Reviews

There's A Riot Going On: Revolutionaries, Rock Stars, and the Rise and Fall of '60s Counter-Culture by Peter Doggett

wholelottaotto's review

4.0

An excellent year-by-year social history of the 60s, with special focus on the intersections of politics and music. Each chapter/year covers the student/anti-Vietnam movement, civil rights & black power and women's lib in the U.S., as well as uprisings and protests around the world. Doggett is a very engaging writer, and his sober judgment and myth-deflating of events and personalities make for a fascinating read. (You'll never think of John Lennon or Mick Jagger and their cronies as icons of dissent after reading Doggett's analysis of their political naivete and/or overwhelming disinterest.) Overall, I think his task is to answer the question of what happened to all that revolutionary energy? Why did these social upheavals fail to bring about the revolution that seemed so close, and how did they disappear virtually without a trace? There are no easy answers--in-fighting and ego trips, harassment and brutality by the police and feds, but mostly I think it has to do with capitalism's ability to absorb and commoditize "revolution"--to take genuine rage at the injustice of the system and sell it back to the kids in the form of Che t-shirts and "revolutionary" rock & roll records. That answer is truly depressing, as it means that true revolution can never become a reality in this country, and that we will likely never see a time when it was as close as in the 1960s.