“Let’s Get Together” is one of the 1960s’ most recognizable songs, particularly the version done by the Youngbloods. We should also recognize the name Dino Valenti since it was he who penned the song.
Valenti may or may not have written another staple of the era, “Hey Joe.” There seems to be some fuzziness surrounding that. It may be a reworked traditional song or a song written by Billy Roberts and Len Partridge who “gave” the song to Valenti while Valenti was in jail (marijuana charges) to help Valenti financially.
To add to a bit of the confusion that can surround Valenti, one should also know that he was born Chester William “Chet” Powers, Jr. on October 7, 1937 and was also known as a songwriter as Jesse Oris Farrow.
It was on this date, June 1, 1964 that the Kingston Trio released “Let’s Get Together” on theirBack to Town album. If you were a Kingston Trio fan and bought the album, then you would have become familiar with the song.
The album reached #22 on Billboard Pop Album charts.
Kingston Trio singing “Let’s Get Together” from their Back in Town album.
Dino Valenti Gets Together
Dino Valenti
Here is Dino Valenti singing the song himself:
Dino Valenti Gets Together
We Five
The We Five (of “You Were On My Mind” fame) covered the song in 1965, but it still didn’t catch on.
Dino Valenti Gets Together
Youngbloods
Even in 1967 when Jesse Colin Young and the Youngbloods did what became the definitive version, it did not do that well commercially– reaching #62 on the charts.
Fortuitously for the song and them, the song became part of a Public Service Announcement and re-energized their version which was re-released in 1969 and finally established deep roots in American music.
While the Beatles as a group typically remained apolitical, their fame visibility, and life style put them on the world stage whether they wanted to be there or not.
1969 and the Vietnam war continued despite new President Nixon’s promises to end it. The Beatles were still recording as a group (they’d begin the Abbey Road album in exactly a month) and were still controversial (radio stations were banning the “Balled Of John and Yoko” because of the line “Christ you know it ain’t easy.”)
John Yoko Give Peace Chance
John & Yoko
It seemed the more others criticized Yoko Ono and her supposed negative impact on The Beatles, the more John fell in love with her and wanted to prove to the world he wasn’t listening to those criticisms.
John and Yoko had married on March 20, 1969 and began a number of peaceful events to promote peace and end war. In an Amsterdam interview he said: What we’re really doing is sending out a message to the world, mainly to the youth, especially the youth or anybody really that’s interested in protesting for peace, or protesting against any forms of violence and we say everybody’s getting a bit heavy or bit intellectual about it. Everybody’s talking about peace, but nobody’s doing anything about it, except for a few people, and the things like the Grosvenor Square marches in London. The end product of it was just newspaper stories about riots and fighting. And we did the bed event in Amsterdam and the Bag Piece in Vienna just to give people an idea, that there’s many ways of protest and this is one of them. And anybody could grow their hair for peace or give up a week of their holiday for peace or sit in a bag for peace, protest against peace anyway, but peacefully. Because we think that peace is only got by peaceful methods and that to fight the establishment with their own weapons is no good, because they always win and they’d been winning for thousands of years. They know how to play the game ‘violence’ and it’s easier for them when they can recognize you and shoot you. They don’t know how to handle humor, and peaceful humor. And that’s our message really.
John Yoko Give Peace Chance
Toronto Bed-In
One of these events, a Bed In, took place in Toronto and on June 1, 1969 they recorded “Give Peace a Chance” while in their room with several others helping such as including Timothy Leary, Petula Clark, Dick Gregory, Allen Ginsberg, DJ Murry the K, Derek Taylor, and Tommy Smothers. Smothers also played acoustic guitar with Lennon.
John Yoko Give Peace Chance
Recording song
The recording became the first single released by Lennon while still a Beatle. It was even credited at first as a Lennon-McCartney tune.
Lennon and Ono performed the song live on September 13, 1969 at the Toronto Peace Festival. Their band was called the Plastic Ono Band and included Klaus Voorman, Alan White, and Eric Clapton.
