By Karl Williams
– ” Whatever happened to the revolution? ”
– ” We all got stoned and drifted away”
Well, there might actually be quite a bit of truth in these Skyhooks lyrics – dope was firstly the gift and later the curse of all those starry-eyed ideals that we held back in the late ’60s through the ’70s.
These ideals were tied in with a movement which appeared to be irresistibly sweeping the whole world. It was seen as the dawning of the Age of Aquarius, or simply “The Sixties”. Its leaders were folk and protest singers, peace activists, political revolutionaries and Indian gurus. Its followers were flower children, dropouts, a whole generation of university students, hippies of various shades of grime, and even some ordinary Mums and Dads. If it had any “headquarters” to begin with, it was mythically located on the corner of Haight & Ashbury Streets in San Francisco.