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Below you'll find a link to a recently completed song and visual production that is a powerful reflection on the profound effect John F. Kennedy's assassination in 1963 has had on our nation over the past half century.
I've been a lyricist/songwriter all my life, having the good fortune of working with a number of talented and gifted artists over the past 30+ years. The songwriting credit I'm most proud of is providing the words for "Shadowland", a song co-written with Graham Nash and Joe Vitale that appeared on Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young's first reunion album, "American Dream", certified platinum in 1989.
While "Shadowland" was a stark glimpse at the effects the Vietnam War on the soldiers who fought there, "Childhood's End" is a look back at JFK's assassination and a reflection on how what happened on that November day almost 50 years ago irrevocably changed our country forever. I believe that event in history truly stole away our nation's innocence. That's why the title of the song in the video production is "Childhood's End".
I was hoping someone might connect with this song and video presentation in some way. Unfortunately, these days many young people today aren't fully aware of the lasting effect President Kennedy's assassination has had on our country and the world over the past fifty years. As the saying goes, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it". I think it's critical for our future that this moment from our nation's history is never swept under the carpet of the changing times. We owe that much to our children, our children's children and the future generations that are here long after we are gone..
...how what happened on that November day almost 50 years ago irrevocably changed our country forever. I believe that event in history truly stole away our nation's innocence
You seem quite earnest, and I commend you on your work and desire to keep history alive. However, I think that JFK's assassination was not the start of a domino effect upon the turbulent sequence of events to follow that are featured in the video. Instead, the assassination was one of many indicators of a sharp turning in the American (and actually, worldwide) culture, and was completely synchronous with that time.
The first Presidential debates were televised in 1960, so the profound influence of that media was already on the horizon. By November 1963, the Beatles were already a phenomenon in Europe, and would be on American TV in two months, so a music revolution was underway. Rachel Carson had already written Silent Spring, and the environmental movement was underway. Betty Friedan had written The Feminine Mystique and the women's movement was underway. The Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) formed in 1960, had by 1962 morphed into the radical left, expressing student disillusionment with the military-industrial-academic complex and soon to be expressed in antiwar protests. Playboy Magazine was widely read, and that included the intelligentsia, upending sexual attitudes. In May 1963 Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert (Ram Dass) were fired from Harvard for taking LSD and psilocybin, which they had begun using in 1960, so the psychedelic drug movement was underway. Beat Generation notables like Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac were studying eastern religions and seeding new philosophical ideas for the hippie generation. In 1960 there had already been anti-government protests an UC Berkeley against the House UnAmerican Activities Committee, so the seeds for a profound mistrust of the FedGov were planted. Rosa Parks refused to give up her bus seat in 1955, and by 1960 the Greensboro sit-in protest targeted racial segregation; Martin Luther King had given his "I Have a Dream" speech in Washington in August 1963, and Medgar Evers was murdered, so the Civil Rights Movement was also well underway. Bob Dylan was an institution, and Joan Baez made the cover of Time Magazine in 1962, so the antiwar/peace movement was well established.
I could add many more examples from the worlds of art, fashion, technology, etc. that indicate that a sea change was already happening way before that day in Dallas. The assassination hurt, but America in 1963 had already lost any leftover innocence it may have had from the late 1950's.
I was in my early teens at the time of Kennedy's assasination. Almost immediately, there arose an attempt among the various sectors of the "New Deal Democratic" coaliton to annoint the fallen President, and depict him as a far stronger leader than was actually the case. History has uncovered the flaws (in this case, sexual infidelity and addiction to painkillers) and weaknesses to which every public figure is prone to some degree, and John Kennedy today is viewed from a more realistic perspective. Meanwhile, the old "soft Left" tactice of demonizing anoyne who doesn't Buy blindly into the "vision" of a coalition which has been driven further to the Left by adopting the ideology of the 60's campus radicals continues.
John (and Joseph) Kennedy had no inkling of either the fall of organized Marxism or the emrgence of an economy which, while it has gone "global", still must deal with major players (China, Putin's Russia, and the Islamic Bloc) which hold to no standard of basic human rights. And one can only logicaly conclude that while they would have (probably on a token basis at first) embraded the fuller emancipation of women and the emergence of the environmental movement, these trends must eventually answer to both the free flow of human opinion and the market economy upon which all human progress is dependent. You cannot interfere with one without diminishing the other, and pushing us further toward the stagnation of the corrupt, class-conscious European model, whaich has previously failed miserably when the chips were down.
