By the time I graduated from university in 1966 at the age of 21 I owned two LP albums. One was given to me by my mother after my father's death in May 1965. The LP was Handel 's Messiah. That LP was symbolic of the classical music influences from my parents in the years of my life from 1944 to 1966. The other LP I bought in the late summer of 1965 or early autumn, the first weeks of my final year at university in an honours sociology course. The album was Barrie McGuire's The Eve of Destruction. Mc
Guire helped get the Mamas and the Papas going. On 25 September 1965 the song went to #1 on the charts while the LP topped at #37. All these songs lingered
on the edges of my life
and even penetrated into
the core from time to time
from those halcyon days
of the fifties to the seventies.
Clive James and Peter Porter, in their discussion of 'books of the forties and fifties,' talked about music, classical and other, taking over from literature in the last half of the twentieth century in providing that sense of certitude, although irrational and essentially appealing to the emotions, that people felt a need for in their lives. Among the many topics they talked about relevant to music and poetry--my own interests--was the decline of ideology after WW2 and into the 1950s as well as the role that Alexander Solzenitsyn's books played in the fifties, sixties and seventies in providing an important ingredient in the residue of ideology insofar as the Left was concerned, as fascism had done insofar as the Right was concerned in the two previous decades. A reservoir of skepticism in the west, and especially in England, returned the centre of poetry to the individual and away from its expression and interest in the general society in those same years. I have often thought with some other analysts of poetry that advertising and sociology became in the post-WW2 period new forms of poetry. -Ron Price with thanks to "Clive James and Peter Porter," Sunday Special, ABC Radio, 5:30-6:00 p.m., 2 December, 2001.
As ideology wound down in the fifties, the sixties and seventies, we began to grow and grow all over, unobtrusively. So it is that I've spent my adult life with people who have no ideology, plenty of convictions and passionate
intensity all too much of it, but no ideological centre-the centre did not hold and that mere anarchy was loosed upon the land as well as that blood-dimmed tide drowning that1
ceremony of innocence, if innocence
it was, if innocence it be, back then.
People made homes for their minds-
reading novels, listening to music, watching TV, working in the garden, absolutely no interest in going to meetings--
except to learn macrame, lead lighting and--
inevitable work-associated special planning sessions at 8 p.m. or 8 am or noon instead of lunch--or a new course, or something at uni, or a movie, or a volunteer job where ideology was not desired, contemplated or required.
For ideology did not grab anyone anymore
and religious ideology became the no-no
among no-no's--amidst endless subjectivity.
Superficial and not-so-superficial pragmatism had made everyone into practical realists,
enjoying as far as they were able the complex juxtapositions of pleasures and disenchantments thrown up on the shore of their life-worlds.
And slowly, yes slowly, a new ideology, a new dogma, grew until it came to manifest an attractive form, a gentle beauty all around the world with holy dust at the centre--and a slow greening of people from that desolate garden of arid and unholy disenchantment.2
1 From a poem by W. B. Yeats quoted in thousands of places.
2 The Baha'i Faith spread slowly, unobtrusively around the world as Barry McGuire and The Mamas and the Papas grew to young adulthood and finally into old age. Music helped, as Peter Porter and Clive James pointed out above in their discussion. I immensely enjoyed these musical artists; they enriched my centre-but they were never the centre.
Ron Price
2 December 2001
Updated 1/1/08.moreless
Episode Summary
EDIT
This tumultuous 1960s folk-pop group, best known for hits like "California Dreamin'" and "Monday, Monday", rival Fleetwood Mac for it's internal romantic turmoil, and its members' battles with drug addiction. Even though John and Michelle Phillips are not speaking to each other, they each speak fondly and honestly about the relationships within the group. Everyone gets teary-eyed when discussing the memory of Mama Cass Elliot, and the myth surrounding her death.moreless
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Leah KunkelHerself
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Lou AdlerHimself
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Denny DohertyHimself
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Jim Forbes
Narrator
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