Of course, the backdrop for the killing culture was the ongoing Vietnam War. In April 1969, U.S. troop levels there hit 543,400, the highest reached at any time during the war. By the week of Dec. 20, Nixon's "Vietnamization" policy of slowly withdrawing troops had drawn down that force to approximately 470,000. Nonetheless, by '69 American combat deaths in Vietnam topped 33,700, surpassing the U.S. death tally for Korean War.

On Dec. 1 of that year, the Selective Service conducted its first draft lottery since 1942, pulling out Ping-Pong balls at random with birth dates. The event determined the order of call for induction during calendar year 1970, that is, for registrants born between Jan. 1, 1944, and Dec. 31, 1950.

Appropriately, just as unlucky draftees were about to be shipped off, farewells were in the air on pop radio at the close of December 1969, with "Leaving On a Jet Plane" (Peter, Paul, and Mary), and "Someday We'll Be Together" (Diana Ross & The Supremes) coming in at 1 and 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. Those were sentimental expressions of hope. Sitting behind them at No. 3, though, was a song that had Vietnam on its mind, that put its stamp on the '60s at its close, but couldn't be bothered with sentimentality -- Creedence Clearwater Revival's pounding "Fortunate Son," which stands among rock's most exhilarating 2:18.

In it, growling lead singer John Fogerty declares unabashed class warfare:

Some folks are born silver spoon in hand
Lord, don't they help themselves, oh.
But when the taxman come to the door,
Lord, the house look a like a rummage sale, yes

and undresses the Pentagon:

Some folks are born made to wave the flag,
ooh, they're red, white and blue.
And when the band plays "Hail To The Chief,"
oh, they point the cannon at you, Lord.

Fogerty, who until two years earlier was serving once a month in the Army Reserve, wrote "Fortunate Son" in 20 minutes, sitting on the edge of a bed with a legal pad in his lap. "It's a confrontation between me and Richard Nixon," he once said.

Incredibly, "Fortunate Son" doesn't even appear on "Green River," the CCR album in the top 10 for Dec. 20, '69. That's because Fogerty was so prolific, his singles and albums were beginning to pile up on the charts. (The band's first three albums each cost $2,000 to make and were recorded in one week's time.) In 1969 alone, CCR released an unheard-of three studio albums that produced not-a-note wasted classics like "Proud Mary," "Bad Moon Rising," and "Down on the Corner."

In just over 18 months the band tallied seven top 10 singles, most of them with B-side winners to boot. Like Elvis in '56, the Beatles in '64, the Bee Gees in '78 and Michael Jackson in '83, CCR, with its mixture of Southern Creole styles and tight rockabilly touch,owned American pop music in '69. As Rob Sheffield put it in Rolling Stone, "for a year or two there, Creedence were as great as any rock & roll band could ever be."

At the same time, the Rolling Stones also found themselves in a wicked groove. Rebounding from the psychedelic mess of 1967's "Their Satanic Majesties Request," the band answered with "Beggar's Banquet" in '68, and then hit back even harder with "Let It Bleed." From the opening masterpiece "Gimme Shelter," which writer Greil Marcus dubbed "the greatest rock and roll recording ever made," "Let It Bleed" is soaked in addiction ("All my friends are junkies") violence, ("I'll stick my knife down your throat, baby"), more violence ("You knifed me in my dirty filthy basement"), and lament ("You can't always get what you want"). It's all wrapped around some of the sturdiest, most exhilarating songs ever put to vinyl. "THIS RECORD SHOULD BE PLAYED LOUD," the inside album sleeve commands, and millions of rock fans happily obeyed.

"No rock record, before or since, has ever so completely captured the sense of palpable dread that hung over its era," wrote Stephen Davis in his Stones book, "Old Gods Almost Dead."

"It's kind of an end-of-the-world thing," Jagger said of "Let it Bleed." "It's Apocalypse; the whole record's like that." (The best trivia tidbit: That's not Charlie Watts smacking the skins on the closing "You Can't Always Get What You Want," it's producer Jimmy Miller, the same "Mr. Jimmy" who Jagger sings about seeing at the Chelsea drugstore.)

In the fall of '69, the band, never shy about its love of money, even while playing to the Woodstock nation, faced critics' wrath for charging high prices -- $5.50 and $8.50 -- for its 13-city, 18-concert tour of the U.S. Writing in the San Francisco Chronicle, respected music scribe Ralph J. Gleason complained, "Can the Rolling Stones actually need all that money?"

At a Beverly Hills Wilshire Hotel press conference, Jagger fended off the criticism by suggesting the band might play a free thank-you show at the conclusion of the tour. Or, as the band's promoter later told the New York Times, "It's a Christmas and Hanukkah gift from the Stones to American youth."

