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ne of my favo kit* reasons Move the 197 the decode the dream, the deliriu came walking up to me the other day in his red brocade smoking jacket and black silk pajamas and I asked him whoc the time was was on his watch and said.... No, wait—thot bit is a Top 40 song lyri from that very epoch (did (continued on page

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(continued from page 38) anybody really know what time it was? did anybody miU\ care?) as recorded by the band Chicago, which coincidentally was also the place whence this famously pajamaed man took gradual to permanent flight in those same halcyon years, landing right where I found him the other day, at his Mansion West, itself a sprawling monument to that superfine funkadelic Last Libertine Era. Hav­ing decisively conquered the Great Indoors that was his fabled original Chicago Mansion, he opted to throw his open lifestyle into open sunlight on an epic Hollywood scale, with impeccable timing. At Hef's Holmby Hills playground, five and a half acres of hedonist's Eden a block south of Sunset Boulevard, the 1970s found an epicenter almost sacred, if not secret (this revolution, after all, was televised, e.g., the ABC network special Playboy's Roller Disco and Pajama Party, to cite but one Rabbit-eared Nielsen-ratings eyeful), where America's great behavioral clarion call of the moment— "If it feels good, do it"—was answered with unmatchable authority. "A new Playboy Man­sion for a new decade," pronounced the then newly relocated icon in residence, whose Cali­fornia homesteading act began with the vow, exquisitely realized, to "do my best to create a heaven on earth." Anyway, so here now was Hugh M. Hefner, nearly four decades hence and counting, twinkling before me in the Mansion's Great Hall, waxing a tad nostalgic about that which had transpired on his watch in that lime and concluding, "Well, you know what they say: 'If you remember the 1970s, you weren't there." "

And of course he is correct if also somewhat incorrect. In truth, that was what "they" said about the 1960s, whereas in actual fact the 1960s were more the militant testing lab for what came fully aflower, and was thus uni­formly indulged in, in the breezier decade that ensued. (And by the way, Hefner, who forgets nothing, was most supremely, indel­ibly there in each storied decade and has the pictures to prove it—oh God, such pictures.) But the 1960s, if you think about it, mainly wagged a stern finger and proselytized for a

constricted-conflicted populace to make love, not war. The 1970s slipped a mood ring on that finger and welcomed it (with accompany­ing digits) to freely roam erogenous zones of choice, no worries permitted. In fact, permis­siveness would never again be as pervasive. (Wet-blanket Reaganism and the black plague of AIDS were still blissfully beyond fathom­ing.) As such, hang-ups were hung out in the freshened air and cast to shifting winds scent­ed with cannabis and candles, Herbal Essence and Gee, Your Hair Smells Terrific, Charlie ("Kinda free, kinda wow") and Brut colognes, among other heady musks hygienically emit­ted or dispensed in naughtily shaped txxtles. (Per the "splash-on" Brut, how could we help but heed ads in which Joe Namath threw down the spiced gauntlet "If you're not gonna go all the way, man, why go at all?")

Experientially speaking, it was all about All back then—"to the max," as went the par­lance—and also about More, as well as Never Enough. I think of former porn actress An­drea True's 197(5 hit dance anthem, "More, More, More" ("Ooh, how do you like your love?"), and the late, great orchestral basso seducer Barry White's grinding coital oeuvre ("Can't Get Enough of Your Love, Babe," etc.). Later, the oversize, overheated Maestro White would put the era in idyllic perspective: "It was a freedom time—more people expe­rienced things and tried new things, whether it was drugs or whatever. It wasn't about sex but love and sensuality, communicating, re­lating. There's a world of difference between making love and having sex, and the 1970s was approached as if it was a woman being romanced and made love to." Well, it was, as long as his records were playing, maybe—if pop radio hadn't also been instructing us to just "bang a gong, get it on" and "push, push in the bush." Bush, incidentally, nourished in this time, as evidenced in these pages, where pubic hair (remember pubic hair?) made its hello-there debut in 1971, the same year Hef began installing verdant shrubs on his just-acquired voluptuous Mansion grounds. The landmark film spoof Monl\ P\llwn and the Hol\ (irail lour years later cheekily pushed bush consciousness further when the dreaded forest-dwelling Knights of Ni demanded of

the questing King Arthur crew. "We want...a shrubbery! You must return here with a shrubbery or else you will never pass through this wtxxt alive!" Feel free to make your own shrub-and-wood joke here. Actually, feeling free was the whole point of pubic pride—and of every other an couranl in-your-face erotic trend—from the get-down get-go. (Waxes, in that bygone moment, remained the province of kitchen floors and car polish.)

