1965: 12 Months That Shook the World
Andrew Grant Jackson wasn’t even born in 1965, but in his new book, he does a credible impression of a baby-boomer author with firsthand experience of that year’s revolutionary music. Jackson, whose two previous books focused on the Beatles, considers 1965 to be “the most groundbreaking twelve months in music history”. “It was”, he writes, “the year rock and roll evolved into the premier art form of its time and accelerated the drive for personal liberty throughout the Western world.”
As that quote demonstrates, Jackson’s focus isn’t solely on music qua music, but also as a marker of and force for social change. Throughout the book, he contextualizes the astonishing surge of musical creativity and innovation during the mid-‘60s, making connections to the rise of youth culture, to the Civil Rights and anti-Vietnam War movements, to the emergence of “second wave” feminism and gay liberation. The music, whether rock, R&B and soul, jazz or country, was formally inventive and it “expressed powerful new realities”, as one of 1965’s premier figures, Bob Dylan, would later say about his own songs.
By: George de Stefano
Source: PopMatters