The emerging attempt to canonize John F Kennedy as some sort of "progressive" saint is just one more act in a long-running political circus.
Last edited by 2nd trick op; 03-19-2013 at 12:02 AM..
The JFK assassination had no profound effect on our nation. His 1960 election victory did, however, have an enduring effect...the Vietnam War. But CSNY won't sing these tunes, only that of Nixon's coming.
You seem quite earnest, and I commend you on your work and desire to keep history alive. However, I think that JFK's assassination was not the start of a domino effect upon the turbulent sequence of events to follow that are featured in the video. Instead, the assassination was one of many indicators of a sharp turning in the American (and actually, worldwide) culture, and was completely synchronous with that time.
The first Presidential debates were televised in 1960, so the profound influence of that media was already on the horizon. By November 1963, the Beatles were already a phenomenon in Europe, and would be on American TV in two months, so a music revolution was underway. Rachel Carson had already written Silent Spring, and the environmental movement was underway. Betty Friedan had written The Feminine Mystique and the women's movement was underway. The Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) formed in 1960, had by 1962 morphed into the radical left, expressing student disillusionment with the military-industrial-academic complex and soon to be expressed in antiwar protests. Playboy Magazine was widely read, and that included the intelligentsia, upending sexual attitudes. In May 1963 Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert (Ram Dass) were fired from Harvard for taking LSD and psilocybin, which they had begun using in 1960, so the psychedelic drug movement was underway. Beat Generation notables like Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac were studying eastern religions and seeding new philosophical ideas for the hippie generation. In 1960 there had already been anti-government protests an UC Berkeley against the House UnAmerican Activities Committee, so the seeds for a profound mistrust of the FedGov were planted. Rosa Parks refused to give up her bus seat in 1955, and by 1960 the Greensboro sit-in protest targeted racial segregation; Martin Luther King had given his "I Have a Dream" speech in Washington in August 1963, and Medgar Evers was murdered, so the Civil Rights Movement was also well underway. Bob Dylan was an institution, and Joan Baez made the cover of Time Magazine in 1962, so the antiwar/peace movement was well established.
I could add many more examples from the worlds of art, fashion, technology, etc. that indicate that a sea change was already happening way before that day in Dallas. The assassination hurt, but America in 1963 had already lost any leftover innocence it may have had from the late 1950's.
It's easy to put history into perspective fifty years after all these assorted incidents have occurred. At the time, though, the greater majority of people other than the selected intelligentsia were completely unaware of the writings Kerouac, Ginsberg and the other Beats...and Timothy Leary and Richart Alpert's experiments with LSD never reached any level of recognition until three or four years later. Bob Dylan was not yet an 'institution'--"Blowin' in The Wind" was released in August of 1963 by Peter, Paul and Mary, which climbed up the music charts. At the same time, Dylan's breakthrough album "Freewheelin'" was released...but it would take months for him to receive any sort of widespread recognition. In fact, it's my belief that he truly didn't become an 'institution' until he 'went electric' at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965. In no way do I wish to diminish the murder of Medgar Evers, the bravery of Rosa Parks or the Civil Rights Movement. However, I believe the assassination of JFK then less than five years later, the murder of Martin Luther King and RFK...along of course with our involvement in the Vietnam War...caused our society to reach some kind of collective tipping point. Sure, whatever innocence there might have been was in its death throes at the time of JFK's assassination...but I believe that moment in history drove the point home for the majority of people out there who were sadly unaware of all the other events that were occuring at the time. Hey, I have no idea how old you are, but your post sounds a bit more like you're consulting a history book than actually having been there when all this was going down. Just an observation. Peace,
Rick
Last edited by childhoodsend50; 03-19-2013 at 06:10 AM..
I could barely watch the video because to this day, it will bring tears to my eyes. I think many of us who remember that day would be similarly affected. Our country was torn apart that day. I didn't realize it at the time.
If ripples of change were occurring beforehand, they were barely noticeable to people of my generation who were coming of age about 1963. I was in college and Joan Baez was popular as well as other folk singers like the Kingston Trio. Certainly I had never heard of Betty Friedan, Timothy Leary, Silent Spring or any of the rest of the people and things mentioned in a previous post, in fact to me, all that is about 1967 and later.
