Robin Morgan and Ariel Leve. 1963: The Year of Revolution. New York: Harper, 2013. E-book.

I confess that this book was not at all what I thought it would be, but it is something that might interest certain readers.

Usually when we think of “the sixties” or the 1960s, the era and zeitgeist really begins in 1963 and ends around 1973. This year a lot of ink and electrons have been used about 1968—assassinations, protests, hippies—but those trends began in 1963. 1963 certainly notes that well. There is virtually nothing about politics or high culture. It is mostly about the three things that still characterize the sixties the most: sex, drugs, and rock and roll.

The authors note a singular event on January 13, 1963, in England. Back then there were only two television networks in the country. One of them carried the first televised performance of “an attractive young boy band” named the Beatles. The other network carried the first television performance of the “more cerebral” Bob Dylan. (In Dylan’s case, he was acting as an American folk singer in a television drama.) The Beatles and Dylan would come to characterize the sixties as much as anyone.

1963 is an oral history. It is a collection of many anecdotes by numerous people (my guess at least 50) whom the authors interviewed to get a sense of what the arts, especially music, was up to in 1963. Most of the stories are from England and include reminiscences of promoters and members of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Who, Herman’s Hermits, the Dave Clark Five, the Yardbirds, the Hollies, Jeff Beck, Marianne Faithfull, and so on.

There are some items about film and fashion—especially Carnaby Street and the miniskirt—and a few things about the visual arts. Many names are dropped. Most of these people knew each other within one or two degrees of separation.

As the subtitle suggests, there was a sense of rebellion and revolution. Mick Jagger famously once said that the root of rock music was “familial conflict.” Most of the British musicians were inspired by African-American blues artists, especially from Chicago. Indeed, the Rolling Stones named themselves after a song by Muddy Waters.

The music in America was either folk-based protest like Dylan and Joan Baez or rhythm and blues going mainstream like the Beach Boys and the Supremes.

Besides the distinctive music, especially in England there was a new emphasis on sex and drugs. Jackie Collins, the writer, notes “The pill changed a lot.” (84) People who had few moral qualms about sex now did not have to worry about becoming or making someone pregnant.

It was not all fun and games. One actress complained:

Whenever you went out with a boy they always wanted to sleep with you. I just wished that you could go out with men and not have this dreadful threat that you had to sleep with them. They were very predatory all the time. (90)

Well, not everyone. We are told that Michael Caine was a gentleman, and in America Motown producers tried to maintain a clean image. The testimonies of the people who worked for Barry Gordy and Smokey Robinson give us the impression that the Detroit recording company was more like a family.

Except for the Motown scene, we also read about the rise in drug use. Indeed some of the most famous people in this book would die from drug abuse.

Even later, if they survived, it was not fun. I recall about 1968 or 1969 seeing one of the men interviewed in this book in concert with his band at the time. My friends and I loved their recordings and we were excited to be able to get some tickets. Sadly, the band phoned it in. The concert was terrible. The band members were all so stoned that they did not know what they were doing. One player did clean up his act and is still recording today. The book tells us that one of them was doing heroin even back in 1963.

A number of interviewees make the point that what was happening was a movement. There were no leaders, no George Soros or Koch brother financiers pulling strings. “The Beatles did not lead their generation…they went along with their generation.” (206)

1963 also quotes Philip Larkin’s poem “Annus Mirabilis” (Miraculous Year) which humorously summarizes the cultural changes. Yes, it is a “pop” culture phenomenon. Eliot may be correct in saying that a mass culture is a substitute culture, but does seem that a lot changed, whether for better or for worse, in that year.