Verse 4, continued

Do you recall what was revealed

—the song's most ambiguous line. Some have suggested that it refers to John Lennon and Yoko Ono's 1968 release entitled Unfinished Music No. 1—Two Virgins—on the cover of which stands the two artists, naked as the sun; others have said that it refers to the widespread rumors a little later of Paul McCartney's death; while most choose not to wrestle with this line at all. But in the context of the pivotal 1968 riots at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, this line is most likely speaking of the Chicago police department's brutality there, revealing the dark underside of one of our most cherished institutions.

But another incident around this time also bears mentioning. In the fall of 1968, as the Miss America contest was holding its annual beauty pageant in Atlantic City, New Jersey, the first protest in the pageant’s history occurred. The fledgling Women's Liberation Movement, critical of the pageant’s stereotyping of women as mere sex symbols and housewives, gathered outside of the Convention Center where the event was being held, carrying signs of "No More Beauty Standards" and "Welcome to the Cattle Auction," and even crowning a live sheep “Miss America.” But the real focus of the demonstration centered on the “Freedom Trash Can” that the women protesters had set up, tossing into it false eyelashes, wigs, curlers, high heels, girdles and brassieres to symbolically free themselves from these sexual stereotypes. The discarded bras in particular garnered the most media attention, and given Mclean’s penchant for sexual innuendo in his lyrics during these early years of his career (see “Milkman’s Matinee,” “Narcississma” and “Birthday Song”), “do you recall what was revealed” could then be describing these (ostensibly) braless protesters, ending this verse on a humorously sly note and pointing to the Miss America protest as yet another rejection of the old mores and attitudes of 1950s America.

Blow number four—another day the music dies.

•   •   •

So as the sixties revolution starts coming to a head during these chaotic years, the battle lines are drawn and the inevitable bloody conflicts come to pass. And the youth culture players themselves grow increasingly diverse, all vying for a voice in the American cultural dialogue; but of all of them, it is the Counterculture that speaks the loudest. And the Beatles, embodying in their music much of the Counterculture's idealism and collective harmony, emerge as the dominant symbols of this period’s revolutionary euphoria: all you need is love.