Day 7 - "In the Year 2525 (Exordium and Terminus)” by Zager and Evans (1969)

While worries about the bomb were an ever-present feature of all kinds of apocalyptic speculation in the 1960s, they weren’t the only worry troubling those minded to look for the end of the world. Growing awareness of the danger of pollution and environmental destruction led to campaigns for ecological reforms. Books like Paul Ehrlich’s Population Bomb suggested that the seventies would be marked by famines and wars over resources, while disquiet over the Vietnam war and student protests of 1968 seemed to suggest that society was itself at the point of collapse.

 

Technology presented another area of apocalyptic concern for individuals in the 1960s. As Susan Sontag wrote in her ground breaking article “The Imagination of Disaster” (1965): “The threat to man, his availability to dehumanization, [once] lay in his own animality. Now the danger is understood as residing in man’s ability to be turned into a machine”. Science fiction – the theme which Sontag was concentrating on in her article – presented this danger in a number of different forms. Doctor Who’s Cybermen, first appearing in 1966, imagined a race who had gradually replaced each part of their body with artificial components. “We were exactly like you once, but our race was getting weak”, one Cyberman tells the Doctor, “Our life spans were getting shorter, so our doctors and scientists devised spare parts for our bodies until we could be completely replaced”. But that was not all: “Our brains are just like yours, except that certain weaknesses have been removed. You call them emotions, do you not?”The fear of technology destroying man’s own sense of humanity was a real fear in the period. 

This is where Denny Zager and Rick Evans come in. Performing together from the mid-sixties onwards, the band scored their only hit with their 1968 single “In the Year 2525 (Exordium and Terminus)”. The song gained “breakout” status on a number of local radio stations, which resulted in the boys being signed to RCA Records and enjoying a six week stint at the top of the chart. Without any chorus, the song moves into the future in roughly thousand year increments at a time, each stage revealing that mankind has fallen into an ever increasing reliance on technology leading, essentially, to dehumanization - Your legs got nothin' to do/Some machine is doin’ it for you. The prediction of test-tube babies as soon as, erm, the year 6565 may have been a little off though.

Perhaps the nicest thing about this song (from an apocalyptic point of view) is its hints towards circularity. The secondary title “Exordium and Terminus” refers to concepts of beginning and ending, and the song suggests that what it predicts as far future might, in fact, refer back to the downfall of a previous civilization. God may decide, in 8510, that he needs to tear it down and start again. The final verse thus cycles back – this is a time that is: So very far away/ Maybe it’s only yesterday – before the song returns to the year 2525. The idea that ancient, advanced civilizations have destroyed themselves before us is not uncommon in New Age circles, and hovers around many beliefs surrounding the 21^st December 2012 prophecy. Apocalyptic myth itself often sees in the ending a mirror image of the beginning – and both concepts are reflected nicely in the song. 

Zager and Evans themselves disappeared from view after this – partly, no doubt, because they decided to follow up “2525” with a song called “Mr Turnkey” – told from the point of view of a rapist, who telephones a prison guard to inform him that he has nailed his own arm to the wall in an act of self-mutilation (no, really. Sample lyric: Mr Turnkey, you ain’t never seen nothing like this before/ Mr Turnkey, I’ve nailed my left wrist to your wall). Both singers are still around, with Zager making custom guitars – and the warnings of “2525” perhaps more relevant now than in 1969.

In the Year 2525 (Exordium and Terminus) [Zager and Evans]

In the year 2525

If man is still alive

If woman can survive they may find

In the year 3535

Ain't gonna need to tell the truth, tell no lies

Everything you think do and say

Is in the pill you took today

In the year 4545

You ain't gonna need your teeth won't need your eyes

You won't find a thing to chew

Nobody's gonna look at you

In the year 5555

Your arms hangin' limp at your sides

Your legs got nothin' to do

Some machine's doing that for you

In the year 6565

You won't need no husband, won't need no wife

From the bottom of a long glass tube

In the year 7510

If God's a comin He oughta make it by then

Maybe He'll look around Himself and say

Guess it's time for the judgement day

In the year 8510

God is gonna shake His mighty head

He'll either say I'm pleased where man has been

Or tear it down and start again woh oh 

In the year 9595

I'm kinda wonderin' if man is gonna be alive

He's takin everything this old earth can give

and he ain't put back nothing, oh oh!

 

Now it's been ten thousand years

Man has cried a billion tears

For what he never knew

Now man's reign is through

But through eternal night

the twinkling of starlight

So very far away

Maybe it's only yesterday

In the year 2525

If man is still alive

If woman can survive, they may find…        

Listen on Spotify: Apopalypse: Apocalyptic Advent Calendar

Listen on YouTube:

Buy it:   http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Year-2525-Exordium-Terminus/dp/B005MO1XFU/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1354871940&sr=8-3