Just got through listening to the classic “I’d Love to Change the World” by Ten Years After and think of the lines “everywhere is/freaks and hairies/dykes and fairies/tell me where is sanity” and wonder if they would have sung it to the Woodstock crowd if they had wrote in back in 1968?
I think you’re reading those lines wrong. Especially if you pay close attention to the tone of voice they’re sung in.
I read them as what the singer is hearing from people who hated those groups back in the days when rock and hippies were forces of anarchy and evil.
He’s contrasting those supposed evils, which he thinks are nothing of the kind, with the real evil of starvation, ignored by the British upper class, the rich, who are the real ones complaining of dykes and hairies. (Some people write that word as hari’s, as in hare krishnas, but I think that’s wrong.)
And it was the young that Ten Years After sang to who were saying they were going to change the world (and “stop the war”) while the adults just kept saying change was impossible.
The lyrics are extremely compressed, but always seemed straightforward in meaning to me.
You know after reading up on the song I see that you’re right- its considered a protest song, which I didn’t realize. I thought it was odd a long haired rocker dude would have a problem with hippies- thanks!