That "gift," fittingly for this "Let it Bleed" moment in rock history, turned out to be Altamont.

With their new '69 album "Puzzle People," the Temptations were offering up a different kind of gift intended for black America. The greatest male vocal group of all time ("My Girl," "Get Ready," "Ain't too Proud to Beg," "Just My Imagination"), the Temps were a testament to the polished Motown sound that helped define the decade. By '69 though, the group was staking out new territory. Yes, the albums boasted the prerequisite fireball single, the R&B smash "Can't Get Next to You" that crossed over to No. 1 on the pop charts. But two years before Motown icon Marvin Gaye tackled social issues with his breakthrough release, "What's Goin' On," the Temps took a hard look around. On "Puzzle People," gone from the album cover photo was the trademark Motown matching suits. Instead, it was the Temps in afros, psychedelic shirts and smart street suits, hanging out on the stoop of a inner-city building, far away from the safe supper clubs they often played. "Puzzle People" was part of the Temps' "psychedelic soul" phase, which began earlier that year with the release of the "Cloud Nine" album.

Politically, the "Puzzle People" highlight was "Message From a Black Man": "Your eyes are open but you refuse to see/The laws of society were made for both you and me." It was the Temps' answer to James Brown's anthem, "Say It Out (I'm Black and I'm Proud)."

The timing was dead-on: On Dec. 20, 1969, in the wake of the Black Panther slayings, Chicago's superintendent of police announced there had been "no misconduct by the police officers involved" in the raid. "Message From a Black Man" emerged as an unofficial Black Power anthem.

The Beatles came bearing a gift of their own in late '69: "Abbey Road," which reigned at No. 1 for 18 weeks in the U.K., 11 in the U.S. Unhappy with the recording of "Let it Be," which was actually released after "Abbey Road," the world's most famous rock band returned to EMI Studio No 3, Abbey Road, London NW8, in July and August of '69 for their final sessions.

For a band that was on the verge of breaking up, amid personal squabbling and broken business deals, "Abbey Road" is surprisingly bright, at times seamless, and often silly ("Maxwell's Silver Hammer," "Octopus's Garden.") Not as groundbreaking as "Rubber Soul" or "Revolver," "Abbey Road" is still a classic of pop songwriting, led by John Lennon's "Come Together," which was inspired by Timothy Leary's run at California governor (Leary's slogan was "Come together, join the party") and the hard-rocking "She's So Heavy." Side 2's suite of song fragments, with their haunting melodies and great transitions ("You Never Give Me Your Money," "Carry That Weight") is unique in the Beatles' repertory. And of course pop doesn't come much more perfect than George Harrison's unabashedly optimistic "Here Comes the Sun," written using a guitar borrowed from Eric Clapton, while sitting in his friend's garden.

As the final true track on "Abbey Road," the last album recorded by the Beatles, "The End" served as the band's good-bye to the decade and an era. And they signed off with a Paul McCartney note of unquenchable optimism: "And in the end/The love you take/Is equal to the love you make."

On Dec. 20, '69, "Abbey Road" sat at No. 1 in the U.S. At No. 2 was "Led Zeppelin II," and barreling into the '70s? the band offered a radically different take on love. Opening with the carnal "Whole Lotta Love," complete with Jimmy Page's famous guitar stutter, the song single-handedly ushered in rock's next major chapter: "Way way down inside/ I'm gonna give you my love/ I'm gonna give you every inch of my love."

Heavy metal was born. Not just the relentless, thundering sound, but the strutting, cocksure attitude that would dominate rock (often in inflated, caricatured forms) for years to come. "'Whole Lotta Love' was an emergency telegram to a new generation," wrote Davis in "Hammer of the Gods." "In its frenzy of sex, chaos, and destruction, it seemed to conjure all the chilling anxieties of the dying decade. Ironically, the song (and Led Zeppelin) didn't much appeal to the kids of the sixties, who had grown up with the Beatles, the Stones, Bob Dylan. Tired, jaded, disillusioned, they were turning towards softer sound, country rock. But their younger siblings, the high school kids, were determined to have more fun. Zed Zeppelin was really their band. For the next decade Led Zeppelin would be the unchallenged monarchs of high school parking lots all over America."

The '60s were over, literally and figuratively. And during the final week of '69, in a nice piece of symbolic symmetry, the Beatles, the quintessential '60s band, and Led Zeppelin, soon-to-be '70s rock gods, flip-flopped their No. 1 and No. 2 spots atop the Billboard album chart.