Psychedelia: The 100 Greatest Classics
[Mojo, June 1997]
Psychedelia USA
‘Eight Miles High’ (First Edition) — The Byrds
Recorded: December 22, 1965
Available on: Fifth Dimension and The Byrds’ Greatest Hits (Columbia/Legacy)
Seven weeks after recording the simple folker ‘He Was A Friend Of Mine’, The Byrds blasted into hyperspace with this version of ‘Eight Miles High’, the first aural reproduction of the LSD rush: Gene Clark’s queasy lyric and Roger McGuinn’s Coltrane/Shankar improvisations made the plane flight the central pop metaphor for LSD’s trip into the otherworld. Recorded of RCA studios, this first, wilder version went unreleased for nearly 25 years.
‘Alabama Bound’ — The Charlatans
Spring 1966
The Charlatans (One Way Records)
The first San Francisco psych group was a concept dreamed up by singer/autoharpist George Hunter: swells dressed in clothes that matched the Edwardian mansions of the Haight. An LSD-drenched, summer ’65 season at the Red Dog Saloon in Nevada added the Wild West into the mix: guns, dogs, country blues. Good-timey rather than messianic, The Charlatans’ tour de force was ‘Alabama Bound’, where they stretched out Jelly Roll Morton’s tune of loss and dislocation into a new American symphony of sweet, shimmering guitars.
‘Visions Of Johanna’ — Bob Dylan
May 26, 1966
Blonde On Blonde and Biograph (Sony CBS)
As early as 1963’s ‘Lay Down Your Weary Tune’, Dylan was exploring the egoless surrender to the universe that would characterise the first, benign phase of psychedelia. From 1965 on, his gnomic, gnostic utterances laid down the parameters for what would follow, as The Beatles, The Byrds and The Rolling Stones fell under his spell. Dylan issued disclaimers — “I never have and never will write a drug song…It’s just vulgar,” he exclaimed on the last night of his 1966 world tour — but this ‘Visions Of Johanna’, taken from the night before, has the infinitesimal focus of acid-time compression.
‘Blues From An Airplane’ — Jefferson Airplane
May 1966
2400 Fulton St and Best Of Jefferson Airplane (RCA)
Jefferson Airplane were the first SF rock group to sign with a major label, for the then unheard-of advance of $25,000. ‘Blues From An Airplane’ features first singer Signe Toly Anderson and is a good example of the turf they’d make their own: drug epiphanies translated into romantic storylines. “I’m sure of how I can be the man I feel,” Marty Balin cries, parading a loneliness topped off with soaring folk harmonies and acidic lead guitar.
‘Section 43′ — Country Joe And The Fish
August 1966
The First Three EPs (One Way Records)
In late ’65, Berkeley activists Country Joe And The Fish released the first version of their infamous anti-Vietnam tune ‘I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-To-Die Rag’. This seven-minute instrumental from their second self-produced EP has a fragile, first-time innocence. Dominated By David Cohen’s reedy organ, ‘Section 43′ is all fog, space and possibility — a perfect representation of the Bay Area at that time.
‘Someone To Love’ — The Great Society
Summer 1966
Born To Be Burned (Sundazed Records)
‘Someone To Love’ is one of the few accurate representations of the San Francisco Sound as it happened: teenage angst deliciously amplified to cosmic proportions, with that ballroom echo and wild, distorted guitar. The group’s ambition outstripped their ability — producer Sly Stone quit the studio in disgust after 50 takes — but that’s what makes them resonate still. Grace Slick took the song with her to Jefferson Airplane, who retitled it ‘Somebody To Love’ and went Top 5 in May 1967.
‘Electricity’ — Captain Beefheart And The Magic Band
Summer 1966
Safe As Milk (Castle Classics)
Don Van Vliet unveiled his new look at the Avalon Ballroom in summer 1966. As Gene Sculatti writes in San Franciscan Nights, “The real Captain Beefheart stood up in pre-new wave plastic wraparound sunglasses, tassle-topped shriner’s fez, and a braided bandleader’s corset right out of The Music Man.” With killer drumming, horror movie theremin and slide guitar (played by Ry Cooder) that went straight to the third eye, Electricity surfed on the metallic pulse of the new era: “Go into bright/Find a light and know/That friends don’t mind just how you grow.”
‘Foolish Woman’ — Oxford Circle
Autumn 1966
Endless Journey (Reverberations III)
From Sacramento, Oxford Circle recorded right on the garage/psych cusp. Their only 45, ‘Foolish Woman’, begins with a punk Them-style rant that, after a minute or so, runs out of spleen. There is a pause before some backwards guitar, then they’re off into the stratosphere, speeding into feedback drones. A quick restatement of the basic theme, and they’re cut dead — from misogyny to transcendence and back again, all within 2.30.
‘Feel The Music’ — Vejtables
Autumn 1966
Feel…The Vejtables (Sundazed Records)
In 1965, the Vejtables followed their Autumn labelmates, The Beau Brummels, onto the national charts with the Beatlesque ‘I Still Love You’. A year and two female drummers later, they regrouped for an attempt at mind expansion. The requisite ego-loss is rendered by two ragalike breaks, as the guitarist wanders up and down the frets in sitar simulation. In the high register, finger cymbals; at the end, a cymbal clash; and the band are gone in a puff of smoke.
‘Roller Coaster’ — The 13th Floor Elevators
Autumn 1966
The Psychedelic Sounds Of (Collectables Records) and The Best Of (Nectar Records)
One of the first psychedelic groups to hit nationally (with ‘You’re Gonna Miss Me’), these Texans made frequent visits to the Bay Area in the second half of 1966. Beginning quietly, ‘Roller Coaster’ soon peaks into unabashed proselytism: “You’ve got to open up your mind/And let everything came through/After the trip your life opens up/You start doing what you want to do.” Driven by Roky Erickson’s unearthly shrieks, the Elevators take you through every stage of the journey — eight hours compressed into 5.05.
