It ain’t groovy to talk about peace and love

TOMORROW is the 50th anniversary of when the Beatles sent an unprecedented message of love to the world.

On June 25, 1967, the Beatles sang All You Need is Love to an estimated 400 million television viewers as part of a 2½ hour broadcast beamed into 31 countries.

Produced by the BBC and the European Broadcasting Union, the telecast was known as Our World; the first time the planet had been linked via satellite for a live broadcast.

The Fab Four wore the embroidered garb and Paisley patterns of the flower power generation, surrounded by balloons and flowers. It was the Summer of Love.

Mick Jagger, Keith Moon, Marianne Faithful and other stars were in the audience of the BBC studios where it was filmed. They sang along with the Beatles’ irresistible chorus as people wearing billboards with the word “love” written on them in different languages walked about the set.

Fourteen nations produced segments for the telecast that included beautiful GreekAmerican soprano, Maria Callas, and acclaimed Spanish artist, Pablo Picasso.

Australia’s contribution started at a Melbourne tram depot, where the first tram of the day was to leave at 5:22am on June 26 local time.

The CSIRO Phytotron plant laboratory in Canberra featured, as did the Parkes radio telescope in NSW, where the dish was trained on the most distant object then known, Quasar 0237-23.

But it was the Beatles who shone brightest. John Lennon’s Zen-like verses and mantric chorus, adorned with the heady arrangement of producer George Martin, stole the show.

How bold of Lennon and Martin to seize this chance to spread a message of love.

Would it happen today? Probably not. The counter culture that spawned it is now dismissed as naive and gullible in a world where we are encouraged to be pragmatic, realistic and resigned to an awful state of global affairs.

The idealism of the Summer of Love has been replaced by a suffocating powerlessness, which was identified eight years after the Our World telecast by Pink Floyd in the 1975 song Welcome to the Machine:

“Welcome my son, welcome to the machine. What did you dream? It’s alright we told you what to dream.”

It is not groovy anymore to sing about any love other than hormonal lust.

Speaking about world peace is perceived as the realm of dizzy beauty pageant entrants.

Like a marshmallow in the pocket of a jacket at the drycleaners, love appears to have no chance against the oiled cogs, steaming jets and metal mechanics of the modern industrial machine.

In 1969, Lennon and Yoko Ono were lambasted for their Bed-In for Peace protests in Amsterdam and Montreal. The media often portrayed the happenings, where they lay in bed and gave interviews, as gratuitous self-promotion.

Lennon explained what he and Yoko were trying to do in his song All We Are Saying is Give Peace a Chance.

But whenever anyone dares suggest peace, it is instantly howled down and ridiculed.

It is pertinent that the mere suggestion of peace is met so forcefully; that pacifism is on the nose; that hippies in colourful garb are derided; that flower power is pilloried by mainstream culture.

Peace and love are clearly perceived as threats. To what?

How much, if any, of this herd-like mentality to crush the pursuit of peace and love is engendered by a war machine, much like the mechanism described so eloquently by Pink Floyd? Could enough marshmallows gum up the machine’s cogs? Who knows? Peace rarely gets given a chance.

The 2017 Lowy Institute Poll released this week reveals four out of five Australians are dissatisfied with the direction of the world. We are unhappy with where we are going, but will we change course?

WHEN the Our World telecast was being planned in 1967 there were 19 countries set to contribute. This was cut to 14 the week before it went to air after the Soviet Union, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and East Germany pulled out. They withdrew in protest at Israel’s pre-emptive airstrikes on Egyptian airfields and ground offensives into the Gaza Strip and the Sinai in the second week of June 1967.

Israel seized the Gaza Strip and the Sinai from Egypt; the West Bank and East Jerusalem from Jordan; and the Golan Heights from Syria.

Known as the Six-Day War, most Arab nations fought with Soviet weaponry while Israel’s arms were Western.

Fifty years on and the Middle East is in ruin.

The Russians and the US are at loggerheads over the civil war in Syria, and ISIS is scrapping over what’s left of the bloody carcass in the cradle of civilisation.

Where have all the flowers gone? Gimme hippies any day.