ELECTION DAY IN ZIMBABWE, 2008

It was March of 1965. Two weeks out of Halawa Jail on Oahu, I was driving a new Cadillac Coupe De Ville and programming a major Los Angeles radio station, KHJ. I was on the cool side of a Sisyphusian slide, riding the karma into what would be four years in the epicenter of the rock'n'roll eruption.

There were dozens of things to do. Turn around a beaten, old radio station, make it a winner. I was platoon leader of a bunch of deejay storm troopers who had waited all their lives for this shot at the big time. Our unspoken goal was Do or Die. Either we'd make a success out of this or go back home and sell used cares or life insurance. Being a Top 40 station, I was privileged to work with veteran L. A. music director Betty Brenneman.

I usually play Beatles songs when writing these things. But in scanning my thousands of iTunes to get to them, I hit Barry McGuire's "Eve of Destruction." This song summarized the vibes and angst of the mid-60s. I Googled the song for some info. One item calls it a, "Mock-Dylan protest rant that doesn't hold up." Well, it was "folk" music, McGuire himself came from a briefly hot group called The New Christy Minstrels. Kenny Rogers was also a member. His career went on for years. But McGuire's moment of fame was "Destruction."

The song was written by P. F. Sloan, another of the folk-hippies who hung out on the Sunset Strip and populated Laurel Canyon. When I felt my radio gig was secure I bought a home near the top of that rustic mountain. Neighbors would include David Crosby, Joanie Mitchell, Steven Stills, Frank Zappa, Mama Cass and many other unknowns at the time, who would be super hit makers soon, thence icons till this day. To say the neighborhood was creatively fertile is an understatement. Like saying Kilauea volcano is "really hot."

Wordwise, the cliche "tumultuous times" barely describes 1965. Jack Kennedy's murder two years before changed everything. Gone were the Eisenhower Frivolous Fifties. LBJ couldn't stop the bloodletting in Viet Nam and quit, setting the stage for Richard Nixon and all he would bring. American society lost its bearings. Unfamiliar waves of insecurity washed over America.

The first "television war" was difficult to understand, let alone, reconcile.. "News" was what we were told by the three TV networks. Man had yet to walk on the moon. Computers were as big as refrigerators. The concept of anything vaguely resembling the Internet and its applications would be dismissed as Science Fiction.

Meanwhile, our Band of Broadcast Brothers operated in a three-story concrete fortress on Melrose Avenue. (Jeez, the prime time soap opera MELROSE PLACE was still twenty-seven years away). One of our Boss Jocks, Scotty Brink, was called off to serve in Viet Nam. The station sent a tape of each week's "Boss 30" countdown show to Armed Forces Radio in Saigon, the least we could do. (The movie GOOD MORNING VIET NAM, with Robin Williams in the roll of an Army deejay, would not appear for twenty-two years). Waikiki-born Barack Obama was three-years-old; it would be three years before his mother took him to Indonesia.

1965. The world's focus was on the place called Indochina. Cultures, politics, religions, tribal feuds: They all came to blows in the previously benign country of Vietnam. I was too young for the Korean war and too old for Nam. The closest I'd been to a rifle and uniform were my few years of ROTC, drilling with an empty M-1 rifle on Roosevelt High School's football field. But in '65 my war was against the 40-plus L. A. radio stations that we were out to destroy.

KHJ's new format hit the air and we managed to get it right. We had hit the vein of young folks fed up with "old style" radio, and just about everything else. It was hard not to be "with it,"since we were playing new Beatles' tunes every few months and presenting concerts by the Rolling Stones, Simon & Garfunkel, Jimi Hendrix, The Mamas & The Papas, etc. through the summer of '65. Then, one day a white-label promo copy ABC-Dunhill Record arrived. It was different from anything we, or anyone, were playing. Sure, Bob Dylan and others filled the traditional role of minstrel and folk singer, capturing the zeitgesit. But they got little airplay: their messages were cloaked in poetry and new musical sounds.

We put "Eve Of Destruction" on the air, tentatively, ready to pull it if it bombed or caused a stink. It did neither. The record shot up the charts in "Boss Angeles." Soon it is hit #1 worldwide on the BILLBOARD charts. Flash forward to the New Century. The song is not played on Oldies stations. Barry McGuire converted to Christianity in 1971, moved to New Zealand for a while in the 1980s and, last I heard, he's back in the U.S.A.

For anyone not familiar with the words that struck such a chord in 1965, here they are. I don't know about you, but to me, it seems as if little has changed. I only hope that come November 4 the kid from Waikiki is elected president. Maybe he can rewrite history's lyrics.

EVE OF DESTRUCTION

The Eastern world, it is exploding

Violence flarin', bullets loadin'

You're old enough to kill, but not for votin'

You don't believe in war, but what's that gun you're totin'

And even the Jordan River has bodies floattin'.

Don't you understand what I'm tryin' to say

Can't you feel the fears I'm feelin' today?

If the button is pushed, there's no runnin' away

There'll be no one to save, with the world in a grave,

Take a look around ya boy, it's bound to scare ya boy.

Yeah, my blood's so mad feels like coagulatin'

I'm sitting here just contemplatin'

I can't twist the truth, it knows no regulaton.

Handfrul of senators don't pass legislation

When human respect is disintegratin'

This whole crazy world is just too furstratin'.

And you tell me

Over and over and over again, my friend

Ah, you don't believe

We're on the eve of destruction.