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Inside Music: Features
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SUMMER OF LOVE
Looking back at rock’s flowering, 40 years later
MSN Music

Summer of Love
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In the summer of '67, all you needed was love (even if some young voyagers opted for additional stimulation). For rock fans, whether they realized it or not, this was their heyday: While not everyone was making groundbreaking music, experimenting with drugs or leaving their schools or jobs to follow bands, there were enough such free spirits to shake up the safe expectations nurtured by the relative quiet of the '50s.

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Giving the era's pop cultural aspirations added momentum was the force of sheer numbers. That year, Time magazine awarded its Person of the Year cover not to a political leader, scientist or celebrity, but to "the youth of America," due to the demographic clout of the "baby boom" and its outsized nation of teenagers then leaving high school and entering college, the work force or the military ranks heading toward Southeast Asia.

Best of 1967
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To revisit that legendary "Summer of Love," MSN Music has tapped the "fifth Beatle" to look back on its most fabled music (courtesy of journalist Alan Light), culled music editor Sean Nelson's candidates for the very best albums from that classic vintage and assembled a gallery of the rockers, rogues and visionaries that shaped the year.

Take a journey back in time as we recall some of the, er, high points of that unforgettable (if, to some, possibly un-remember-able) summer.



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