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Pretty heavy stuff for a six year old.

1960 Fear of Nuclear War

By the time the sixties arrived I had discovered three things.

1. My AM radio was super cool

2. Sunday night television was in technicolor ("Bonanza" & "Magical World of Disney")

3. We needed nuclear fallout shelters.

The first two discoveries thrilled me. The third one chilled me, but I didn't let it show for fear someone would say "Off with his head!"

1963 War Escalates and A President is Assassinated

By 1963 I was twelve years old and dreaming of being an astronaut. It was about this time I first became aware of Viet Nam . . . where a war had been going on for four years, but I had been too preoccupied playing toy soldiers to know about war half way around the world.

Then as I sat in my seventh grade classroom on a November afternoon there was an announcement that the President of the United States had been killed. I still wasn't old enough to totally comprehend the magnitude of this event, but I knew something was fundamentally wrong.

"Alice, where can we get some wonderland potion?"

1964 The "Love" Potion Arrives

On February 7, 1964 "The British Invasion" (video) began when the Beatles landed in America. My AM radio was supercharged with a new sound. I turned on and tuned in every night to my great escape, Dick Bionde, at WLS in Chicago. I was over a thousand miles from Chicago, but as close to the Beatles as I could possibly get.

Beatles love songs like "I Want to Hold Your Hand" and "Love, Love Me Do" were my potion from wonderland. I liked the idea of love. The Beatles had now declared love to be "All We Need" and millions of young people agreed.

1965 Folk Songs Protest the War

I was growing up quickly and wanted to seek life's answers, but part of me was still a kid. Another musical group, Peter, Paul and Mary, was protesting the war by hammering out songs like "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?" and telling me the answers "my friend" were "Blowing in the Wind". I figured radio signals were "blowing in the wind" so I continued to tune in with my AM radio. They also sang to the kid in me with "Puff the Magic Dragon."

1966 Countercultural Revolution Begins

The war in Viet Nam was gaining momentum. A nation pained at the losses of thousands of young soldiers. In 1966 Barry Sadler (video) was number one for 5 weeks in a row with "Ballad of The Green Beret".

In Oct. 1966 Grace Slick had joined Jefferson Airplane. In December 1966 Jefferson Airplane was featured in Newsweek magazine. It also appeared Sandler's patriotic salute to the "3 in 100" who were "America's best" had sparked a fever in the anti-war movement and the countercultural revolution was rapidly growing.

1967 Countercultural Revolution In Prime Time

On June 3, 1967 Jefferson Airplane appeared on Dick Clark's American Bandstand singing "White Rabbit" and "Somebody to Love". Then, in prime time on network television, Jefferson Airplane performed on the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour (video).

A generation of young people was counting on free love and psychedelic drugs to give them enlightenment. The idea of proudly dieing for a country at war was being challenged by dodging the draft and "making love, not war."

1968 Sex, Drugs and Music

The"hippie movement" was enticing many of America's middle class youth to come to Haight Ashbury, a district of San Francisco, where "free love" and "dancing in the street" were entertwined with partying and an array of substances from wonderland.

More popular artists like The Grateful Dead, Jimmie Hendix and Janis Joplin (video) were getting prime time television exposure and becoming musical evangelists to "Tune In, Turn On and Drop Out", a phrase coined by Dr. Timothy Leary.

1969 Final Chapter of The Countercultural Revolution

Woodstock was perhaps the grand finale of the countercultural revolution before the The 70s ushered in disco fever. Janis Joplin and Jimmy Hendrix (video) would soon go too far in their countercultural revolutionary ways and find their stairway to the hereafter with drug overdoses injected into their blood streams.

We were on the cusp of losing the war in Viet Nam and the flower children were left without a cause, without leadership and without song. Free love gave way to free clinics for control of venereal diseases. My AM radio had been replaced by 8 track tapes and FM stereo was on the horizon.

1969 Magazine

1969 Magazine is for anyone who grew up in this era or is interested in what it was like to be a child of the 60's. 1969 Magazine highlights things that touched our lives from birth to current events. We want to be entertaining, informative and above all honest . . . especially to ourselves.

The 60's was a decade that showcased America at it's worst and it's best. 1969 presented the worst and best of the decade.

In 1969 Charles Manson demonstrated people can be incredibly evil and proved evil will always try to steal our virtue.

In 1969 we aimed at the stars and put a man on the moon.

"The Class of 1969" grew up in a countercultural revolution to "Tune In, Turn On and Drop Out". America is still here and so are we.

"We're the class that's really fine. We're the class of '69."

1969 Magazine
David Webster, Publisher