The post-Hiroshima generation was the first completely electroid generation. At exactly the time when this enormous genetic wave opened to receive a post-Einsteinian reality, SHAZAM!… 4,000 years of Old Testament pessimism popped up in the person of the Electronic Pad-Trip Evangelist.

The one song "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue" probably caused more biological and philosophical suicides than any poem in Western history. This is a tribute, not to the dismal poet, but to electronic amplification.

Give a close reading, if you can, to the Zimmerman lyrics of the 1960s—snarling, whining, scorning, mocking. "Just like a Woman." "No, No, No, It Ain't Me, Babe." "Subterranean Homesick Blues." "It's All Right, Ma, I'm Only Bleeding."

The classic techniques of brainwashing are unconsciously employed in these albums. First, the dogmatic command, "Everybody Must Get Stoned," encourages a chemically induced state of neural receptivity. Note the semantics: stoned. Don't get high...