Why the U.S. Failed in Vietnam: Key Reasons Behind a Costly Conflict

The Vietnam War remains one of the most controversial and analyzed conflicts in U.S. history. In the Sixties it was on the evening news every day and every teen at that time had to think about what they would do if they were called to go serve. Despite the country's military superiority, the United States ultimately failed to achieve its objectives in Vietnam. 

Over the years I've heard many people propose that had John F. Kennedy not been assassinated we would never have gotten mired in that costly, useless war. Seymour Hersh, in his JFK expose The Dark Side of Camelot, shows very clearly that Kennedy was himself a hawk on the war, having mis-read it as Cold War action instead of what it was, an effort to achieve Vietnam's independence from foreign colonial rule. 

Misunderstanding the nature of the conflict was America's chief failure. We believed we were stopping the spread of Communism. U.S. leaders underestimated the importance of Vietnam's quest for national identity. Proponents for the war continuously repeated, as did their media mouthpiece, the Domino Effect theory, insisting that all Southeast Asia would fall to Communism if we failed to stop them here. We failed, and Southeast Asia did not fall.

In addition to this, the U.S.lacked a clear military objective, unlike World War II, where the goals were well-defined (such as the unconditional surrender of Germany and Japan). The U.S. in Vietnam had a more ambiguous mission. Initially, it was to support the South Vietnamese government against communist insurgents, but the lack of a clear exit strategy or concrete end goals made it difficult to measure progress. As a result, the U.S. military found itself trapped in a prolonged war of attrition, with no clear understanding of what "victory" looked like.

The U.S. also severely underestimated the capabilities and resolve of its enemy. (See WWAUA) The Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army (NVA) were highly adaptable, using guerilla tactics that made conventional U.S. military strategies less effective. The terrain in Vietnam, from dense jungles to rural villages, was ideal for guerilla warfare, and the U.S. military struggled to adapt to these conditions. (See: Battle of Dien Bien Phu)

Additionally, the Viet Cong had the support of many South Vietnamese civilians, which made it difficult for American forces to differentiate between combatants and non-combatants. The extensive use of airpower and large-scale bombing campaigns like Operation Rolling Thunder, intended to demoralize the enemy, often had the opposite effect, stiffening the resolve of the Vietnamese. I remember reading somewhere that for every innocent South Vietnamese civilian we killed, we created 10 more Viet Cong soldiers and sympathizers.

While the war raged on in Vietnam, public support for the conflict steadily eroded in the U.S. By the late 1960s, the anti-war movement had gained significant traction, fueled by increasing media coverage of the war’s brutality, the high number of American casualties, and the perception that the government was not being truthful about the war’s progress. The 1968 Tet Offensive, although a military failure for the Viet Cong, was a psychological victory that significantly weakened U.S. public confidence in the war effort. Mounting protests, political pressure, and a divided public eventually forced the U.S. government to de-escalate and seek a way out.

Finally, the U.S. was supporting a weak and corrupt South Vietnamese government that lacked popular support. Successive leaders in South Vietnam were seen by many Vietnamese as out of touch with the needs of the people and overly dependent on U.S. aid and military assistance. This lack of legitimacy made it difficult for the South Vietnamese government to maintain order and effectively combat the Viet Cong insurgency. U.S. efforts to build a stable, democratic government in South Vietnam were constantly undermined by internal divisions, corruption, and the perception of the government as a puppet regime.

Bottom Line: Vietnam became a "tar baby" for each successive administration from Kennedy to Nixon. Like Brer Rabbit, the more the U.S.got involved, the more entangled we became in a war we could not win, ultimately leading to one of the most significant military and political defeats in American history.

Frank Zappa Explains Why the 60s Music Scene Scene Was Such a Kick

Last week I shared some of the songs that brought to mind memories of various people who were important to me in one way or another. One of these songs was the zany one-hit-wonder They're Coming to Take Me Away Haha. Assuming you're familiar with the song (and I won't blame you if you're not), have you ever noticed the similarity between the opening notes (no notes, but percussion) and the intro to Bob Dylan's Rainy Day Women #12 & 35.

It's not identical, but similar, until Dylan adds that Salvation Army Band accompaniment, including trombone, the slide trombone being the second most memorable feature of the background players, the heartfelt laughter being first--none of which detracts in any way from the lyrics, which have nothing to do with rainy day women and everything to do with the punch line.

So, the question on the table is this: How did all those crazy songs like They're Coming to Take Me Away Haha get produced, and even promoted?

First off, silly songs had always peppered the pop charts, and were no doubt features of traditional folk music from the Hngarian hills to the Scottish Highlands. Nevertheless they became more visible via the advent of radio, and that didn't start in the Sixties either. Examples include the Monster Mash (1962), Flying Purple People Eater (1958), and Alley-Oop (1960).

But the late Sixties, when I was in high school, gave us plenty of unexpected music that one would be hard pressed to find a record label for today. Here are just a few memorable tunes that may bring back memories if you're a Boomer: Snoopy vs. The Red Baron, Wild Thing, Green Tambourine and Gitarzan to name a few.

Painting by the author.

Bob Hoffman, in his new book Advertising For Skeptics, shared an insight from Frank Zappa about why this period in pop music was such a swirl of creativity. Here's a link to a 1987 interview where Zappa explains the decline of the music business.  

