The History of Rock Music: 1966-1969

Genres and musicians of the Sixties

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( Copyright © 2009 Piero Scaruffi)

Psychedelia 1965-68

(These are excerpts from my book "A History of Rock and Dance Music")

The Synthesis

TM, ®, Copyright © 2009 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.

Between 1963 and 1966 rock music took three decisive breaks from the original
nature of rock'n'roll: Bob Dylan introduced an explicit socio-political message;
British bands such as the Rolling Stones and the Who (the heirs to the "juvenile
delinquent" image of the 1950s) indulged in instrumental and vocal mayhem; the
Beach Boys, the Beatles and the Byrds focused on studio techniques and
eccentric arrangements. Each of them embodied three different ways of using
music as a vehicle: the profound bard, the street punk, the sound sculptor. The
Rolling Stones and the Who personified an eternal and universal attribute of
youth: rebellion. The Beach Boys and the Beatles were as removed as possible
from their times (the Vietnam war, the civil-rights movement, the fear of the
nuclear holocaust). Bob Dylan was all about his times. Dylan used music as a
weapon, the Rolling Stones and the Who used it as an insult, while the Beach
Boys and the Beatles were largely indifferent to the ideological turmoil.
The convergence of these three wildly different threads yielded the great season
of psychedelic music, a genre that reflected the spirit of the time, that
experimented with studio sound and that embodied the frustration of the youth.
The synthesis of 1966 was fueled by hallucinogens, as if drugs were the natural
meeting point of the bard, the punk and the sound sculptor. Most likely, it was a
mere coincidence: drugs just happened to represent the unifying call to arms for
that generation. It may as well have been something else. Drugs were
conveniently available and stood for the opposite of what the hated
Establishment stood for (war, bourgeois life, discipline, greed, organized
religion, old-fashioned moral values).
If one had to pinpoint an event that concretized this historical synthesis, it would
have been in may 1966, when Dylan's Blonde on Blonde came out, a double
album (already a significant departure from the old format) that had ironically
been recorded in Nashville (between october 1965 and march 1966). Until then,
Edited and updated in 2010 by Rocco Stilo
rock musicians had all operated within the boundaries of the three-minute
melodic song of pop music. After that album's release, only mainstream
commercial music would remain anchored to the traditional song format of Tin
Pan Alley. Albums with lengthy, free-form "songs" began to flow out of
London, New York and Los Angeles: the Fugs' second album with Virgin Forest
(recorded in january and released in march, thus actually beating Dylan), Frank
Zappa's double-album Freak Out (recorded in march and released in june), the
Rolling Stones' Aftermath (recorded in Los Angeles in march), the Velvet
Underground's The Velvet Underground & Nico (mostly recorded in april and
may), the Who's A Quick One (recorded in the fall), the Doors' first album
(recorded in the summer), Love's Da Capo (between summer and fall), etc.
Several of them had been recorded at the same time as Dylan's masterpiece,
signaling a collective shift away from the pop song.

This shift in rock music (grafted onto the historical synthesis of the bard, the
punk and the sound sculptor) coincided with the boom of "free jazz". Rock'n'roll
had been born at the confluence of blues and country music, but after 1966 blues
and country/folk became mere ingredients (two among many) of a much more
complex recipe. The lengthy "acid" jams of the Velvet Underground, of
Jefferson Airplane, of the Grateful Dead and of Pink Floyd, relied on a loose
musical infrastructure that was no longer related to rhythm'n'blues (let alone
country music). It was, on the other hand, very similar to the format of jazz
music played in the lofts and the clubs that many psychedelic rock musicians
attended, and that had rapidly become the second great pillar of the
counterculture (the first one being the movement for civil-rights and pacifism).
Basically, the indirect influence of free jazz became prominent in rock music
during the psychedelic era, fueling its musical revolution and emancipating rock
music from its blues foundations. Before 1966 rock music had been more a part
of the blues tradition than rockers wanted to admit; after 1966 rock music
became more a part of the jazz tradition than rock musicians wanted to admit.

San Francisco and the hippies

TM, ®, Copyright © 2009 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.

In 1965 San Francisco, whose scene had largely languished in the years of surf
music and of the Greenwich Movement, suddenly became one of the most
ebullient cities in the nation. The poets of the "Beat generation" moved here; the
"Diggers" turned the Haight Ashbury district into a "living theater". Mario Savio
founded the "Free Speech Movement" at the University of California at
Berkeley, where sit-ins and marches were supported by the likes of Country Joe
McDonald. There was excitement in the air. In the summer of 1965 a San
Francisco band, the Charlatans, and their hippy fans took over the "Red Dog
Saloon" in Virginia City (Nevada), and came up with the idea of playing a new
kind of music for a new kind of audience. The Warlocks (later renamed the
Grateful Dead) got hired by Ken Kesey to play at his "acid tests" (LSD parties),
where the band began performing lengthy instrumental jams, loosely based on
country, blues and jazz. In october of that year, the Family Dog Production
organized the first hippy party at the "Long Shoreman's Hall". Following the
success of that "festival", avenues for San Francisco's new bands sprang up all
around. Those acts embodied the pacifist ideals that had been promoted by Bob
Dylan, but with a far less political stance. Theirs was a philosophy of life
("peace and love" and drugs) that was in many ways the direct consequence of
what Dylan had preached, but was also much closer to Buddhist philosophy.
Edited and updated in 2010 by Rocco Stilo
Hippies gathered not to march, but to celebrate; not to protest but to rejoice. The
spiritual experience was preeminent over the political experience. This
represented a dramatic change from the times of rock'n'roll, when the music was
an (ultimately violent) act of rebellion.

