1970 at a glance:
- Robert Altman's "M*A*S*H," premieres.
- Jeffrey McDonald murders his entire family.
- Paul McCartney officially announces the split of The Beatles.
- The first episode of US soap opera All My Children is broadcast on the ABC television network.
- An oxygen tank in the Apollo 13 spacecraft explodes, forcing the crew to abort the mission and return in 4 days, culminating the phrase "Houston, we have a problem".
- Kent State shootings: Four students at Kent State University in Ohio are killed and 9 wounded by Ohio National Guardsmen, at a protest against the incursion into Cambodia.
- The Who become the first act to perform rock music (their rock opera, Tommy) at the Metropolitan Opera House, New York.
- The Mary Tyler Moore Show, featuring its star as an unmarried professional woman, debuts on CBS.
- The Grumman F-14 Tomcat makes its first flight.
- The North Tower of the World Trade Center is topped out at 1,368 feet (417 m), making it the tallest building in the world.
By 1970, the hippie culture was in full swing-and full transition. As the society gravitated toward the new decade, a fresh breed of hippies had emerged. Growing from the roots of the original sixties era, the seventies gave us a new and improved, and highly inspired version of the peace and love machine. People had hair, and they were growing it! The Woodstock festival had become legend. The world lost The Beatles, but it in the end, it gained the seventies.
I was 14 and 15 years old in 1970
Often the word Apocalypse is taken for doom and destruction. However, the true origin of the word is Greek: apokálypsis, meaning "to uncover, or to reveal". And that's what the 70's were for me; a vast uncovering, and a lifting of a childhood veil. I was fourteen years old, and turned fifteen in July of 1970.
On January 1st, 1970 I was finishing my freshman year in high school. Come September of the that year I entered high school as a Sophomore.
My greatest memories of that early time were the songs on the radio, in particular: "Move Over" by Steppenwolf, and "Love Grows Where My Rosemary Goes" by The Edison Lighthouse.
On New Year's Day of 1970, I picked up a copy of John Lennon & The Plastic Ono Band's "Live Peace in Toronto" which was a monumentally flawed record. Side one was a series of sloppy, uninspired performances that were about as exciting as making Jell-O, and side two was pure Yoko screeching.
Money was hard to come by; I sure hated to waste it on something like this. I know there are fans of the LP out there, but I was not, and still am not one of them. I found much more enjoyment with "Steppenwolf Live".
Goodbye, Beatles
The End of the Long and Winding Road
In 1970, the world lost The Beatles. Their breakup was a devastating event that happened during the spring of that year. On April 10, 1970, Paul McCartney made it official by announcing he was leaving The Beatles.
To a non-Beatles fan, this is ho-hum information, but to a kid who'd embraced the entire Beatle culture, and for someone who lived with them through the years, this was devastating news. The end of The Beatles even made it to our nightly news station. Word of the event hit England even harder than it did for us here stateside. The Fab Four were after all Great Britain's native sons.
Fortunately, I'd had a bit of premonition that this was coming; the album "Abbey Road" was too perfect, even more perfect than the engineering and production excellence of Sgt. Pepper. Abbey Road was sheer brilliance. The record concluded its second side with an inspiring jam session that sounded, in a word, epic. It felt like a swan song, and as I listened to the record over and over, I had a sense, that on a very unique level, they were saying goodbye to us.
The next Beatles release came in February as an odd hits-based LP that contained the full studio version of their monster success "Hey Jude". Bearing that song as its title, the LP consisted of side B filler tunes, and some previous earlier hits. In short, for me it was a complete waste of time, effort and money. The record only made me suspicious. They'd never done anything as odd as this before, so why now? This was a record that felt as unplanned, and uninspired as any could be. My first thought of the album was "they forgot to put Hey Jude on the White Album, so they had to create a quick release to put it onto." However, it also had the hit song "The Ballad of John and Yoko", which was a fun song despite the fact that it was a paean to John's Ono transference.
Again, by April of that year, the news was out, and the damage was done. The Beatles, as a band, were done. A final LP—and in my opinion—a truly inferior bit of tripe called "Let it Be" was released. The album looked, sounded, and felt like garbage. It appeared to serve only as a vehicle for two of their final hits "Get Back", and "Let it Be", yet didn't feature the studio perfected versions that comprised the singles. (However, George's raw guitar solo on "Let it Be" more than made up for it).This entire record was nothing more than a set of live studio outtakes that were only marginal in quality. The "Let it Be" album was, in my opinion, a sad commentary, and a sadder piece of history. I believed then as I do now that this was their personal memo to the world regarding their breakup.
