Something New

 We feature each fortnight Nicholas Reid's reviews and comments on new and recent books.   

 

“JUMPING SUNDAYS – The Rise and Fall of the Counterculture in Aotearoa New Zealand” by Nick Bollinger (Auckland University Press, $NZ49:99)

 

Sometimes it’s best to give a succinct verdict on a book at the beginning of a review rather than working slowly towards a verdict, so here I go. Nick Bollinger’s Jumping Sundays is a thoroughly-researched, always interesting and very engaging work – a mine of information about a time and a place. Nobody will agree with absolutely every judgement Bollinger makes in the course of his narrative, but everybody will note the care with which he negotiates a decade now receding into the distant past. For baby-boomers such as Bollinger and I (we were both born in the 1950s) much of Jumping Sundays is an exercise in nostalgia, a reminder of things that are largely forgotten and basically unknown by younger people. But while he celebrates much, Bollinger does not endorse everything that belonged to the old “counterculture” and in the end he delivers a very nuanced verdict on his chosen decade, weighing up the good and the bad that came with a period of change and often confusion.

There now. You have my verdict on this very good book and if that was all you wanted you have to read no more. But I’m one of those picky people who actually reads in detail the books he reviews, and I’m now going to plunge into the specific details that support my verdict. This will mean clopping through Jumping Sundays chapter by chapter, quoting book and verse.

Bollinger’s opening gambit is a vignette of the “jumping Sundays” in Auckland’s Albert Park, just across from the university. These events were initiated in 1969 when thousands of (mainly) young people invaded the park, against the regulations of the city council, and turned it into a place of dancing, picnicking, speechifying, singing, listening to bands and maybe smoking pot (though not too conspicuously). This was seen as “liberating” the park and for Bollinger it typifies a new mindset of the times.

Bollinger shifts then, in Chapter One, into the oft-told story of New Zealand’s precursors to the 1960s counterculture. (I say “oft-told” because you can read about the Kiwi 1950s in Redmer Yska’s  All Shook Up and about Auckland’s cultural 1950s and 1960s in Murray Edmond’s Time to Make a Song and Dance.) There were those few bohemians and rebels in the 1950s  and early 1960s who hung out in coffee bars, knew about American beatniks, tried to emulate them, and generally showed  discontent with the way things were. Some such people were genuine thinkers and writers, but others were simply performative narcissists like Lorna Jenks (self-styled “Anna Hoffmann”), an exhibitionist who specialised in posing and making scenes. Of course much of this chapter assumes that New Zealand in the 1950s was a dour, puritanical, tightly-controlled society where controversial books and films were regularly banned and the RSA still held sway in the shadow of the Second World War. Some people who lived at that time might question such a characterisation, but right or wrong it has become the standard caricature of the New Zealand 1950s.

Then we get (Chapter 2) the first whiff of the counterculture in the early 1960s. Awareness of the threat of nuclear weapons sets more New Zealanders to thinking about banning the bomb, protesting and often taking their cue from the British CND. The Vietnam War is heating up and becoming a matter for protest. The jazz musician Thelonious Monk visits New Zealand to the applause of jazz aficionados. In 1963, the Beatles visit New Zealand. Girls scream. Some boys scream. It’s the harbinger of something, but critical mass has not yet formed a real New Zealand counterculture. New Zealand is, as always, behind the beat of what is going on overseas in Europe and especially in the USA. Whereupon (Chapter 3) there is the beginning of a drug culture, which rapidly becomes big in the USA. New Zealanders begin to smoke marijuana. Some New Zealanders take LSD (which is banned in NZ only in 1967) and claim to be finding enlightenment in their altered states. Others of course crash and have their brains fried. Bollinger, balancing things up carefully in these matters, gives the example of an overseas musician, Syd Barrett, founder of the band Pink Floyd, whose “experiments with LSD inspired some of his most adventurous music, though may also have been a catalyst for the mental illness that would ultimately curtail his career.” (pp.82-83)

As mores begin to loosen up (Chapter 4) adolescents and younger adults begins to clothe themselves differently. Dare I use such antiquated terms as “funky” and “groovy” to describe their kaftans and tie-dyed skirts and bandannas and soft-leather jackets with tassels? For young men, the real sign of your hipness is long hair. They are, as Bollinger correctly notes, in a way emulating those nineteenth-century French poets who set out to epater la bourgeoisie (“flabbergast the middle classes”). One problem is, however, that it takes a lot to really epater la bourgeoisie, because in no time la bourgeoisie has monetised and commercialised the counterculture’s fashions and is selling them in expensive boutiques and using their imagery in their advertising. Far more important, especially after the introduction of The Pill (as it was then called), sexual mores were changing, sex outside marriage was less criticised, unmarried mothers were more accepted (although their lot was still often a difficult one). So we were into the era of “free love” with no barriers. But again there was a big problem here. Often, in this new sexual environment, “free love” meant men shaming or coercing women into having sex. Bollinger notes “A new vocabulary, imported from psychotherapy, developed around sex and could be used for coercion. Not wanting to have sex, for whatever reason, indicated that the woman was ‘uptight’ or had ‘hang-ups’. Despite the counterculture’s do-what-you-like ethos, social pressure could be powerful.” (p.116) The result was that men often gained more freedom than women did in the era of “sexual revolution” and it was understandable that women were soon to adopt what one academic miscalled “sexual puritanism”. [On this matter it’s interesting to look at Milo Bilbrough’s memoir of her time as a teenager in a hippie commune In the Time of the Manaroans, reviewed on this blog, where she notes the opportunism of males in the commune seeking sex.]