‘Psychotic Reaction’ — The Count Five
September 1966
Psychotic Reaction (Edsel)
Included as much for its title and its contemporaneity, ‘Psychotic Reaction’ was justly celebrated by Lenny Kaye in his groundbreaking Nuggets collection — which, in 1972, excavated ‘60s punk for the next generation to plunder. A Top 5 hit, ‘Psychotic Reaction’ was The Yardbirds’ ‘I’m A Man’ as played by five gawky teens from San Jose — a punker so perfect as to inspire the Lester Bangs rant that titled his book Psychotic Reactions And Carburetor Dung.
‘Children Of The Sun’ — The Misunderstood
Autumn 1966
Before The Dream Faded (Cherry Red)
Another Yardbirds cop, perhaps the finest ever, as this Riverside, California, group — transplanted to the UK — go stratospheric with a toughened up rewrite of ‘Shapes Of Things’. Dominated by Glenn Ross Fernando Campbell’s searing slide guitar, ‘Children Of The Sun’ rocks so hard you wonder how The Misunderstood could top it, and they didn’t. Like Icarus, they quickly fell to earth, draft dodgers hounded by the army and the FBI.
‘Feathered Fish’ — Sons Of Adam
Autumn 1966
Mondo Mutiny (Way Back)
A total punk/psych classic, with a massive, fuzzed stop-start riff, high harmonies and wacko lyrics by none other than Love’s Arthur Lee. Like, uh: “I don’t know/There I go.” All that we know about Sons Of Adam is that they were an LA group, affiliated with Love. Impressed by their rendition of this ferocious tune, Lee pinched drummer Mike Stuart for Love’s upcoming Da Capo album.
’7 And 7 Is’ — Love
September 1966
Da Capo (Elektra)
A hyperspeed slice of acid-amped teen angst. Sample lyric: “When I was a boy I thought about the time I’d be a man/I’d sit inside a bottle and pretend that I was in a can/In my lonely room I’d slip my mind in an ice cream cone/You can throw me if you wanna ‘cos I’m a bone.” At the break, Arthur Lee counts it down” “One, two, three, four!” and then Love’s only Top 40 hit explodes in your face, leaving a fragment of the blues in its wake.
‘Good Vibrations’ — The Beach Boys
October 1966
Smiley Smile/Wild Honey and The Best Of The Beach Boys (Capital/EMI)
Recorded over six months, the final version of ‘Good Vibrations’ is a masterpiece of editing. Brian Wilson’s pocket symphony begins with a deceptive simplicity, all solo voice and modulation organ, but twists and turns into a full-blown theremin psych-out. It reached Number 1 in December 1966; for a brief moment The Beach Boys were ahead of The Beatles. And yes, it was the first time you heard the phrase.
‘Frantic Desolation’ — Sopwith Camel
Early 1967
Hello Hello Again (Sequel)
Named to reflect the obsessions of the moment (Edwardiana, flight), SF art-schoolers Sopwith Camel are best known for their Top 30 hit ‘Hello Hello’, which rode The Lovin’ Spoonful’s sweet jug-band style for one last time in January 1967. Since having a hit was uncool, the Camel were consigned to the outer darkness — an injustice, as this unexpected slice of desperation makes clear. The eloquent fuzz solo is as pure a distillation of San Francisco as you will ever hear.
‘The Crystal Ship’ — The Doors
January 1967
The Doors (Elektra)
Always the most understated and thus persuasive song from the group’s infamous first album. With images of parting, madness, surrender and death, The Doors set sail for unchartered waters and took their audience along with them. Just so you didn’t forget that they came from LA, the West Coast’s media centre, Jim Morrison came up with some great soundbites: “I’d rather fly”; “another flashing chance at bliss”; “deliver me from reasons why”.
‘Mr Farmer’ — The Seeds
March 1967
More Nuggets — Classics From The Psychedelic ‘60s Vol 2 (Rhino)
LA’s finest for a season, The Seeds straddled the punk/psych divide until they went over the edge in late ’67. As the notes to their third album, Future, say, “leading the way once more back past the dragons through the crooked forest to the fairy castle surrounded by flowers and flower children playing in the sun.” This 45 was the follow-up to ‘Pushin’ Too Hard’ and, although drenched in the same cheesy organ, is more psych in its imagery and subject matter: “My Farmer, let me water your cropsss.” Now what were those little green things?
‘Keep Your Mind Open’ — Kaleidoscope
April 1967
Blues From Baghdad — The Very Best Of Kaleidoscope (Edsel)
All the more impressive for its restraint, this ballad was one of the first anti-war songs from within the emerging counterculture. Berkeley’s Kaleidoscope were the first to fully integrate non-Western music and pop. Here, an exotic, hothouse mood (wind chimes, Near Eastern instrumentals) is slowly undermined by gunfire swells — the Realpolitik behind psychedelia.
‘Get Me To The World On Time’ — The Electric Prunes
April 1967
Psychedelia (Music Collection International)
‘Get Me To The World On Time’ was the follow-up to the Electric Prunes’ Number 11 hit ‘I Hold Too Much To Dream (Last Night)’ and, like all great follow-ups, tightened the mesh. In this case, that meant snotty vocals, mind-melting lyrics shrouding a basic teenage horniness, a killer Bo Diddley beat and a whole battery of effects meant to induce freaking out: fuzz, wah-wah, reverb. “Here I go go go,” the band gibber on the fade, as the guitarist shoots for the stars. Top 30 US, deservedly.
‘Johnny Was A Good Boy’ — Mystery Trend
May 1967
San Franciscan Nights (Rhino)
One of the first wave of SF groups, Mystery Trend took their name from a misheard line in Dylan’s ‘Like A Rolling Stone’. This tough punker — sped up in the cut — was their only 45. Announcing itself with breaking glass, it told a story that has since become all too familiar: the boy next door, good with kids and animals, who makes front-page news with something so unmentionable that the group doesn’t dare to name it. Great but twisted and, unsurprisingly, not a hit.
