Born before 1959? Want to chat about your memories of the 1960s and 1970s?

[SequentialAnalyst]

This is a thread to do just that And to compare, contrast, and discuss our memories of living through those times with MNers around the world, and share good stuff from those days we might have overlooked back in the day

I'm sorry to have to write this: but please No BabyBoomer Blaming or Bashing.

Wherever you come from, whatever your experience, whether you saw the Stones in the Park, or whether you could only listen longingly to Radio Luxembourg on your transistor radio in your bedroom, this is the place for you.

@AcrossthePond55 Could you do a similar para re the range of US experiences?

PS when I was about 9 years old I was desperate to be 18, share a flat and have boyfriend troubles like Beryl and Sandra.

Bloody loved the Liver Birds.

another smelly Afghan coat here...the other thing about them is that they were extremely warm ( a good thing as it was colder then I think, and very little heating)...BUT, they didn't do up at the front very well, so you'd be cold down the middle of your front, but boiling elsewhere

I left home at 17 so yes that was me... in a flat with 2 other girls. Flat was beyond grotty, and we fell out. Next flat and flatmates were amazing. 4 storey victorian house, 2 floors were girls sharing... so long ago, but I do have fun mad memories.

Me and a boyfriend drove all the way to South of France, along and down through Spain to Portugal in a deux cheveux in the 70s. Driving round L'Arc de Triomphe in that little car was terrifying! We went to St. Tropez when it was beyond unheard of to be topless, I still have a pic of me and him! Some were even nude on the beach, we were in shock! We camped all the way there and back... the municipal campsites were cheap but awful, money was tight but every now and again we treated ourselves to a decent campsite.

During my school holiday in 1971, age 17, I got a job in the purchasing department of a large aerospace company. The office manager was a woman, and all the other staff except me were men.
She earned less than they did, which I found incomprehensible, but even she thought that was ok, as she had a husband so only needed to earn 'pin money'.

Place marking so I don't lose this wonderful thread.

I was born in 1955 and did live in a few grotty bed sits (even a squat for a while) because I couldn't wait to get away from my parents.

I didn't go abroad on holiday until I was 30. Holidays with my parents were to grandparents who lived far away because we had to move around a lot due to my dad's job.

I did most of my growing up in a New Town. I thought it was boring and couldn't wait to leave but actually there are worse things than boring.

In 1978 I was working in an office. The people in my section were discussing whether men should 'help' with housework. I said I thought they should take equal responsibility and the others, even those that thought men should help, thought that was a step too far.

tobee
So I'm a decade too young for this thread but I'd like to ask what memories people have of 2 things:

1. going on holidays - either with families or when you were a bit older and went without parents

We went to Cornwall to stay in a rented cottage when I was not quite two, and I have a distinct memory of a long road at the top of a cliff which we had to walk along to get to the beach: later my mother told me the cottage had been advertised as being a hundred yards from the beach, which it was but most of them were vertical. There were holidays on a farm in Shropshire (twice), with an aunt in Wales, in a house at "Kitt's Quarry" in Oxfordshire which belonged to some sort of distant cousin (that family had gone to That Abroad so we were house-sitting), and with a different set of cousins in Manchester (just us children; some of theirs went and stayed with my parents that year) and with yet another set of cousins in a huge, mad house in Corbridge and then a different huge, mad house in Hexham. For two holidays we stayed in Tennyson's house Farringford, on the Isle of White, which had become a hotel and on the first year we were there still had his study like a sort of shrine with everything just as he had left it including his top hat on his desk, which gave me a serious grue. (The second year that room had been turned into a Resident's Lounge with a television in it.) Then my mother discovered another house/castle which had become a hotel, Bargy Castle in County Wexford, and we went there a couple of times.

When we were a little less totally skint we also went to Italy three times: the car was lifted into a ferry by a crane in the middle of the night and lifted off again in the early morning, and my father drove us down through France staying in strange, idiosyncratic (and very cheap!) hotels found by my mother in whatever town we had got to when my father was too tired to drive further, and through Switzerland staying for the night at the Hotel Poste in Fiesch and going over the Simplon Pass, and then wherever in Italy my mother had a fancy for (Marina di Carrara was interesting to me for the marble mines and the black cat at the Hotel Gatto Nero, Venice for the small courtyards surrounded by high walls). That was more fun for me than for my father, I imagine; it must have been hard work driving any distance to speak of back then, with no power-assisted steering and no motorways in the right places and what there were being toll-roads which he refused to pay for. But the package holiday didn't really exist in those days so if he wanted to go to Italy at all that was how it had to be done: flying was ridiculously expensive for five.