Rock festivals were invented with the "Human Be-in" held in january 1967 at
the Golden Gate Park (the "Gathering of the Tribes"). The hippy phenomenon
was unique in that it became a mass movement that spread rapidly around the
States (and the world) although it never had a leader. It was a messianic
movement without a messiah.

Mostly, the music of the hippies was an evolution of folk-rock. It was renamed
"acid-rock" because the original idea was that of providing a soundtrack to the
LSD parties, a soundtrack that would reflect as closely as possible the effects of
an LSD "trip". This music was, in many ways, the rock equivalent of abstract
painting (Jackson Pollock), free-jazz (Ornette Coleman) and beat poetry (Allen
Ginsberg). These phenomena had in common a loose structure in which form
"was" the content and an attitude of disregard for century-old aesthetic values. In
music this meant that improvisation was as important, and (even more
important) than composition. Acid-rock's main invention was the "jam", which,
of course, had already been practiced by jazz and blues musicians. Acid-rock
musicians jammed in a slightly different context: they placed more emphasis on
the melody, less emphasis on the virtuoso performance. The most visible
difference (besides the race of the musicians) was the lead role of the electric
guitar. A more subtle difference was that the passionate, aching spirit of the
blues was replaced by a transcendental, Zen-like spirit. The archetype for acid-
rock was actually recorded in Chicago, by the white bluesman Paul Butterfield
(1): East-West (1966), a lengthy piece that fused Afro-American and Indian
improvisation. From the instrumental point of view, acid-rock was still very
much a descendant of rhythm'n'blues, but from the vocal point of view it was
very much a descendant of folk and country music. The melodies and the
harmonies were mostly inspired by the white tradition. 1966 was the year of the
jam: Virgin Forest by the Fugs, Paul Butterfield's East-West, Up In Her Room
by the Seeds, Going Home by the Rolling Stones, Sad Eyed Lady Of The
Lowlands by Bob Dylan, etc. In the following years rock musicians would record
increasingly more complex and lengthier pieces.

Jefferson Airplane (25) were one of the greatest rock bands of all times. They
not only embodied the spirit and the sound of the hippy era more than anyone
else, but also counted on a formidable group of talents, that redefined singing
(Grace Slick), harmonizing (Paul Kantner, Marty Balin), bass playing (Jack
Casady), guitar counterpoint (Jorma Kaukonen) and drumming (Spencer
Dryden) in rock music. Their early singles, Somebody To Love and White
Rabbit, helped establish psychedelic-rock as a musical genre. The music of
Jefferson Airplane was largely self-referential, and their career feels like a
documentary of their generation. Surrealistic Pillow (nov 1966 - feb 1967) was
a manifesto for the hippy generation. After Bathing At Baxter's (jun 1967 - nov
1967), one of the greatest artistic achievements of the psychedelic era, was the
album that broke loose with the conventions of the song format and the pop
arrangement. After Crown Of Creation (jun 1968 - sep 1968), a detour into
transfigured folk-pop-jazz-rock lullabies and ballads, their supreme masterpiece
Volunteers (apr 1969 - nov 1969) fused the backward trend towards a return to
the roots (both musical and moral) and the forward trend towards hard-line
politics. Paul Kantner's sci-fi and political concept Blows Against The Empire
Edited and updated in 2010 by Rocco Stilo
(? 1970 - nov 1970) was a nostalgic look back to the ideals of the communes
and a utopistic tribute to the space age. Sunfighter (? 1971 - nov 1971), credited
to Paul Kantner & Grace Slick, was an adult and solemn return to the song
format and to nature (an "ecological" concept). The sophomore album of the
couple, Baron Von Tollbooth & The Chrome Nun (dec 1972 - may 1973),
transformed the anthemic overtones of the Jefferson Airplane into a self-
contained aesthetic. Their "marketing appeal" was precisely that they represented
(and practiced) a new lifestyle, while, musically, they rarely challenged the
song-oriented format the way other acid-rock bands did. Jefferson Airplane were
partially accepted by the Establishment because they were still living in the
world of pop music, because the folk and blues roots were still visible, because
the melody was still the center of mass.

