I missed The 60s even though I was there. I flunked my draft physical and didn’t have to worry about conscription. Half the guys at college were there only to get a draft deferment. The demonstrations and riots were actually against conscription.
Most of the music of the 60s was pap; I scorned rock&roll and was an elitist jazz aficionado. A friend of mine played in the Detroit Symphony Orchestra and did side gigs at Motown; he was scornful of rock and called it “the music of minimal competence.”
But then Jimi Hendrix came along and I doubt he was some studio musician’s puppet. I became entranced with Cream and Led Zep. But that was pretty darned late into the 60s.
I flunked my draft physical and didn’t have to worry about conscription......Not puttin’ you down, bro, but when I got on the bus to Pittsburgh for the induction center I was with twin brothers. One was a quarterback in his sophmore, junior and senior years who got a free ride with Penn State. His brother had Coke bottle glasses, was half his brother’s size and was so mousy he jumped if anyone addressed him. At the end of the physical, on the way home, I found out I was accepted, the brother was accepted and the QB was rejected because he had hemmorhoids. I found out the brother retired with 20 years in the Army.
I scorned rock&roll and was an elitist jazz aficionado.
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But even jazz went through some pretty horrible times in the 60s. Jazz and the 60s started out great, but by the end of said 60s Miles Davis had screwed up nearly the entire generation of young lions with fusion (Miles and a few others), and there was also that god awful free jazz thing. It took jazz until the mid to late 80s to recover (and I do thank Wynton Marsalis for some of the recovery).
The rock (that was still mostly pop) of the first part of the 60s was clearly still being produced by the same folks who were producing the recordings of the crooners - awful strings and horn arrangements.
Of course the above is painting with a broad brush.
I think it was in the 70s that the promise of good rock came into its own.