Frank Kogan

The '60s social change and the political left were perceived to be mixed up together (whether or not the right-left axis is a good way to think about politics and society, this way of thinking was there), and freaks were assumed to be on the political left even when they were fundamentally nonactivist (Berkeley free speech movement morphed from concern with political rights and the right to solicit money for civil rights causes to a general rebellion against in loco parentis and in favor of wilder lifestyles, free speech meaning "fuck" as well as SNCC and CORE). The relationship between the radicals and the freaks was actually often tenuous, even if they looked the same to outsiders, and in 1966 "freaks" hadn't coalesced as a group yet and the Vietnam War wasn't quite the dividing line it was to become in a couple of years. But the rebel hoods and greasers who'd have been naturally attracted to the Stones' and Animals' toughness were ambivalent about the long hair, and hard rock definitely had connotations of taking you to some social extreme, even if this social extreme was only a vague feeling of extremity.