You Say You Want A Revolution? A Brief History Of Protest Music

 

You Say You Want A Revolution?

In 1965 Marc Bolan, Donovan and Joan Baez Marched To Trafalgar Square

by Stuart Penney

Global warming and climate change are a major concern for the kids of today, and rightly so.  But in the 1960s we had a very different kind of apocalypse on our minds.  Back then we were convinced the world might end at any moment in a Russian nuclear attack (following the requisite four-minute government warning, naturally).  Whether by missile, bomber plane, submarine or ship, the twin superpowers had devised the perfect way to deliver mutually assured destruction to each other’s doorstep.  It was a genuinely scary time and for more than a decade we really did live under the shadow of a full-scale nuclear war.

So, how did we respond in the face of this impending doomsday scenario?  Did we invade the nearest art gallery and superglue ourselves to a Picasso or a Rubens?  Did we nail our hands to the fast lane of the newly built M1 motorway at Watford Gap during rush hour?  Not a bit of it.  We did what anti-nuclear protesters have always done.  We marched.  And we waved banners.  Together with politicians (Tony Benn and Michael Foot were early supporters of the cause), pop stars, members of the clergy and assorted learned scholars from Oxbridge, we pulled on our duffle coats and backpacks and trudged along the A40 from Aldermaston to Trafalgar Square carrying signs and singing songs.  That’ll show ‘em, we thought.  It’ll all be over by Christmas at this rate.

Rod, complete with CND stickers

I say “we” but, as a schoolkid marooned in grimy Sheffield, I was a few years too young to take part in the earliest of the CND protest marches and, in any case, I had little interest in the political side of things at that time.  At this point I’m reminded of an interview Rod Stewart gave to BBC2 TV's Reel Stories in 2019.  Asked by Dermot O’Leary about his time as a ban the bomb protester in the early 60s, Rod recalled with barely concealed glee, “We used to go on the CND marches, but I did it just to get shagged.  I didn’t care about the bomb, actually.  It was just rebellion, that’s all it was.”  

This is the kind of stuff the hubristic Stewart frequently comes out with in interviews.  To him, most things in life are (or once were) seen as an opportunity for “picking up the birds” as he likes to term it.  While not fully endorsing Rod’s carefully honed Jack the Lad arrogance or, indeed, his outrageous braggadocio, I can kind of see what he was getting at because as a college student in the mid-60s I did take part in a few ban the bomb protests for reasons that were not entirely altruistic.

 

There I was, in regulation corduroy jeans and desert boots, a selection of CND badges proudly displayed along the collar of my army surplus combat jacket.  Sometimes I even bought a copy of The Daily Worker newspaper (rebranded as The Morning Star in 1966) and stuffed it in the pocket of said jacket, making sure the masthead was clearly visible to all who passed by.  This ridiculous affectation was purely to enhance my left-wing street cred, you understand.  I seldom, if ever, read the dreary communist rag.*  Truth be told, my heart wasn’t really in it.  Despite coming from a staunchly Labour voting working-class family, I had little interest in the gloomy leftist politics of the CND.  For me and my school pals the marches were purely social events.  For us it was all about the music, the camaraderie and, like Rod, the girls.  These days you’d probably say we were there just for the craic. 

*Editor’s Note: In July 1977 I did buy (and read) an issue of the Morning Star purely because it contained a lengthy interview with John Peel.  On his radio show in 1987 Peel revealed he was a Morning Star subscriber and had been for some years.

But it wasn’t all beer and skittles.  On one occasion I tramped 13 miserable, footsore miles (21 km) in entirely unsuitable shoes on a drizzly CND march from Chesterfield to Sheffield simply to win the approval of a particularly attractive girl in my year at college.  We’d arranged to meet up somewhere along the route where I hoped to impress her with my knowledge of Dylan and the Beat Poets, but I arrived late to find she’d already left with some of my friends.  The mansplaining would have to wait another day.

The March

All of which brings us to the photographs below.  They have been popping up on the internet for years, usually on Facebook groups and the like and I’ve always found them fascinating.  So, I decided to dig a little deeper.  