‘Omaha’ — Moby Grape
May 1967
Vintage: The Very Best Of Moby Grape (Columbia/Legacy)
The received wisdom that hippies were about peace and love is exploded by records like this. Backwards guitars come at you like hammer blows, the dual-octave riff starts, and they’re off. ‘Omaha’ is nothing if not intense, a jammed-up collision of flashing guitars and ragged voices that taps the crazy, aggressive energy of a moment turning in on itself. A Skip Spence song from what is undoubtedly the finest first-wave SF album, Moby Grape, and a Top 30 hit in July 1967.
‘White Rabbit’ — Jefferson Airplane
June 1967
Surrealistic Pillow and Best Of Jefferson Airplane (RCA)
Alice in Wonderland set to a bolero beat, this is Grace Slick’s record. She brought it from The Great Society, and it is her sardonic, precise vocal that gives the moral authority to the kiss-off: “When logic and proportion have fallen sloppy dead/And the White Knight is talking backwards/And the Red Queen is off with her head/Remember what the Dormouse said: ‘Feed Your Head! Feed Your Head!” Explicit drug propaganda and one of the oddest records ever to reach the US Top 10.
‘Hallucinations’ — Tim Buckley
June 1967
Goodbye And Hello (Elektra)
To the mass media, the point of psychedelia was love. In fact, psychotropic drugs only serve to augment what is already there, and what comes across as strongly as the utopian propaganda of this period is an overwhelming sadness. Buried in an album subtly dominated by Vietnam, Buckley’s ‘Hallucinations’ are not paisley patterns but lyrical, disturbing paradigms of how loss fucks your head up.
‘Are You Gonna Be There? (At The Love-In)’ — Chocolate Watch Band
June 1967
No Way Out (Sundazed Records)
From the South Bay, the Watch Band are best known for their performance in the AIP film Riot On Sunset Strip (rushed out to exploit the December 1966 Sunset Strip riots), which they enlivened with a perfect Yardbirds rip-off, ‘Don’t Need Your Lovin’’. ‘Are You Gonna Be There?’ is another Mod R&B record, written for a film called The Love-Ins: all crunch and sneer, an outsider’s view of a culture curdling into conformity.
‘Ball And Chain’ — Big Brother And The Holding Company
June 1967
Cheap Thrills and 18 Essential Songs (Janis Joplin) (Columbia/Legacy)
Like most first-wave SF groups, Big Brother didn’t have much of an idea about making records. Their first album was a bunch of demos; their second a major label botch job. This live cut from the Monterey festival is the one that made them superstars. Not a second too long at 8.07, it captures the group at the height of their powers and hints at their future demise — the loser script that Janis Joplin would be required not only to sing but to live out.
‘I’m Five Years Ahead Of My Time’ — Third Bardo
Summer 1967
Psychedelic Microdots 3 (Sundazed)
New York’s Third Bardo took their name from the Tibetan Book Of The Dead and recorded this lunging come-on with lyrics so perfectly pretentious that they bear printing in detail: “It may strong/But I know just where it caring ‘bout that right or wrong to life’s mystery! Just step in.”
‘Anxious Col’ — Painted Faces
Summer 1967
Pebbles Vol 3…Various Burnout (AIP/Archive International)
Nothing is known about the Painted Faces except that they came from Fort Myers, Florida, and they released three singles. This was their first: a marvellous encapsulation of how LSD hit nonmetropolitan America. As the group take you through all the styles they’ve learned up to this point — frat rock, Brit beat, punk — they offer the definitive summing up of the acid experience in the title phrase.
‘Magic Hollow’ — The Beau Brummels
August 1967
Triangle (Warner Brothers)
The Beau Brummels’ January ’65 hit, ‘Laugh, Laugh’, was the first creative American response to the British Invasion. It also helped to finance Autumn Records, the label where Sly Stone attempted to produce first-wave SF groups like The Great Society and The Charlatans. Although in at the ground level of the SF boom, the group were too minor-key for the full thunder of psychedelia as it became defined. This song, from their Triangle LP, all harpsichord and chimes, hints at the secret sadness that lay beneath the wonder.
‘Broken Arrow’ — Buffalo Springfield
Autumn 1967
Buffalo Springfield Again and Retrospective — The Best Of Buffalo Springfield (Atco)
In March 1967, Buffalo Springfield went Top 10 with ‘For What It’s Worth’, written after the Sunset Strip riots. The group then began to disintegrate, recording their second album on the run. Neil Young explored his ambivalence to fame in this six-minute epic (which begins with drummer Dewey Martin’s fake soul Xerox of Young’s ‘Mr. Soul’, recorded live without its author). With an ambition typical of the period, Young then vaults into American Indian mythology and thus the core reason for the shadowy absence that’s always present in America: the exterminated native race.
‘Incense And Peppermints’ — Strawberry Alarm Clock
October 1967
Strawberries Mean Love (Big Beat) and Anthology (One Way Records)
NutraSweet psychedelia, ‘Incense And Peppermints’ went to Number 1 in the US in November 1967, six months after it was first released locally an the West Coast, which tells you something about the time lag involved in hitting the mass market. By the winter, of course, the song’s uncritical acceptance of the hippy ethos was passé. For all that, it is addictive as a sugar hit, with soft harmonies and an irresistible melody.
‘The Red Telephone’ — Love
November 1967
Forever Changes (Elektra)
What was so great about Love was that they were nasty hippies. No-one was more perfectly cast as Nero than Arthur Lee, sitting on the hillside, watching all the people die. Forever Changes cuts through the pacific pieties of 1967 with an astringent viciousness, sweetened only by Lee’s crooning vocals and David Angel’s lush orchestration. ‘The Red Telephone’ is a masterpiece of melodic bile, one source of which is made apparent in the song’s famous fade, when a noxious Uncle Tom voice offers: “All God’s chillun gotta have their freedom.”
