Annivyrsary: 1970
ISSUE #89
Ten years is as far as you can stretch in time while still holding your sense of self. Take a squinting look backward, and you can trick yourself into believing you've been the same in those ten years—provided you've been at least close to an adult the whole time. Walk back through each week, however, and it's exhausting to see just how far time's canyon will reach. The decade is the standard unit of change.
In 1960, we had Kennedy, candy pop, and the Beatles; by 1970, we had Nixon, Vietnam, and heavy metal. It was a year of losing idols and planting flags. The Beatles broke up and Hendrix died; Joplin too, seventeen days later, both of overdose. Even our acts of creation were full of gloom: with their first two albums, Black Sabbath single-handedly created heavy metal this year.
People had given up singing about love—the sexual revolution briefly quenched some collective libido—and now we were off creating other worlds, singing about magic, aliens, loneliness, parking lots, the devil. This was the year of Kent State and Cambodia; rather than address it in song, we deflected. The void was open, and the darkness leaking through.
Elsewhere in 1970:
Some books were The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, Judy Blume's Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret, and Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee.
Our movies were The Aristocats, El Topo, M*A*S*H, Five Easy Pieces, Wanda, and Brewster McCloud.
Apollo 13 was launched, an oxygen tank exploded, and it was forced to make a splash landing in the Pacific four days later.
A patent was filed for the first computer mouse, and the first novel to be written on a word processor was published.
The John Hancock Center was opened in Chicago, and the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York.
Cigarette TV ads were banned on TV and America celebrated its first Earth Day.
A lot of iconic songs came out in 1970, but there was only one obsession: "Song to the Siren." I dedicate this to your irresistible pull.
1984 has been called the greatest year in pop, and I think it might still be true. If 1974 was music’s fallow period, ten years later was its opposite. We danced in the dark beneath the killing moon and under purple rain—this was the year the critics and the people met in the Minneapolis streets.