rock and roll war

nearly every aspect of society as traditional values were rejected by a new counterculture.

In the early sixties, folk started as a little known but hated form of music. Advertised as “Three days of

peace and music” , the most remarkable thing about the concert was that it was exactly

that. It was a time when people

valued personal freedom and social equality.

Other folk soloists were popularized by their own musical interpretations of the

trivial events of the time. Woodstock became much more than an enormous

concert and party for half a million kids.

Outside of the musical arena, however, civil rights was still a hard battle to be

won. argued against black soldiers fighting overseas

for the Vietnamese people’s freedom when their own liberties were still at stake on the

homefront. It was

the decade of civil rights, tragic assassinations, flower children, unforgettable fashion,

protest marches and the first moon landing. The tune revealed the true ugliness and sheer brutality of war as the cast began

with, “Ripped open by metal explosion, fallen barbed wire, fire-bomb, bullet-shot/

bayonets, electricity, shrapnel, throbbing meat/ Mail order rifles shoot through muscle”,

and concluded the number with a musical rendition of Shakespeare’s “What a Piece of

Work is Man” from Hamlet. Hendrix’ solo version of the

“Star Spangled Banner” echoed that the generation did not hate America or what it stood

for, but wanted the rest of the nation to understand that a definite change was occurring. At home, the clash of tradition and upheavel,

violence and dreams created a portrait of a nation torn asunder. I had to write what I wanted to sing

because what I wanted to sing, nobody else was writing. Later influenced by folk singers such as Dylan and Havens, rock underwent a

series of dramatic changes which gave birth to the legendary artists like Jimi Hendrix,

Crosby Stills and Nash, and the Who.