People have the tendency to demarcate historical periods with single events. The 1960s especially, that mythical period of universal love and kindness, is seen as a specific and limited time that ended suddenly before the decade was quite over.
The poet Philip Larkin marks the beginning of the hippie-period of sexual freedom in one of his best known poems ‘Annus Mirabilis’:
Sexual intercourse began
In nineteen sixty-three
(which was rather late for me) –
Between the end of the “Chatterley” ban
And the Beatles first LP
The peak of this period was arguably the Woodstock Rock Festival: 3 Days of Peace and Music. After this mass gathering of drugged-up love making hippies it didn’t take long before the dream faded and a few months later the 60s were apparently officially over:
‘The Sixties Generation came to an abrupt tragic end on December 6, 1969, on a desolate, barren field in Livermore, California, with the Rolling Stones presiding over the demise,’ writes A.E. Hotcher in Blown Away: The Rolling Stones and the Death of the Sixties. Hotcher describes the infamous free concert at the Altamont Speedway in immaculate detail and makes the case that a disaster was pretty much unavoidable.
Others give the Tate-LaBianca murders, organised by Charles Manson in August 1969, as the end of the 60s. In Manson in His Own Words, Charles Manson gives a personal account of his life and the infamous killings, based on interviews with Nuel Emmons. The author had met Manson before the murders, when they were incarcerated at the same prison (on two separate occasions). Here too some form of disastrous outcome seemed unavoidable. If Manson was a monster, as is often claimed, then he was very much a monster of our own making: he was a product of American society of that period, a dark consequence of the hippie-dream.
The 60s had many personal casualties. Several rock stars were left behind when the next decade came along. Maybe the 60s ended with the death of Rolling Stones guitarist Brian Jones (3 July 1969), or with the passing of Jimmi Hendrix (18 September 1970), Janis Joplin (4 October 1970), Jim Morrison (3 July 1971), or possibly with the mental breakdown of Syd Barrett, beautifully described by Rob Chapman in A Very Irregular Head.
Pink Floyd continued without Barrett and the Stones entered the 1970s with a new guitarist in tow and made some of their best albums ever. Their first record of the decade, Sticky Fingers, is an incredibly important record in many ways. The music is brilliant of course, but there is also the album cover, designed by Andy Warhol, and the tongue and lips logo that appeared for the first time. Early designs for both sleeve and logo can be seen in an obscure publication that was apparently published as a tie-in with the album and is available through our website.
The Rolling Stones were not just leaving their old record company, but also, for financial reasons, the UK. After a short farewell tour the band moved to France. If the Altamont disaster marked the end of the 60s, then maybe the release of Sticky Fingers and the band’s subsequent move to France was the proper beginning of the 1970s. Music had become serious business.