They were taken by Graham Keen on May 29, 1965, during a march through central London.  This was not one of the big Easter CND marches, but a short one-day protest called the “Peace in Vietnam Meeting” which travelled from Marble Arch to Trafalgar Square.  In the late 60s Keen was art director of the underground newspaper International Times and his photographs captured some of the biggest names of the 60s counterculture.

A couple of photos show the group heading along Oxford Street.  In the background we see the Marshall and Snelgrove department store at the junction of Vere Street, indicating the march is, at that point, roughly midway between Bond Street and Oxford Circus (the store was demolished in the 70s and redeveloped as Debenhams).  Leading the protest are an array of famous (and one soon to be extremely famous) faces.  Left to right there’s Mark Feld, Olive Gibbs, Susan Robinson, Joan Baez, Donovan, Tom Paxton and Vanessa Redgrave.  Let’s meet them one by one and discover what these celebrity activists were up to in 1965. 

Over on the left is 17-year-old Mark Feld, busily networking and putting his face out there.  He may have been a virtual unknown in May 1965 but here he is, already rubbing shoulders with famous pop stars and folk music aristocracy.  He’s wearing a polo neck sweater as favoured by the folkies and has a cheap nylon string acoustic guitar strapped across his back, Woody Guthrie style.  I may be wrong but it looks to me like he’s also carrying a Collets record bag.  Collets was a famous folk, blues and jazz shop, then located at 70 New Oxford Street, only a couple of minutes from where the photos were taken.  It’s tantalising to speculate what LPs young Mark might have had in his bag.

Feld briefly called himself Toby Tyler around this time and in early 1965 had made some demo recordings under that name, including a version of Dylan's "Blowin' In The Wind." Three months after the march he signed to Decca records and changed his name to Marc Bolan.  His debut solo single “The Wizard” (allegedly featuring Jimmy Page on guitar) was released on November 19, 1965.*  Following a couple more unsuccessful solo singles and a four-month stint with the band John’s Children, Bolan formed the acoustic duo Tyrannosaurus Rex with Steve Peregrin Took in 1967.  After a few moderately successful years on the John Peel endorsed hippie underground circuit (towards the end of which Took was replaced by Mickey Finn), the band name was truncated to T. Rex, Bolan plugged in his electric guitar and rapidly became the UK’s biggest pop star of the Glam era until his untimely death in a car crash on Barnes Common in September 1977.  But you don’t need me to tell you any of that.

*Ed. Note: “The Wizard” was re-recorded in 1970 for the self-titled first T. Rex album. 

Next to Mark is Olive Gibbs (1918-1995).  Olive was London Area Chairperson of CND between 1964-67.  She was also twice Lord Mayor of Oxford and the first Labour Chair of Oxfordshire County Council.  Often described as a “Labour firebrand,” in 2015 she was awarded a blue plaque at Christ Church Old Buildings in Oxford. 

A street in Oxford, Gibbs Crescent, was named after her, as was the Humanities building at Oxford Brookes (then Oxford Polytechnic).  In February 2017 Gibbs Crescent was in the news after an explosion destroyed a block of flats, killing one resident.

Alongside Olive is Joan Baez’s assistant and personal secretary Susan Robinson.  She was married to the famous anti-war activist Ira Sandperl (1923-2013) who was a major figure in the civil rights and peace movement.  His work influenced Bob Dylan, John Lennon, Martin Luther King, Allen Ginsberg and, of course, Joan herself.

This was a particularly busy time for the queen of folk music Joan Baez.  A seasoned activist, she took part in many famous events, notably the August 1963 March on Washington with Bob Dylan (where Dr. Martin Luther King delivered his immortal "I have a dream” speech).  Here are just a few entries from Joan’s hectic 1965 diary:

March 5 & 6: Two concerts with Bob Dylan in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and New Haven, Connecticut.

March 24: Joan sang at a “Stars for Freedom” rally during the five-day Selma to Montgomery march in Alabama.  The march was led by Martin Luther King.

April 17: The March Against the Vietnam War in Washington DC.  Joan appeared with Judy Collins and Phil Ochs. 