The 60s were a time of transition where book publishing and the music industry weren't sure what would or would not work in the marketplace. I've written elsewhere about how the New York publishing houses eventually got out of the religious market because they were getting pummeled by not understanding the Jesus Movement.

In the music scene they're attitude was something akin to throwing spaghetti on the wall to see what stuck. They were often surprised.

“One thing that did happen in the 60s,” he (Zappa) says, “was some music of an unusual and experimental nature did get recorded, did get released.” The executives of the day were “cigar-chomping old guys who looked at the product and said, 'I don’t know. Who knows what it is? Record it, stick it out. If it sells, alright!'”


Freak Out (Mothers of Invention) was born in this spirit, as was "They're Coming To Take Me Away, Haha."

That's all for now. The doorknob's broke.

Related Link
Zappa Quotebook

Glen Campbell and Stevie Wonder Sing "Blowin' in the Wind"

Creative Commons

In the years leading up to his election, Ronald Reagan would do a daily radio talk, much like people today do daily blog posts or daily podcasts. Wherever he went he carried with him a cigar box which contained clippings of newspaper articles which served as starter material -- kindling -- when he had a daily talk to give but lacked an idea or theme.

There's a sense in which I do the same thing, except I don't store my ideas in a cigar box. Instead, I use a virtual holding tank here on Blogger. It's called Drafts. That is, I begin more blog posts than I have time to complete. I tell myself I will get back to it one day, like unfinished business. As of this morning I have 945 drafts. This one was intended to be a memorial for Glen Campbell, who passed away in August 2017.

As I searched for something special to accompany my memories of Glen Campbell, I found this video of Campbell performing Dylan's Blowin' in the Wind with Stevie Wonder. Which derailed my blog post because as I read a little about Wonder a new story emerged. Then I set this unfinished idea aside, till this morning.

Glen Campbell's career exemplifies being in the right place at the right time. Stevie Wonder's story is about defying the odds.

Campbell, 1967. Public domain.

The cherub-faced Campbell was much older than we thought when he moved from studio musician with the Wrecking Crew to becoming a performer in his own right in the late 60s. Those studio musicians did an amazing amount of uncredited work. According to the Times piece cited above Campbell played or sang on nearly 600 recorded songs in 1963 alone.

In 1969 he got his own show called The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour. Like Johnny Cash and the Smothers Brothers, it became a venue for showcasing up and coming musicians. One of these megastars was Stevie Wonder, with whom he performed "Blowin' in the Wind" which aired on February 19, 1969.

Did you know that Campbell was 33 years old at the time? The Rhinestone Cowboy singer star was born in 1936, a few years younger than my parents. The boy wonder, Stevie Wonder, was born in 1950, and just two years older than myself.

Wonder's story is striking. Born a premie, he was put on oxygen the first weeks of his life. Unfortunately, medical science has since learned that you can damage an infant with too much oxygen as easily as not enough. The result for this little one was detached retinas. In other words, he was not born blind but ended up that way in the first weeks of life.

1973. Public domain.

His hardships didn't end there. At age four his parents were divorced. His mother moved to Detroit, Motor City. Broken homes don't automatically lead to juvenile delinquency and it's apparent his mother's nurturing did him good.

I neglected to mention that his mother was a songwriter, which factors into this story. At an early age he sang in church (age 4) and learned to play piano, harmonica and drums. He formed a group with a friend and performed on street corners and at parties when he was 11. He sang one of his own compositions to one of the Miracles, and soon was connected to Motown.

His stage name, Stevie Wonder, is not his real name, of course. His actual last name is Morris. (Dylan did officially change his stage name to become his real name.) Stevie Wonder was just 19 when he performed Blowing in the Wind with Glen Campbell on the latter's show.

Bob Dylan first conceived this song when he was 19, performing a two verse version at Gerde's Folk City a month before his 20th birthday. The full version was recorded in July and became one of the iconic songs of his iconic second album, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, which was released the following Spring.

* * * *

Here's Bob, not yet 22, performing this song on television, March 1963.


In the beginning... 
Meantime, life goes on. Make the most of it.
Mucho thanks to Bob, Stevie and Glen for all the Great Music
that has so enriched our lives over the years.

Throwback Thursday: Dylan's Lonesome Mournful Sound

THROWBACK THURSDAY: 2009

"'Only A Pawn In Their Game' is one of Dylan's truly great songs, and what puts it over the top... is its unmatched tone." ~ John Hinchey, Like A Complete Unknown

While driving to Morris to pick up my daughter, now finished with school and coming home before the next chapter of her life begins, I was listening to the soundtrack of Martin Scorcese's Dylan bio No Direction Home. What caught me is that lonesome, mournful quality in his delivery that must have been so out of step with the pop world of its time.

The early Sixties produced groups like The Four Seasons and Jay & the Americans, The Chiffons, The Crystals and The Safaris were sending records to the top of the charts. Smiles and good cheer were the order of the day. In 1963 The Ronettes produced the top hit of the year, Be My Baby, with the Kingsmen's Louie, Louie right on its heels at #2.