Meanwhile, a new sort of publication was growing (Chapter 5) among university students and in “alternative” bookshops such as the preciously titled Resistance Bookshop. Poets were (they thought) “freeing the word”, though often writing in an opaque way understood by few. Often the term “revolution” was bandied about, but it was never made quite clear exactly what sort of revolution was being considered. Some publications were simply high-spirited provocation, such as Christ’s College old boy Chris Wheeler’s Cock, which was published between 1967 and 1973. Some of its contents were amusing political satire but, as Bollinger freely admits, much of it was schoolboyish smut and potty jokes. Understandably it was a great hit with schoolboys. A similar, but not quite as scurrilous, publication was Earwig. Then there were the university papers such as Craccum and Salient, also now increasingly including satire and protest. In all this there was a greater tendency for teenagers and university students to identify with “anti-establishment” American movies such as Easy Rider. There was also the greater influence of young public speakers only loosely connected with the universities. The best known was Tim Shadbolt. As Nick Bollinger notes, Shadbolt’s soap-box orations were often so nebulous that they meant little when analysed: “Wherever he went, he never shut up. It helped that he was extremely entertaining. His speeches, always recounted with humour, combined revolutionary rhetoric with ripping yarns of masculine derring-do.” (p.153) Later (in Chapter 7) Bollinger examines a violent Mick Jagger song and notes that it “amplifies the casual misogyny of many a countercultural male” (p.214). Like it or not, macho posturing and bullshit, even if wrapped in revolutionary language, was a strong component of the counterculture.

Relentlessly (Chapter 6) , the Vietnam War became a focus of protest, with marches, demonstrations, sit-ins and petitions, at their height when US vice-president Spiro Agnew visited New Zealand, facing protests around the Auckland hotel where he was staying. Though some critics of the protests (such as Robert Muldoon) saw this as the work of Communists, the fact is that the old and largely insignificant New Zealand Communist Party had split in two and was a very minor component of such demonstrations. Nevertheless, a Marxist-inspired group, the Progressive Youth Movement (PYM), became prominent for a short time in this era. A small minority of protesters turned to violence of a sort, such as John Bower who blew up a few things to little effect. More important than this was the other great cause of protest, to wit, apartheid South Africa and New Zealand’s sporting contacts therewith. This inspired the foundation of HART (Halt All Racist Tours) in 1969, although the biggest protests against racist tours came in 1981, when the “counterculture” was largely over.

Forms of art were changed in New Zealand’s 1960s and 1970s (Chapter 7). Some silly things happened, such as the trial for obscenity of the American rock-musical Hair when it was staged in Auckland. The producers of the show were acquitted and the show went ahead, which shows how much censorship had been relaxed. More important than this imported side-show, however, was the interesting musical work of Jenny McLeod, who moved from classical music to grandiose compositions involving orchestra, huge choruses and large settings. Her presentation Earth and Sky was widely praised and appreciated with its telling of Maori origin myths; but her later Under the Sun did not gain such applause. Later she moved into rock music, said goodbye to academic teaching, moved into Eastern Mysticism by way of drugs, and basically faded from the scene. Other music was making more impact on young people. Prominently there was acid rock music and the influence of Jimi Hendrix who, apparently, had a great influence on Maori bands. And there were travelling shows, “festivals” and theatre, playing mainly to student audiences, such as Ken Rae’s Living Theatre and  Bruno Lawrence’s BLERTA and the attempts to emulate Woodstock with rock festivals staged in rural fields (often very popular but most of which lost money for their promoters).