Late April / early May: She was part of Bob Dylan’s entourage during his 1965 English tour and was pictured in a series of famous photos with Dylan in the Victoria Embankment Gardens behind the Savoy Hotel in London.  Bob didn’t invite Joan onstage to perform as she had hoped / expected, and she left the tour in disappointment. 

May 29: The Peace in Vietnam March through London with Donovan, Tom Paxton, Vanessa Redgrave etc.  Bob Dylan was back in the UK for a BBC TV concert to be filmed on June 1 (it was broadcast in two parts on June 19 and 26), but he reportedly turned down Joan's invitation to join the march.

June 5: A week after the London march, Joan played her own concert for BBC TV.  Recorded at the BBC Television Theatre in Shepherd’s Bush (now the O2 Shepherd’s Bush Empire), she performed 18 songs.  The concert was originally broadcast in 1965 as two separate half-hour specials, both ending with the classic French love song “Plaisir d’amour.”  The show was re-broadcast on BBC Four in January 2009

July 22-25: Joan appeared at the Newport Folk Festival, duetting with Donovan on “Colours.”  On the final day of the festival Bob Dylan went electric for the first time, stunning the Newport crowd

October: Released in October 1964, Joan’s current album at the time of the London march was Joan Baez/5.  Her sixth album Farewell Angelina (Fontana TFL 6058) was released almost exactly a year later and was her only LP issued during 1965.  The red PVC coat she is pictured with on the cover of Farewell Angelina is the same one she wore during the London march. The LP cover photo by Richard Avedon was taken on June 18 in New York.

Also in October 1965 several photos from the May 29 march were used in a feature about Joan in the British teen magazine Rave.  Titled “When Joannie Goes Marching Home,” the piece carried a quite bizarre sub-heading “A Girl In A Girl’s World becomes A Girl In A Man’s World as this month it takes a look at Joan Baez, folk star beautiful, protest marcher extraordinary”

October 12-21: Seven date tour of UK & Ireland:  

12 - Sheffield (City Hall)

14 - Bristol (Colston Hall)

15 - Birmingham (Town Hall)

16/18 - London (Royal Festival Hall)

19 - Belfast (King’s Hall)

21 - Dublin (National Stadium)

Although aged just 24 in May 1965, Baez was already an established star with five LPs to her name, including two live albums.  By contrast Donovan, then a mere stripling of 19, stood at the threshold of an unimaginably successful recording career.  Let’s find out what he was up to in 1965:

January/February/March: Donovan burst on the UK pop scene via an estimated five TV appearances on Ready Steady Go!  

February 8: He signed a recording contract with Pye records

March 12: His first single “Catch the Wind” was released, reaching #4 in the UK charts  

April 11: Donovan’s first big live show of 1965 was the NME Poll Winners Concert at the Empire Pool, Wembley (now the Wembley Arena) where he received the quaintly named “New Disc or TV Singer” award.  He performed a short two song set on the same bill as some of the biggest names in UK pop, including the Beatles, Rolling Stones and Kinks  

May 14: His debut album What’s Bin Did and What’s Bin Hid (Pye NPL 18117) was released in the UK, reaching #3 in the LP charts  

May 14-23: He took part in a seven date UK package tour with the Pretty Things, Wayne Fontana & the Mindbenders, Unit 4 + 2 and others  

May 28: Donovan’s second single “Colours” hit the shops just one day before the march.  Like “Catch the Wind” it also peaked at #4 in the UK singles chart  

May 29: The Peace in Vietnam March through London.  In Donovan's wonderfully hubristic 2005 autobiography The Hurdy Gurdy Man he wrote: "That June [sic] I marched with Joaney [sic] to the Protest Rally in Trafalgar Square, linking arms with Vanessa Redgrave (British actress), Tom Paxton (US folksinger), Olive Gibbs (chairperson of the CND) and a very young, very small Marc Bolan. I gave my support that day and yet I felt that protest in the streets would not be as successful in spreading the message as would the singing of songs." Later the same day, Donovan attended a Variety Club Star Gala at Battersea Park Festival Gardens, a charity event where he signed autographs, together with other pop stars and TV celebrities 

June: The What’s Bin Did and What’s Bin Hid LP was released in the US, retitled Catch the Wind (Hickory LPM 123)

August/September: A summer season at the Britannia Pier Theatre, Great Yarmouth playing four Sunday shows with, variously, the Who, the Fourmost and the In Crowd (featuring Keith West, who hit the charts in 1967 with “Excerpt from A Teenage Opera”). Don also played a similar show at the North Pier, Blackpool with the Walker Brothers and the Merseybeats.