Most of us were not that interested in politics in the early 60s, we were emerging from the apathetic 50s and there was an air of happiness and optimism. Personally, I didn't understand what JFK was all about and was more taken with Jackie and the beautiful children, the redecorating of the White House in a much more tasteful style, the more upscale tastes and style of the new administration.
Everything was fine. The day Kennedy was shot, it felt bad but my main concern was that it was a Friday and would my new boyfriend cancel our date for that night!!
Well, it may have been a year or so before I realized it was not fine anymore. All of a sudden all I heard about on campus was Viet Nam. Kids were getting sent there and killed--I had never even heard of it before. Our music changed to a lot of anti war songs. The folk singers started singing against Viet Nam about 1965/66. "Eve of Destruction" - Barry McGuire and P.F. Sloan (1965)--from Wikipedia is one of the first I remember.
It was Lyndon Johnson's war and we hated him for it. That war divided the entire country and ruined people's lives for no good reason. Instead of peace and happiness, we were now being led down a different course.
Looking back on all of it now, there was a lot more going on than the war, but being in college, that's all I knew and it was my age group that was being drafted and killed. We were enraged. It felt like a giant explosion had occurred and rage was released. We felt angry and alienated as though our world, as it had been handed down to us, was gone and it had been replaced by things we didn't want and didn't understand. What were the late 60s but anger and people dropping out? I did the anger--we marched in the streets and wanted to take our country back and end the war. Other people didn't even want to cope so they went to live on communes and became hippies. Some people took drugs as a means of escape from a world gone crazy.
Now I know that Kennedy wanted to end the Viet Nam conflict, that he was for peace. The military didn't quite agree with him! Now I know that Kennedy wanted to dismantle the CIA, the CIA didn't like that idea very much! Now I know that Kennedy was against certain monied interests who wouldn't have like it and one of these was Big Oil. Now I know that Kennedy was anti Mafia--a truly fatal error because they had helped his father to get him elected.
So I knew instinctively and from what I saw around me after JFK was shot that something changed radically but only now, after researching I can see that a lot more changed than what I was aware of at the time and I can see why. Kennedy was our last real President in the sense that he was the last one who tried to stand up to the corruption and control of the powers who seek to control the government but who were never elected to do the job.
He was far from a perfect person but he did have courage to defy the powers that vied for control and he was leading us on a path that would probably have made this country continue to thrive, not to fall apart and become more corrupt and lead to the mess that we have today.
Thank you for your post. Back on that day in November of 1963, I was an eleven year old Irish Catholic kid growing up in Belmont, Massachusetts. I knew something profound had happened, still I really wasn't aware of the impact of what had occurred on that Friday afternoon. By the time I was 18, unfortunately both of my parents had died. Years later, while writing the words to "Childhood's End", a huge well of grief opened up deep inside me...not only for the loss of my mom and dad, but for the loss of President Kennedy in such a senseless and brutal manner. I suddenly realized that his assassination had affected me much more than I'd ever realized before. All the feelings that 11-year old boy had experienced decades earlier...feelings he'd somehow tucked away into the deepest recesses of his psyche...were suddenly coming to the surface. It was a truly a cathartic experience. I've written lyrics to hundreds of songs, but none have affected me so deeply before or since.
Hey, I have no idea how old you are, but your post sounds a bit more like you're consulting a history book than actually having been there when all this was going down. Just an observation. Peace,Rick
An incorrect observation.
I: saw the Beatles live (twice) as well as all the British Invasion bands; went to Ginsberg and Ferlinghetti poetry readings; lived 1 block from the Playboy mansion in its heyday and went to the Playboy Theatre regularly; hung out in Beat coffeehouses (father was a Beatnik); participated in Civil Rights sit-ins and protests in Chicago (organized mostly by Jesse Jackson); marched on Washington D.C.(twice) in antiwar protests; was a member of a radical political organization; ran with the mobs in Chicago during the '68 convention riots; was a full-on hippie and all that lifestyle implied; later worked with Vietnam vets who had PTSD.
I have seen and experienced firsthand a lot of 1960's history.
People in the early sixties were just figuring out through psychology and the media that it was OK to express feelings. When Kennedy was shot, I even saw men cry, which astounded me. But since everything else in society was already changing and happening so fast, within a few months the assassination had already been pushed back in the news. People just wanted to get past it. It was the Beatles, the "War on Poverty," Liz Taylor and Richard Burton, race riots and other news that consumed attention.
Catholics and the Irish took the assassination harder, because it was the first time that the religion or ethnicity did not prevent public success in majority Protestant America.
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