And of course (Chapter 8) there was a proliferation of communes and different ways of using a house. There was, for a very short time, the “scandal” of “mixed flatting”, meaning male and female students inhabiting the same house; but soon such arrangements were accepted without comment. For some people, the poet James K. Baxter was a guru of the counterculture, though his adopted Catholicism was often at war with his propensity for having affairs with (sometimes young) women. Baxter was undoubtedly one of New Zealand’s greatest and best poets, but his advocacy for younger people and their point of view was often muddled. Nick Bollinger gives an amusing, sceptical and somewhat jaded view of James K. Baxter’s interaction with young urban lost souls in Auckland (pp.224-225). Famously Baxter later moved into a sort of commune at Jerusalem on the Whanganui. Again, Bollinger gives a very mixed report on it. But then communes in general, and the urge of some to separate from cities and go “back to the land”, also get a mixed review. Some communes functioned well and survived, especially those that were run by people who really did know how to use the land and raise crops. But far more failed or faded away after just a few years, frequently because the town-bred aspiring communards didn’t know what hard work was required to be self-sufficient. Also, in the general counterculture, there was an ongoing debate about their worth. Bollinger writes: “There were those who believed that dropping out was copping out; that to change the system or to bring about the revolution you had to be in the thick of it, not on a remote hilltop smoking grass, nursing a child or talking to God. An educated elite seeking self-sufficiency in a commune or other closed, minority community was betraying its social role, Russian-British architect Serge Chernayeff told students at the Warkworth congress in early 1971. Others insisted that dropping out was itself a political act.” (pp. 237-238).

This was the age (Chapter 9) when gurus flourished and people who claimed to be seeking spirituality and enlightenment became their disciples. Some took what became known colloquially as “the hippie trail” and headed for Asia, especially India. Some took to Transcendental Meditation or to chanting Hare Krishna. There were followers of the Mahjara Ji’s cult. Perhaps the ultimate countercultural seekers of truth were the Jesus Freaks. Most of these groups were benign and peaceful. But there were other groups that were either authoritarian or extremely manipulative, such as Ananda Marga, the Moonies and Scientologists. And there were gurus who, when they turned up in New Zealand, proved to be less impressive than their supporters though they would be. Bollinger gives a scathing account (p. 267) of Scottish psychiatrist R. D. Laing, who visited in 1973 and underwhelmed his audience with a rambling, semi-coherent speech filled with long pauses as he kept losing the order of his pages. It surely can be no accident that Bollinger’s publishers have chosen an accompanying photo of Laing looking as if he is half-asleep or otherwise zonked-out. [From the perspective of 2022, I wonder why anyone ever took Laing’s crank theories seriously, but let us move on…]. Some gurus proved to be totally malign. In America, the notorious Esalen Institute bent people’s minds and were perpetuators of the idea that women were “uptight” or had “hang-ups” if they said no to sex. And, with a shudder, there was Bert Potter’s Centrepoint, north of Auckland, which claimed to be curing people's inhibitions but which ended with criminality, wide practice of paedophilia and legal suits filed (successfully) by survivors.

Less controversial than all this, and still much admired by many, was (Chapter 10) the growing environmental movement. There had long been such a movement since the 1930s, but it had been embraced only by a few vegetarians and crusading naturalists. In the 1960s and 1970s it became mainstream, with big campaigns such as attempting to save Lake Manapouri from being flooded in the interests of generating power. This campaign failed and the lake was duly flooded; but the campaign to save South Island beech trees was more successful. Anthropogenic climate change hadn’t yet become a widely-known issue, but conservationist groups stepped up their interest in protecting threatened species. Nick Bollinger gives much credit to the short-lived Values Party, founded in 1972, and sees it as the precursor to the current Green Party.

But in the whole account of this era of “counterculture”, there was an element that many radicals and protesters took a long time to recognise. This (Chapter 11) was the presence of Maori and Pasifika people, and the fact that they had legitimate grievances that Pakeha protesters had ignored. Hence the formation of the Maori Nga Tamatoa and the Pasifika Polynesian Panthers, which were inspired by the American civil rights movement and the American Black Panthers. Increasingly Maori were asking questions about land that had been expropriated and reminding communards that the land they went to, with utopian plans, was Maori land. Samoans and Tongans were protesting against being deported. After  having discussed the different aspirations of young Pakeha and young Maori, Nick Bollinger says:  “If Maori and Pasifika alliances with the counterculture were not stronger, it may be because Maori and Pasifika societies are essentially collective, while Pakeha society is… individualist. The counterculture sought in many ways to reject the tenets of mainstream society, but old habits die hard. Despite the aspirations espoused by certain communards, rabble rousers, hippie idealists and fallen priests, the counterculture, with its overriding notions of freedom, would increasingly show itself to be a group of loosely affiliated individuals doing their own things.” (p.299) To put it another way, the idea of a coherent  “revolution” was really a mirage. Within the counterculture there were simply too many conflicting priorities and ideas to stand together as a unified cause.

