasn’t that songs had never been crossover hits before or that there hadn’t been songs where the in›uences of more than one musical style could be heard. Rather, it was that well-established popular music categories , clear-cut musical styles, and speci‹c target audiences were getting out of focus. Earlier in 1967, Jefferson Airplane’s music had exempli‹ed the psychedelic counterculture sound. Throughout the early sixties, Bob Dylan’s music had been inseparable from the folk 155 music genre. Diana Ross had been a key shaper of the Motown sound. Otis Redding had pushed soul music into the spotlight. The Beatles and the Rolling Stones had carved out two distinct musical poles of the British Invasion sound. But then, at the beginning of 1968, Otis Redding listened repeatedly to the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper album and released the blues, soul, and popular ballad “Dock of the Bay.” The Rolling Stones, too, responded to the popularity of the Beatles’ album by breaking from their mainstream “bad boys of the British Invasion” role with their 1967 album Their Satanic Majesties Request and their mid-1968 hard-drugs-in›uenced, blues rock song “Jumpin’ Jack Flash.” And then there was Steppenwolf’s “Magic Carpet Ride.” It was exaggerated psychedelic counterculture on tap with a pop-ish dance rhythm, childlike appeal, and a recurring message of “fantasy will set you free.” Even the Top 40 listener could jump on board, take the imaginary ride, and indulge in the undemanding message. Something about the pluralistic, refusal-to-be-aligned sensibility of the counterculture had seeped out into the greater popular music world and was taking on a life of its own. As we have seen, from late 1965 through the beginning of 1967, the San Francisco counterculture didn’t identify itself in opposition to the system, didn’t claim to be an alternative to the mainstream, and didn’t view itself as a movement that would change the dominant capitalistic structure. It hoped to live out its new tribalism distinct from the system. Pluralism, nonalignment, and negation were its tools for shaping a distinct existence and a self-image that appeared natural, politically disengaged, sexually liberated, color blind, spiritually minded, and free of consumerism. In actuality, though, the countercultural lifestyle and image needed both the semblance of autonomy as well as access to the system for its driving sensibility to be realized. The counterculture relied on pluralism to refuse association with any one category while also drawing on, sometimes surreptitiously, sometimes unCounterculture Kaleidoscope 156 knowingly, various aspects of the mainstream system to sustain itself. With pluralism, the counterculture believed that it could drop out of system. However, because it continued to use threads of mainstream consumer culture to craft its image, the counterculture tempted fate in ways that contributed to its own demise. The counterculture that existed in the HaightAshbury district from late 1965 through mid-1967 dissolved and spread out. What had seemed to be a self-contained entity of refusal became more of an infectious, multifaceted ethos of rebellious pluralism. As one Grateful Dead biographer noted, “By 1970, Haight-Ashbury’s bacchanal was history.”2 In addition to the Woodstock Festival, there are two familiar stories—about the Altamont Festival and about Charles Manson —that are often cited in historical accounts as markers of the end of the sixties. Certainly, historians of all types tend to focus on speci‹c dates and events as symbolic points of change. And typically these points serve as historical constituents of a teleological history. Joel Selvin, for example, refers to the Monterey Pop Festival as a marker of a culture “on the cusp of innocence.” Similarly, Carol Brightman implies a teleological order of events when she...