All we are saying is give peace a chance All we are saying is give peace a chance
C’mon Ev’rybody’s talking about Ministers Sinisters, Banisters and canisters Bishops and Fishops and Rabbis and Pop eyes And bye bye, bye byes
All we are saying is give peace a chance All we are saying is give peace a chance
Let me tell you now Ev’rybody’s talking about Revolution, evolution, masturbation Flagellation, regulation, integrations Meditations, United Nations Congratulations
All we are saying is give peace a chance All we are saying is give peace a chance
Ev’rybody’s talking about John and Yoko, Timmy Leary, Rosemary Tommy Smothers, Bobby Dylan, Tommy Cooper Derek Taylor, Norman Mailer Alan Ginsberg, Hare Krishna Hare, Hare Krishna
All we are saying is give peace a chance All we are saying is give peace a chance
John Yoko Give Peace Chance
Legacy
The song has become one of the most powerful peace songs ever written and is still sung today.
…but on May 31, 1977 the BBC told them they couldn’t.
R & R v the Establishment
Rock and Roll and those in Power have never been on the best of terms. At it’s best, rock and roll pokes a stick in the eye of Power.
1977 was the year of the United Kingdom’s Queen Elizabeth II’s Silver Jubilee. Many adored and admired her and not just in the UK but throughout the world. Even popular in the former British colonies her country had often subjected to harsh rule.
What better time then for an outrageously named British rock group, the Sex Pistols, to sing an outrageously disrespectful song about their adored and admired Queen Elizabeth.
Sex Pistols Save Queen
God Save the Queen
“God Save the Queen” was released on May 27, 1977 and on May 31 the BBC banned it. Such a ban would normally be the death knell for a band’s song, but banning sometimes backfires and this ban did just that.
Even though the song was difficult to hear over the airwaves and even though the some major outlets refused to sell it, the recording sold more than 150,00 copies a day from the end of May and into early June.
Sex Pistols Save Queen
A #2 that was #1
That it didn’t reach #1 on the British charts and “stalled” at #2 is hard to believe given such sales. It doesn’t take much to think that it was a deliberate decision to keep it from the #1 spot.
The song holds up well nearly 40 years later. And I suppose some are still asking for God to save the Queen. The Sex Pistols cannot. They were gone within two years.
God save the Queen The fascist regime, They made you a moron A potential H-bomb
God save the Queen She ain’t no human being There is no future And England’s dreaming
Don’t be told what you want Don’t be told what you need There’s no future No future
No future for you
God save the Queen We mean it man We love our Queen
God saves
God save the Queen ‘Cause tourists are money And our figurehead Is not what she seems
Oh God save history God save your mad parade Oh Lord God have mercy All crimes are paid
When there’s no future
How can there be sin We’re the flowers In the dustbin
We’re the poison
In your human machine We’re the future You’re future
God save the Queen
We mean it man We love our Queen God saves
God save the Queen We mean it man There is no future And England’s dreaming
The Sex Pistols were: Steve Jones , Paul Cook, Glen Matlock , and John Lydon (aka, Johnny Rotten). Sid Vicious replaced Matlock.
The Rolling Stone magazine bio on the band begins with: Unabashedly crude, intensely emotional, and calculated to exhilarate and offend, the Sex Pistols’ music and stance were in direct opposition to the star trappings and complacency that, by the mid-Seventies, had rendered much of rock & roll stagnant. Over the course of their short, turbulent existence, the group released a single studio album that changed the course of popular music. While the Sex Pistols were not the first punk rockers (that distinction probably goes to the Stooges), they were the most widely identified with the genre — and, to appearances, the most threatening. Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols unquestionably ranks as one of the most important rock & roll records ever, its sound a raw, snarling, yet mesmerizing rejection of and challenge to not only rock & roll music and culture but a modern world that offered, as Rotten sang in “God Save the Queen,” “no future.”
Sex Pistols Save Queen
What's so funny about peace, love, art, and activism?