And, just as the presence of Maori and Pasifika voices blew apart some of the certainties of the counterculture, so did (Chapter 12) the feminist movement, or what was then called Women’s Liberation. Increasingly women critiqued the assumptions of male counterculture figures who took it for granted that women still had to do all the chores while happy pot-smoking men lazed around and theorised or strode about making barnstorming radical speeches. Thus the common-sense and critical comments of Rose Beauchamp, wife of Ian Wedde (p.305). And thus, much later in the book, the shrewd comments of Miriam Cameron, partner of Tim Shadbolt (pp.355-356). Communes were nirvana only for men. The visit of Germaine Greer in 1972 gave a big publicity boost to the women’s movement, but partly for the wrong reasons. Greer was caught up in a trial for having used obscene language (she had publicly used the words “fuck” and “bullshit”) and had to pay a fine. Much of the mainstream media was negative about her visit. Nick Bollinger notes that the student press was more open to women’s liberation than the mainstream press; but it still ran “sexist cartoons and pornographic imagery in the guise of rejecting bourgeois views of decency.” (p.309)

Thus, in a late chapter (Chapter 13) Bollinger begins to count the negatives of the counterculture as the whole general idea began to fall apart. The government of Norman Kirk (1972-1974) was liberal on some things, but conservative on others, perhaps truly reflecting the nature of the country. Among the more astute observers, there dawned the realisation that some apparently countercultural figures were more concerned with being entrepreneurs and making money. Thus a number of  “alternative” promoters of rock concerts. Thus the publisher Alister Taylor, about whom Bollinger writes very negatively (pp.337-338), depicting him as a man who started publishing anti-establishment stuff like The Little Red Schoolbook and Tim Shadbolt’s egotistical Bullshit and Jellybeans, but who (as Bollinger tells it) rarely paid his debts, deprived his authors of their royalties and enriched himself. Then there was the nagging suspicion that some prominent protesters had been plants put in place by New Zealand’s Security Intelligence Service (SIS). Oh dear.

So at last (Chapter 14) Nick Bollinger raises the question “Who Killed the Counterculture?” Wisely, he does not blame the government of Robert Muldoon (1975-84), even if Muldoon himself was a prickly conservative with little love for the counterculture. Rather, the counterculture died of its own contradictions. Merry takers of illicit drugs slowly understood that the stuff they consumed was being supplied by, in some cases murderous, gangs of criminals like Terry Clark. Overseas in America, some notable rock icons (Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin) had died of their addictions. Charles Manson’s gang had looked like a hippie commune. It was responsible for massacre. The glamour and lustre of taking drugs died.

And besides all this was the fact that the counterculture, laying so much emphasis on “doing your own thing” and individualism, led first to libertarianism and then ultimately (under the Lange government, 1984-89) to the neo-liberalism of “Rogernomics”. After all, what could be more individualist than selling state assets into private ownership?

Much of the counterculture in New Zealand was built on an illusion. In the 1960s and early 1970s, New Zealand was economically sound, there was little unemployment, university tuition was free and it was easy for young people to sustain themselves by taking up – and then dropping – seasonal work and casual labour. But the economy changed and so did the relatively easy life that made the counterculture possible. Having considered the hippie lifestyle and the “hippie trail” in Asia, Germaine Greer wrote with a breath of common sense “The hippie is the scion of surplus value. The drop-out can only claim sanctity in a society which offers something to be dropped out of.” (p.354). In other words, a counterculture could be sustained only as long as there was a generally prosperous and open society. In many cases, countercultural-ists were “dropping out of” comfortable middle-class suburbia to which, of course, they could eventually return… which many of them did. And “going back to the land” transmuted into buying a lifestyle block.

Nick Bollinger’s epilogue is therefore very ambiguous. As an experienced writer on rock and pop music, he praises many bands and individuals who made new music in New Zealand in the decade he surveys. He credits the old counterculture with raising awareness of environmental issues. He notes the greater public advancement of women’s rights and the status of women in the workplace. He believes the 1960s and early 1970s saw Maori and Pasifika asserting their rights more overtly. But he also sees the negative stuff. The trouble with drugs. The false messiahs and gurus. The continuing macho assumptions of countercultural men. The passing fads that now look either quaint or absurd. The advancement of individualism at the cost of the common good.

Ultimately, what does all this mean? I think in synopsising Jumping Sundays, I have reported accurately what Bollinger is saying, though perhaps emphasising the negative side of things a little more than Bollinger does. Even so, like every other decade, the years that Bollinger covers have made their own imprint, have left traces of things both good and bad, and are now fading off into history. I do not think they are more or less significant to us now than New Zealand’s decades of World Wars, the decade of the Great Depression or for that matter the (near) decade of John Key. Let us not idealise any decade of the past. All have their positives and negatives

 

Hasty Footnote: In writing this review, I have ignored one important matter. Jumping Sundays is amply illustrated with photos from the 1960s and 1970s  as well as reproductions of artwork from magazines of the era. They give us the style of the times – but not being an art critic I am not the person to comment on them.