It would depend on where you spent your youth in the 60's and 70's. My buddy first read LOTR while on a PBR cruising the Mekong in 1968. He seemed to remember it as a story of a bunch of guys humpin' the boonies with waves of bad guys trying to overrun them, while folks back home never even heard there was a war going on.
I read somewhere that the hippies grooved on the Silmarilion even more than LOTR. It supposedly gave them a view of an older, purer world that the nastiness shown in LOTR. A few hits on the bong, and they could see themselves as elves, groovin' through history leading lives of beauty and peace, and not having to hustle for a buck.
It's strange, but in the movie, at the great battle before the gates of Mordor, I don't remember any elves flashing a peace sign at that ocean of orcs.