Gli anni sessanta americani saranno per sempre etichettati come quelli della rivoluzione. Della nascita dei movimenti hippy e pacifisti.
Iniziamo con Bob Dylan e The times they are a-changin, annuncio dell’avvento di una nuova generazione di cui la vecchia dovrà tener conto. Siamo nel 1964 e la canzone anticipa i tempi e lo stesso Bob Dylan prenderà strade che lo porteranno lontano dal movimento di protesta nascente.
Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
And don’t criticize
What you can’t understand
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is
Rapidly agin’.
Please get out of the new one
If you can’t lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin’
Passiamo al 1967 con For What It’s Worth dei Buffalo Springfield, canzone che illustra la tensione sempre più crescente tra manifestanti e forze dell’ordine.
There’s something happening here
What it is ain’t exactly clear
There’s a man with a gun over there
Telling me I got to beware
I think it’s time we stop, children, what’s that sound
Everybody look what’s going down
Però già nel 1969, troviamo le prime incrinature nel movimento, quando la denuncia dal basso in Fortunate Son dei Creedence clearwater revival viene perfino tacciata di qualunquismo reazionario.
Some folks are born made to wave the flag,
Ooh, they’re red, white and blue.
And when the band plays “Hail to the chief”,
Ooh, they point the cannon at you, Lord,
It ain’t me, it ain’t me, I ain’t no senator’s son, son.
It ain’t me, it ain’t me; I ain’t no fortunate one, no.
D’altra parte, la mitica Wooden ships (1969) uscita in contemporanea nell’esordio omonimo di Crosby, Stills and Nash e in Volunteers dei Jefferson Airplane, fotografa impietosamente la perdita di mordente degli ideali sessantottini, dove la diserzione simboleggia una resa ed una evasione verso lidi troppo vicini ai paradisi artificiali.
If you smile at me, I will understand
‘Cause that is something everybody everywhere does
in the same language.
I can see by your coat, my friend,
you’re from the other side,
There’s just one thing I got to know,
Can you tell me please, who won?
Say, can I have some of your purple berries?
Yes, I’ve been eating them for six or seven weeks now,
haven’t got sick once.
Probably keep us both alive.
Wooden ships on the water, very free and easy,
Easy, you know the way it’s supposed to be,
Silver people on the shoreline, let us be,
Talkin’ ‘bout very free and easy…
Horror grips us as we watch you die,
All we can do is echo your anguished cries,
Stare as all human feelings die,
We are leaving – you don’t need us.
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