Fabulous - thanks for these replies

I have a copy of the LP "Fill your head with rock", bought it especially to play at my 18th birthday party in 1970. I remember the first time I heard Led Zep's first album, listened to it 4 times straight through... Loved Cream and later Black Sabbeth, King Crimson...

DH went to the Rolling Stones free concert in Hyde Park, my best friend went to the first Isle of Wight festival and saw Jimi Hendrix (I chickened out of that one, dammit). I did see T Rex live when they were still Tyrannosaurus Rex in their "Beard of Stars" era.

TV as a child - the Billy Cotton Band Show, the Black and White Minstrels (saw them live in London too - very much not PC now), Crackerjack, Bengo the Boxer Puppy... US stuff - My 3 Sons, I Love Lucy.

At home we were well off enough to own a washing machine and fridge and a TV. None of my relatives or friends' parents did, IIRC. We didn't have central heating, I didn't know anybody that did - just public buildings like schools and hospitals had it. We had a coal fire in the sitting room and a paraffin heater that was taken to a room that needed heating temporarily, eg. the bathroom. I know all about chilblains, LOL.

What I find odd now is how little common sense children seem to be credited with. DH and his friends went on a cycling/youth hostel holiday on their own at 12 years old, a trip to Switzerland (again alone) at 14. I was 14 when I went on camping trip with school friends and also a week at Butlins with one other friend. Used to travel alone on long distance coach (including having a change) from 12. There were no mobile phones to keep tabs on us, in fact we didn't have a phone at all until I was a teenager.

@bluesatin Hendrix was at the 1970 I.o.W Festival. The cool festival to have been at was 1969, with Dylan. The one I didn't go to. But enthused and emboldened by my forthcoming escape to university, at just turned 18 I determined to go to the 1970 one. I thought I knew all about it, because I had read about it in the Evening Standard

Technically, it was supposed to be a money making event. I think I did pay to get in. But youth took matters into their own hands, and stormed the fences.

Can you believe I went on my own? And that my mother let me? It was hot during the day, and bloody freezing at night. There was a huge communal blow up tent thing - I mean huge - and I slept in that the first night. Apart from my lack of camping experience, I somehow thought that the last night in August would be like a hot night in June

I was so cold by the 3rd day that I went home and missed Hendrix.

There is more to say, but not at the moment too embarrassing.

Bwah hah hah hah 'Weird Sisters'! I'll proudly wear the title!!

Oh wow! Record Stores! I can recall The Warehouse, Licorice Pizza, Sam Goody, & Musicland. And a bit later on Rhino Records for those 'avant garde' LPs. That's where I bought 'Have a Marijuana' by David Peel and the Lower East Side. Had to hide that one from the parents! Luckily they couldn't understand the lyrics! At times I still sing "Up Against the Wall, Mother Fucker" under my breath if someone really pisses me off.

Remember how great it was when a lyrics sheet was included in the LP or the lyrics were printed on the jacket? No internet to look them up so you had to rely on your ears & your friends' ears if they weren't on the LP.

Those of you from the 'pre cell phone era'. Remember when you actually KNEW everyone's phone number? Your friends, parent's work, relatives & neighbours, your school, your fave pizza joint. Just pick up the phone and dial their number (yeah, remember DIALS?). Nowadays I don't know anyone's phone number because they're all in my phone!!!

Who remembers their first colour TV? We got ours in (IIRC) probably 1963 or 64. The first thing I remember watching on it was the annual Easter telecast of The Wizard of Oz. When the movie changed from B&W to color I was mesmerized!

@SequentialAnalyst

My BFF and I had a chance to go to Woodstock. But when the guys we were flirting with realized they'd just asked two underaged girls to drive clear across the country with them for a music festival, they backtracked real fast!

I honestly don't know if we'd have gone or not. We were pretty damned crazy back then.