Against this backdrop Dylan was nowhere, seemingly out of step and out of sight. His roots: the classic folk tradition. His aim: to wear the mantle of Woody Guthrie for a new generation, drawing attention to the outcast, the forgotten, the downtrodden, the misfit, the alienated and disenfranchised. In 1963 Dylan produced an album lyrically rich and socially pointed, The Times They Are A-Changin'. Some might describe it as bleak, but I say otherwise. It's a harsh realism. Dylan's grim countenance is a counterweight to the cheery, oblivious lighthearted distractions of the pop culture within which much of America was bathing.

The images on this page were produced last night based on the somber Dylan that sears the cover of this album.

Only A Pawn In Their Game

A bullet from the back of a bush took Medgar Evers' blood
A finger fired the trigger to his name
A handle hid out in the dark
A hand set the spark
Two eyes took the aim
Behind a man's brain
But he can't be blamed
He's only a pawn in their game.

A South politician preaches to the poor white man
"You got more than blacks, don't complain
You're better than them, you been born with white skin" they explain
And the Negro's name
Is used it is plain
For the politician's gain
As he rises to fame
And the poor white remains
On the caboose of the train
But it ain't him to blame
He's only a pawn in their game.

The deputy sheriffs, the soldiers, the governors get paid
And the marshals and cops get the same
But the poor white man's used in the hands of them all like a tool
He's taught in his school
From the start by the rule
That the laws are with him
To protect his white skin
To keep up his hate
So he never thinks straight
'Bout the shape that he's in
But it ain't him to blame
He's only a pawn in their game.

From the poverty shacks, he looks from the cracks to the tracks
And the hoof beats pound in his brain
And he's taught how to walk in a pack
Shoot in the back
With his fist in a clinch
To hang and to lynch
To hide 'neath the hood
To kill with no pain
Like a dog on a chain
He ain't got no name
But it ain't him to blame
He's only a pawn in their game.

The day Medgar Evers was buried from the bullet he caught
They lowered him down as a king
But when the shadowy sun sets on the one
That fired the gun
He'll see by his grave
On the stone that remains
Carved next to his name
His epitaph plain:
Only a pawn in their game.

Recorded June 1963
Copyright Bob Dylan

* * * *

Here's another reminder to mark your calendars for the October 15 celebration of John Bushey's KUMD radio show Highway 61 Revisited. Don't wait to the last minute to get your tickets. (Follow the link below the poster.)

Join us October 15 at the Rex.

Purchase tickets here. Special thanks to KUMD, the Duluth Dylan Fest Committee, the Rex Bar and everyone else who is helping to make this event happen.

Meantime life goes on.... Stir it up.

Innocence Lost: A Reflection on the Sixties

"No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning. I keep on swallowing. At other times it feels like being mildly concussed. There is a sort of invisible blanket between the world and me." 
~ C. S. Lewis

These are the opening words of A Grief Observed, C. S. Lewis' personal reflections on the loss of his wife Joy Davidson. Can it be that our nation itself received this same concussive blow on the day John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963?

I find it interesting that C. S. Lewis, Aldous Huxley and John F. Kennedy all died on the same day in 1963. The deaths of Lewis and Huxley, whose personal lives were more remote from most of us, were eclipsed by the dramatic assassination of our president... and the subsequent events surrounding his passing.

There have been few more powerful events in our personal histories. Television brought this president into our homes like none before him. His PR-created persona made him out to be more than a man. He was a mythological god. He rode a white horse. He was a knight in shining armor. With the vitality of Youth, he provided a euphoric hope that seemed necessary after two world wars, a major depression and the brooding tensions of the Cold War.

I was in sixth grade that day, Stafford School, Maple Heights, Ohio. There was an announcement over the loudspeaker that we were all to go to the auditorium for an assembly. This was the same room where we assembled to see men from NASA demonstrate how a rocket would within the next ten years carry men to the moon.

As we shuffled along toward the nearly filled assembly room, I was distracted by a janitor who was stepping in from outside. I remember the grey November sky. And the janitor's tears, the janitor standing there, cap in hand, tears streaming down his wrinkled cheeks, looking back toward the flag he had just lowered to half mast. I don't remember the assembly, or much of anything else. Only the image of that janitor weeping.

Few people knew it then, but that day was a portent of difficult times ahead for America. Medger Evers, Martin Luther King, Robert Kennedy, race riots in every major city, Kent State, My Lai -- the decade, stained with blood, left a generation of parents concussed and children confused.

Wrote Lewis in A Grief Observed, "I find it hard to take in what anyone says. Or perhaps, hard to want to take it in."

And when Nielsson sang: "Everybody's talkin' at me, I can't hear a word they're saying"... did we not find a resonance in our hearts because we, too, were grieving? What was it we had lost? What is it we were looking for? What was Joe Buck looking for? What did Joe Buck find?

I believe it was Gurdjieff who compared life experiences to the food we take into our stomachs. Eventually the food is digested, but it takes time, and some foods longer than others. Likewise, our experiences take time to digest before they are assimilated to nourish or poison us.

Even though more than 50 years have passed, we who were there still sometimes don't know what to say about what we saw and heard and felt. We are still processing our experiences.

While some of the experiences were uniquely ours, many were shared. For this reason it is my conviction that when we have gained a measure of understanding, we have a responsibility to share the light we have received. In this way, our pain becomes redemptive, a healing influence in an otherwise broken world.

