SENTINELCELTS

Morning,all.

Fifty years ago today was,to a lot of people,the day that they realised that The Swinging Sixties really were over. Don McLean wrote and recorded American Pie only a year later,and though it has always been about the plane crash a decade earlier that killed Richie Valens,The Big Bopper and Buddy Holly,and referred to that as being the end of times for those growing to adulthood in the Fifties,I’m pretty sure that the symbolism of the end of the decade each time wasn’t lost on him.

The Beatles had split up!

Well,it was actually Yesterday. I couldn’t resist that,saves JIMMYNOTPAUL pointing it out to me.

Sure,there were many other symbols of The Sixties,many other icons. George Best,for one! The Mini was a Fifties launch,late 1959 in fact,but it became cool in The Sixties. Everyone had one,they were chic and cheap. And after The Italian Job,ubercool too!

There was the mini-skirt,the summer of love and all the tune in turn on drop out that went with it. Woodstock,civil rights,Kennedy. The moon landings. Vietnam and,oh,you name it.

And The Beatles. The band that brought the world so much. Including Oasis,when you think about it! Would The Sixties have been the same without them? Well,ask most people between say,40-80 years old for five things about the Sixties,and I reckon about 90% of them will mention them in their top five.

I was only six years old when the Sixties came to an end,hardly knew what day of the week it was much less which decade. And looking back on it,there are a good few artists from then in my record collection.

Top three being Dylan,The Rolling Stones and The Doors. The Beatles,not so much. In fact,not a single LP so that says a lot. And why? Well,I won’t go into detail,but…

The Doors burned ferociously,like a shooting star crashing to its oblivion. The Stones strutted their stuff for the latter half of the decade and beyond-into parody,eventually!-like the wide boys who knew how good they were,and didn’t care who else knew it.

And Dylan? Turned the world on its head,forced it to look at itself,and recently won a Nobel Prize anaw. Plus he is the current US No1 and gave us one of the best Christmas singles,after The Pogues and Greg Lake. Not that I’m damning him with faint praise.

Yet The Beatles would be in most of those top fives,and deservedly so. Because at the time,they DEFINED The Sixties as much as the other things I mentioned earlier. I suppose you had to be there-and if you can remember it,you apparently weren’t!

They defined a whole ten years in less than ten hours of original released albums. Yep. Add up the running times. And most of them haven’t lasted the test of time either. In fact,I would only give pass marks to Rubber Soul,Revolver,Sgt Pepper,The White Album and Abbey Road.

Bit those albums don’t just pass. They are amazing! There are some legendary tracks on there,and still getting played widely on Classic and AM radio today. It’s why the rights to their songs are worth so much. It’s hardly an exclusive list-feel free to add your own,of course-but A Day In The Life,Come Together,Something,Because,oh you name it.

They’d just released Abbey Road too,so the fans must have thought that things were back on the up. What a boot in the baws,fifty years ago today. And so we went,from the heady optimism of The Sixties to the unknown future of The Seventies and Eighties. A future we would rather forget.

Maybe it wasn’t The Day The Music Died. Maybe it was the day that,in retrospect,we realised-that boot in the baws was gonna last a bloody long time.

Above article by BMCUWP. Usual rules,please send us your thoughts for Article of the Day. Mail Mahe

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