August 5-17: After a few US dates (during which he bought his famous Gibson J45 cherry sunburst acoustic guitar in Hollywood), Donovan embarked on another UK package tour, this time co-headlining with the Byrds.  Also on the bill were Them (with Van Morrison), Elkie Brooks, Kenny Lynch and others.  The Four Pennies and Unit 4+2 alternated on some dates.  The final date in Portsmouth was cancelled due to poor ticket sales.  The compère on the tour was Ray Cameron, who was the father of UK comedian Michael McIntyre

August 13: The politically charged Universal Soldier EP was released in the UK.  It sold well, reaching the singles charts in some of the music papers (if not the national charts), no mean feat for an expensive 7” EP retailing at almost twice the price of a single 

October 15: Donovan played two shows at “Folk ‘65,” a CND benefit concert at the Fairfield Halls, Croydon.  Also on the bill were Julie Felix, Bob Davenport and the Ian Campbell Folk Group 

October 22: His second album Fairy Tale (Pye NPL 18128) was released in the UK, reaching #20 in the albums chart

October 29:  Donovan’s third single “Turquoise” was released, reaching #30 in the UK.  The song was apparently written for / about Joan Baez who later recorded it for her 1967 album Joan (Fontana TFL 6082) 

November: His second album Fairy Tale (Hickory LPM 127) was released in the US, reaching #85 in the Billboard charts

By 1966 he would leave folk music (and those insidious Dylan comparisons) behind to become a major force in the pop / psych field with million-selling US hits like “Sunshine Superman” and “Mellow Yellow.” 

Next up is US folk singer-songwriter Tom Paxton. Like Donovan he was also at the start of a long and distinguished career in 1965.  His 1964 acclaimed debut LP Ramblin’ Boy (Elektra EKL 277) contained possibly his biggest song, the much covered “The Last Thing On My Mind.”  “Goin’ To The Zoo” and the title track also became enduring concert favourites.  His second album Ain’t That News (Elektra EKL 298) was released in October 1965.  

Tom played his first UK live dates during early 1965 and just weeks earlier on May 4 he had performed at the famous Troubadour folk club in Earls Court.  By 1966 Paxton would be headlining the Royal Albert Hall and appearing on British TV.  He was aged only 28 when these photos were taken, yet he was already fast losing his hair.  Before too long Tom would seldom be seen without his trademark peaked fisherman’s cap.  Tom Paxton is still releasing music in 2022, with 50 studio albums and a dozen live LPs in his back catalogue. 

On the far right of the line we see actress Vanessa Redgrave.  She was no stranger to political activism, having joined the Committee of 100 (a CND affiliated anti-war group) in 1961.  Along with her brother Corin she joined the Workers Revolutionary Party in the 1970s and unsuccessfully ran for parliament several times under the WRP banner. 

 

Part of a famous British showbiz dynasty, Vanessa is the daughter of actors Sir Michael Redgrave and Rachel Kempson.  Her siblings Lynn and Corin were also successful thespians.  Aged 28 at the time of the march, Redgrave was better known as a Shakespearean stage actress in 1965, having made only one film up to that point, Behind the Mask in 1958.  That would soon change, however, with Morgan - A Suitable Case For Treatment, A Man For All Seasons and Blowup gaining cinema release in 1966 and 1967, with Camelot, Isadora Duncan and Oh! What A Lovely War (also featuring her father and brother) following soon after.  As of 2022 Vanessa has appeared in over 100 films, plus an equally impressive number of stage plays and TV productions.   She has collected numerous accolades including an Academy Award and two Golden Globes.  Her political activism continues unabated.

