The Rock'n'Roll History of the World

The 1960s:

  

  

1960
Syngman Rhee, President of South Korea, forced from office for corruption.
"We Didn't Start The Fire" - Billy Joel

1960
An American U2 spy plane is shot down over Russia.
"We Didn't Start The Fire" - Billy Joel

1960
The Payola scandal shows bribery is business as usual in the music biz.
"We Didn't Start The Fire" - Billy Joel

1960
JFK becomes the American President.
"We Didn't Start The Fire" - Billy Joel

1960
Chubby Checker drives America around the Twist.
"We Didn't Start The Fire" - Billy Joel

1960
Hitchcock releases "Psycho".
"We Didn't Start The Fire" - Billy Joel

1960
The Congo wins its independence from Belgium.
"We Didn't Start The Fire" - Billy Joel

1961
Ernest Hemingway dies.
"We Didn't Start The Fire" - Billy Joel

1961
Adolf Eichmann is tried and convicted of war crimes as a member of the Nazi regime.
"We Didn't Start The Fire" - Billy Joel

1961
Bob Dylan's career takes off.
"We Didn't Start The Fire" - Billy Joel

1961
The IUD birth control device first becomes available.
"We Didn't Start The Fire" - Billy Joel

1961
JFK announces lunar mission
"Tomorrow Wendy" - Andy Prieboy

1961
"Stranger in a Strange Land" by Robert Heinlein first published.
"We Didn't Start The Fire" - Billy Joel

1961
The Berlin Wall is built.
"We Didn't Start The Fire" - Billy Joel

1961
The Bay of Pigs Invasion is a miserable failure.
"We Didn't Start The Fire" - Billy Joel

1962
"Lawrence of Arabia" sweeps the Academy Awards.
"We Didn't Start The Fire" - Billy Joel

1962
The Beatles begin making a name for themselves.
"We Didn't Start The Fire" - Billy Joel

1962
Mississippi University becomes the first university in the U.S. to allow negroes to attend.
"We Didn't Start The Fire" - Billy Joel

1962
John Glenn becomes the first American to orbit the Earth.
"We Didn't Start The Fire" - Billy Joel

1962
Marilyn Monroe dies
"We Didn't Start The Fire" - Billy Joel
"Candle in the Wind" - Elton John

1962
Sonny LIston defeats Floyd Patterson, becoming World Heavyweight Boxing Champion.
"We Didn't Start The Fire" - Billy Joel

1963
Pope Paul I is becomes pontiff.
"We Didn't Start The Fire" - Billy Joel

1963
JFK is assassinated, possibly even by Lee Harvey Oswald. LBJ becomes President, and helps young American men to empathise with JFK by sending lots of them to Vietnam to be shot at too
"Life in a Northern Town" - The Dream Academy
"In Praise of Sha Na Na" - The Dead Milkmen

"Purple Toupee" - They Might Be Giants
"We Didn't Start The Fire" - Billy Joel
"Tomorrow Wendy" - Andy Prieboy
"Civil War" - Guns N Roses

1963
Malcolm X stirs up controversy with inflammatory comments about JFK.
"We Didn't Start The Fire" - Billy Joel

1963
British Minister Stephen Ward is brought low by a sex scandal.
"We Didn't Start The Fire" - Billy Joel

1963
Patsy Cline falls from the skies, but not the charts
"Air Crash Museum" - The Dead Milkmen

1963 - 1975
'Nam
"Beach Party Vietnam" - The Dead Milkmen
"I Was Only Nineteen" - Redgum
"Goodnight Saigon" - Billy Joel
"19" - Paul Hardcastle

1964
The Gulf of Tonkin incident makes Ho Chi Minh a household name in the US.
"We Didn't Start The Fire" - Billy Joel

1964
Richard Nixon declines the Republican Presidential nomination, but fools no one.
"The Fletcher Memorial Home" - Pink Floyd
"We Didn't Start The Fire" - Billy Joel

1964 - 2001
Mary Whitehouse tries to save the morals and manners of Britain.
"Pigs (Three Different Ones)" - Pink Floyd

1966 - 1967
The arrests, trials and conviction of Rubin Carter, for somethin' that he never done
"Hurricane" - Bob Dylan

1966 - 1967
The white man leaves the Congo, except for the ones who like to get paid to kill the natives
"Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner" - Warren Zevon

1968 - 1975
Richard Milhous Nixon fails utterly to live up to his nickname
"The Fletcher Memorial Home" - Pink Floyd
"Sweet Home Alabama" - Lynyrd Skynyrd

"We Didn't Start The Fire" - Billy Joel
"Ego is Not a Dirty Word" - Skyhooks
"Young Americans" - David Bowie

1969
Buzz Aldrin becomes the most famous also-ran since Scott of the Antarctic
"(He'll Never Be An) Old Man River" - This Is Serious Mum
"We Didn't Start The Fire" - Billy Joel
"Man on the Moon" - REM

1969
Several thousand hippies take bad acid and roll around in mud at Woodstock. Oh, and some bands play.
"My Generation (Part Two)" - Todd Snider
"We Didn't Start The Fire" - Billy Joel

1969 - 1975
As National Security Advisor to the President, Henry Kissinger contributes notably to the insecurity of several nations, not least his own.
"Henry Kissinger" - Monty Python

1969
Roy Campanella is inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.
"We Didn't Start The Fire" - Billy Joel

1969 -1970
The Weathermen are A1 credibility wise in the US political activism scene, although most of them appear to have been unable to find their asses with both hands
"Subterranean Homesick Blues" - Bob Dylan

 

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Copyright Loki Carbis, 200
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Last tinkered with:
December 2, 2002