* * * *
The above blog post originally appeared here in 2008. It comes to mind again upon having just finished Charles Murray's Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010. The title is misleading. The book is really about the decline that has taken place in all of America in the half century from 1960 on. He presents stats to show that the decline isn't just because what's happened with minorities has dragged all the stats down.

Though the dates run from 1960-2010, it was the assassination of JFK that really placed a marker in the ground. Many of the outcomes that followed were set in motion by that traumatic event. Check out the review of Murray's book here by Graham H. Seibert.

"Darkness at the break of noon... eclipses both the sun and moon.... Meantime, life goes on all around you."

A Reflection on the Sixties

I wrote this short essay in 1993 to be included in a book about the Sixties. Theoretically any profits from the enterprise would be shared, and I signed some kind of paperwork indicating that my submission here was my own and that they had the right to use it. Twenty years have passed and as I read the many comments on Facebook and in the media yesterday my essay came to mind as something that should also be posted to mark the anniversary of that black day.

"No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning. I keep on swallowing. At other times it feels like being mildly concussed. There is a sort of invisible blanket between the world and me."

These are the words with which C.S. Lewis opens A Grief Observed, his personal reflections on the loss of his wife Joy Davidson. Can it be that our nation itself received this same concussive blow on the day John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963?

•

Greg Kinnear as JFK

I find it interesting that C. S. Lewis, Aldous Huxley and John F. Kennedy all died on the same day in 1963. The deaths of Lewis and Huxley, whose personal lives were more remote from most of us, were eclipsed by the dramatic assasination of our president... and the subsequent events surrounding his passing.

There have been few more powerful events in our personal histories. Television brought this president into our homes like none before him. His PR-created persona made him out to be more than a man. He was a mythological god. He rode a white horse. He was a knight in shining armor. With the vitality of Youth, he provided a euphoric hope that seemed necessary after two world wars, a major depression and the brooding tensions of the Cold War.

•

I was in sixth grade that day, Stafford School, Maple Heights, Ohio. There was an announcement over the loudspeaker that we were all to go to the auditorium for an assembly. This was the same room where we assembled to see men from NASA demonstrate how a rocket would within the next ten years carry men to the moon.

As we shuffled along toward the nearly filled assembly room, I was distracted by a janitor who was stepping in from outside. I remember the grey November sky. And the janitor's tears, the janitor standing there, cap in hand, tears streaming down his wrinkled cheeks, looking back toward the flag he had just lowered to half mast.

I don't remember the assembly, or much of anything else. Only the image of that janitor weeping.

•

Few people knew it then, but that day was a portent of difficult times ahead for America. Medger Evers, Martin Luther King, Robert Kennedy, Kent State, My Lai -- the decade, stained with blood, left a generation of parents concussed and children confused.

Wrote Lewis in A Grief Observed, "I find it hard to take in what anyone says. Or perhaps, hard to want to take it in."

And when Nielsson sang: "Everybody's talkin' at me, I can't hear a word they're saying"... did we not find a resonance in our hearts because we, too, were grieving? What was it we had lost? What is it we were looking for? What was Joe Buck looking for? What did Joe Buck find?

•

I believe it was Gurdjieff who compared life experiences to the food we take into our stomachs. Eventually the food is digested, but it takes time, and some foods longer than others. Likewise, our experiences take time to digest before they are assimilated to nourish or poison us.

Even though more than 25 years have passed, sometimes we still don't know what to say about what we saw and heard and felt. We are still processing our experiences. While some of the experiences were uniquely ours, many were shared. For this reason it is my conviction that when we have gained a measure of understanding, we have a responsibility to share the light we have received. In this way, our pain becomes redemptive, a healing influence in an otherwise broken world.

copyright 1993 ed newman

Mad Men: More Than Meets the Eye

When Pop Art swept through the art scene in the Sixties, I didn't get it. A lot of other people didn't get it. In retrospect, Andy Warhol understood the world he lived in far better than most of us who were simply immersed in it, or viscerally reacting against it.

Warhol once pointed out, "It's the movies that have really been running things in America ever since they were invented. They show you what to do, how to do it, when to do it, how to feel about it, and how to look how you feel about it."

In the preface of her book Mad Men on the Couch, Dr. Stephanie Newman writes, "What Warhol meant was that movies not only reflect major social trends and changes; they also shape cultural norms and expectations. Movie and television stars become the avatars of fashion and style, the messengers of ethics and morality.

"And TVs powerful effect continues today."

When Mad Men popped onto the cultural landscape a few years back I was not a television watcher, though occasionally I've dabbled here and there for the purpose of keeping my finger on the pulse of what people were being moved by. The notion of obtaining box sets of complete seasons of your favorite shows was a foreign concept when we were kids. Today, you can obtain collections of every episode of Perry Mason or Lost. And for the record, I have seen all the Perry Mason shows again, and lost myself in the first five seasons of Mad Men.

Mad Men was a special challenge because I practically hated a couple of the characters and didn't want to be around them when they showed up in a scene. At the bidding of a friend I persisted because he said so-and-so isn't such a jerk after the first season, etc.

Being an ad man, what fascinated me about the show was its realistic portrayal of the problem solving aspect of the advertising game and how the agencies provide real services to oftentimes clueless clients. The show's widespread popularity is driven by the manner in which it re-creates the Sixties, mirroring the values, styles and events of that time. The screenwriting is superb.

