I’ve been watching The Vietnam War, a new PBS documentary series about the war the Vietnamese refer to as “The American War.” Having lived through the tumultuous 1960s, I was fortunate never to have been forced to fight. Already, it was a time of such convulsive change with the anti-war movement, hippies, drugs, birth control and everything else that was going on. I was mostly a big jazzhead (and still am), but hearing the songs featured in the excellent PBS series’ soundtrack reminds me of some of the music that I listened to back then. Anyhow, I thought I’d share some of my favorites in this 1960s-themed Spotify playlist. (Warning: The Fugs track includes explicit language.)
- “The End” by The Doors: At the age of 19, I moved into my own tiny flat and decided I would try my first-ever joint. Before taking the first hit, I turned on my color wheel, thinking I’d get the full effect. Instead, the smoke felt uncomfortable in my lungs because I had never even smoked a cigarette. So there I was, listening to “The End,” while lying on a mattress on the floor of my apartment, waiting for something to happen. But nothing happened.
- “Pushin’ Too Hard” by The Seeds: I feel like this song really captured a lot of the restless energy felt by my generation during the 1960s.
- “Mellow Yellow” by Donovan: I admit, I was one of the scores of idiots who tried to bake, scrape and smoke themselves high with banana peels. Stupid, I know. But it was the 1960s, and I was young and adventurous. I blame Donovan. Needless to say, the dried banana peels didn’t work either.
- “Magic Carpet Ride” by Steppenwolf: I’ve always liked this song by Steppenwolf, a band that named themselves after the Hermann Hesse classic.
- “I Had a King” by Joni Mitchell: Joni Mitchell burst onto the pop scene with her 1966 debut album, Song to a Seagull. Her impossibly high, clear soprano later gave way to years of smoking. She never sounded the same again.
- “Up from the Skies” by Jimi Hendrix: This was one of Jimi Hendrix’s trippiest songs, featuring a great rhythmic groove and his unique guitar style. I often played this track on my KCRW shows.
- Main title song from Blow-Up by Herbie Hancock: I loved this track from Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1966 film, Blow-Up—the way it transitions from The Yardbirds to Herbie’s smooth jazz groove. This movie helped sell a million SLR cameras, and made many a man fall in love with a young Vanessa Redgrave, whose slender, bare midriff graced posters everywhere.
- “Ego Trip” by Ultimate Spinach: A lifeguard friend of mine once crashed at my place for awhile after deciding not to go to Monrovia, Liberia, with the Peace Corps. He loved this band and played this track over and over on my hi-fi. American bands of the 1960s came up with lots of clever names like the Electric Prunes’ “I Had Too Much to Dream Last Night.”
- “Somebody to Love” by Jefferson Airplane: As one of the anthems of the ’60s, “Somebody to Love” features to great effect in The Vietnam War series.
- “Masters of War” by Bob Dylan: This very early Bob Dylan song reflects former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and General William Westmoreland’s misguided approach to the Vietnam War, body counts and all. This anti-war anthem is also featured in the PBS series.
- “l’Assassinat de Carala” by Miles Davis: Although I’ve focused more on non-jazz tracks for this playlist, there is one immortal jazz song that the PBS series made perfect use of: “l’Assassinat de Carala” from Miles Davis’s 1957 soundtrack for the Louis Malle’s film, l’Ascenseur Pour l’Echafaud (Elevator to the Gallows). Miles’s mournful, muted trumpet poignantly evokes the loneliness and despair felt by the American troops, as they engaged in mortal combat with an often-unseen enemy. Fittingly, the song is about an assassination.
- “CIA Man” by The Fugs: Finally, we have The Fugs, the East Coast parallel to Frank Zappa’s Mothers of Invention. The Fugs released their first album on the ESP-disk label, where the playback instructions were in Esperanto, with one of their more notorious lyrics as follows (warning: explicit lyrics): “I ain’t ever gonna go to Vietnam, I’d rather stay at home and f*ck your mom.” Other outrageous acts on ESP-disk included Albert Ayler, Timothy Leary, and the New York Art Quartet.
