Sex, Drugs, and Rock 'n' Roll
The Rise of Americas 1960s Counterculture
By (author) Robert C. Cottrell
Publication date:
19 March 2015Length of book:
452 pagesPublisher
Rowman & Littlefield PublishersISBN-13: 9781442246065
Sex, Drugs, and Rock ‘n Roll: The American Counterculture of the 1960s offers a unique examination of the cultural flowering that enveloped the United States during that early postwar decade. Robert C. Cottrell provides an enthralling view of the counterculture, beginning with an examination of American bohemia, the Lyrical Left of the pre-WWII era, and the hipsters. He delves into the Beats, before analyzing the counterculture that emerged on both the East and West coasts, but soon cropped up in the American heartland as well. Cottrell delivers something of a collective biography, through an exploration of the antics of seminal countercultural figures Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Timothy Leary, and Ken Kesey. Cottrell also presents fascinating chapters covering “the magic elixir of sex,” rock ‘n roll, the underground press, Haight-Ashbury, the literature that garnered the attention of many in the counterculture, Monterey Pop, the Summer of Love, the Death of Hippie, the March on the Pentagon, communes, Yippies, Weatherman, Woodstock, the Manson family, the women’s movement, and the decade’s legacies.
This massive and impressively researched look at the cultural revolutions in the U.S. in the post-WWII years is a perfect text for a college class on 1960s culture. Fully aware that 'the hippies of the 1960s, of course, were hardly the first countercultural figures to appear in the United States,' Cottrell (Icons of American Popular Culture) begins with detailed looks at four early seminal countercultural figures: Allen Ginsberg, whose poetry attacked the 'conservatism and conformity' of American 1950s culture; Jack Kerouac, whose novel 'On The Road' popularized the youthful image of 'the restless wanderer;' Timothy Leary, the most notable proselytizer for LSD; and author Ken Kesey, whose Merry Prankster commune 'kicked off the liberal employment of psychedelics.' Cottrell expertly shows how their outlaw images and ideas influenced almost every aspect of the 1960s counterculture: the political shift from traditional protest to the violence of the Weathermen; the popularization of the use of psychedelics for personal liberation; and the move from cities into country communes as an escape from the collapsing countercultural ideals in the 1970s. Cottrell believes that the positive aspects of Sixties culture live on, quoting Whole Earth Catalog editor Stewart Brand’s belief that 'the counterculture’s scorn for centralized authority provided the philosophical foundations of not only the leaderless Internet but also the entire personal-computer revolution.'