Every time I listen "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds", it gives me a feeling that I'm getting drunk. The reason for that is probably because the bartender that I always visit back in Beijing love to play this song when he mixes drinks. But... this is the first time that i know this song is actually called "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" and its played by The Beatles.
This song is written by John Lennon, for Sgt Pepper's album. As the book mentioned, "Musically, the gentle beat works towards a slowing down of the listener's own pulse rate, while the gradual shifting harmonies in the chromatic descent in the bass line suggest a relaxation in the a comfortable and languorous dream state".
The Sixties is an incredible age, while the British Invasion from Beatles mixed with Martin Luther King Jr's speech, Vietnam finally turned Cold War hot, and the Hippie movement followed by that against the war. The world is changing so fast and so many things are coming together, people in that situation sometimes just need a break, in such a intense world maybe just need a break. I think that's part of the reason why this song is so successful and changed the world so much.
The book also talks about the women's roll in the sixties where many of them emerging from universities, education, self-education and political intervention, and how they drag attention from the public world to express their voice, but also how it is evident that the principal trajectory between the counter culture and the women's movement lay in the debates surrounding freedom and repression. This reminds me that in the sixties seems the whole world is in the movement mode, where in capitalist we have the feminism, the women's and the black rights movement, and in communist world we have this great leap forward and culture revolution, as we can see here the the feminism is a part of the big civil rights movement.