Newman's book takes each of the characters from the Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce and has them lie on the couch to be analyzed. We see what's beneath the surface in Don Draper the Mad Ave Marlboro Man, Betty Draper the Original Desperate Housewife, Peggy the Career Woman, Pete the Bulldog, Roger the Blue Blood, and Joan the Competent Sexpot. The book deals with the narcissism, racism, anti-Semitism, sexism and every other kind of ism... as does the show, actually.

Just for the fun of it, here's a brief peek at what the real Mad Men of the Sixties were producing for their clients.

Mad Men on the Couch by Dr. Stephanie Newman was published by Thomas Dunne Books, A Division of St. Martin's Press.

Why I Don't Have a Fine Arts Degree

The war was still on, full force, with bombing and napalm and mayhem in Southeast Asia, and confusion amongst the students at home. Ohio University in Athens is my alma mater and for four years, beginning in 1970, I learned a lot about many lessons at and around that campus that sprawled along the Hocking River in those beautiful Southeast Ohio hills.

The early Seventies was a period of contradictions and "mixed up confusion." The Sixties ended with a man walking on the moon while events like Kent State, illegal bombings in Cambodia and My Lai were in the news. Whether it was public education, the times we lived in or simply the air we breathed, "Question Authority" was part of the attitude with which we learned to approach everything. Skepticism about the motives of our leaders, skepticism about our past, skepticism about our values... We were products of the Sixties.

One notion that took hold in me was the incorrect belief that the past had no relevance for what we were living through in the present.

Kate Ellis opens her essay "Parallel Lives: Are We Closer to the Past Than We Think?" with this statement: "Many people today consider the past to be an irrelevance. To a large proportion of the population history is something confined to theme parks, costume drama, museums and what is known now as the heritage industry." Where did this idea come from that the past has no relevance for us today?

Actually, I don't have time to explore that question. Of real interest to me here is that I bought into it. I accepted it wholeheartedly. And as I signed up for art classes at Siegfried Hall, the only art history that interested me was the one class on Modern Art. I had no use for the other art history classes, I believed. Except to graduate with a fine arts degree you had to have two, not one, art history classes. Despite my 90 credit hours of art classes I was still one point shy of obtaining that arts degree.

This is how I finished college with a General Studies degree, instead of Fine Arts. For what it's worth, that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

By the way, week three of the Robert Hughes film series "Shock of the New" about the history of 20th century art will be playing at the Zinema 2 here in Duluth. Today's reel is titled, The Landscape of Pleasure with a discussion afterward led by Jeff Kalstrom, Drawing and Painting professor at UMD. Hopefully, I will see you there.

Sounds of Silence

"Kathy I'm lost," I said, but I knew she was sleeping.
~Paul Simon, America

The other night while rifling through some old LPs I came across Simon and Garfunkel's Sounds of Silence, put it on and drifted back to high school art class. There was a record player in the art room and there were two girls who seemed to own the right to decide what everyone else should listen to because I don't recall ever seeing anyone else ever even touch that record player except them. They were juniors and I was a senior.

The reason Sounds of Silence brought me back to that class is that it was one of the only records they played all year. The other two albums they played were Wednesday Morning 3 a.m., Parsley Sage, Rosemary and Thyme and Bookends. The net result is that by year's end the lyrics to nearly every Simon & Garfunkel song had become permanently etched within my cranium.

As I listened to Side II it dawned on me how dark their music really was. On one level their vocal harmonizations and acoustical sound provided a musicality that was sweet and pleasing to the ear. But getting to the lyrics themselves brings shadows across this landscape and a density that is almost unexpected when juxtaposed with the melodic voices.

The first song is a re-telling of the story of Richard Cory, which was originally a poem by E.A. Robinson about a wealthy factory owner who "owned half of this whole town, with political connections to spread his wealth around," as told from the point of view of an envious man who is at the bottom rung in his factory, looking up from the dust. "My mind was filled with wonder when the evening headlines read, 'Richard Cory went home last night and put a bullet through his head.'" It's a song about suicide.

And the second song is the same, only this time is the suicide of a man who is a social misfit. He lives alone, isolated... ...and all the people said, "What a shame that he's dead, but wasn't he a most peculiar man."

The side concludes with another song of alienation by a man who has given up on love, who is now shut off. "I am a rock, I am an island," is his refrain.

The opening cut on their Bookends album picks up on the same theme. A boy standing on a ledge, preparing to leap to his death as a gathering crowd below reacts.

What strikes me is the context of all this heart-wrenching drama and its contrast with the writers of the Lost Generation. In the 1920's a generation of writers and artists had seen first hand the horrors of war, captured the pain and challenge of fitting into society after having suffered physical and emotional wounds "over there." In the 1960's, we see a generation of song writers emerge who grew up in an age of modest abundance, yet reflecting the empty soul of this abundance. They had money, but something inside remained hollow.

This was Paul Simon's legacy, the ability to tap into that painful hollow space and make it vivid so we could better understand ourselves and our times.

Reflections on the Sixties

One reason a show like Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous with Robin Leach was popular was undoubtedly because the audiences were neither rich nor famous themselves. Leach, the host, also had an interesting accent, which did not hurt the ratings either. In other words, people like watching, or reading about, experiences different from one's own.

This might be why war books like my father-in-law's memoirs And There Shall Be Wars have such appeal. Even within the context of the war two veterans will have differing experiences, and perspectives.

