Love Is All You Need

 

                                                Love Is All You Need

Peace and love, love and peace, that’s what the 60’s and 70’s was all about. 

The Peace movement started in Northern California, San Francisco in the early 60’s and spread rapidly throughout the country.

The Hippie, as the peace lovers were called, sang songs about peace and love, wore flowers in their hair, had love-ins and basically got stoned.

The “V” made with the first two fingers, meaning PEACE, symbolized their agenda.

More singer/songwriters, bands, and songs came from this generation of teenagers than at any other time. Everyone wanted to be a musician.

Jackie DeShannon did a great song that epitomizes the generation, “What The World Needs Now Is Love” saying, “it’s the only thing that there is just too little of.”

In the late 50’s into the 60’s, the younger generation gathered on college campuses to hear groups sing folk songs and ballads, but as the 60’s progressed those songs changed.

The war in southeast Asia was escalating and the anti-war groups were becoming ever-present in our society.

Songs about the war gave way to really good, down to earth story-telling songs.

This was my generation and the music that was played, to me was the best music ever written and produced.

Harmony, words, instruments, and the invention of stereo allowed the listener to be mesmerized in the sound.

This was definitely the generation of love. 

Recently I heard a speaker make a statement describing love, “Love is not something you feel, it’s a choice that you make.”

As I pondered that statement, deciding whether I was going to buy into that philosophy 100%, I began thinking about love.

How do you love someone or something, is saying I love you mere words or is there more to it.

I love food, but food is an object. I don’t feel for food, so I guess you can say I make a choice to love food.

I love my truck and my satellite radio, because driving and listening to the sounds of the generation I mentioned previously pleases me, but I make a choice to do that.

However, when it comes to my family, not only do I make a choice to love them but I feel the love we share.

How does someone feel love you may ask, I don’t know about you but the gut, in my case has a lot to do with it.

I met my wife in 1969, during the Hippie generation, no we were not hippies, though I loved the music as I have already eluded too.

I was a mere child of fifteen, but we connected in our soul, we both had a feeling. 

The older generation would say that what two young people our age had was mere puppy love.

Puppy love means a crush or infatuation, at first that may have been true, but it didn’t take long till we both knew and felt love.

Love to me is when you hurt or feel you can’t go on if you don’t see or be with that special someone. That my friends is how you feel love.

When my children were born,I felt the love for them the moment I saw them. My daughter was the first and the moment I saw her it was instantaneous, I can’t explain it but I knew it. 

When our second child, my son, was born, I feared I would not have enough love to support both children, but when I saw him my heart seemed to open up and I felt the love for him as well.

Both of my children would laugh when I told them that, I loved them so much my stomach hurt and now the grandchildren laugh too because I tell them the same thing.

Music is my passion and love while writing sits right up there with it. 

On December 18, 1967, my mother allowed me to stay home from school to attend the funeral of the late, great Otis Redding. The City Auditorium in Macon was full of people from the middle Georgia area as well as superstar R&B singers, coming to pay their respects.

I stood and watched as these great musicians filed past me into the auditorium to pay their respects to a man who helped shape the Motown sound.

I have had the opportunity to meet, talk with and dance on stage with some really good musicians.

In my early twenties, I have shared beers sitting beside Gregg Allman at a little restaurant in Macon, Georgia called Le Bistro. 

I had the opportunity to spend an afternoon in conversation with BJ Thomas.

I have met and spoken with many country music stars, Bill Anderson, Sonny James, and Faron Young, to name a few. 

I have gotten on stage and shared a dance step with Arthur Conley and recently CJ Jefferson of the Temptations Review.

I have danced as a young boy at sock hops to a Macon group called The Celtics, which produced Ronnie Hammond of The Atlanta Rhythm Section (ARS).

In our day we had music, real music that spoke of love and goodwill. Music that had a meaning.

My son once asked me how I could like a song that spoke about doing drugs, of course he was questioning the words to Woodstock by Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young. 

I simply smiled and said, “Isn't it beautiful man.”

Today a lot of the music brings on anger and resentment for society. Songs about killing and devil worship, infiltrate the minds of our young people. 

I think we should turn back time to the 60’s and listen once again to the songs about love, not hate.

Maybe we could use words like groovy or cool man, to make life a little more mellow.

When you walk down the street and meet someone, flash them a peace sign, smile and nod your head. You might even want to cheerfully utter, “Peace Man.”

I am getting a little nostalgic, I may get the trunk out of the attic and look for my Nehru jacket and put on Happy Together by The Turtles or maybe All You Need Is Love by The Beatles.

Make love not war, Peace Man!