GENTLE PEOPLE WITH FLOWERS IN THEIR HAIR

What was it in the hippie zeitgeist that made the May-September Mrs. Robinson/Summer of ‘42/Maggie May axis so resonant?

I think a clue can be found in Maggie May itself:

“But you turned into a lover
And, mother, what a lover, you wore me out.”

Now, I realize the intention here is to use “mother” as a mild oath, but it doesn’t take much syntactical trickery to tease out the Oedipal:

“But you turned into a lover and mother,
What a lover, you wore me out.”

So in this scenario, what the hippies were craving was a return to “original” love— in a broad sense, a return to the womb. Perhaps they were feeling the third-law pull of vulnerability that attaches to the impulse to rebel.

I’d argue that this drama plays out quite openly in the grooves of the mid-60s Beatles’ albums, where you can hear the band entering gradually into a tuck, which culminates in the full-on fetal position that is Sgt. Pepper’s.

So, kill the father and fuck the mother?

OK Jim. OK...