Episode 18: 1969 Part I

11/18/19 • 102 min

We’re putting down a marker with this episode, and the follow-up: the highest highs and the lowest lows of the entire Rock Era occurred in 1969. It’s a year so big, we had to cut it in two, in order to serve it up properly.

We start in January, with The Beatles on The Roof, a 42-minute outdoor concert that definitely warmed up the neighborhood of Mayfair, London, England. Then we catch up with their friends and rivals, The Rolling Stones.

The Stones broke out HUGE in 68 and 69, the beginning of an incredible five-year run: from Beggars Banquet on through to Exile On Main Street. Peak Stones, the sweet spot for the World’s Greatest Rock N Roll Band.

Brian Jones is out, Mick Taylor is in. We talk about how that happened, and how it impacted the Stones’ sound and attitude. Another influence starts seeping in: American Country Music, thanks to Keith’s new best buddy, Gram Parsons.

Brian’s tragic--and still unexplained--demise changes the Hyde Park Concert from a coming-out party into a memorial service. Emotion and conviction carry the day, and Hyde Park sets a very high and hopeful bar; it’s an early example of How To Successfully Pull Off A Really Big Concert.

During that “Moon-Crazy Summer” of 1969, NASA pulls off something really big. It’s the single greatest feat--so far--of human exploration: The Apollo 11 mission to the moon and back. We look at the moon landing through the Rock N Roll lens; we’ll talk about space travel, science fiction, and fantasy...in books, film, television, and most of all, in Rock Music.

Then David Bowie, with his lifelong knack for being ahead of his time, said take your protein pills and put your helmet on.

And we did.

And in just a short time we got used to it, became a little jaded about it.

That comes later. Here and now in the summer of 1969; stardust, golden, billion year old carbon...got to get ourselves back to the garden.

We’ll open Part Two at Yasgur’s Farm in upstate New York, and we’ll light a candle in the rain.

Head over to Pantheon Podcasts for full show notes.

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Then David Bowie, with his lifelong knack for being ahead of his time, said take your protein pills and put your helmet on.

And we did.

And in just a short time we got used to it, became a little jaded about it.

That comes later. Here and now in the summer of 1969; stardust, golden, billion year old carbon...got to get ourselves back to the garden.

We’ll open Part Two at Yasgur’s Farm in upstate New York, and we’ll light a candle in the rain.

Head over to Pantheon Podcasts for full show notes.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Previous Episode

Episode 17: Bookends

Chapter 17 of Rock N Roll Archaeology is bookended by a couple of Simon & Garfunkel albums: “Bookends” from the spring of 1968; and “Bridge Over Troubled Water” from January of 1970.

Our story takes place mostly in New York City: a city big enough to spawn two very different, very talented--and very influential--artists: Paul Simon and Lou Reed.

We skip work on a cold January afternoon to catch a movie: Mike Nichols’ “The Graduate.” It’s a generation milestone of a film, and Simon & Garfunkel’s music is a big part of that; what’s more, we argue, it’s a different kind of soundtrack, something new in film and popular culture.

We meet Tom Wilson, the first African-American staff producer at Columbia Records. Tom oversaw the first two Simon & Garfunkel albums. We follow him for a little while and he leads us to...Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground.

We get to know Lou and the Velvets, and the scene from which they sprang: Andy Warhol’s Factory. We meet a Factory hang-around, an angry young woman with good reasons to be angry, but she takes it way too far, with tragic consequences.

And we’ll meet the first Punk Rock band: The MC5, and the revolutionary political milieu they occupied. Wayne Kramer of the MC5 has some things to say about that, and about a fateful MC5 gig at the Fillmore East.

Finally, we’ll meet one of our favorite artists ever, who came from the same scene as the MC5: Iggy Pop. We say “Amen” to Iggy Pop.

We wrap it back around to Simon & Garfunkel, and their take on the anger and disappointment, on the turmoil of the late 1960s. An offer of comfort and healing is the first big Pop hit of the 1970s.

Listen to episodes 1-16 of Rock N Roll Archaeology and all our other podcasts at www.pantheonpodcasts.com

Next Episode

Episode 19: 1969 Part II

This episode is dedicated with love to the memory of our dear friend Dennis Gordon. Dennis was the big booming voice on our show “bumpers” that would begin and end each chapter of Rock N Roll Archaeology. Thank you Dennis, we miss you. May the Four Winds blow you safely home.

Welcome back to the second half of our big chapter telling the big story of a big year in Rock. If you haven’t done so already, we highly recommend you listen to Episode 18 before you delve into this one!

We tell the story of 1969 by telling the story of four concerts: The Beatles on the Roof, The Rolling Stones in Hyde Park was the first part. Part Two will take us to the peak, to the apotheosis of Woodstock...and to the abyss at Altamont. And we’ll go to some other places in between too.

1969 is the year Rock N Roll goes global, and we’ll get into that a little, and set up later discussions of great topics like Rock behind the Iron Curtain and the growing influence of Reggae and World Beat.

Then we’ll take you to Woodstock, and call off the roster, with lots of great music and commentary.

The first mythical Rock tour--the Rolling Stones ‘69 tour of America, is up next. That will take us to the final show of the tour, on a dark December night in California, where everything that can go wrong, will go wrong, and the consequences will be tragic.

We close out with some thoughts on the year and on the decade we’ve just completed, and on what comes next.

This show is part of Pantheon Podcasts.

@PantheonPods

Listen in HD only at www.rocknrollarchaeology.com