The Best Decade...Probably

This is so tricky, selecting and then writing about the  Best Decade . Where to start? Literally! How about 1140 - 1149 AD? You think I'm joking? The first complete decade in the reign of good King Stephen (the only English monarch to have shared my name). You're right, of course. I am joking. I know I'm supposed to pick the best decade from my own lifetime and there are six and a half to choose from - but what to leave out? Childhood in Africa? Student life? Getting married? Becoming father to two beautiful girls? Working in America? Writing for a music magazine? Playing in the Deadbeats? Supporting Blackpool FC in the Premier League? The here and now?

I was honestly tempted to go for the pick'n'mix angle and select ten top years from across a spread of decades, on the principle that no one decade can represent the best of times, because often as not it includes the worst of times as well.

However, that pick'n'mix approach has already been adopted by a couple of my fellow Dead Good Bloggers, so in the end I decided to stick to the given brief (more or less) and I've chosen a discrete run of ten consecutive years as representing probably the best decade ever. (If Carlsberg wrote history....)

That said, I'm still going to cheat slightly by having my chosen decade commence on 1st October 1962 and end exactly ten years later on 30th September 1972. For me (and for the western hemisphere) that was one hell of a ten years! It started in the week the Beatles released their first single, 'Love Me Do' (the beginning of a musical evolution that would change millions of lives) and it ended on the day my folks deposited me at university at the start of Freshers' Week and a four-year stretch of student life. 


'Before...'

Having established the co-ordinates, let's first come up the years on a whistle-stop tour from 'Before' (the straitened, plastic "adoration of the Tupperware" era - as pictured above) to 'Afterwards' (the liberated, organic "Self-aware and can realise anything" era - see the additional image further on), before getting on to philosophical musings about what it all meant. The fact is that in between those two dates, all changed utterly as we experienced a cold war, a big freeze, a white heat, a space race, winds of change, a world shading from grey to day-glo, a general unshackling both cultural and sexual, transistorisation, decimalisation and a great European adventure. To my mind it was a period that stood apart, almost a renaissance; ten intense years of phenomenal and rapid change that transformed the 20th century and helped shape the world as we know it today. It was also the decade in which I was fortunate enough to grow up.

Even before the month of October 1962 was out, we lived through the Cuba Missile Crisis, which came close to being the end of the world as we knew it. It was an experience that shaped my anti-military stance and long-term CND sympathies. Hard on its heels came the coldest, longest winter I have ever known... and so on into 1963 with ice on the insides of our windows (no central-heating in those days), cheered by nascent Beatlemania - 'Please, Please Me', 'From Me To You', 'She Loves You', all over the radio-waves and each song a step forward from the last. Pop culture was born. After the thaw, I attended my first league football match - watching Peterborough United (my home town at the time) beating Swindon 3-1 at London Road. Although I'm a lifelong Blackpool supporter (which is how come I ended up living here in the jewel of the north) it was unrealistic for a ten-year old from East Anglia to get to see the Seasiders play... that came later in the best decade. 1963 also saw my first serious girlfriend come and go. I wonder where you are now Gillian (nee) Jackson. My first pangs of love were for you. The year rounded out with the assassination of President Kennedy (I know exactly where I was at the time), the arrival of Doctor Who on the small screen and the complete ascendance of those afore-mentioned Beatles.

1964 brought our first foreign family holiday, in West Germany. It was almost exotic, a mind-expanding experience in terms of continental food and geography, even if Dusseldorf was the nearest we got to the fabled city of Hamburg, wherein the abilities of the Fab Four had been forged. My abiding love of yogurt and salami, unheard of in early Sixties East Anglia, traces back to that holiday, as does an unshakeable pro-European disposition; (I remain a Remainer). We moved house from Peterborough to Cambridge in late summer, so I got to watch 'A Hard Day's Night' at Peterborough Odeon in August and at Cambridge Odeon the following month. The move was in connection with my Dad's job but it also marked my transition from junior to secondary school in a beautiful and historic university city. I hope I knew how lucky I was - I think I did.

