Someone asked me why music was so central to American society in the 1960's. What happens is rock 'n' roll grows up with the baby boom generation. It begins with Elvis on the Ed Sullivan show, shaking his hips.
If you look at the lyrics, listen to the lyrics, of rock music in the 1950's, it's still very much about the things that people had been singing about for generations: it's about romance and about heartbreak.
It's really in the 1960's, as the baby boom generation moves into its teen years, that rock takes on its more rebellious tone. And it takes different forms. There's the classic folk rock: people like Bob Dylan, with the very progressive message, the anti-war, post civil rights. You have psychedelic rock, which glorifies the use of drugs and of sex.
But whatever form it takes, what music in the 1960's, in all its different forms, does is it gives younger people, it gives this generation permission to rebel. It gives them permission to defy their parents. It becomes a part of their expression - their desire - to assert themselves and to prove that they're different from their parents.
If you want to get a great idea of how music is evolving and changing during the 60's, look at a picture and listen to the Beatles from, say, 1964 when they first appear on the Ed Sullivan show, and 1967. And you'll see not only do they look different, but the types of lyrics that they're singing are completely different. So they're trying to keep up with the evolving ethos and sense of rebellion of the generation as it moves through the 1960's.
