The tragic aspect of the late ‘60s hippie movement was how hard it ate shit when it tripped over the harsh realities of the world. Coming out of the impressively shallow 1950s, the Love Generation were fueled by sexual and chemical revolution, celebrating peace, freedom, rock’n’roll, and the end of the hideous war in Vietnam. Unfortunately, a series of massive bummers -- the Manson Family slayings, the murder at the Altamont Free Concert, and the state-sanctioned assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., to name just a few -- shone a light on many of the movement’s shortcomings and internal conflicts, while the eventual desire to make a buck led many revolutionary artists to perform Vegas revues and shill for Coke.
To paraphrase Hunter Thompson, without the crash of the wave that was the ‘60s, heavy metal simply wouldn’t exist. Black Sabbath were obviously products of their industrial surroundings in Birmingham, but it was the realization that darkness might (and probably would) swallow the light that gave their debut such resounding cultural weight. Meanwhile, the dampening parade of the late ‘60s helped birth the biker movement, whose champions approached freedom with a more aggressive, no-nonsense sound booming behind them. The rest, as they say, is history.
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