It is indeed a very tired cliche, with apologies to Kierkegaard, to say that “life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.” The problem is, it’s not always true. Fifty years ago, at the apogee of the summer love and the Vietnam war, those that were there all sensed that they were part of, or at least touching something, unique in the cultural history of America. We know this today, not just because we remember the songs, or the clothes or where we were, but because the seismic shifts that took place then, are still producing aftershocks. It was a moment, as author Joel Selvin says “that
was a kind of big bang,” when art, politics, morality and culture would join together to create an expanding universe of creative imagination.
Danny Goldberg’s new book In Search of the Lost Chord: 1967 and the Hippie Idea
almost makes us present at the creation. My conversation with Danny Goldberg:
