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Art Hutchinson's avatar

I'm glad another non-boomer is tapped into the spiritual dimension of what happened with late-'60s music--somewhere between cause and effect, IMHO, but hardly worth half a century's adulation unless one thinks of it as the rub-it-in-their-faces spiritual victory party put on by the victors. (Peter Jackson's recent release of the boringly endless Beatles' 1969 "Get Back" sessions would be laughably pitiful had we not, as a culture, already elevated the fab four to watch-every-move demigod status.)

Until recently, I scoffed at Tipper Gore's hand-waving thesis that (in effect) there-be-demons, not only in her era, but in the one which preceded it. Then I researched my first novel, set in 1969. (bit.ly/CWS-p or bit.ly/CWS-e) She was mostly right.

For those with ears to hear, there are clues-upon-clues-upon-clues that a pitched Normandy-scale battle for souls was being played out in late '60s music--a Dresden/Hiroshima bigger than most of its musical stars ever knew (although, IMHO, a bunch, like Led Zep knew *exactly* who they were serving... which Dylan obliquely noted a decade later; but that's a bunny trail for another day.)

My title, "Covered With Snow," borrows a phrase one era artist used--deliberately, I am convinced based on exhaustive research--to juxtapose a Biblical reality (the forgiveness offered in Christ, as word-pictured in Isaiah 1:18) with a spiritual one that artist saw coming unglued around him, in particular, at the time of Nixon's December 1st, 1969 draft lottery.

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JD Cowan's avatar

A good example of the Beatles self-mythologizing is the Pete Best affair. Back in the day it was treated as good and noble what happened to him, even portrayed in movies and books as an "event" where Ringo played at a show protesting what happened to Best and it was turned around because Everybody Clapped and became pro-Ringo. It was even referenced in the Simpsons. This story never happened, and over the years it was proved that Best actually was done dirty and screwed out of money and credit he rightfully deserved. Every interview with the members of the band since have changed tremendously into regret over the way they treated him for a piece of fame.

The other example is, as you mentioned, Cobain. I was a kid in the early 90s and I listened to a lot of music. No one really mentioned Cobain until he died, and no one started wearing those same smiley-faced Nirvana shirts until around 1997 or so--the time when Geffen really starting pushing the myth. Chances are unless you were into the early '90s scene as a teenager, you never listened to Nirvana at all when they were around, and if you did they were just another band that was about to break up (In Utero was not on any level more popular than Nevermind, either) from the era. I never knew anyone who listened to them, and I knew kids who listened to Smashing Pumpkins, Weezer, Gin Blossoms (a band who also had an important member die but was never mythologized for it), and Green Day. That only changed at the end of the '90s when post-grunge influenced by Cobain started popping up.

Funny thing is, after Cobain, they've never really been able to pull it off since, which really goes to show how much things have changed since Cultural Ground Zero. In another universe we would all be wearing the same Amy Winehouse shirts and re-contextualizing the lame Van Halen III as a masterpiece (like we did with In Utero) instead of the rather normal reaction such deaths received.

It feels as if that spell is broken, and I don't think it will be cast again any time soon.

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