Others were reacting against all of the above. The Grateful Dead (23),
considered by many to be "the" greatest rock band of all times, were a
monument of San Francisco's hippy civilization, and, in general, a monument of
the psychedelic civilization of the 1960s. Their greatest invention was the
lengthy, free-form, group jam, the rock equivalent of jazz improvisation. Unlike
jazz, in which the jam channeled the angst of the Afro-american people, Grateful
Dead's jam was the soundtrack for LSD "trips". But soon it came to represent an
entire ideology of escape from the Establishment, of artistic freedom and of
alternative lifestyles. Contrary to their image of junkies and misfits, the Grateful
Dead were one of the most erudite groups of all times, aware of the atonal
compositions of the European avantgarde as well as the modal improvisation of
free-jazz and the rhythms of other cultures. They managed to transform guitar
feedback and odd meters into the rock equivalent of chamber instruments. The
infinite ascending and descending scales of Jerry Garcia are among the most
titanic enterprises ever attempted by rock music. The Grateful Dead never sold
many records: their preferred format was the live concert, not the record. They
literally redefined what "popular music" was: the live concert shunned the laws
of capitalism, removing the business plan from entertainment. Their recorded
masterpieces, Anthem Of The Sun (mar 1968 - jul 1968), Aoxomoxoa (mar
1969 - jun 1969) and Live Dead (mar 1969 - nov 1969), are mere
approximations of their art. Anthem Of The Sun was refined in studio using all
sorts of effects and techniques. The band looked at Karlheinz Stockhausen, John
Cage and Morton Subotnick (not Chuck Berry) for inspiration. The Dead's blues
and country roots were horribly disfigured by hallucinogenic fits, thus
disintegrating song structure and development. Each piece became an orgy of
amoebic sound: drums beat obsessive tempos to reproduce the pulsations of an
LSD trip; electronics painted nightmarish and ecstatic soundscapes; gloomy
keyboards moaned mysteriously like ghosts imprisoned in catacombs; guitars
pierced minds and released their dreams into the sky; voices floated serenely
over the maelstrom. Arrangements overflowed with tidbits of harpsichord,
trumpet, celesta, etc. But overall the feeling was one of angst, enhanced by the
jungle of dissonances and percussions. The lengthier improvisations sounded like
chamber music for drunken junkies. (Credit goes to producer Dave Hassinger for
overdubbing different performances and creating a "multi-dimensional" feeling,
i.e. an extreme version of Spector's "wall of sound"). Rhythm and melody had
become pure accessories. Aoxomoxoa repaired part of the damage, by moving
back towards the traditional song format. Live Dead, instead, returned to their
true dimension with tracks such as Feedback, one lengthy monolithic "trip" by
Garcia's guitar, and Dark Star, the Dead's terminal jam and the swan song of
acid-rock. At the same time, though, their free-form jams were born out of a
philosophy that was still profoundly rooted in the USA tradition. They were
Edited and updated in 2010 by Rocco Stilo
born at the border between the individualistic and libertarian culture of the
Frontier and the communal and spiritual culture of the Quakers. Despite being
ostracized by the Establishment, the Grateful Dead expressed, better than any
other musician of that age, the quintessence of the USA nation, and perhaps that
was precisely the reason that their music resonated so well with the soul of the
USA youth. It is not a coincidence that the Grateful Dead, along with the Byrds
and Bob Dylan, led the movement towards country-rock, via Workingman's
Dead (feb 1970 - jun 1970) and Jerry Garcia's solo album Garcia (jul 1971 - jan
1972). The band spent their adult years trying to transform the subcultural idiom
of the hippies into a universal language that could reach out to every corner of
the planet (not only the hippy communes). They succeeded with a form of
intellectual muzak which interpreted the lysergic trip as a cathartic escape from
daily reality and liberation from urban neuroses: Weather Report Suite (1975),
Blues For Allah (1975), Shakedown Street (1978), Althea (1979). In practice,
their art was a psychological study on the relationship between the altered states
of the mind (psychedelic hallucinations) and the altered states of the psyche
(industrial neuroses).

The early San Francisco bands had to cope with a record industry that
completely misunderstood them. The big companies were dying to exploit the
hippy phenomenon, but they balked at the odd music that these hippies were
playing. Producers were paid specifically to destroy the original sound and to
"normalize" the jams (in other words, to "Beatles-ize" acid-rock).

While previous music scenes around the world had revolved around a specific
style (such as Mersey-beat or rhythm'n'blues or surf music), the San Francisco
Bay became the place where anything was allowed. In fact, pretty much the only
thing that was not allowed was to replicate someone else's sound. Originality was
mandatory, whereas talent was optional.

The album recorded in 1967 by the Charlatans, The Charlatans (? 1966/? 1967
- ? 1977), was not released for ten years, but the songs came out as a series of
limited-edition singles in late 1966 and early 1967.

Kaleidoscope (11) were among the most adventurous with the fusion of country,
jazz, cajun, middle-eastern, Indian, flamenco, gypsy and South American music
propounded on Side Trips (? 1967 - jun 1967) and A Beacon From Mars (?
1967 - ? 1968), the latter including Taxim (possibly raga-rock's all-time
masterpiece).

Mike Bloomfield's Electric Flag debuted with Trip (may 1967 - ? 1967), a
bizarre mixture of electronics, noise, psychedelia, country, ragtime and blues.

Moby Grape (2) embodied the casual and magical spirit of the acid jams on
Grape Jam (jan/feb 1968 - apr 1968), featuring Mike Bloomfield and Al Kooper
(both Dylan cohorts), and on Alexander Spence's solo album Oar (dec 1968 -
may 1969).

Quicksilver (1), one of the greatest jam bands of the acid-rock scene, bridged
San Francisco's acid-rock, the garage sound of the Northwest and Chicago's
rhythm and blues, particularly on Happy Trails (nov 1968 - mar 1969), whose
lengthier tracks are bold pan-stylistic cavalcades that take blues as the starting
point but aim for the inner self.

Mad River (2) were also influenced by the blues on Mad River (? ? - ? 1968)
Edited and updated in 2010 by Rocco Stilo
and Paradise Bar And Grill (? ? - ? 1969).

Blue Cheer (1), on the other hand, played blues-rock with a vengeance:
Vincebus Eruptum (? 1967 - jan 1968) introduced a terrifying sound
(deafening guitar and bass amplification), that challenged the whole "hippy"
ideology and predated stoner-rock by 25 years.

Steppenwolf unleashed two of the hardest-hitting anthems of this loud and fast
acid-rock: Born To Be Wild (1968), which contains the expression "heavy metal"
that would come to identify a new genre, and Magic Carpet Ride (1968).

At the other end of the spectrum, Fifty Foot Hose (1), one of the most
experimental bands of the 1960s, and one of the first to employ electronics and
to bridge rock music and the avantgarde, recorded Cauldron (? 1967 - dec
1967), challenging the placid atmosphere of acid-rock with the cacophonous and
chaotic sound of their apocalyptic "freak-out" jams (Fantasy).

