I’m wondering because, lets be honest, the music during 1966 and 1972 era was pretty damn good. The music during WW2 was popular for the times, but pretty boring. I’m a Gulf Vet and back when I first got out, I joined a VFW, and at the time there was still a lot of WW2 Vets who hung around. I respected the hell out of these guys but during the 90’s and 2000’s a lot of WW2 Vets just wanted to have somebody to talk to, probably due to their age. What were WW2 Vets like in the 60’s and 70’s?
I’ve had a few drinks, but I miss those guys.
I just want to point out that the question is a little broad: You’re asking about the musical tastes of 20 million people
As a Gulf vet, you are part of a select group.
But remember that, regarding WW2, everybody was a vet.
Although I was a kid at the time, I don’t remember music featuring a lot in the late 40s/early 50s. Big bands were pretty popular but it wasn’t until the late 50s that rock and roll began to filter over from the USA. This led to a flock of copycats which led directly to the music explosion that was the 60s.
This was not for “vets” though - it was the kids who had grown up with wartime shortages and rationing, who were now teenagers (a new term then) and looking for some excitement to relieve their otherwise pretty boring lives.
Moderator Action
Since this is asking for opinions, let’s move it to our opinion forum.
Moving thread from General Questions to In My Humble Opinion.
My Dad, a British WWII RAF veteran certainly hated all that dirty long hair pop music as much as my brother and I loved it. He was pretty typical of his age group.
It was a big part of the originalGeneration Gap.
I was a young kid in the late 60s and early 70s, but here’s how I remember it.
WW2 vets were part of an entirely different culture. Their culture was a lot more formal. Children spoke only when spoken to. People dressed for dinner. You had respect for your elders. People were expected to work hard.
During the late 1960s and 1970s, there was this large counter-culture movement. The new generation didn’t care for society’s formal rules. Rather than have respect for your elders, people tended to protest their elders. The elder generations saw the hippies as disrespectful, lazy, dirty, and their music was just horrible noise.
As was pointed out upthread, you’re asking about the musical tastes of 20 million people, and it’s not like they all liked the same things. However, in general, they hated the music from the late 1960s and early 1970s.
It has nothing to do with vets nor wars. At my age, music now sucks. So do movies. They were OK up to about 2000, maybe '05. I could keep up and recognize talent and quality and art up to about the age of 60, then everything went to hell.
Some truth in that but WWII veterans were not generally in their 60s by the 60s. Dad was in his forties. It was more that there was an ongoing cultural sea change and for various reasons this made people of my parent’s generation very angry.
In YOUR opinion. And what will future generations think of the totally boring and lame music of the Gulf Vets?
My father seemed to get through the Elvis era with my older sisters, but he did NOT like my taste for the Who and Rolling Stones.
For some unknown reason, he seemed to like Janis Joplin, though.:eek:
My grandfather was the same generation as WWII vets and the most current musician he liked during the late 60’s/early 70’s was Helen Reddy. My grandparents also liked Lawrence Welk.
My Dad served in China going over at first with the AVG and staying V+30; his oldest (my beloved brother) served in Vietnam for two tours mostly in forward/combat positions. All that being said, one of his favorite songs was Country Joe’s “Feel Like I’m Fixin’ to Die Rag” and his favorite band to listen to 1975-2001 was CSN&Y with maybe the Carpenters as seconds. Dad didn’t seem to like the music of the 50s or early 60s much - no real Elvis or Jerry Lee - but from JA and Steppenwolf on it pleased his ears.
From A Hard Day’s Night:
Stuffy Old Man: I fought a war for your sort!
John Lennon: Bet you’re sorry you won!
“That thing’s louder than in Guadalcanal when we took a direct hit…”
I shouldn’t have said “boring”. It’s just that the 1940’s didn’t really have a lot of different types of music like the 60’s and 70s had.
As a kid I would go to the VFW with family. I kinda remember WW2 Vets giving Vietnam Vets a hard time a lot. WW2 Vets were always nice to me when I came home, but I saw a WW2 Vet make a Vietnam Vet cry and then laugh about it. It was like a big click too. WW2 Vets didn’t really want anything to do with Vietnam Vets.
They did an episode of the difference between WW2 Vets and Vietnam Vets in the tv show King of the Hill. I also remember a scene from Born on the 4th of July where a WW2 Vet told Tom Cruise to stop whining. I guess I just find it interesting the differences.
Oh, there was all sorts of different music in the 1940s – there was country (Carter family and western (Sons of the Pioneers), black music (somehwat famously, Okeh records), bebop, swing and jazz. Don’t be misled just because all you’ve heard is a few Tommy Dorsey and Glenn Miller collections.
Time to really stir things up! American pop music began with Stephen Foster (anyone who can’t sing 4 Foster songs is barred from responding to this item) and ran until the 40s and 50s, with a high point with Big Bands. By 1950 some deterioration was beginning to set in, and by 1960 pop music was practically extinct. I think I could name 200 singers from the 40s and 50s, each and every one of which is a better singer than anyone who has made a record in the last 40 years. In those decades there was a greater variety of good music than any time since.
It seems obvious that music business professionals, executives, agents, radio people, record company men and a hundred other positions, all instrumental in conveying the new sound to the consumer for a price, would largely have been in their '40s and '50s in the 1960s-70s, and therefore unlikely not to have been involved in WWII when younger.
Presumably they liked what they were putting out.