Still, with, or without The Beatles life went on.
Teen Magazines
POINT: Teeny Bopper Magazines like Tiger Beat spewed bubble gum all over magazine racks in the stores. As hard as I tried to get away from the bubble-gummers, they came out in force. It wasn't enough that this stuff practically dominated television, but these horrible teen idols had records too!
Tiger Beat was actually quite ingenious in its design; it was more like a teenage girl's scrapbook. The covers were generally overloaded with info, cropped photos, wild color, and opportunities galore with promos like "dream dates" and "tours of their homes".
An after thought: Us guys on the home front of course resented these teen idols without once taking into consideration the hell these guys must have been going through. Some started off as child stars and became heartthrob sensations once they entered into their teen years. Perhaps David Cassidy liked Led Zeppelin and preferred to be jamming on stage with Jimmy Page.
I had to seek comfort in magazines more suited to my tastes like Rolling Stone, Creem and Circus that chronicled the albums, tours, and lives of heavy rock stars. Fortunately, these weren't gossip mags, but contained photos, tour info, and interviews as well as album reviews and articles about the bands.
North Portland Life
When Springtime came, we migrated north to Columbia Boulevard. This was a cross-cultural section of Portland at the time populated with white families and black families in fairly equal measure. The house we rented was a marvelous 2-story with a full basement and an awesome attic-type room which I occupied.That summer taught me much of what was to come in life, and that innocent '60s feel was slowly moving away from me.
There was a blonde girl named Cindy who lived next door to us. She had a crush on me from the beginning. She was my age, and was very cute, but still had a lot of tomboyish traits—which at the age of fifteen—weren’t that attractive to me. Most of the guys in the area drooled over her often, but I felt special for the fact that I was the one she had a crush on. After a bit she gave up on me as she wasn’t crazy about the direction I was going. She had unsavory opinions about the guys I’d recently met and hung out with.
I fell in love with the band "Grand Funk Railroad." I soon developed an immediate hero-worship with front man Mark Farner. His outward appearance resembled an American Indian complete with headband, armband, and he played bare-chested on stage. For many '70s hard-rocking girls, Farner may have been a 70's love guru. For the '70s hard-rocking guys, he led a 3-man band that was largely responsible for "hard rock" to enjoy the reputation it did. One noteworthy fact about Grand Funk Railroad was they sold out at the Hollywood Bowl much faster than The Beatles did.
Though I remained loyal to Grand Funk, and had their entire catalog of LPs, they went a bit sour for me when they converted to a 4-piece unit adding keyboards. The "We're An American Band" era was not exciting at all, and I lost interest in GFR for the remainder of my musical years. For me, Grand Funk's signature song was "Paranoid" from the second album simply titled "Grand Funk".
1970 was a great year for music, and I had been rocking like a wild boy to albums like: "The Who Live at Leeds", "Band of Gypsies", "Woodstock", Jimi Hendrix and Otis Redding's "Monterey" live album, "Hot Tuna", and "Chicago". (They shortened their name to simply "Chicago" losing the "Transit Authority" altogether).
Oddly enough, I was also listening to Bread and the albums "On the Waters" and "Manna" were very beloved LPs for me. The primary attraction I think was that I have always admired songwriters as much as I do musicians, and David Gates is a champion songwriter. Bread never lasted too long for me though.
1970 led me to the attraction of cigarettes. I'd sneak out to the roof and puff away thinking I was cool. Unfortunately, my coolness didn't survive as I was stupid enough to drop a finished butt down onto the porch below where my Mom sat on a warm summer evening. I remember her vividly saying "If you really want to smoke, then you have to wait until your sixteenth birthday." Those were the '70s!
Crosby, Stills, Nash — Add Young
The spring of 1970 found me well-acquainted with the now legendary supergroup Crosby, Stills & Nash. Their first album eponymously titled "Crosby, Stills & Nash" was a stellar success packed with incredible songs.
With the addition of Neil Young, CSN & Y became for me a force majeure. "Deja Vu" became a super-album from a super-group, and the song "Woodstock" more or less became an anthem for 1970. This became one of the most-played records on my turntable and earned its myriad pops, skips and scratches. During the 70's, one of the most common sights among young people —especially the Heads— was to see a person walking down the street with record albums under their arm. This album went with me to every house that did not have this record stocked as a part of their essential household supplies. The song "Almost Cut My Hair" was my favorite followed by "Carry On".