By the time these bands reached the recording studios, the golden age of acid-
rock had already ended thanks to two highly-publicized events in the summer of
1967: the Monterey festival (that legitimized the format) and the Beatles' Sgt
Pepper (that legitimized the sound). During that summer the "alternative"
became "mainstream". The anti-commercial spirit of acid-rock became a
contradiction in terms. The following year, the hippy bands embraced country-
rock and returned to the traditional song format. That summer drew young
people from all over the USA. The term "Summer of Love" became
commonplace (although one can argue that the real "summer of love" had taken
place one year earlier, unbeknownst to most of the media).

There was also a sociopolitical reason for the sudden demise of the hippy
movement. Hippies had never truly represented the intellectual class. They had
represented the average young man from the middle class, who was afraid of
being drafted for the Vietnam war and dreamed of a world without nuclear
weapons. Left-wing intellectuals had different priorities, and subscribed to the
notion that some degree of urban guerrilla was necessary in order to change the
Establishment. The hippies were only one of the facets of the counter-culture. In
1968 the tide turned, and violent protests became more popular than peaceful
ones. The peace movement was hijacked by revolutionaries of a different caliber,
and its soundtrack (acid-rock) became anachronistic.

New York and the new Boheme

TM, ®, Copyright © 2009 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.

Even during its heydays, San Francisco was not all psychedelic-rock. Bands such
as the Velvet Underground (210) had little or nothing in common with the San
Francisco bands. They represented the culture of "heroin" (which was a more
sinister, neurotic, nihilistic culture) rather than the culture of LSD (which was
bucolic, dreamy and utopian). The Velvet Underground scavenged the narrow
alleys of the bad parts of town, and scavenged the subconscious of the urban
kid, for emotional scraps that were a barbaric by-product of the original spirit of
rock'n'roll. Their goal was only marginally the sonic reproduction of the
psychedelic experience: their true goal was to provide a documentary of the
decadent, disaffected, cynical mood that was spreading among the intelligentsia.
These were not hippies, these were elitist musicians who were aware of the
Edited and updated in 2010 by Rocco Stilo
avantgarde movements: they began playing (in 1965) as part of Andy Warhol's
multimedia show "The Exploding Plastic Inevitable". They originated the
"pessimistic" strand of psychedelic music (as opposed to San Francisco's
optimistic strand). The Velvet Underground probably remain the most influential
band in the entire history of rock music. Above all else, they originated a spirit
of making music (independent, nihilistic, subversive) that ten years later would
be labeled "punk". Rock music as it is today was born the day the Velvet
Underground entered a recording studio. The Velvet Underground And Nico
(apr/nov 1966 - mar 1967), recorded in the spring of 1966, includes an
impressive number of masterpieces (mostly penned by Lou Reed and John Cale,
and sung by Nico): the cold, spectral, autumnal odes of Femme Fatale, All
Tomorrow's Parties and Black Angel's Death Song, the percussive boogie of
Waiting For My Man, the orgasmic chaos of Heroin, the dissonant tribal music
of European Son, the Indian raga imbued with decadent spleen of Venus In Furs.
They are immersed in the dark, oppressive atmosphere of German expressionism
and French existentialism, but they also exhaled an epic libido: each song was a
sexual fetish, and a cathartic sado-masochistic release. It was difficult to find a
precedent for the Velvet Underground's music, because these barbarians were
attuned to the classical lieder and to LaMonte Young's minimalism, while they
borrowed very little from rock'n'roll and pop music. Although less impressive,
White Light White Heat (sep 1967 - nov 1967) contains Sister Ray, which
probably remains the ultimate, definitive masterpiece of rock music, an epic
piece that rivals Beethoven's symphonies and John Coltrane's metaphysical
improvisations. The Live (oct/nov 1969 - sep 1974) album contains a few more
uncontrolled jams in the style of Sister Ray, while the mellow ballads of Velvet
Underground (nov/dec 1968 - mar 1969), and Sweet Jane (1970), founded a
decadent pop-song that would be influential on glam-rock. By praising drug
addiction and deviant sex, the Velvet Underground revealed a whole new
category of hedonistic rituals. Their albums evoked a Dante-esque vision in
which the border between hell and paradise was blurred. Their songs were also
unique in the way they fused funeral elegy and triumphal anthem: they were
terrible and seductive at the same time. Semiotically speaking, those songs
constituted "signs" by means of which reality was encoded in sounds: the
metropolis was reduced to an endlessly pulsing noise, daily life was reduced to
an unconscious delirium, and everything, both public and private, was clouded
in pure, Freudian libido. The Velvet Underground's hyper-realism was deformed
by a mind constantly in the grip of drugs and perverted fantasies. At the same
time, their music was a visionary chaos from whose fog the mirage of a better
world could rise. Their music was always majestic, even when sinking into the
depths of abjection.

The rest of the New York contingent pales in comparison to the Velvet
Underground. The Blues Magoos (1) released one of the earliest psychedelic
albums, Psychedelic Lollipop (? 1966 - nov 1966); and Mystic Tide released
some of the earliest psychedelic anthems, notably Frustration (1966) and
Psychedelic Journey (1966).

Psychedelic-rock would soon become as formulaic as any other genre. Few

bands ventured outside the dogma, and those who did died in obscurity. For
example, Devils' Anvil (1) played a unique middle-eastern acid-rock,
immortalized on Hard Rock From the Middle East (? ? - ? 1967).

