John Trudell quite eloquently summed up the mindset in his poem/song "Baby Boom Che":

You wanna know what happened to Elvis?
I’ll tell ya what happened.
I oughta know, man, I was one of his army.
I mean, man, I was on his side,
He made us feel all right.
We were the first wave in the post war baby boom.
The generation before had just come out of the great depression
and World War Two,
You know, heavy vibes for people to wear,
So much heaviness
Like some kind of voiding of the emotions.
Their music,
You know, the songs life always carries.
You know, every culture has songs?
Well, anyway, their music was restrained emotion,
You know, like you didn’t wanna dance
If you didn’t know how,
Which says something strange.
Well, anyway, Elvis came along about ten years after the nuke
When the only generals America had and the only army she had
Were Ike and Mac
And stupor hung over the land,
A plague where everyone tried to materially free themselves,
Still too shell-shocked to understand
To feel what was happening.

The first wave rebelled,
I mean, we danced even if we didn’t know how,
I mean Elvis made us move.
Instead of standing mute he raised our voice
And when we heard ourselves something was changing,
You know, like for the first time we made a collective decision
About choices.
America hurriedly made Pat Boone a general
In the army they wanted us to join
But most of us held fast to Elvis and the commandants around him
Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly,
Little Richard, Bo Diddley, Gene Vincent,
You know, like a different Civil War all over again
I mean, you take ‘Don’t Be Cruel’, ‘I Want You I Need You I Love You’
And ‘Jailhouse Rock’,
Or you take Pat and his white bucks singing love letters in the sand,
Hell, man, what’s real here?
I mean, Pat at the beach in his white bucks,
His ears getting sunburned,
Told us something about old wave delusion.

Then before long Elvis got assassinated in all the fame,
Taking a long time to die.
Others seized control while Elvis rode the needle out
Never understanding what he done.
It’s like we were the baby boom because life needed a fresher start,
I mean, two world wars in a row is really crazy man
And Elvis, even though he didn’t know he said it,
He showed it to us anyway
And even though we didn’t know we heard it,
We heard it anyway
Man, like he woke us up
And now they’re trying to put us back to sleep.
So we’ll see how it goes,
Anyway, look at the record, man,
Rock ’n’ roll is based on revolutions
Going way past 33?
You gotta understand, man,
He was America’s baby Boom Ché.
I oughta know man,
I was in his army.