Scottish folk singer Alex Campbell was pictured in some photos (without his trademark beard at this point) as the procession moved along Oxford Street. As usual the march terminated at Trafalgar Square where Joan Baez performed a few songs up on the plinth alongside Landseer’s lions.  Although he wasn’t spotted marching, Bert Jansch was pictured on the stage at the foot of Nelson’s Column (an unfortunately positioned banner reading “West Ham Anarchists” sits right behind him). 

Bert’s self-titled debut album (Transatlantic TRA 125) was released just six weeks earlier on April 16, 1965, and at age 21 he was fast becoming the hottest name on the London folk club scene.  I initially thought it was Ralph McTell seated next to Bert at the very edge of the photo, but Ralph was still three years away from releasing his first album in 1965. Others say it's more likely to be guitarist Mac MacLeod, an early influence on Donovan who backed him on some 1965 dates.  The jury is still out on this one.

The figure in front turning to speak to the woman in the leather cap behind Vanessa Redgrave could well be Eric Winter, a left-wing journalist from Manchester who sometimes wrote for Melody Maker.  Winter founded Sing, Britain's first folk music magazine in the style of the American Sing Out and it was he who wrote the poem “The H-Bomb’s Thunder” which, when put to the tune of “The Miner's Lifeguard,” became the Aldermaston marchers’ anthem.  A recording by The London Youth Choir with Leon Rosselson appeared on the 1959 Topic LP Songs Against The Bomb (see below).  Another esteemed Melody Maker folk writer and musician Karl Dallas was also heavily involved with the early marches, providing music to welcome the marchers as they entered the towns along the route.  

The Music – A Brief Overview

As early as 1949 the bomb and its political and social implications had found its way into popular music.  Four years after two nuclear bombs were dropped on Japan, ending World War II, Gospel group the Charming Bells recorded Lee McCullom’s “Jesus Hits Like the Atom Bomb.”  The song was covered multiple times within the first year and is still a popular gospel / doo wop song today with notable versions by Ry Cooder (1987) and the Blind Boys of Alabama (2005).  In 1998 the third album by Dallas, Texas band Tripping Daisy was titled Jesus Hits Like the Atom Bomb but, other than the title, this seems to have no connection with McCullom’s song. 

In 1950 came the talking blues “Old Man Atom” by country & western vocal group Sons of the Pioneers.  Other versions by Ozie Waters, Sam Hinton and Bob Hill appeared the same year, while Pete Seeger recorded it as “Talking Atom Blues” in 1958.  

The early CND protesters in Britain had marched to the accompaniment of trad jazz and skiffle provided by the likes of Ken Colyer’s band and journalist / musician Karl Dallas.  But folk music would soon make its presence felt.  Ewan MacColl was a key figure in the political protest movement and as early as the 1950s he was writing songs such as “The Ballad of Ho Chi Minh,” “Against the Atom Bomb” and “The Ballad of Stalin” (“Joe Stalin was a mighty man, and a mighty man was he / He led the Soviet people on the road to victory”).  Speaking to The Daily Worker in 1958, MacColl said “There are now more new songs being written than at any other time in the past 80 years - young people are finding out for themselves that folk songs are tailor-made for expressing their thoughts and comments on contemporary topics, dreams and worries.”

Songs Against The Bomb (Topic 12001) a 13 track album containing cuts by MacColl, Peggy Seeger, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott and others was issued in 1959 and Ewan would hand out lyric sheets for his song “That Bomb Has Got to Go” along the route of the marches.  Among those who sang it was his future wife (and co-writer), Peggy Seeger, who went on to fight many campaigns with MacColl as well as writing numerous crusading songs of her own.