Soon dubbed the Rhino Brothers, Foos and Bronson made their initial foray into the making of music in 1975 when they hired a local street singer named Wild Man Fischer to record a store theme song. "Go to Rhino Records" was given away as a promotional gimmick and a copy somehow found its way to England, where influential deejay John Peel started playing it so much it made the British charts.

Info taken from this article:
RHINO, POP'S RECORD KEEPER - The Washington Post
published Jan 22nd 1995
which also contains these two particular gem of information.

Even Rhino was surprised in 1987 when it not only had a No. 1 hit with Billy Vera's "At This Moment" (thanks to repeated exposure on TV's "Family Ties"), but cashed in on the revival of Monkeemania when three-fourths of the Monkees reunited for a 20th-anniversary tour. Happily, Rhino had licensed the group's entire catalogue. Now all four Monkees are together for a 30th-anniversary world tour, and Rhino is reissuing their albums on CD for the first time, along with videos of the group's television series. In typical Rhino fashion, there will be a limited-edition boxed set with all 56 episodes.

"Video hasn't done well," says Foos, noting that Rhino made Billboard's video charts for the first time in November with director Ed Wood's classic worst-film-of-all-time, "Plan 9 From Outer Space," released in conjunction with Tim Burton's "Ed Wood."

Thanks to Rhino, this is now a cult film in its own right, and I think I may once have seen it one late night on Channel 4 (at the time the cool TV channel, and one of only 4 channels, all terrestrial.) It is indeed a truly terrible film

Of course, I heard Wild Man Fisher on the John Peel radio show at the time.

The excitement when Pick of the Pops was on on Sundays and you got to find out what was topping the charts.

What a brilliant thread.

Dead right! Did you have a go at taping it without recording the spoken words in between?

Growing up in Australia in 60s and 70s - my parents made me read an editorial in the Sydney newspaper about how the Beatles were corrupting the youth of today! Wearing flared pants and platform shoes and mini skirts in with psychedelic patterns in lots of oranges and rust colours. Peter,Paul and Mary and the Seekers were huge.
I remember when the shops were closed on Saturday afternoons and Sundays.
Surfie guys with long sun-bleached hair and suntans!
In the early 1970s I visited the UK and to phone home you had to use an operator. I still remember my father answering the phone and the operator saying "London calling".
Amazing times..

My Dad falling for the BBC's April Fool bulletin about the bad weather causing a bad spaghetti harvest - there were pictures of trees draped with spaghetti and workers on ladders scything the spaghetti.into baskets. My mother kept saying she didn't think spaghetti grew on trees and Dad would sigh and say 'Everybody knows that they do!!' He trusted Richard Dimbleby implicitly!
We lived in a two room tenement with no bathroom or inside toilet. Mum used to bath my sister and me in a tin bath in front of the coal fire. She and my Dad took turns going to the local swimming pool which had baths to rent.
Then we moved to a bigger flat and we had a phone and a proper bathroom- wouldn't have called the Queen my cousin!
The first time we went abroad was. By bus from Glasgow to Belgium. I remember my Mum covering our eyes when we stopped to look at the famous statue of the peeing boy. She was scandalised!
The world opened up for working class people in the sixties. Suddenly I was in a grammar school, studying hard, then university. First in the family to go there, first in the street. There were lots of opportunities then. Sometimes I look at the way things are now and despair for youngsters
We always had hope.
.

I remember my walls being covered with posters, mainly of Marc Bolan, fromJackie magazine . I also used the free lipsticks and eye shadows that came with the magazine. I used to also read Fab208 magazine and listened to Radio Luxemberg in bed. For a while we also had the pirate Radio Caroline. Our radio was originally rented from Radio Rentals and they gave us a new battery when it ran out . When they stopped renting radios we were able to buy it for a small fee!

I loved the fashion back then, especially the loon pants.

I went to an all-girls high school and in the first year we had a talk about periods from a woman teacher.
We all had to put our hands over our heads at our desks so we couldn't see her and embarrass her while she talked.

We used to hitch our school uniforms up under the belts to make them shorter, but the headmistress used to measure the length from the hem to our knees with a ruler before we went through he school gates each afternoon.

On our last day at high school the boys from the local boys' high school drove a car through the metal school gates of our school and smashed them.

A psychologist friend later pointed out how Freudian that was!

@Turquioseblue I just had to go and find this!
And now: some live music for a change.