‘Change Is Now’ — The Byrds
August 30 1967
The Notorious Byrd Brothers (Columbia/Legacy)
Although they had recorded some of the best examples of the genre before there was one, The Byrds were not part of the psychedelic hierarchy. Just to show everyone, they pieced together this droning masterpiece of acid lift-off. Propelled by Chris Hillman’s pumping bass, ‘Change Is Now’ moves through a country chorus before entering serious third-eye territory with a multi-dubbed, backwards-guitar symphony. By now, when Roger McGuinn sings “dance to the day when fear is gone,” you’ve joined him.
‘(Sittin’ On) The Dock Of The Bay’ — Otis Redding
January 1968
The Definitive Collection (One Disc) and The Definitive (Four Disc Box) (Atlantic)
For a brief moment, worlds collided as white psychedelia impacted on black dance music. Inspired by Sgt Pepper and the SF scene, Otis Redding recorded this ambient ballad of loss, travel and time (replete with sea atmospherics and seagull noises from Steve Cropper’s guitar), which, after his death in an airplane accident, went to Number 1 on both sides of the Atlantic. In that process, what had been reflective became unbearably poignant; what had been a pause became a full stop.
‘A Question Of Temperature’ — The Balloon Farm
March 1968
The Laurie Records Story (Ace)
A throwback to the cheerful certainties of 1966 punk, this Top 40 hit features one of the best “Huhs” on record — no small achievement — and same neat catchphrases: “Cool disposition hanging by a thread”; “Nonstop elevator going to the top”. Lust reduced to pathology, the tension (and psych quotient) is kept up by trebly, fuzzed guitar and what sounds like very early Moog synthesizer squiggles.
‘Dance To The Music’ — Sly And The Family Stone
March 1968
Greatest Hits (Epic)
Waiting to launch his own vision, Sly Stone witnessed the birth pangs of the new era as house producer at Autumn Records. He took that ambition and applied it, with incredible glee, to a reconstruction of black music. ‘Dance To The Music’, the Family Stone’s first Top 10 hit, breaks up jazz, doo wop, soul and Tamla into a wholly new thing. In this psychedelic funk, you can hear everything that came after, from Funkadelic through to today’s rap.
‘Pride Of Man’ — Quicksilver Messenger Service
May 1968
Quicksilver Messenger Service (EMI)
The San Franciscan bidding frenzy wasn’t always to the benefit of the musicians, many of whom had fractious relationships with record companies who had no understanding of what they’d bought. Quicksilver held out, signed late, and delivered a carefully arranged debut. This opener has unusually confident vocals and stinging lead guitar by John Cipollina, as metallic as that acid taste in your mouth, which backs up the lyric’s biblical curse.
‘That’s It For The Other One’ — The Grateful Dead
Summer 1968
Anthem Of The Sun (Warner Brothers)
The Dead were always the furthest out, but you couldn’t hear how far until 1968’s Anthem Of The Sun, recorded at concerts and studios around the US over a six-month period. From the time when musicians talked about taping air, this 12-minute sequence mixes the thunder of the Dead in full flight with Phil Lesh’s musique concrete and a gorgeous guitar melody about seven minutes in, which by itself justifies Jerry Garcia’s reputation. A tour de force of editing and cross-fading, it carries the ambience of the moment like nothing else.
‘In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida’ — Iron Butterfly
September 1968
In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida (Atco)
Along with Blue Cheer and Vanilla Fudge, Iron Butterfly epitomised the moment that the lightness of psychedelia became heavy rock, a process later industrialised by Led Zeppelin. A corruption of ‘In The Garden Of Eden’, this was the title track of Iron Butterfly’s second album, which stayed on the charts for nearly three years and became one of the first million-sellers of the new era. With its Mafioso title, ponderous solos, moronic riff and ludicrously deep vocals, ‘In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida’ shows that the ridiculous can be a lot of fun.
‘Magic Carpet Ride’ — Steppenwolf
October 1968
16 Greatest Hits (MCA)
More psychedelic schlock, this time from exiled Canadians who hitched the SF with an existentialist name and a style that they named in their first hit ‘Born To Be Wild’: “heavy metal thunder.” This follow-up (Number 3 US in November) is even better, with its dogfight intro, definitive rock riff, Hammond organ break and spooky premonition of ‘70s pleasure-babble: “Fantasy will set you free.”
‘Songs For Our Ancestors’ — The Steve Miller Band
November 1968
Sailor and The Best Of The Steve Miller Band 1968-1973 (Capital)
Steve Miller would have been successful in whichever period he came to prominence, and he was, with hits in the ‘70s and the ‘80s. For several albums in the late ‘60s, however, this rock pro had his game raised by the scene of which he was a part. Opening the Steve Miller Band’s second, and best, album, Sailor, ‘Song For Our Ancestors’ is Country Joe’s ‘Section 43′, two years and a lot of record company investment later: all creeping fog and bay atmosphere, with a depth of field that we would now describe as ambient.
‘Machines’ — Lothar And The Hand People
November 1968
This Is It, Machines (See For Miles)
Investing heavily in the new rock, the major labels deep-trawled longhaired groups from across America. Among the quacks, false messiahs and journeymen thus given exposure were genuine oddities like this New York group. The opening cut on their first album, ‘Machines’ should have been covered by Gary Numan in the late ‘70s. Its synth blasts and automaton percussion just beg for robot dancing.
