Happy Days…back the way it never was
…the sixties civil rights movement, assassinations, Vietnam fiasco, drug culture and sexual revolution had the left brain of the country at odds with the right. Now Nixon and his executive branch cronies’ petty paranoia, hypocritical criminality and economic mismanagement had both sides questioning whether the recession crippled body politic could still function, circulation strangled by gasoline lines bloating the veins of Exxon. As films and TV desperately looked back to “The Way We Were” and “Happy Days” with “The Walton’s,” “The Brady Bunch” and “The Partridge Family,” in Billboard, “Time In A Bottle” was replaced at number one by “The Joker,” then Ringo’s remake of the 1960 hit, “You’re Sixteen.” It felt like our entire generation just gave up, wanting everything back the way it never was.