ROCK 'N' ROLL
The Eastern world it is explodin', Violence flarin', and bullets loadin'. You're old enough to kill, but not for votin' . . . If the button is pushed, there's no runnin' away. There'll be no one to save, with the world in a grave . . . Ah, you don't believe we're on the eve of destruction.
Get the message? Several million teen-agers do — so loud and clear that Eve of Destruction, as sung by Barry McGuire, is right at the top of the best seller charts. With a dozen more songs of protest snapping close behind, it heralds a radical change for rock 'n' roll. Suddenly, the shaggy ones are high on a soapbox. Tackling everything from the Peace Corps to the P.T.A., foreign policy to domestic morality, they are sniping away in the name of "folk rock" —big-beat music with big-message lyrics. Where once teen-agers were too busy frugging to pay much heed to lyrics, most of which were unintelligible banshee wails anyway, they now listen with ears cocked and brows furrowed. The rallying cry is no longer "I wanna hold your hand," but "I wanna change the world."
That such ticklish themes as Viet Nam and integration are now the lyrical concern of the impressionable young has caused alarm in some quarters. Attempts to impose a blanket ban on Eve of Destruction have failed, but on grounds of taste many radio stations have decided on their own not to play it. Says Los Angeles' Disk Jockey Bob Eubanks: "How do you think the enemy will feel with a tune like that No. 1 in America?" Some rock jockeys play it safe by allotting equal air time to The Dawn of Correction, an "answer song" intoned by the Spokesmen:
The Western world has a common dedication, To keep free people from Red domination. Maybe you can't vote, boy, but man your battle stations, Or there'll be no need for votin' infuture generations.
"A Decaying Everywhere." Author of Eve of Destruction and 30 other "songs of our times" is P. F. Sloan, 19, who allows that his inspiration comes from being "bugged most of the time." A graduate of the breezy West Coast "surf sound," Sloan traded in his sneakers and sweatshirt for black leather boots and a Hans Brinker cap this spring, set out "to say what I feel," that is, an impression of "a decaying everywhere." Says he: "Society is so confused. There are triple roadblocks and detours wherever you go, and no one knows which road to travel." Viet Nam? "I know we have to stay there, but I don't know why particularly." The Bomb? "It's like a cloud hanging over me all the time."
Other recent Sloan songs are studies in alienation: This Mornin' ("I seem to be existin' in a world that will not listen"), Child of Our Times ("They'll try to make hypocrisy your heredity, so choose your views most carefully"). Underneath the shroud of gloom, claims Sloan, an "instant solution" is there for the probing: "If the world is full of hate, we have to change it to love."