The Transatlantic label, soon to become home to Bert Jansch, John Renbourn, Pentangle and a host of other famous folkies, released a 1962 album by Sheila Hancock and Sydney Carter titled Putting Out The Dustbin (Transatlantic TRA 106).  Carter wrote all 15 tracks and the vocals were shared, with Sheila singing 10.  The opening track, an up-tempo ditty titled “Coming Down from Aldermaston,” told the story of a famous protest march.  It sounds a little dated now, but it was the first time I recall the CND movement namechecked on a record.  In 1963 Carter would pen the much-loved folk song “Lord of the Dance” (sung in schools across the land and later covered by Donovan on his 1970 album HMS Donovan), while Hancock was a busy comedienne and actress who was then starring in the famous BBC sitcom The Rag Trade which ran from 1961-63.

In 1963 Ian Campbell, leader of the eponymous folk group (and father of UB40’s Ali and Robin Campbell), wrote about the Cuban Missile Crisis in “The Sun is Burning”, which became a powerful Aldermaston anthem.  This song was covered by Simon & Garfunkel on their 1964 album Wednesday Morning, 3am and was later recorded by The Dubliners (1972), Christy Moore (1978) and others. 

Bob Dylan brought the anti-war protest song into the 60s mainstream with a string of timeless classics including “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall,” “Masters of War” and “With God On Our Side.”  Meanwhile Donovan (him again) released the Universal Soldier EP in August 1965.  Three of the four tracks were covers of protest songs with a strong anti-war theme - "Universal Soldier" (Buffy Sainte-Marie), "Do You Hear Me Now?" (Bert Jansch) and "The War Drags On" (Mick Softley).  The fourth track was an edit of Donovan’s own “Ballad of a Crystal Man.”  References to “Vietnam,” “murdered negroes” and, inevitably, “the bomb” are shoehorned into almost every track on the EP. 

US singer / songwriter P. F. Sloan (1945-2015) saw which way the wind was blowing and conjured up “Eve Of Destruction,” an unashamedly commercial protest song, very much in the style of Bob Dylan.  After the Byrds turned it down, the Turtles included the song on their debut LP It Ain’t Me Babe.  It was then released as a single by gravel-voiced Barry McGuire (late of the New Christy Minstrels folk group) who turned it into a worldwide hit in August of 1965.

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An infuriatingly catchy record, complete with random harmonica stabs à la Dylan, “Eve of Destruction” covered all the protest bases and ticked every conceivable social issue box (Cold War, Red China, middle east, Vietnam, civil rights, the draft, nuclear weapons, the space programme etc) along the way to the top of the US pop charts (#3 in the UK).  The threat of Armageddon had now become part of the teenage entertainment industry and was therefore big business.  There was even an early film clip of “Eve of Destruction” which was shown on US teen pop shows like Hullabaloo.  Set in what was presumably meant to be a dystopian post-apocalyptic world (but it actually more closely resembled a car scrap yard), this extraordinary film featured McGuire clad in what looked like a pair of jodhpurs frowning and wandering disconsolately between piles of gloomily lit wreckage while a bunch of teenagers performed a carefully choreographed go-go dance of despair atop the cars.  

Watch that video HERE :

Below are just a sample of the lyrics.  The glut of apostrophes in place of the dropped letter “G” was plainly an attempt to ape Dylan’s freewheelin’ style (which Bob had, in turn, lifted wholesale from Woody Guthrie):

The eastern world, it is explodin',

Violence flarin', bullets loadin',

You're old enough to kill but not for votin',

You don't believe in war, but what's that gun you're totin'.

At the other end of the pop spectrum were The Fugs, a loose collection of underground poets and self-styled noise terrorists led by Ed Sanders and Tuli Kupferberg.  On their 1966 self-titled second album the Fugs recorded “Kill For Peace” an anarchic track - think early Mothers of Invention minus Zappa’s musicality – which satirised the Vietnam war.  

“Gimme an F!  Gimme a U!  Gimme a C!  Gimme a K!  What’s that spell?” inquired Country Joe McDonald from the stage at Woodstock 1969.  It was one of the finest examples of audience participation the anti-war movement had seen up to that point.  He was performing an updated solo version of the Country Joe & the Fish medley “The Fish Cheer / I-Feel-Like-I’m Fixin’-To Die Rag” which opened the band’s second album released in November 1967.  