‘Crimson And Clover’ — Tommy James And The Shondells
December 1968
Anthology (Rhino)
Bubblegum pushed by spacey lyrics and an overdose of reverb into the last great psychedelic Number 1. Formerly best known for pulp classics ‘I Think We’re Alone Now’, ‘Hanky Panky’ and ‘Mony, Mony’, James made his move in summer 1968, when he advised Democrat presidential candidate Hubert Humphrey on youth affairs. ‘Crimson And Clover’ was the first time the group had artistic freedom, and they really hit it; for all its transparent dopiness, the song still shimmers in its own time.
‘William’ — White Lightning
Early 1969
The Acid Dream’s Testament (DL)
Impossibly intense and vicious, this is Love’s ’7 and 7 Is’ several hundred trips later. Built around a monstrous treble/fuzz riff, William is both a perfect psych put-down, — “how can you be happy with a symbol for your goal?” — and an encapsulation of the moment when the movement imploded. “You think you’re making music but it’s twisted out of key,” they sneer, then rip off a distorto-solo of which Kurt Cobain would be envious.
‘Dream Within A Dream’ — Spirit
January 1969
Time Circle 1968-1972 and The Family That Plays Together (Epic/Legacy)
Bookended by Ed Cassidy and Randy California, a 40-year-old jazz drummer and a teenage guitar prodigy who had worked with Jimi Hendrix, Spirit had a generosity of talent that made for the most enduring records of that era. From the album The Family That Plays Together, ‘Dream Within A Dream’ coils and uncoils like a desert rattlesnake while retaining a truly psychedelic sense of wonder. “And oh my soul like some newborn baby cries.”
‘War In Peace’ — Alexander Skip Spence
February 1969
Oar (Sony Special Products)
Skip Spence had lived out the breakdown of the psychedelic age, from the first Jefferson Airplane through Moby Grape and LSD psychosis to an enforced hospitalisation in New York’s Bellevue Hospital. Recording by himself in Nashville, Spence took on the multiple cracked personae of the street singer who grabs you by the sleeve. Poised between ineptitude and infinite delicacy, ‘War In Peace’ resolves the tensions of its title into, as Greil Marcus writes, “a final version of the San Franciscan Sound, all scattered, but still gleaming.”
‘Darkness, Darkness’ — The Youngbloods
Spring 1969
Elephant Mountain (Edsel)
From the same New York folk/blues scene as The Lovin’ Spoonful, The Youngbloods moved to San Francisco and went Top 5 in 1969 with the dippy ‘Get Together’, a snatch of which is parodied in Nirvana’s ‘Territorial Pissings’. Recorded decades before the hippies’ children would return to haunt them, ‘Darkness, Darkness’ is The Youngbloods’ masterpiece, a full recognition of the shadow absent from the rest of their work, given a total authenticity by one of San Francisco’s great guitar solos.
‘Electric Sailor’ — Kak
Summer 1969
Kak (Epic/Legacy)
A real SF obscurity, Kak’s only album disappeared as quickly as it came. If you dig deep, however, you’ll find connections with the Oxford Circle and Blue Cheer, which makes sense. ‘Electric Sailor’ has 1969’s ponderousness, but the mood is playfully acid-fried. Their celebration of a hippy everykid, with his coffee-coloured T-shirt and striped bell pants, is bisected by a yattering, bending guitar solo that pushes through into another dimension. Like they say, “You’ve got to smile if you’re from space.”
‘Mountains Of The Moon’ — The Grateful Dead
June 1969
Aoxomoxoa (Warner Brothers)
Even more so than Dark Star, which is full of life and movement, this is the Dead at their moment of fullest outreach. Trapped within their palindrome, the band barely stirred throughout Aoxomoxoa: ‘Mountains Of The Moon’ is all harpsichord and celestial harmonies, harnessing this wasted entropy to a science-fiction scenario of weightlessness and mythical heroism worthy of Philip K. Dick. From here on in, the rest was a slow retreat.
‘Star-Spangled Banner’ — Jimi Hendrix
August 18, 1969
The Ultimate Experience (Polydor) and Jimi Hendrix: Woodstock (MCA)
A blast of reality from a collective delusion. Playing to a half-asleep audience, in his blackest, most American phase, Hendrix redrew the psychic map of his own country with a solo that has everything and nothing: the rage of the black American Indian, the hallucinatory terror of the Vietnam War, the end of the hippy dream at the very moment when it seemed to have won.
PSYCHEDELIA UK
‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ — The Beatles
April 1966
Revolver (Parlophone)
‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ takes you right into the maelstrom: shamanistic drums compressed and limited to the max; guitars fuzzed and played backwards; tape loops from five different sources all topped by John Lennon’s mutated voice, artificially double-tracked, then fed through a whirling Lesile speaker so that he’d sound like the Dalai Lama singing from the highest mountain top. The final cut on a Number 1 album in the US and UK, it immediately impacted on pop culture.
‘Paint It Black’ — The Rolling Stones
May 1966
Hot Rocks and Big Hits (High Tide And Green Grass) (London)
The first million-selling single (Number 1 US and UK) to open up the ethnic sonorities of what would become psychedelia. Typical for The Rolling Stones in this careening, nihilistic phase, ‘Paint It, Black’ is a total downer: “I wanna see the sun blotted out from the sky.” Psychotic overtones were provided by Near Eastern humming, inward-looking lyrics and the internationally televised sight of Brian Jones, crosslegged and priestly, playing the sitar.
‘Making Time’ — The Creation
July 1966
Painter Man (Edsel) and Midsummer Night Dreams (Debutante)
Built around massive R&B bass riffs and heavy, slashing Who-inspired chords, this stomper falls right on the Mod/psych cusp. Best known for the wild break, where guitarist Eddie Philips sends the harmonics flying with a violin bow, ‘Making Time’ explodes with frustration: “Makes you sick!” they sneer, and you remember that, yes, the Sex Pistols played Creation songs early on.