By 1965 my friends and I were lusting after girls in mini-skirts (the new craze - fashion, not lusting) who'd never think to give us a second look because they only had eyes for boys at least three years older than us. We consoled ourselves with girly magazines and sneaky cigarettes, played football in the park on weekends and holidays, watched Cambridge City on Saturday afternoons (they were rubbish but it didn't matter) and listened to pirate radio while doing our chemistry and Latin homework. Pirate radio (as I've blogged before) was a portal into another, more exciting world for us; it allowed callow schoolboys across the land to feel hip and connected to the zeitgeist. The Beatles still blazed the trail with 'Help' and 'Rubber Soul' but now they had the Byrds, Dylan, Kinks, Lovin' Spoonful, Rolling Stones, Small Faces and Who in the vanguard and an unstoppable youth revolution was on a roll. What else? Martin Luther King led a civil rights march as race riots erupted in America and the US military initiated operation Rolling Thunder in Vietnam.

My first teenage summer, that of 1966, will be forever fondly remembered for England winning the World Cup (our greatest ever sporting achievement?) and for the Beatles releasing 'Revolver', still the finest LP of all time (dispute this if you choose). Labour won a second successive General Election, the white heat of a technological revolution was going to ensure Britain's super-power status, the Sixties were in full swing and London was the cool capital of the world. What could possibly go wrong? Sure, girls were still playing hard-to-get but it was only a matter of time... Meanwhile, Mao Tse Tung gave his blessing to the Cultural Revolution in China and the number of US soldiers deployed in Vietnam hit the half-a-million mark. As if in response or recoil, American youths burned their draft cards, flower-power and making-love-not-war became the rallying call and psychedelia began emanating from San Francisco as Jefferson Airplane took off with the Grateful Dead and Quicksilver Messenger Service in close attendance.

Excuse me for skipping 1967, which was really 1966 part two, only not as good. 'Sergeant Pepper' was okay, but not as ground-breaking as its predecessor and the much-hyped Summer Of Love was pretty-much over before the airwaves were chiming with songs about flowers in our hair.

1968 however was seismic - in the East, a brave revolution in Czechoslovakia was crushed by mean Soviet tanks; elsewhere, student riots and anti-war demonstrations broke out in major cities around the world (Detroit, London, Paris especially, Tokyo). Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King were assassinated. Biafra tried to break away from Nigeria and was starved into line. Black power activists declared war on the US state. So much for peace and love, it seemed. It felt as though the old order might just be crumbling, even in beautiful and historic Cambridge. However, I took to the pacifist, hippy ethic and decided that was for me. I started to grow my hair and tie-dyed my jeans.

By 1969 Nixon was in the White House, Vietnam was in flames and the Beatles were disintegrating, their last public performance being on the roof of the Apple building. Oh, but serious dating of girls was now a constant distraction, bringing my first proper sexual encounters and a going steady - and then there were O-levels to sit (the GCSEs of yesteryear). My Dad couldn't understand why I went punting on the River Cam with my girlfriend the night before a big exam when I could have been getting in some last-minute revision! That was about the time I put a bolt on my bedroom door and he smashed it in. That summer saw three men land on the moon and half a million hippies groove in the mud at Woodstock. It also saw the death penalty abolished in the UK. By the autumn I was a rebellious sixth-former (nick-named hippy Steve), my girlfriend was on the pill and recreational drugs were an occasional indulgence.

'After...'

I think my parents were worried that I was going to throw everything away and end up some stoned wreck with a teenage mother and kid to support. The world was changing too quickly for them and they didn't know how to handle it as the Sixties morphed into the Seventies. In point of fact, I think that in 1970 I was relatively normal, focussed on getting good A-levels and going to university to study English - which is exactly what I did. Other notable events of the year included Germaine Greer (who would lecture me at Warwick) publishing 'The Female Eunuch' as women's lib began to have a social impact, Labour's six years of reforming political leadership coming to an end and me finally getting to see the mighty Blackpool FC play. It was in a 2-0 defeat at Oxford, last game of the season, but the Seasiders had already secured promotion back to division one after a three year absence. (Unfortunately they only survived in the top flight for a year with a mere four wins - and it was to be another forty years before they'd get back there again.)