Hair, in general, was big—well, more ac­curately. Big was big, celebratory even, most infectiously so in the realm of personal pre­sentation. You fold to join the gleeful, expan­sive spirit at play or risk existential insignifi­cance. Fashion (G<xl help us) enthusiastically screamed "Look at me or else," from cavern­ous bell-bottoms and fat neckties to aero-flap shirt collars and bells the size of traffic stripes. (Electric stripes and plaids, by the way. so ir­radiated all requisite wardrobe' polyesters as to inflict near blindness—but hey. it fell snazzy to be encased in such visual shrill.) Also, plat­form shoes lowered and teetered, earrings grazed shoulders, sideburns consumed faces. But hair—no longer a symbol of defiance as in the 1960s—just did its own thing: extra large and carefree and winging wild via cow­licks, mullets, helmets and feathered shags. Poster goddess Farrah Fawcett-Majors (her then-bionic hyphenate per marriage lo TV cyborg hero I.cc Majors) gave remarkable hair remarkable ubiquity; 12 million copies of her immoilal 1970 pinup with red swimsuit (a one-piece to hide childhood tummy scars) coated worldwide wall space, never mind she was months away from becoming one of Charlie's Angels when striking that magic pose (in front of the ratty Indian blanket that moments earlier had served less glamorously as a seat cover in the photographer's 1937 Chevy). "I was a little self-conscious," recalled Farrah of her time-capsule image, "probably because my smile is so big." (See? Big! Per­fect!) No wonder Cheryl Ladd. who replaced Farrah on (Jmrlie's Angels, reported for duty on the series in a T-shirt lettered with the demurral farrah kawcf. it-minor.

Farrah's toolh-o-rama smile notwithstand­ing—keep in mind that the sunnily ubiquitous hav K A N ic;k dav smiley face was trademarked at

the decade's outset—we should also note that miles of reflexive smiles were mostly triggered by the poster's casual glimpse of celebrity-nipple protrusion. (For the record, Charlie's AngeLs introduced the concept of jiggle tele­vision to a videoscape that had never before so blatantly showcased such developments.) Arguably, however, it was Carly Simon's ap­propriately tided 1972 No Secrets album—on whose cover her raisins d'etre perdy greeted consumers beneadi a snug blue top—that set pop-cultural precedent. Simon's unabashed example, according to scholar Anne-Lise Francois, lk "the scandal out of bralessness, making the practice so prominent and accept­ed as to be both visible and hardly capable of attracting notice." Perhaps even more 1970s salient regarding No Secrets was its hit-single, sell-obsession harangue "You're So Vain" ("I'll

bet you think this song is about you"), which Simon had wryly com­posed in caustic honor of.... Well, that's one secret she's hoarded to this day, although she has confessed that his name contains the letters E, A and R— and frankly, everyone surmised its subject was her former swain and the decade's pre­eminent Hollywood loth.irio (and Playboy Mansion habitue). Warren Beatly. "He certainly thought it was about him,' she later revealed. "He called me and said thanks for the song.' Meanwhile, Ueattys brilliant 1975 cinematic exposition in lost-boy narcissism, Shampoo—he stars as an insatiably priapic Beverly Hills hair­dresser—syliopsi/.es the era (and his own legend therein) when he lectures to fawn-eyed Coldic Hawn, "Everybody fucks ev­erybody. Crow up, for Christ's sakes! Look around you—all of

'em, all of these chicks, they're all fucking." This may suggest why Woody Allen (who gave thai decide just plain funny films without apology, lor (he last time) once wished to be reincarnated as Warren Bealty's fingertips.

