The yearbook I linked to in yesterday’s post is still the ne plus ultra of Seventies yearbook covers. (Go see it if you haven’t.)
But when I found this one, I thought it deserved sharing as well, for the way it evoked that uniquely Seventies collision of deep, profound thought (or what was perceived as deep, profound thought) with the mass market.
I give the Stoneham High Class of ’74 credit: Their reproduction of the work in question, inside the front cover, is accurately credited. None of that 1692 nonsense, or whatever canard it was that was going around back in the day.
It had been a few years since the recording of this work had been on Top 40 radio; the members of the Class of ’74 were mere wet-behind-the-ears sophomores when it was a hit. I guess it made a lasting impression in Stoneham.
Finally, while I’m thinking about it: I have always perceived the sun-photos on the covers of yearbooks (including this one) as sunsets. It has only hit me just now that they’re probably supposed to be sunrises — representative of the dawn of a new day, and like that.
I accept whatever that particular Rorschach test says about me.
(Beyond a wholesome discipline, I am being gentle with myself.)
Neck Pickup 
Until you mentioned it, it never occurred to me to think of them as sunrises. I have always considered them sunsets. In school, endings always seemed more profound to me than beginnings, and I suppose they still do.
I suppose a yearbook is meant as an end-of-year summary (here’s what went down at Everett Dirksen High in 1974-75), so in that sense, it makes sense that they would be sunsets.
Somewhere in my surfing, I came across a yearbook cover that had an ambiguous sun-photo and a phrase like “New Beginnings.”
And that made me see them in a different light: Maybe these are sunrises, and they’re meant to connote that everyone at Everett Dirksen High is just getting started on their journeys.
(“There is a road, no simple highway / Between the dawn and the dark of night.” And like that.)