‘Season Of The Witch’ — Donovan
August 1966
Greatest Hits…And More (EMI) and Midsummer Night Dreams (Debutante)
A masterpiece of controlled menace, ‘Season Of The Witch’ captures the nascent psychedelic culture with its follies (“Beatniks out to make it rich”), possibilities (“When I look in my window, so many different people to be”) and paranoia, always returning to the ominous refrain, “You’ve got to pick up every stitch”, which states an essential acid fact: LSD was not an escape but a reckoning.
‘Happenings Ten Years Time Ago’ — The Yardbirds
November 1966
Roger The Engineer (Edsel)
When asked what they were about in summer 1966, The Yardbirds replied, “Images in sound”, a claim they’d soon back up with this, their finest moment. Lyrically, ‘Happenings’ is the standard mixed-up confusion, but the song cracks open in the break, where Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page convert their ego battles into sensory overload: sirens, low-flying jets, seismic disturbance.
‘I Feel Free’ — Cream
December 1966
Fresh Cream and The Very Best Of Cream (Polydor) and Midsummer Night Dreams (Debutante)
Beginning with a cappella vocals, ‘I Feel Free’ explodes into life with an electric Clapton guitar figure, and then they’re off: fast, hi-hat drumming, repeated high-register piano notes, a succinct Clapton solo, and a hyperventilating Jack Bruce vocal. Psych lyrics: “I can drive down the road and my eyes don’t see/Though my mind wants to cry out loud/Though my mind wants to cry out loud.”
‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ — The Beatles
February 1967
Magical Mystery Tour (Parlophone)
When this first came on radio in early 1967, it sounded like nothing else, with its wracked vocal, out-of-tune brass section and queasy strings. There was a good reason: the final ‘Strawberry Fields’ edited together two quite distinct versions. Despite the fact that they were in different tempos and different keys, the intimate original was sped up and the heavily scored manic second version slowed down, giving a disoriented sheen to Lennon’s trip back into his tortured childhood and orphaned adolescence.
‘Interstellar Overdrive’ — Pink Floyd
February 1967
The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn (EMI)
This 16:46 interplanetary voyage is the finest extant example of Syd Barrett’s improvisation: intuitive, free of longueurs, surprisingly delicate. As Chris Cutler writes in File under: Pop, “Barrett took the guitar into a new realm; he introduced a whole range of new techniques but, most important, an inspired and risky approach to performance. He unlocked the electric guitar to a degree beyond anything that had come out of rock until that time.”
‘My Friend Jack’ — Smoke
February 1967
It’s Smoke Time (Repertoire)
Early UK psychexploitation. ‘My Friend Jack’ begins with a total reverb OD before making its statement of intent in the first line: “My friend Jack eats sugar lumps.” Points are awarded for the effete vocals and mystical lyrics, but everything comes down to the reverb, which slashes and shimmers throughout.
‘Days Of Pearly Spencer’ — David McWilliams
Spring 1967
Remember The Pirates (EMI) and Midsummer Night Dreams (Debutante)
A heavily produced folk-rock song, ‘Pearly Spencer’ couldn’t have been made in any other year. It’s something to do with the strings that swirl into the chorus with McWilliams’s compressed voice, and the detailed yet distanced underdog lyrics: “Iron trees smother the air/Withering they stand and stare/Through eyes that neither know nor care/Where the grass has gone”
‘In Your Tower’ — The Poets
March 1967
The Rubble Collection Vol 6 (Bom Caruso)
Glasgow’s finest, The Poets were on a dying curve when they cut this storming 45 in early 1967. Built around a flute riff and distorted raga (i.e. detuned) guitar, ‘In Your Tower’ is total fairly-tale medievalism and a fabulous document of how LSD impacted on the styles of the time, although I blame The Rolling Stones and ‘Lady Jane’ myself.
‘Green Circles’ — The Small Faces
Spring 1967
Small Faces (Repertoire) and The Very Best Of (Charly)
‘Green Circles’ was The Small Faces’ first major psych-out, a gentle tune that is dominated by high-register tack piano and mystical lyrics (“And with the rain/The Stranger came/His eyes were filled with love”) before the final rave-up where the sound is squeezed by a primitive form of stereo panning. ‘Circles’ seems to have been the most popular English metaphor for LSD disorientation in ’66 and ’67.
‘I Can Hear The Grass Grow’ — The Move
April 1967
The Move (Repertoire) and Midsummer Night Dreams (Debutante)
A big UK hit, this has everything: a killer riff, the complex Move production, percussive yip yip background vocals, Beach Boys harmonies, weird electronic alarm noises and mind-melting lyrics: “My head’s attracted to a magnetic wave of sound/With the streams of coloured circles making their way around.” In the final verse, some acid one-upmanship: “If you can’t smell what you’ve found/Then I know that you’re not my kind.”
‘Night Of The Long Grass’ — The Troggs
May 1967
The Troggs Greatest Hits (Polygram TV) and Midsummer Night Dreams (Debutante)
Coming off four caveman Top 10 hits — the UK equivalent of US punk — The Troggs dipped with the formulaic ‘Give It To Me’. Their next 45, ‘Night Of The Long Grass’, brilliantly adapted their two-chord trick to the new era. Wind noises segue into high female harmonies and whispered choruses of evanescent desire and loss. Major psych move: “With lips apart I thought that you were going to call my name/Instead the kiss that followed was enough to melt my brain.”
‘Paper Sun’ — Traffic
May 1967
Keep On Running and The Best Of Traffic (Island) and Midsummer Night Dreams (Debutante)
The first 45 by Steve Winwood’s second group, ‘Paper Sun’ went Number 5 UK in early summer 1967. The PR about Traffic was that they went to get their heads together in the countryside (among the Berkshire Poppies), and ‘Paper Sun’, with its sinuous sitar, buzzing saxophone and Swinging London burnout lyric, has the expected looseness stiffened by a bitter, bleak undertow that stays on the tongue long after the period trappings have faded.