Joe’s Vietnam war spoof dated back to a 1965 EP but it would soon find a much wider audience, first on the 1967 Fish album and then even more so at Woodstock two years later.  With hard hitting satirical lyrics like this, it perfectly captured the American protest mood at that time: 

“And it's one, two, three, what are we fighting for?

Don't ask me, I don't give a damn, next stop is Vietnam

And it's five, six, seven, open up the pearly gates

Well there ain't no time to wonder why

Whoopee! we're all gonna die”

Recorded mid-1968 for the album Beggars Banquet (Decca LK4955), “Street Fighting Man” is possibly the Rolling Stones’ most politically charged song.  The band already had the tune, but Mick Jagger supposedly wrote the lyrics after attending an anti-Vietnam war rally in March 1968 at the US embassy in London’s Grosvenor Square together with political activist Tariq Ali.  There he witnessed mounted police charging the crowd, a rare event in Britain in 1968.  Similar instances of civil unrest were also happening in Paris around the same time.

  

Inspired by the 1968 protest marches John Lennon recorded two distinctly different versions of the song “Revolution” with the Beatles.  An up-tempo version of the song ended up on the B-Side of the “Hey Jude” single, while a slower, bluesy take (titled “Revolution 1”) was included on their self-titled double album, aka “the White Album.”

At this point Lennon was still unsure whether it was wise to fully align himself with the violent tactics of the left-wing protesters and hedged his bets with the ambiguous lyrics “But when you talk about destruction / Don’t you know that you can count me out (in).”  But, with “Give Peace A Chance” he took things to another level entirely. 

John and Yoko hit the headlines in 1969 with their extended peace campaign which started with the single “Give Peace A Chance.”  Credited to the Plastic Ono Band and recorded while Lennon was still a member of the Beatles, it reached #2 in the UK singles chart (#14 in the US).  The song instantly became an anthem of the American anti-Vietnam war movement in the 70s, where it was adopted by veterans such as Pete Seeger at peace rallies.  “Give Peace A Chance” may have been a simplistic message, but it proved to be a powerful and enduring one, still cropping up across Europe in 2022 following the attempted Russian invasion of Ukraine, which is ongoing at the time of writing.  This was followed in 1970 by another politically charged single "Power To The People" which reached #6 in the UK.

Also in 1970 Tony McPhee’s blues rock outfit The Groundhogs released their third album Thank Christ For the Bomb.  The title track took what would probably be seen as a simplistic and controversial stance today – ie that the two atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were ultimately a positive thing and probably ensured that such weapons would never be used again.  The lyrics went, in part:

But, in the final year of that war, two big bangs settled the score,

Against Japan, who'd joined the fight, the rising sun didn't look so bright.

Since that day it's been stalemate, everyone's scared to obliterate,

So it seems for peace we can thank the bomb, so I say thank Christ for the bomb

But times change and causes come and go.  Eventually the once-terrifying threat of nuclear war receded, to be replaced in the 70s and 80s by new musical crusades such as Rock Against Racism, Nelson Mandela, South Africa, Live Aid, Farm Aid and a host of other worthy causes.

The mushroom cloud itself had already been reduced to an artistic cliche years earlier and the image was often used in an ironic (if not exactly light-hearted) way on album covers by everyone from Count Basie (The Atomic Mr. Basie 1958) and Tom Jones (A-tom-ic Jones 1966), to Jefferson Airplane (Crown of Creation 1968) and Iron Maiden (2 Minutes To Midnight 1984).

  

Inevitably, the world of heavy rock had embraced the stark imagery of Armageddon and in 1981 Gary Moore and Greg Lake recorded separate versions of the song “Nuclear Attack.”

In 2004 it’s likely few of those who bought the U2 album How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb gave its title* a second thought, or even knew what a mushroom cloud was.  The album went on to sell 10 million copies.  OK Boomer, indeed.

  

The CND / Vietnam peace marches of 60 years ago may be a distant fading memory, but they left an abiding legacy, certainly in the world of folk music.  The causes may be different today but the strength of feeling about the horrors of nuclear war lingers on.  

*Editor’s Note: The U2 title came from a line in the song “Fast Cars” which was a bonus track on the album in most territories.