So it is that the Sixties was an experience which we all experienced, yet all experienced differently. As veterans of the Sixties, we had some shared experiences, but being in such a range of spaces and places, there is much which may be uniquely our own and occasionally, as those are shared, we gain additional illumination as regards our own experience. These diverse shared experiences not only help us connect to others, but also assist in our own self-understanding.

Christella, who has recently made contributions to this blog, started blogging this summer to share memories from her seven decades of life experience. Her writing is rich with life and you might wish to bookmark it for future returns. This week she has been sharing some of her memories of the Sixties at her own site which she has called Meandering Moody Memories. It's worth a visit if you have some time and is what prompted me to grab this off my original website to post here today.

In 1993 I wrote an essay called "Reflections on the Sixties" for a book that someone was trying to assemble for publication. AOL was just emerging and everyone there was thrilled by the power of connecting with so many others. I remember one AOL virtual community that had a former member of the Sixties band Strawberry Alarm Clock in it.

Several years passed and I was contacted again by this fellow who had me sign something that gave him permission to publish what I'd written, but I never learned what became of the project or whether it ultimately found a publisher.

Reflection on the Sixties

"No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning. I keep on swallowing.

"At other times it feels like being mildly concussed. There is a sort of invisible blanket between the world and me."

These are the words with which C.S. Lewis opens A Grief Observed, his personal reflections on the loss of his wife Joy Davidson. Can it be that our nation itself received this same concussive blow on the day John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963?

•

I find it interesting that C. S. Lewis, Aldous Huxley and John F. Kennedy all died on the same day in 1963. The deaths of Lewis and Huxley, whose personal lives were more remote from most of us, were eclipsed by the dramatic assassination of our president... and the subsequent events surrounding his passing.

There have been few more powerful events in our personal histories. Television brought this president into our homes like none before him. His PR-created persona made him out to be more than a man. He was a mythological god. He rode a white horse. He was a knight in shining armor. With the vitality of Youth, he provided a euphoric hope that seemed necessary after two world wars, a major depression and the brooding tensions of the Cold War.

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I was in sixth grade that day, Stafford School, Maple Heights, Ohio. There was an announcement over the loudspeaker that we were all to go to the auditorium for an assembly. This was the same room where we assembled to see men from NASA demonstrate how a rocket would within the next ten years carry men to the moon.

As we shuffled along toward the nearly filled assembly room, I was distracted by a janitor who was stepping in from outside. I remember the grey November sky. And the janitor's tears, the janitor standing there, cap in hand, tears streaming down his wrinkled cheeks, looking back toward the flag he had just lowered to half mast.

I don't remember the assembly, or much of anything else. Only the image of that janitor weeping.

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Few people knew it then, but that day was a portent of difficult times ahead for America. Medger Evers, Martin Luther King, Robert Kennedy, Kent State, My Lai -- the decade, stained with blood, left a generation of parents concussed and children confused.

Wrote Lewis in A Grief Observed, "I find it hard to take in what anyone says. Or perhaps, hard to want to take it in."

And when Nielsson sang: "Everybody's talkin' at me, I can't hear a word they're saying"... did we not find a resonance in our hearts because we, too, were grieving? What was it we had lost? What is it we were looking for? What was Joe Buck looking for? What did Joe Buck find?
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I believe it was Gurdjieff who compared life experiences to the food we take into our stomachs. Eventually the food is digested, but it takes time, and some foods longer than others. Likewise, our experiences take time to digest before they are assimilated to nourish or poison us.

Even though more than 25 years have passed, sometimes we still don't know what to say about what we saw and heard and felt. We are still processing our experiences. While some of the experiences were uniquely ours, many were shared. For this reason it is my conviction that when we have gained a measure of understanding, we have a responsibility to share the light we have received. In this way, our pain becomes redemptive, a healing influence in an otherwise broken world.

copyright 1993 ed newman

Clapton Autobiography Has Me Plugged In

Someone once said that when you write autobiographically about your pain, don’t just show the scab, but peel back that scab and probe the sore. The uncommon candor in the opening lines of Eric Clapton’s autobiography Clapton clued me in that he had been coached at the same school of writing: an autobiography ought to reveal, not conceal, those hidden recesses of the heart.

The book begins when Clapton was seven years old, telling how he came to recognize that he was an illegitimate child in a family with secrets. This is very different from finding out that there is no Santa Claus. For Clapton, art became a way to escape his pain, and later music (and substance abuse) serviced this same need.

The story of his experiences with John Mayall, Cream, Derek & the Dominoes, Blind Faith is written with what comes across as real humility. And with the vantage point of a man in his sixties, he relates how his own attitudes and excesses interfered with and even marred some of the high points of his fame.

For Clapton, it was all about the music. For this reason he was put off by anything that appeared to be a setup for “pop fame.” He just loved playing his guitar.

A friend of George Harrison’s, sometimes they would literally just get stoned and play for days and days. When he speaks with awe about being able to play with Delaney and Bonnie, you can tell it is genuine. It’s talent, not fame, that impressed Clapton in every stage of his life journey, hence his attraction to Steve Winwood, George Harrison, Greg Allman and others who were part of his life at different times.