Most lamously of course, Tom Wolfe pro­claimed these years the Me Decade, wherein, also lamously. Sieve Martin bleated "Excuuiiuse metee!" and Neil Diamond brayed "I am, I said—I am, I cried!" and Chevy Chase asserted "I'm Chevy Chase, and you're not!" and Helen Reddy yowled "I am woman, hear me roar!" and I.ynyrd Skynyrd fretted "III leave here tomorrow, would you still remember meeee}" and Todd Kundgren whinnied "Hello, it's me..." and psycho taxi driver Travis Bickle taunted (straight into his own mirror, natu­rally) "You talkin' to me? Well. I'm the only one here." And self-actualization met instant

gratification by way of New Age enlightenment and Eastern spiritualism, primal screams and shame-free shrinkage—all of which seeped into the mainstream, sneakily permeating the most reticent bastions of stoic holdouts and scofling stragglers. (Whodidn't tog themselves in that Utopian oh-whatever uniform of the day, the synthetic leisure suit?) This self-awak­ening movement offered "appeal [that] was simple enough," wrote Wolfe. "It is summed up in the notion: 'Let's talk about Me.' No matter whether you managed to renovate your personality through encounter sessions or not, you had finally focused your attention and your energies on the most fascinating sub­ject on earth: Me." Thus the period's most last­ing art was taken personally, largely because it was made that much more personally. As |ames Wolcolt would write in The Xnr Yorker.

"The 1970s were the last time when movies seemed signed with the sweat of a director's brow rather than packaged by a committee of cellular phones." Even now, to behold the best cinema of that epoch is to taste the DNA of auteurs in heat: Robert Altman (Nashx'ille, McCabr and Mrs. Miller), Hal Ashby {Harold mid Maude. The ImsI Detail). Martin Scorsese (Taxi Driver, The Last Waltz), Paul Mazursky (An Unmamed Woman), William Friedkin (The Exorcist, The French Connection), George Lucas (American Graffiti. Star Wars), Steven Spielberg (Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind) and Francis Ford Coppola (The Godfather I and //. The Cmnk his Vietnam Apocalypse allegory so person­ally he suffered a nervous breakdown during its gonzo shoot; the film's screenwriter, John Milius, later stated, "In a way, Apocalypse Now

is about a guy who decides to make his own decisions. The further he gets in his career the more he's convinced he's not going to listen to the crap." A mantra of me-ism that synchs with that of news prophet Howard Beale's 1976 Network rant for Americans to yell out their windows: "I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!"

Even as California rock rogues the Eagles were imploring us to take it easy (and also to the limit), we did in fact take plenty else square in the chops: inflation, stagfla­tion, recession, oil crunches, Kent State, Three Mile Island, Wounded Knee and the blighted Nixon presidency as unraveled by 1972's Watergate scandal and as unmasked by All the President's Men marauders Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, via help from the deep-background source dubbed Deep

Throat—an homage to that moment's eponymous film sen­sation in which Linda Lovelace revolution­ized the meaning of a mouthful. The tooth­less presidency of a toothy peanut farmer followed, even after Jimmy Carter "shock­ingly" confessed in these pages that his Bible-belted heart had "looked on a lot of women with lust." But such was the egalitarianism of the times, whose sym­bolic capitol throbbed within that velvet-roped Taj Mahal of discotheques. Studio 54—which, accord­ing to Andy Warhol, epitomized "a way of life...a dictator­ship at the door and a democracy on the floor. It's hard to get in," he said, "but once you're in you could end up danc­ing with Liza Min-nelli. At 54, the stars are nobody because everybody is a star. It's the place where

my prediction from the 1960s finally came true: 'In the future everyone will be famous for 15 minutes.' "

All of which explains the eternal stayin-alive shimmer of 1977"s Saturday Night Fever. When John Travolta pointed skyward, he also fanned worldwide disco-inferno flames of hope and underdog dreams come true— "I'm a dancin' man, and I just (ant lose!"— as set to the relentless beat of the Bee Gees' insanely best-selling soundtrack. Snicker now though we may at the retro strut of those boogie shoes of yore, the 1970s opened the cultural dance door to platform-heeled pos­sibilities and oversize optimism. It's a fashion trend that today looks more enviable than ever. Maybe we should be dancing after all.