Measuring a decade
Comparing American popular culture in 1960 with 1970 shows a striking contrast. A better question is how much of that difference was caused by the counterculture, which was one influence among several. Some changes began before the movement, some were driven by technology and business, and some reached mainstream audiences only after the hippie scene had faded. This article follows five areas and tries to say, for each, who was responsible.
Music
In 1960, the American pop charts were dominated by solo singers, vocal groups and songs written by professional songwriters. By 1970, rock bands who wrote their own material, and the album as an artistic form, occupied a central place.
The turning points are well known. The Beatles’ arrival in the United States in February 1964 opened the market to British groups. Bob Dylan’s move to electric music at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival signalled that folk and rock could merge. In 1967, albums such as Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band convinced many critics and listeners that rock could be serious art, and the Monterey International Pop Festival in June showed that live music could draw an audience large enough to be a cultural event. The decade ended with the Woodstock festival in August 1969.
The counterculture helped shape this by supplying audiences, venues and attitudes, particularly in San Francisco. But the music industry was also driven by teenagers’ spending power, studio technology and the spread of FM radio, none of which belonged to the movement.
Film
Hollywood in 1960 operated under the Production Code, which restricted what could be shown on screen. By the late 1960s the Code was losing its force, and in November 1968 it was replaced by the ratings system that is still broadly familiar.
Two 1967 releases are often seen as markers. Bonnie and Clyde, released in August, caused argument over its violence and its sympathetic outlaws, while The Graduate, which appeared in December, dealt with a young man’s alienation from his parents’ world. Together with later films such as Easy Rider (1969), they signalled a shift toward younger audiences and more daring subjects. Yet this was also a response to falling cinema attendance and changing business conditions in the studios, so it would be wrong to treat film simply as a product of youth rebellion.
Dress and appearance
Fashion changed in two stages. In the first half of the decade, British youth styles and designers such as Mary Quant helped popularise the miniskirt, with its roots in London rather than in the hippie scene. In the later part, long hair on men, beads, denim, tie-dye and secondhand clothing became associated with the counterculture.
Hair length was an especially charged issue, with schools, employers and families arguing over it. By 1970 longer hair on men was common enough that it no longer marked a person as a rebel by itself, which is a pattern repeated with many counterculture styles: wide adoption, then loss of oppositional meaning.
Language
The slang associated with the period, such as “groovy,” “far out,” “freak” and “hang-up,” came from a mix of sources, including jazz and Beat circles, the drug scene and African American speech. “Generation gap” became a common phrase in the second half of the decade. Some expressions entered mainstream use and quickly became dated, while others lasted. Newspapers often over-reported hippie jargon, and much of what was printed was more a media construction than something people actually said.
Drug use
Drug use is the area where caution matters most. Marijuana and LSD became associated with the youth scene, and arrests for drug offences rose over the decade. The best evidence suggests that use increased among college students and young adults, especially in the later 1960s and into the 1970s, but remained a minority behaviour for most of the decade. Exact rates depend on survey methods, and the early surveys were limited.
LSD itself was a legal drug until the mid-1960s. California banned it in October 1966, and further restrictions followed nationally. The drug’s effects and risks were widely debated at the time and remain a matter on which the historical record includes both enthusiastic accounts and well-documented harm. This article does not suggest that any of these substances are safe.
What should not be credited to the counterculture
Several large changes of the decade had only a partial or indirect connection to the movement:
- Civil rights and Black Power. These movements grew from African American organising that predated the hippies and had its own agenda.
- Feminism. The reawakening of the women’s movement drew on its own sources, and it often criticised the counterculture’s treatment of women.
- Technology and media. The spread of colour television and cheap transistor radios shaped how fast styles moved.
- Demographics and money. The size of the youth market made it commercially attractive to advertisers, regardless of ideology.
A sound reading is that the counterculture accelerated and made visible changes already underway, gave them a distinctive look and sound, and provoked a strong reaction. It was neither the sole cause nor merely a fad.