Generations

The song 51^st anniversary can be seen as a song directly addressing the generation gap between the hippies and their parents.  The song first discusses the happiness of the older generation with their marriages, their lifelong commitments saying “fifty years they been married and they can’t wait for their fifty first to roll around”.  This static ideology is at first ironic sounding as for much of the album, Jimi talks about going through life day by day, with no commitments, stone free, constantly changing depending on his personality of the day.  In the middle of the song however, Jimi changes his entire perspective talking about the down sides of marriage, about the adulterous lovers and makes it seem as if the responsibilities of children are overwhelming.  Hendrix discusses this aspect of marriage however when talking about the newer marriages, the marriages between lovers of his generation.  Therefore, The Jimi Hendrix experience suggests that while marriage and lifelong commitments worked wonderfully for their parents and the older generation, they are impossible to put up with for the younger generation, a group of youth that is free and without a chain.  At the end Hendrix says “I and ready, Let me live”.  This takes his point to the extreme suggesting that marriage marks the end of living, and therefore, that the older generation, while they seem to be happy, it not really living at all.