Tom Rapp's Pearls Before Swine (11) were perhaps the greatest band venturing
into psychedelic-folk during the 1960s. Their two masterpieces, One Nation
Edited and updated in 2010 by Rocco Stilo
Underground (may 1967 - ? 1967) and especially Balaklava (? 1968 - ? 1968)
are mosaics of atmospheric songs that defy classification, evoking the
hallucinated state of Dali's surrealism, lushly arranged, and influenced by both
classical and jazz music. Each album is performed by a veritable "chamber
ensemble": organ, harmonium, piano, harp, vibraphone, English horn, clarinet,
celesta, banjo, sitar, flute...

Also typical of New York's artistic milieu were Cromagnon (1), who released
one of the most radical, futuristic and frightening albums of the era, Orgasm (?
1969 - ? 1969).

Bizarre and eclectic arrangements featured prominently on United States Of

America (dec 1967 - mar 1968), the one and only album released by Joseph
Byrd's United States Of America (11), a hodgepodge of sonic experiments that
can be hardly called "songs". One of the most significant albums of that era, it is
also one of the first albums on which a whole range of keyboards (not just piano
or organ) paint most of the soundscape. There are hints of cut-up techniques,
atmospheric jazz ballads and futuristic lounge-music: ideas that would be
resumed three decades later. Byrd's surrealistic music-hall was the opposite of
the Fugs' political theater. A better definition for this kind of music is the title of
Byrd's solo album, American Metaphysical Circus (? 1968 - ? 1969).

Los Angeles and acid-pop

TM, ®, Copyright © 2009 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.

Psychedelic-rock in Los Angeles clearly descended from the Byrds, but it

rapidly split into several camps: the poppy, stereotyped novelty number, best
represented by Strawberry Alarm Clock's Incense And Peppermint (? 1967 - ?
?); the wild, raw, bluesy rave-up, influenced by the Rolling Stones, whose
archetype were the Seeds (2), violent, lascivious punks who cut the unpleasant
albums Seeds (? 1966 - apr 1966) and A Web Of Sound (? 1966 - oct 1966);
the lengthy, intoxicating guitar-driven improvisation, whose heroes were Iron
Butterfly (1), the band that released an album titled Heavy (oct 1967 - feb 1968)
before the term "heavy-metal" was coined, and concocted an exciting, feverish
blues-psychedelic jam, the title-track from In A Gadda Da Vida (early 1968 -
jul 1968). The fragile and dreamy music of Part One (? 1967 - may 1967), by
the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band (1), was probably the closest thing to
San Francisco's acid-rock that Los Angeles produced.

Love (11) were representative of three different stages in psychedelic-rock: its

roots in folk-rock, still evident on the naive Love (jan 1966 - mar 1966); its full-
blown creative maturity, after digesting blues, jazz and raga, as on their
masterpiece Da Capo (jun/oct 1966 - jan 1967); its baroque apex, when,
influenced (like everybody else) by the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds, the band
adopted the lush pop arrangements of Forever Changes (jun/sep 1967 - nov
1967).

Of all creative bands in the history of rock music, the Doors (113) may have
been the most creative. Their first album, The Doors (aug 1966 - jan 1967),
contains only masterpieces (Light My Fire, Break On Through, Crystal Ship,
Soul Kitchen, End Of The Night, and the most suspenseful song in the history of
popular music, The End) and, as a collection of songs, it remains virtually
unmatched. Jim Morrison may well be the single most important rock frontman.
Edited and updated in 2010 by Rocco Stilo
He is the one who defined the rock vocalist as an artist, not just a singer. Ray
Manzaker's style at the keyboards was at the vanguard of the fusion of classical,
jazz, soul and rock music. The virulence of some of their riffs bridged the blues-
rock era and the hard-rock era. Whether it was him, Manzarek or guitarist
Bobbie Krieger or all of them, their songs exhibit a unique quality that has never
been repeated. They are metaphysical while being psychological and even
physical (erotic and violent). They are the closest thing rock music has produced
to William Shakespeare. Partly Freudian psychodrama and partly
shamanic/messianic invocation, Doors songs were always more than "songs".
The fact that they borrowed elements from blues, Bach and ragas was less
relevant than the fact that they represented suicidal self-inflicted agonies. They
continuously referenced death: sex, drugs and death made up the Doors' triune
reality. Each one was ecstasy and annihilation. The supernatural quality of their
hymns was not gothic, but rather imbued with the fatalism of the French
symbolists. Death was the ultimate aspect of that trinity, as Morrison found out
in 1971. The music spanned a broad range of styles, a fact best epitomized by
the long instrumental break in Light My Fire, where Krieger's guitar intones a
raga while Manzarek's organ weaves a Bach-ian fugue and both improvise jazz-
like. The Doors made at least three more albums that proved their talent,
Strange Days (aug 1967 - oct 1967), Waiting For The Sun (may 1968 - jul
1968) and L.A. Woman (jan 1971 - apr 1971), but never managed to repeat the
feat of their first album.
Jim Morrison represented a new kind of sexual persona. Elvis Presley's animal
magnetism, which made him an idol of the teenagers of the 1950s, was largely a
white impersonation of black (forbidden) sexuality. His moves and his voice
were simulating black stereotypes. The teenagers who fell for his charade were
mainly well-behaved children of the middle class. A decade later Morrison
employed a completely different technique, which made Presley obsolete:
Morrison's sexuality was demonic. Morrison placed his sexuality at a higher
"forbidden" level. Morrison's act was also different from Presley's act in that it
was not a travesty: it was real life. Presley only pretended to be a juvenile
delinquent, whereas Morrison had all the intentions of being the (perverted and
suicidal) character that he played. Morrison's audience was an audience of
similarly deviated youths.

