Tonight's NBC movie "The 60's" brought back memories for a lot of us. It
doesn't seem that long ago, when the music, bell bottoms and the war seemed so
important.
Keith McCord takes a look.
I found some interesting things at home: A real ticket to Woodstock. A
three-day pass for $24!
Remember POW bracelets? The name on mine was Lt. Cmdr. John McCain--now the
U.S. Senator from Arizona.
I also found some interesting things down in the old KSL News film library.
The images of the '60's are what make the decade stand out! Anyone who grew
up then has vivid memories. Skip Schmiett remembers, "I mean the first thing
that comes to my mind is music, and then maybe the Viet Nam War, or the
Kennedy's, or something like that."
Music, war, Kennedy's. These icon's of the '60's were also quite visible
in the Utah '60's scene.
President Kennedy came here several times. Here he dedicated the Flaming
Gorge Dam. "This great dam with almost 4-million acre feet of capacity, will
make Salt Lake City grow," he said.
JFK's last visit came just two months before his death.
Other presidents came too. Utahns cheered when Lyndon Johnson gave a
pro-Viet Nam War speech, and warned of dangers of communist aggression.
But, the anti-war message echoed loudly too. Protests played out regularly
on Utah campuses. Ted Capener of the University of Utah recalls, "There were
demonstrations, burning down of a building...so we were not immune to
everything that was happening in the rest of the country."
During the '60's in Utah:
- Salt Air Resort burned down...again!
- Construction of I-80 was just underway!
- Utah's worst airline disaster occurred. A United 727 crashed at Salt Lake
International.
- Teddy came to ski Alta!
"So I'm going to be tagging along with my wife Joan and looking for easy
slopes and gentle slopes and good snow conditions," he told us at the time.
- Park City still resembled a mining town.
- And Robert Redford said he would build a new ski resort.
"And so far as the exact number of chairs and pomma lifts and so forth, that I
can't say now, because it's all really in the planning stages," he said.
The music of the '60's was so memorable--loud rock and roll; protest
songs; the psychodelic sound; songs about peace.
And the bands who played it always came to Utah.
Would you believe:
- The Rolling Stones played Lagoon?
- The Doors came too.
- The Beach Boys played Lagoon all the time.
- At the Salt Palace and Terrace Ballroom there was Canned Heat, Jefferson
Airplane, Donovan.
- Vanilla Fudge opened for Led Zepplin and Janis Joplin!
Ken Sanders remembers her very first visit here. "And she gets up and starts
wailing away at the mic, and just electricfies the audience. And everybody
says, 'Who is that hippie chick?' And when that tour was over, the whole world
knew that hippie chick was Janis Joplin."
Just a small sampling of what took place in Utah in the '60's.
Speaking of music, there were several local bands like "Holden Caulfield"
that opened for the big groups that came to town. Several of bands' fans just
put together a CD of the group, from old tapes that were made.
