"The Fulcrum of the Decade"

"When TV shows run through Christmas No 1s of years past, Tom Jones's 'Green, Green Grass of Home' always sticks out like a sore thumb, a blear country song about a man returning to his childhood home that was No 1 for seven weeks over the 1966 Christmas period and well into January 1967. How did this happen?
"A fortnight before it came out, more than 100 children had died in the Aberfan mining disaster; the country was in deep shock. In the pre-Band Aid era, before charity records were the norm, 'Green, Green Grass of Home' was bought as an act of remembrance, somehow blending 'How Green Was My Valley' and a funeral dirge. In Jones's hands, the song sounded more Welsh than Appalachian–it had 'a death-haunted lyric that offered some surcease within a nation still coming to terms' with Aberfan, 'reminding everyone of lives cut short and the impossibility of going back'.
"I've never heard anyone make the connection before. This is not only fine pop writing, but social history of a high order."

Bob Stanley in The Guardian reviews Jon Savage's 1966: The Year the Decade Exploded.

"Understanding the Secrets of Space and Time"

"You could be forgiven for thinking that it's a Xerox of the Byrds' Eight Miles High but not so, according to the Dovers' guitarist, Bruce Clawson. 'We'd already worked on the tune,' he told Mike Markesich, 'a few weeks later I'm in the car and Eight Miles High came on. I was crushed. I thought I had something unique.'"

In The Guardian's music blog, Jon Savage praises the Dovers's "The Third Eye" from 1966 as one of the first pop songs influenced by LSD.

Pandora's Box Set

"During those years, Los Angeles developed a creative youth culture--centred around the Sunset Strip--that matched anything in London or San Francisco. This was shut down by the police at the end of 1966 after weeks of teen protest--hence the set's opener, the Standells' deliriously exploitative Riot on Sunset Strip."

Jon Savage in The Observer reviews Where the Action Is! Los Angeles Nuggets: 1965-1968.

Privacy Please

"If the Republicans can propose a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, why can't the Democrats propose a right to privacy amendment? Making this implicit right explicit would forever end the debate about whether there is a right to privacy. And the debate over the bill would force Republicans who opposed it to explain why they don't think Americans deserve a right to privacy--which would alienate not only moderates, but also those libertarian, small-government conservatives who survive only in isolated pockets on the Eastern Seaboard and the American West."

In The New York Times, Dan Savage proposes enshrining privacy rights in the Constitution.