When Clapton writes about the influence of Buddy Holly, the light finally went on for me and I finally “got it.” That is, I had never been that impressed with the way people seem to have gone ga-ga over Buddy Holly. I mean, he made a few songs, but they were not the greatest songs ever. He played rock ‘n roll music, but so did a lot of people.

Clapton saw Holly with different eyes than I because coming of age in the sixties I had already been exposed to the Kinks, the Animals, the Who, the Beatles. Clapton, in the fifties, was blown away when he saw that first Stratocaster electric guitar… and the black horn-rimmed glasses which put me off turned young Eric on. By that I mean, Clapton said to himself, “That’s me. He’s just another guy like me.” It was not pretty faces, but a guy with a guitar. The experience propelled Clapton into a life direction.

Personally I have enjoyed the book, including the insights into where some of the songs came from and the manner in which the various groups were formed with which he played. I totally related to the music of Cream and Blind Faith during my youth and still listen to those albums from time to time. Disraeli Gears was an incredible abum as was Wheels of Fire.

Not having been a groupie type who read all the fan zines, I found this book to be insightful and informative. Some of the reviews at Amazon.com are a little more cutting with one reviewer calling it “a terrible disappointment.” But for me, it is an autobiography up to the caliber of Steve Martin's Born Standing Up and Dylan's Chronicles: Volume One.

It’s been a great read thus far and because I am listening to the audio book, I can’t wait for my morning commute to the office here in a few minutes.

Reclaiming the Sixties

The Sixties, like all periods of our history, cannot be lumped into one homogenous experience. Yes, some things were shared universally. Our president was assassinated in 1963. Our values were challenged. Our cities burned. Viet Nam and the Deep South racism, so highly visible through the medium of television, scarred our national conscience. The values of the American Dream were called into question.

But as time has elapsed the Sixties became more associated with hippies, drugs, psychedelic music, and dropping out… all having the appearance more of faddishness than significance. The sense of hippiedom being a fad was reinforced by the rapidity with which Seventies youth embraced the Yuppie values of high fashion and glitz.

For the record, I became depressed by the new wave of Yuppie values. Perhaps because I truly bought into many of the key issues that had been brought to the forefront during the Sixties. These are the primary values that resonated with me, and which I still hold as valid.

1. Question authority. In other words, don’t accept everything you hear, wherever you hear it from… including here. Think things through, make your decisions because you have weighed things out for yourself. Even the Apostle Paul in the Bible said that his words should not be taken as authoritative until his hearers checked things out with the Old Testament truths that had been handed down.

This idea flew directly in the face of the prevailing attitude of the day, “My country, right or wrong.” No wonder the “hippie philosophy” created so much ire.

2. There is more to life than the material world. More than anything, the youth of the Sixties were especially misunderstood on this point, and in retrospect misunderstood their parents’ generation. We did not know what it was like to be raised during the Great Depression. When our parents gave us clothes and stocked refrigerators and gifts, they were doing something for us that seemed meaningful. My mother remembers living on navy beans for a while in West Virginia. Grandpa would come home with a hundred pound sack of navy beans. That was all they had, all they could afford.

And so, many young people in the Sixties had large homes in suburbia, surrounded by manifold blessings of the good life, and still felt empty. They learned through experience that there was more to life than things. Without love, even a castle is little more than collection of empty rooms.

And so, there was a reaction against materialism, against “things.” There have been many misunderstandings on this matter, but the message remains true that life is more than gadgets, toys and things. “Love is all you need” is a bit of a simplification, since I can’t pay my heating bill with “love.” But love for my family will sufficiently motivate me to do what it takes to provide for my family, which includes paying those nasty heating bills.

3. The “Beautiful People.” I remember sitting in the donut shop in Athens, Ohio with some other Ohio University hippie-type students and thinking, “These people are so beautiful, but in the ‘success’ world they would probably all be rejects.” The one fellow’s beard concealed a weak chin, another girl did not fit the Barbie mold, yet each was a person, a human being with special value. To the degree that we determine value based on outward appearance, race, economic earning power or social status, to that very degree we have become impoverished as a culture.

4. Increasing awareness of the power of the Military-Industrial Complex. Might makes right was not a value of the hippies. Flower Power, which is looked back on as something of a joke today, had at its heart a seed thought: ideas have power, too. Yes, there is evil in the world, and naivete was certainly part of the reason the seeds of Flower Power found such fertile soil in our hearts. But there were real issues being raised as regards what war and the military-industrial complex was doing to our humanity. On this, there is more to say, but we’ll follow up on that tomorrow.

Here’s a song from Bob Dylan’s second album which became somewhat of an anthem for that era. I remember singing it as part of our youth group at First Presbyterian Church in Pluckemin, NJ. Its questions still beg for answers today.

Blowing In The Wind

How many roads must a man walk down, before they call him a man?
How many seas must a white dove sail, before she sleeps in the sand?
How many times must the cannonballs fly, before they are forever banned?

The answer my friend is blowing in the wind,
the answer is blowing in the wind.

How many years must a mountain exist, before it is washed to the sea?
How many years can some people exist, before they're allowed to be free?
How many times can a man turn his head, and pretend that he just doesn't see?

The answer my friend is blowing in the wind,
the answer is blowing in the wind.

How many times must a man look up, before he can see the sky?
How many ears must one man have, before he can hear people cry?
How many deaths will it take till he knows, that too many people have died?