Technically speaking, Spirit (3) were even more talented than the Doors. They
recorded some of the most adventurous albums of the psychedelic era, frequently
employing elements of jazz and classical music and pre-dating progressive-rock.
Spirit (nov 1967 - jan 1968) and The Family That Plays Together (mar/sep
1968 - dec 1968) toyed with an erudite fusion of blues, jazz, raga and rock,
while Twelve Dreams Of Dr Sardonicus (apr/oct 1970 - nov 1970) marked a
move towards overwrought (and electronic) arrangements.

Psychedelic-rock was a bonanza for Los Angeles producers, because it gave

them the excuse to indulge in all sorts of bizarre arrangements. Producer Ed
Cobb contributed to psychedelic-rock via an artificial band, San Jose's the
Chocolate Watchband, who are credited with his The Inner Mystique (? 1967 -
dec 1967). David Axelrod penned the Mass In F Minor (? 1967 - jan 1968) by
the Electric Prunes (1), the first "rock mass". But Music Emporium's Music
Emporium (? 1969 - ? 1969) was more sophisticated than anything the seasoned
producers concocted.

Texas and the freak-out

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TM, ®, Copyright © 2009 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.

The psychedelic school in Texas, on the other hand, was one of the most
authentic and uncompromising. The 13th Floor Elevators (1) were among the
earliest psychedelic bands: The Psychedelic Sound Of (oct 1966 - nov 1966)
came out in the autumn of 1966. Like the Seeds in Los Angeles, their ferocious
sound harkened back to the Rolling Stones. Roky Erickson was the demonic
front-man and Stacy Sutherland was the quintessential fuzztone and reverb
guitarist but Tommy Hall was the real brain behind the project, both in terms of
sound (thanks to his electric jug) and in terms of ideology (he merged
psychedelic culture with Eastern philosophies and Western science).

Red Crayola (102), later renamed Red Krayola, were one of the greatest
psychedelic bands of the 1960s and probably of all times. They played extremely
wild and cacophonous music that was decades ahead of its time. They predated
Germany's expressionistic rock (Faust) and the new wave of the USA (Pere
Ubu). Their "freak outs" were closer to John Coltrane's free-jazz and to Jackson
Pollock's abstract paintings than to rock'n'roll. Their leader, Mayo Thompson,
was a composer who ranks among the greatest musicians of his time (classical,
jazz, rock). His revolutionary compositional style had few stable coordinates.
His pieces float not because they are ethereal but because melody and rhythm
are left "loose". They are organisms that rely on supporting skeletons that are
falling apart as they move. Thompson placed his art firmly in the iconoclastic
tradition that Frank Zappa had just founded, and simply increased the amount
and the speed of noise. Parable Of Arable Land (mar 1967 - ? 1967) is one of
the milestones of rock music, a carousel of savage harmonic
inventions/sabotages. God Bless (? 1968 - ? 1968) was even closer (in spirit if
not in sound) to the likes of Edgar Varese and John Cage. It is not a coincidence
that Thompson was rediscovered by the new wave ten years later: his Soldier
Talk (? ? - ? 1979) could have well been the album of the Pere Ubu (the band
he eventually joined).

Euphoria's A Gift From Euphoria (? 1969 - ? 1969), on the other hand, offered
an odd combination of orchestral pop ballads, country-rock, distorted
psychedelia and sound effects.

The spreading of the disease

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The first band to use the term "psychedelic" in an album title had actually been
from a city that was not much of a hub of rock music: Philadelphia. The Deep
released The Psychedelic Moods (aug 1966 - fall 1966) and then changed name
to Freak Scene for the follow-up, Psychedelic Psoul (? 1967 - ? 1967).

Another martyr of psychedelia, Jimi Hendrix (21), was one of the greatest icons
of the 1960s. His death in 1970 still stands as one of the crucial events in the
history of rock music, one of the dates that divide two eras. His work may be
less important than his image, as too many of his albums were below average.
Hendrix was, after all, one of the most exploited artists of all times (many more
albums were released after his death than during his lifetime). Hendrix made
only two amazing albums: the first and the third, Are You Experienced? (apr
1967 - may 1967) and Electric Ladyland (aug 1968 - oct 1968). His greatest
achievement was to coin a new guitar style, a style that amounted to a
Edited and updated in 2010 by Rocco Stilo
declaration of war against western harmony. Born at the crossroad between
Chicago's blues, Memphis soul and Charlie Christian's jazz improvisation,
Hendrix's style was an excruciating torture of tonal music. His astral glissandos
bridged the historical suffering of African slaves and the existential angst of
European philosophers. A black man, Hendrix always used the blues as the basis
for his improvisation, but then used the whole human body to play and distort
the sound of the guitar. The guitar became a sacrificial totem for an entire
generation. A cosmic hymn such as Third Stone From The Sun was fueled
towards higher dimensions by the heroic guitar workout. The blues agony of
jams such as Voodoo Chile was pushed to new psychological levels by the
endless guitar pyrotechnics. Tracks such as 1983 flirted with free-jazz and
avantgarde music to achieve a form of "sound painting". On the album Band Of
Gypsys (jan 1970 - apr 1970) Hendrix was indulging in endless acrobatics.
Hendrix's guitar opened new doors to experimental music. His lesson would be
applied not only to guitar but also to keyboards and to whatever instrument
would lead a rock song. His legacy as a guitarist is comparable to Beethoven's
legacy as a symphonist.