‘Are You Experienced?’ — The Jimi Hendrix Experience:
May 1967
Are You Experienced? (MCA)
Opening with backwards beats that leap forward 16 years to the scratches of hip hop, ‘Are You Experienced?’ moves through a basic come-on to something much sweeter and infinitely cosmic: “Trumpets and violins I can hear in the distance/I think they’re calling our names/Maybe now you can’t hear them, but you will (ha ha)/If you just take hold of my hand.” A great anthem, pinned to the back of your brain by martial drums, repeated high piano notes and the definitive backwards guitar solo.
‘Midsummer Night’s Scene’ — John’s Children
Summer 1967
Midsummer Night’s Scene (Bam Caruso)
There’s a face disfigured with love: a real oddity from a group that epitomised the Britpop tendency to foppish violence. This 45 was scheduled as the follow-up to the banned Marc Bolan song, ‘Desdemona’, and stakes out its currency with repeated phrase “petals and flowers”. This idiot mantra recurs through a string-breaking, freak-out solo, before Bolan crashes in with a vocal that tears the song to shreds — his final act with the group.
‘It’s All Too Much’ — The Beatles
May/June 1967
Yellow Submarine (Parlophone)
An unusually sloppy Beatles recording, with an unnamed curse and overamped guitar leading into mad brass and handclaps so luscious that they sound like the chewing of a thousand cows. The George Harrison lyrics are the usual domesticated UK acid fare — “Show me that I’m everywhere then get me home for tea” — but all that is subsumed within aural pleasure as The Beatles relax into the first of their long fades, a few baroque flourishes, a snatch of The Merseys’ ‘Sorrow’, then everything merges into the acid haze.
‘Colours Of My Mind’ — The Attack
June 1967
The Rubble Collection Vol 6 (Bam Caruso)
More detuned raga guitar and raging male hormones cloaked by pseudo-profound lyrics: “My eyes are green and yellow because they’re the roving kind.” The Attack span the journey between the basic punk/R&B and prog rock that bookends this period. ‘Colours Of My Mind’ comes from that moment when groups tried to have hits with lyrics like “Living is a habit thrust upon mankind.” Nevertheless, they rock.
‘We Love You’ — The Rolling Stones
August 1967
More Hot Rocks: Big Hits & Fazed Cookies (Abkco)
The song of the cause celebre. A few days after their July 31 release on appeal, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards went in with the other Rolling Stones and two Beatles — Lennon and McCartney — to record this glorious fuck-you masquerading as a Summer of Love anthem. ‘We Love You’ sounded fabulous on the radio in high summer of ’67 with its monster piano riff and Mellotron arabesques hanging in the air. It was only later that you noticed the heavy walking of the prison warden at the song’s start or the sarcastic hostility of the lyrics.
‘Itchycoo Park’ — The Small Faces
August 1967
Small Faces (Repertoire) and The Best Of The Small Faces (Summit)
One of the few UK psych records to make the US Top 20, ‘Itchycoo Park’ is a surprisingly simple production, making the most of acoustic guitar, Hammond organ and Steve Marriott’s white-soul voice. The sentiments could easily curdle — “I feel inclined to blow my mind” — but are given total authority by a gorgeous melody and phased cymbals that take the roof off your head, so that by the time Mariott yells “It’s all too beautiful” at the song’s fade, you’ve believed him.
‘The Stars That Play With Laughing Sam’s Dice’ — The Jimi Hendrix Experience
August 1967
The Singles Album (Polydor)
Tucked away on the flip of Hendrix’s fourth single, ‘Burning Of The Midnight Lamp’, was this demented aural simulation of LSD’s stronger cousin STP. A quick wah-wah lift-off, then let MC Jimi be your guide: “The Milky Way express is floating. All aboard! I promise each and every one of you won’t be bored…Oh, I’d like to say there will be no throwing cigarette butts out the window…Thank You…Now to the right you’ll see Saturn. Outassight. And if you look to the left you’ll see Mars…”
‘Matilda Mother’ — Pink Floyd
August 1967
The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn (EMI)
‘Matilda Mother’ is a perfect evocation of childhood wonder, sung by a child to his mother as she reads him stories at bedtime. The verse carries the written fairy-tale, “A thousand misty riders climb/Up high, once upon a time” alternating with the child’s point of view in the chorus: “Why d’you have to leave me there/Hanging there in my infant air, waiting!” In retrospect, such empathy masked real disturbance, but how could anyone know that heady, first-time summer?
‘Relax’ — The Who
August 1967
The Who Sell Out (Polydor)
Despite their single in support of Jagger and Richards, despite their appearance at Monterey, The Who hardly embraced the new era. Their big hit from this period, ‘I Can See For Miles’, is a furious explosion. Buried deep within their hymn to pirate radio and pop commerce, ‘Relax’ is one of The Who’s sweetest songs, a trip guide enhanced by a golden, droning feedback glow: “Settle your affairs and take your time/’cos everything in the world is yours and mine.”
‘Flight From Ashiya’ — Kaleidoscope
September 1967
Dive Into Yesterday (Fontana) and Midsummer Night Dreams (Debutante)
Another take on the flight motif, made pop as only the Brits knew how: a folkish tune, thrumming bass line, fey vocals, romantic sadness. London’s Kaleidoscope master the basic requirements of the time — the emphasised word “high”, the visions of childhood, the high (spaceship) concept — but make them their own with a curious, quavering chorus that carries a hint of psychedelia’s end, far from anywhere that you could call home: “Nobody knows where we are.”
‘Defecting Grey’ — The Pretty Things
Autumn 1967
The Rubble Collection Vol 1 (Bam Caruso)
An LP’s worth of ideas in one side of a single, ‘Defecting Grey’ moves through several stages: a pulsing, bass-heavy intro; sitar-dominated verses (sitting alone on a bench with you); rave-up choruses with heavy, rock guitar; a lyrical middle eight bars; a music-hall finale; and a wistful psychout fade. Even with all this, The Pretty Things didn’t get the girl, a far cry from their days as R&B Neanderthals.