1971 was quite pivotal as well. As chairman of the School Council I went head-to-head with the Head over sixth-form students' rights to have long hair and beards if they wished. (I got kicked out but was allowed to go back to sit my A-levels.) I know, there are many issues more worthy than length of hair to take a stand on, but it was a symbolic gesture and I still don't regret it. My Mum's own hair seemed to turn white almost overnight, though she may just have stopped dyeing it. My Dad ordered her not to feed me until I came to my senses - and I cleared out. I got a job washing-up in a steak bar (remember Berni Inns?) lunchtimes and evenings. It paid the rent and just about covered my food bill - though I ate plenty of steak and my Mum used to drop by with additional provisions; (I don't know if my Dad ever knew). Having a pad of my own (with double bed and stereo) felt like the right move, self-determination and independence. After A-levels I decided to take a gap-year, got myself a better job working in a men's boutique (you know, Ben Sherman shirts, velvet loons et cetera), earned reasonable money, read lots of books (Heller, Hesse, Kerouac, Kesey, Nietzsche, Orwell, Steinbeck), bought LPs, wrote poetry and saw as much of my girlfriend - two years my junior and still at school - as possible.

My valve radio had died a death and I had no TV set (it would be the 1980s before I got one) so my links with the bigger world were mainly via the 'underground' press, International Times, Frendz, Oz, through Private Eye and the music weeklies Melody Maker and NME; it was a bit like being partly off-grid. Music was still key and I had a quite extensive LP collection but the major world events of 1972 passed me by except at the macro-level: the ongoing war in Vietnam, troubles brewing in Northern Ireland, negotiations to join the Common Market. After one last glorious summer in Cambridge, punting on the river, hanging out with friends, making headway on my university 'reading list' I made peace with my parents and prepared to head off to read English at Warwick.

I suppose that for many people, if they are lucky (as I was), their formative or teenage years will be  among the most significant in their lives - everything is new, one is relatively carefree and so on - which carries quite some weight when trying to identify the best decade.

On a personal level, other decades might have had equal claim, as I suggested at the outset - my first ten years of married life, for instance. What really nails it for my slightly skewed definition of the Swinging Sixties is the external things that were happening at the same time and which helped to make my formative years what they were.  Even if one were to remove the individual (and inevitably mythologised) view of developments that I've given on this whistle-stop tour, I still think the period I've chosen was special in a significant way for the sheer range and rapidity of the changes that took place.

Of course in this revolution of the heart and mind, matters didn't go from Tupperware to Self-aware for everybody, or not at the same rate anyway. There is always an avant-garde, followed by a media bow-wave and then a time lag until new expressions, freedoms, ideas become mainstream and accepted. London swung (or to be precise, parts of London) long before Swindon or Sunderland. Hippies were advocating an eco-friendly stance decades before legislation attempted to address global warming or the dangerous ubiquity of plastics. It has taken Ireland nearly half a century to become as liberal in matters of gender as Great Britain. And so on.

In addition to those great life-enhancing changes I've already touched on, think also of these: self-determination for many countries who were able to throw off the yoke of colonial status by peaceful negotiation; the breaking down of class, gender and race taboos; the trend towards liberalisation of legislation (regarding abortion, homosexuality, recreational drugs, religious freedoms, women's rights); deregulation of the airwaves; advances in medical science (especially transplant surgery); technological leaps like satellite communications, the internet (or Arpanet as it began) and data digitisation. These rights, freedoms and capabilities, no matter how long they took to make their mark or how widely they have become accepted, all had their origins in the best decade. I rest my case, exhausted.

Unfortunately, I've spent such a lot of time putting this mini-essay together (nearly a whole day) that I've not given a thought to writing a poem to suit. Let me leave you then with something appropriate by Adrian Mitchell, socialist, pacifist, dubbed the Shadow Poet Laureate and without a doubt my favourite poet of the last half-century...

The People Walking
Sometimes the people walk together
Down the streets of their own cities
With no weapons but the truth

Sometimes the soldiers and police
Turn their backs on their own officers
And walk with the people

As the people walk together
Down the streets of their own cities
With no weapons but the truth

Sometimes the people walk together
Brave and fearful and angry and joyful
With no weapons but the truth

                                         Adrian Mitchell (1932-2008)

I know that was a bit of a long read, but thanks for sticking with it. I feel unmasked. Have a cool week, S :-)