Baroque arrangements (flute, clarinet, harpsichord) enhanced the compositions

of the Chicago band H.P. Lovecraft (1), whose most accomplished album was II
(jun/jul 1968 - sep 1968).

Another Chicago band, the Amboy Dukes (2), laid the foundations for both
heavy-metal and progressive-rock with the complex and energetic compositions
of Journey To The Center Of The Mind (? 1968 - apr 1968) and Marriage
On The Rocks (dec 1969 - mar 1970).

Ultimate Spinach (1) were the most significant psychedelic band from Boston.
They specialized in sophisticated suites such as Ballad Of The Hip Death
Goddess, from Ultimate Spinach (sep/oct 1967 - ? 1968) and Genesis Of
Beauty, from Behold And See (? 1968 - aug 1968). They, too, predated
progressive-rock.

A Canadian band, L'Infonie (1), inspired by the cacophonous chaos of Captain

Beefheart and Red Crayola, but also by Pierre Henry's musique concrete, by Sun
Ra's cosmic jazz and Frank Zappa's dadaistic sketches, and obsessed with the
digit "3", released Volume 3 (? 1969 - ? 1969), performed by 33 musicians,
Volume 33 (? 1971 - ? 1971), and Volume 333 (? 1972 - ? 1972).

Indirectly, psychedelic-rock also permeated melodic ("bubblegum") rock, as

visible in American Breed's Bend Me Shape Me (1967), Steam's Na Na Hey Hey
Kiss Him Goodbye (1968), Ohio Express' Yummy Yummy Yummy (1968). In
Michigan, Tommy James roared Mony Mony (1968) and moaned Crimson And
Clover (1968).

Britain and the light show

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British psychedelia was a very minor and very late phenomenon, with one
notable exception: Pink Floyd. In the summer of 1966, Joel and Tony Brown,
who had worked for LSD guru Timothy Leary in the USA, exported to London
the "light show", which became immediately a major sensation. At the same
time, upon returning from a journey to the USA, disc-jockey John Ravenscroft
Edited and updated in 2010 by Rocco Stilo
(better known as John "Peel") began broadcasting psychedelic music during his
radio show "Perfumed Garden". In december 1966, the UFO Club was
inaugurated to foster the new phenomenon. In april 1967, dozens of bands
played at the "14 Hours Technicolour Dream", which was de facto the first rock
festival. In august 1967, the whole of Europe joined in at St Tropez. The
following year a hippy festival was held at the Isle of Wight, and more (larger
and larger ones) would follow.

Creation were the first psychedelic band to cause a sensation, but it was Pink
Floyd (24) that soon became the reference point for the entire school.

Pink Floyd devised a compromise between the free-form tonal jam, the noisy,
cacophonous freak out, and the eccentric, melodic ditty. This amalgam and
balance was inspired and nourished by Syd Barrett's gentle madness on their first
two albums, their psychedelic masterpieces: The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn
(feb/jul 1967 - aug 1967), that includes the pulsating, visionary trips of
Astronomy Domine and Interstellar Overdrive (the bridge between space-rock
and cosmic music); and A Saucerful Of Secrets (aug 1967/apr 1968 - jun 1968),
that contains the stately crescendo and wordless anthem of A Saucerful Of
Secrets and the subliminal raga of Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun.
The ambitious Ummagumma (live: apr 1969; studio: may 1969 - oct 1969), a
failed albeit intriguing attempt at establishing their credentials as avantgarde
composers, and the eponymous suite from Atom Heart Mother (mar/aug 1970 -
oct 1970), a failed albeit intriguing attempt at merging rock band and symphonic
orchestra, marked the end of the epic phase. Barrett had already departed, and
the new quartet led by bassist and vocalist Roger Waters was more interested in
sculpting sound for the sake of sound, with each musician (guitarist David
Gilmour, keyboardist Richard Wright and percussionist Nick Mason) becoming
a virtuoso at his own instrument. For better and for worse, Pink Floyd
understood the limits and the implications of the genre, and kept reinventing
themselves, slowly transforming psychedelic-rock (a music originally born for
the hippies that had been banned by the Establishment) into a muzak for
relaxation and meditation (aimed at the yuppies who are totally integrated in the
Establishment). The other half of Atom Heart Mother already hinted at the
band's preference for the languid, mellow, hypnotic ballad, albeit sabotaged by
an orgy of sound effects. Echoes, the suite that takes up half of Meddle (jan/aug
1971 - oct 1971), sterilized and anesthetized the space-rock of Interstellar
Overdrive, and emphasized not the sound effects but meticulous studio
production. Pink Floyd did not hesitate to alter the letter and the spirit of
psychedelic music. The delirious and cacophonous sound of their beginnings
slowly mutated into a smooth and lush sound. Rather than just endorsing the
stereotypes of easy-listening, Pink Floyd invented a whole new kind of easy-
listening with Dark Side Of The Moon (jun 1972/jan 1973 - mar 1973) and
Wish You Were Here (jan/jul 1975 - sep 1975). The former was a collection of
high-tech songs propelled by funky rhythms and shaped by electronic effects.
The latter was basically the high-brow version of the former, a concept on primal
states of the mind such as fear and madness that set the devastated psyche of the
narrator (Roger Waters) in the context of a tragic and oppressing
Weltanschaung. The futuristic anthem Welcome To The Machine was actually a
symphonic requiem for layers of electronic keyboards and romantic guitar. A
tactical move soon became a strategic move. In the end, Pink Floyd reshaped
psychedelic music into a universal language, a language that fit the punk as well
as the manager, just like, at about the same time, jazz-rock was "selling" the
anguish of the Afro-American people to the white conformists. Roger Waters'
Edited and updated in 2010 by Rocco Stilo
existential pessimism and historical angst became the pillars of the band's latter-
day melodramas, such as The Wall (apr/nov 1979 - nov 1979). These monoliths
of electronic and acoustic sounds, coupled with psychoanalytical lyrics, indulge
in a funereal pomp that approaches the forms of the requiem and the oratorio.

