Life and Health | Fashion and style | Flower power, love-ins - and lies: "Martin Wainwright
Friday July 7, 2006
The Guardian
History records that it was the Swinging Sixties. A decade that included the summer of love, the Beatles, hippies and outrageous drug-taking.
And if it ever seemed odd that everyone who was around at the time seemed to be indulging in all of the above, a survey today reveals why.
Fibs. Lots of them.
Parents who have been trying to impress their children have resorted to exaggeration and outright lies over what they did during the flower power decade. Claims of liberated teenage years at love-ins and being at live Beatles gigs have led to the coining of a new phrase - generational gazumping - to describe 50-somethings desperately trying to appear cool."
5 comments:
As someone who was about six years of age when McCartney sued to dissolve the Beatles, I can confidently say I've never felt the need to lie about my career as the fourteenth or sixty-fourth Fifth Beatle (I played ukulele on their cover of the Beach Boys' "Fire"...which only appears on the soundtrack of the Jerry Lewis opus, THE DAY THE CLOWN CRIED). I have been at the periphery of various small youthquakes in the history of punk rock, so I can bore someone's grandkids someday about co-bankrolling the First Pacific Nu Musik Festival and attendance at early Fugazi and late Soulside (featuring Dave Grohl! Kids, before Nirvana and Foo Fighters!) concerts, and being calumnified for no compelling reason by Bikini Kill members. No, wait, having bored readers here, that's sufficient.
Well, I can only repeat that I've seen Slim Whitman.
Oh, great, and my generation gets the Pet Shop Boys and Milli Vanilli.
Well, Graham, the Summer of Love had Tommy James and Bobby Sherman, so it's roughly a wash.
Claims of liberated teenage years at love-ins and being at live Beatles gigs have led to the coining of a new phrase - generational gazumping - to describe 50-somethings desperately trying to appear cool."
But, but...I was at a live Beatles gig - February 1964, Carnegie Hall.
Really!
Geezer bus leaving in 10 minutes.
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