When David Crosby reckoned with the legacy of the 1960s: “Love is better than hatred”
“If you don’t remember it, you didn’t do it properly,” is a cliche phrase wilfully thrown around in reference to the 1960s. The glamourised idea that in an era so hedonistic and so liberating, the only way you prove you did it right is to wipe it from your memory altogether? Yeah, nice.
It’s convenient then for those of a certain generation, who are hellbent on telling us how much better they had it in their day. If the looming threat of digitalisation and tyrannical reality show presidents wasn’t enough for us, we’re incessantly reminded that a decade in which we weren’t even close to being born had all the things we wish to enjoy. So then, what was it like? “Well, I can’t remember because it was so good.”
Maybe the lack of memory comes from a disinterest in actually engaging with the nuance of the decade. OK, sure, it would have been outrageously exciting at points. The never-ending innovation of The Beatles, the widening spectrum of fashion and art, and the ambitious pursuit of human innovation that ended with the first human being on the moon. All of that would have been undoubtedly brilliant.
But it didn’t come without consequence. In fact, the very reason art thrived in the 1960s was that it had so much injustice to push back against. Wide-eyed smiles of the British invasion music seemingly papered over the cracks of systemic racial injustice and intense political turmoil that saw America plunge deeper into the heart of a morally questionable Vietnamese war.
But in the rose-tinted rear-view mirror, we bypass the realities of the situation and instead evaluate the success of the decade through cultural pillars like Woodstock. But an artist who lived through it all, Woodstock and the rest, and crucially remembered it, sees it now as a missed opportunity, as opposed to a glamourised fever dream.
David Crosby was pertinently asked by a journalist, “We’re the generation that gave the world George W Bush, Donald Trump and countless CEOs that are doing their very best to destroy the environment. Were the ‘60s just a dream that didn’t come true?” to which the truthful musician rightly responded, “Fair question.”
He continued, explaining that he “thought we’d just about wiped racism out, and now look at how it is. I think it goes back and forth – I’m hoping that’s how it is. What’s going on now is very, very bad.”
Concluding, “But I don’t think the things we espoused in the ‘60s were wrong: that love is better than hatred, that peace is better than war. I think those are true; I don’t think we were wrong about any of those.”
All of the great, eulogised moments were certainly true. Love and art were freer concepts than they have ever been, and there was a palpable mood of resistance in the air, which Crosby rightly outlines as a missed opportunity. It’s just up to different generations to decide who is to blame.