Nobody could compete with Pink Floyd, in terms of both artistic achievement
and influence. However, Tomorrow (1), featuring drummer John "Twink" Alder,
recorded one of the most eccentric albums of that season, Tomorrow (spring
1967 - feb 1968), and Hapshash & The Coloured Coat (1) did even better with
Featuring The Human Host And The Heavy Metal Kids (? 1967 - ? 1967).

The Incredible String Band (2) was Scotland's premier hippy commune. Their
album 5,000 Spirits or the Layers of the Onion (early 1967 - jul 1967)
introduced medieval and middle-eastern music into folk-rock. Their masterpiece,
Hangman's Beautiful Daughter (dec 1967 - mar 1968), is a hyper-creative
stew of hypnotic exorcisms, magical and pagan rituals, Indian music, Donovan-
esque lullabies, baroque music, all drenched in exotic instrumentation and
psychedelic chanting. Following their example, an impressive number of British
bands released an impressive number of inferior albums that relied on the fusion
between psychedelia and folk: the Trees' The Garden of Jane Delawney (mar
1970 - ? 1970), Forest's Full Circle (spring 1970 - ? 1970), Dr Strangely
Strange's Heavy Petting (? 1970 - sep 1970), Clive's Original Band (C.O.B.)'s
Moyshe McStiff and the Tartan Lancers of the Sacred Heart (late 1971 - ?
1972), etc.

Great Britain never had a counterculture movement in the early 1960s, a

counterpart to Country Joe and the Fugs. It didn't have much of a pacifist
movement, a Bob Dylan or a Free Speech Movement that could compare with
the originals. There were no student riots in 1964, there was no need to create an
alternative political world to fight the Establishment. Instead, it was the
psychedelic movement that led to the development of an underground
infrastructure (magazines, clubs, radio stations). In Britain, psychedelic music
played the role that the Greenwich Movement had played in the USA.

Once that infrastructure was in place, the political wing of the movement was
allowed to emerge.

The leading agit-prop band was the Deviants (13), which were born as the
British version of the Fugs, but soon developed an even more iconoclastic and
unpredictable sound via Ptooff (? 1967 - end 1967), their masterpiece,
Disposable (sep 1968 - end 1968), III (? 1969 - sep 1969) and Mick Farren's
solo album Mona The Carnivorous Circus (dec 1969 - mar 1970).

Also following a cue from the Fugs, Edgar Broughton (1) clearly represented the
fusion of psychedelic and political elements on Wasa Wasa (early 1969 - jul
1969).

Euro-psychedelia

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However, one of the greatest of the European psychedelic bands was not even
British but Swedish: Parson Sound, whose compositions would surface only 32
years later on Pärson Sound (jul 167/aug 1968 - ? 2001). Their main influences
Edited and updated in 2010 by Rocco Stilo
 were minimalist composer Terry Riley, who at the time was inventing a musical
aesthetic founded on repetition, and pop-art guru Andy Warhol, who, at the time,
was experimenting with the droning music of the Velvet Underground. Renamed
International Harvester (1), they later released Sov Gott Rose-Marie (aug/sep
1968 - spring 1969), a wild fusion of psychedelia, minimalism, raga, folk, jazz
and sounds of nature.

Their only competitors were Italy's Le Stelle di Mario Schifano, a musical event
put together by decadent-futurist pop artist Schifano the same way Andy Warhol
put together the Velvet Underground. They composed a cacophonous suite Le
Ultime Parole di Brandimarte, dall'Orlando Furioso (with the instructions "to be
listened with the TV on and no volume"), off their only album Dedicato A (oct
1967 - nov 1967), one of the most experimental tracks of the time.

Brazil's Os Mutantes (1) concocted a high-volume maelstrom of dissonant

guitar, musique concrete, found sounds and pop melodies on albums such as Os
Mutantes (? ? - jun 1968) and especially Mutantes (? 1969 - ? 1969).

The Outsiders in Holland were also notable, thanks to their CQ (sep 1968 - end
1968). But Holland's most popular export was Shocking Blue's feverish Venus
(1969).

The Czech band Plastic People of the Universe was the main psychedelic act of
Eastern Europe (unreleased until 1978).

Last but not least, the open French ensemble of Les Maledictus Sound (1)
released one of the most psychedelic albums ever, Les Maledictus Sound (apr
1968 - ? 1968).

The classical avantgarde was, indirectly, helping the creative freedom of this era.
The marriage between rock and classical music was fostered by rock composers
such as Frank Zappa, but also by classical composers such as Pierre Henry,
whose Rock Electronique (1963) employed electronic riff and rhythm, and
whose rock mass, Messe Pour Le Temp Present (1967), that mixed symphonic,
rock and electronic instruments. In 1964 Charles Dodge and James Randall
started "computer music". In 1965 Terry Riley and Steve Reich were performing
music based on repetition of simple patterns ("minimalism"), an idea that shared
with psychedelic-rock the hypnotic and mystical qualities.

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Edited and updated in 2010 by Rocco Stilo