The answer my friend is blowing in the wind,
the answer is blowing in the wind.

NOTE: The image at top left, titled Reclaiming the Sixties, was created by Susie, the Down Home Creator. Please click to enlarge.

Strange Fruit

For the past couple weeks I've been watching and listening to Ken Burns' ten part film series called Jazz. This is a remarkable piece of work. I have enjoyed jazz since introduced to various artists through friends in college, from John Coltrane to Chick Corea, and Miles Davis to Charles Mingus and Pharaoh Sanders. More recently I listened to an eight part lecture series on the history of jazz, which was insightful and informative. But Burns' live footage from the earliest days of twentieth century jazz to the present is an amazing retrospective of the contribution of blacks to Americana.

From the raucous Twenties to the depression era Thirties, jazz was evolving, and reflecting all facets of the culture. Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Ella Fitzgerald, Benny Goodman... all of their stories are here.

Purportedly a film series about music, this is really a series about race relations. Some amazing footage of musicians, dancers, and singers has been captured here including the remarkable Billie Holiday. Every once in a while a song cuts through you though, and tears something in your heart. That's what happened to me when Burns gave us raw footage of Billie Holiday singing Strange Fruit. What a daring song for 1939. What heart wrenching lyrics by Lewis Allen.

Strange Fruit
Southern trees bear strange fruit,
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,
Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze,
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.

Pastoral scene of the gallant south,
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth,
Scent of magnolias, sweet and fresh,
Then the sudden smell of burning flesh.

Here is fruit for the crows to pluck,
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck,
For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop,
Here is a strange and bitter crop.

The tragedy is not simply that a man lost his life unjustly. The tragedy is the signal such events would send to every black man in this cultural situation... that he dare not challenge "the Man," dare not himself be a man, raise his head and look into a white man's eyes with defiance, raise the fist. It is difficult to impossible to understand the black power movement of the late Sixties, early Seventies, without understanding the context of Strange Fruit.

The photo at the top of this entry is from a memorial here in Duluth, MN, a photo I took this evening in our City by the Lake. Most people associate racial violence as a Southern phenomenon. The memorial here is a remembrance that it can, and did, happen here. In 1920, three black circus workers were lynched downtown by an irate, irrational mob. Hepped up by hearsay, they broke into the jail and brought these men's lives to a sudden end. Historians believe they were almost certainly innocent, but the tragic affair demonstrated that "it can happen here."

Race relations in America are a complicated affair and, like Lewis Allen's evocative lament, so very sad.

May we never forget.

Innocence Lost: A Reflection on the Sixties

"No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning. I keep on swallowing. At other times it feels like being mildly concussed. There is a sort of invisible blanket between the world and me." ~ C. S. Lewis

These are the opening words of A Grief Observed, C. S. Lewis' personal reflections on the loss of his wife Joy Davidson. Can it be that our nation itself received this same concussive blow on the day John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963?

I find it interesting that C. S. Lewis, Aldous Huxley and John F. Kennedy all died on the same day in 1963. The deaths of Lewis and Huxley, whose personal lives were more remote from most of us, were eclipsed by the dramatic assasination of our president... and the subsequent events surrounding his passing.

There have been few more powerful events in our personal histories. Television brought this president into our homes like none before him. His PR-created persona made him out to be more than a man. He was a mythological god. He rode a white horse. He was a knight in shining armor. With the vitality of Youth, he provided a euphoric hope that seemed necessary after two world wars, a major depression and the brooding tensions of the Cold War.

I was in sixth grade that day, Stafford School, Maple Heights, Ohio. There was an announcement over the loudspeaker that we were all to go to the auditorium for an assembly. This was the same room where we assembled to see men from NASA demonstrate how a rocket would within the next ten years carry men to the moon.

As we shuffled along toward the nearly filled assembly room, I was distracted by a janitor who was stepping in from outside. I remember the grey November sky. And the janitor's tears, the janitor standing there, cap in hand, tears streaming down his wrinkled cheeks, looking back toward the flag he had just lowered to half mast. I don't remember the assembly, or much of anything else. Only the image of that janitor weeping.

Few people knew it then, but that day was a portent of difficult times ahead for America. Medger Evers, Martin Luther King, Robert Kennedy, race riots in every major city, Kent State, My Lai -- the decade, stained with blood, left a generation of parents concussed and children confused.

Wrote Lewis in A Grief Observed, "I find it hard to take in what anyone says. Or perhaps, hard to want to take it in."

And when Nielsson sang: "Everybody's talkin' at me, I can't hear a word they're saying"... did we not find a resonance in our hearts because we, too, were grieving? What was it we had lost? What is it we were looking for? What was Joe Buck looking for? What did Joe Buck find?

I believe it was Gurdjieff who compared life experiences to the food we take into our stomachs. Eventually the food is digested, but it takes time, and some foods longer than others. Likewise, our experiences take time to digest before they are assimilated to nourish or poison us.

Even though more than 40 years have passed, we still sometimes don't know what to say about what we saw and heard and felt. We are still processing our experiences. While some of the experiences were uniquely ours, many were shared. For this reason it is my conviction that when we have gained a measure of understanding, we have a responsibility to share the light we have received. In this way, our pain becomes redemptive, a healing influence in an otherwise broken world.