‘From The Underworld’ — The Herd
Sept 1967
From The Underworld (BR Music), The Herd feat Peter Frampton (Fantana) and Midsummer Night Dreams (Debutante)
The story of Orpheus and Eurydice faithfully rewritten for the teen market and goosed up with a classic 1967 overproduction: funeral bells, thundering brass, high-register piano, fuzz guitar, and that awful Rickenbacker bass you heard everywhere that year. Mythological kitsch of the highest order: “What was the sudden will to destroy the love and the joy?”
‘Michael Angelo’ — The 23rd Turnoff
September 1967
The Rubble Collection Vol 6 (Bam Caruso)
The Turnoff were named after the Liverpool exit on the M6 highway, Junction 23. This melancholic celebration of the Renaissance artist was underscored by phased strings, ‘Penny Lane’ trumpets and Jimmy Campbell’s Scouse vocals. Like many other long-lost groups, the Turnoff wrote their own script: “How can it be that a man such as me/Who cares not for money and fame/Shouldn’t be rich with God’s natural gifts/To have something to show at the end of life’s game.”
‘King Midas In Reverse’ — The Hollies
October 1967
The Best Of The Hollies (EMI) and Midsummer Night Dreams (Debutante)
Manchester’s finest, The Hollies hadn’t ignored the trend towards odd noises and inventive story lines, but hits like ‘Stop Stop Stop’ kept the weirdness firmly within the everyday. ‘King Midas In Reverse’ was their Summer of Love move into mythological allusion, with full orchestration, slurred exotic vocals, and gratifyingly pretentious lyrics. The idea, of course, was that our hero turns everything not into gold but into dust: “I’ll break you and destroy you given time.”
‘Dream Magazine’ — Svensk
Autumn 1967
Electric Sugarcube Flashbacks (AIP)
Svensk run The Who’s ‘Pictures Of Lily’ concept — boy falls in love with image of woman, is devastated when he realises that it’s not real — into unhealthy obsession: “Saw her picture in a dream magazine/Sweetest girl I’ve ever seen/In wide angle she’s so fine/In telephoto she is mine.” The domination of the thundering church organ shows the immediate influence of the UK Summer of Love hit, Procol Harum’s ‘A Whiter Shade Of Pale’.
‘Imposters Of Life’s Magazine’ — The Idle Race
October 1967
Back To The Story (EMI)
Before late-period ELO, Jeff Lynne had five years of making great records with The Move, early ELO and The Idle Race. ‘Imposters Of Life’s Magazine’ was their first 45, a compressed production typical of the period, with storming riffs, sped up wah-wah guitars, strings and the rest. What begins in media, however, ends in acid riddles: “Touch your friend’s girl. Will he mind?/Will his mind will it? Will your friends think?/In their thoughts they’re with you/Are they?”
‘San Franciscan Nights’ — Eric Burdon And The Animals
October 1967
The Best Of Eric Burdon And The Animals 1966-1968 (Polydor) and San Franciscan Daze (Debutante)
‘San Franciscan Nights’ was the most effective of all the records that exploited Haight-Ashbury that summer with its sweet melody and evocative lyrics; it’s now part of the folk memory of 1967. Debuted at Monterey in June and a UK Top 10 by November, by which time this beatific vision of Haight-Ashbury was already in the past.
‘Love Is All Around’ — The Troggs
October 1967
The Troggs Greatest Hits (Polygram TV)
Continuing the journey they’d begun with ‘Night Of The Long Grass’, The Troggs scored with this Summer of Love anthem disguised as a romantic ballad. Underpinned by cellos and violins, Reg Presley makes fidelity sound like LSD lift-off: “I feel it in my fingers/I feel it in my toes/Love is all around me/And so the feeling grows.” As the strings blend with the ether at the fade, Presley waxes wistfully cosmic. Their last big hit (Number 5 UK; Number 7 US), and a fitting epitaph.
‘Vacuum Cleaner’ — Tintern Abbey
November 1967
The Rubble Collection Vol 6 (Bam Caruso)
Tintern Abbey, fashionably named after Arthurian legend, made this one defining 45. A simpler yet ambient production, ‘Vacuum Cleaner’ is driven by flashing cymbals and David MacTavish’s awe-struck voice. The lyrics celebrate a surrender made physical by the droning, feedback guitar break: “Fix me up with your sweet dose/Now I’m feeling like a ghost.” The group disappeared into thin air, leaving behind this perfect testament.
‘Madman Running Through The Fields’ — Dantalians Chariot
Autumn 1967
The Rubble Collection Vol 5 (Bam Caruso)
All the hard-drinking loons from the mid-‘60s club scene fell like ninepins to acid and none harder than Zoot Money, who folded his Big Roll Band and got seriously psyched with a mythological name and this complex 45 dominated by backwards cymbals and high-pitched drone. As R.D. Laing might have said: “If reason’s gone/How do I live on?/Because I know/Which way I must go.” Note also the guitar on the great spacey fade, thanks to future Policeman Andy Summers.
‘Kites’ — Simon Dupree And The Big Sound
November 1967
Kites (See For Miles)
A Top 10 UK hit in December 1967, ‘Kites’ is pure exotic kitsch, a straightforward love ballad embellished with the trappings of the time: gongs, woodblocks, wind sounds, flight metaphors, a Chinese rap and, dominating throughout, the Mellotron. Simon Dupree And The Big Sound affected to despise the atmospheric performance, and soon formed Gentle Giant. Shows how much rock groups know, it was by far the best thing they did.
‘I Am The Walrus’ — The Beatles
November 1967
Magical Mystery Tour (Parlophone)
In late ’67 ‘I Am The Walrus’ sounded like nothing on earth, all bizarre effects and gobbledegook lyrics. Beginning with the two notes of a police siren, ‘I Am The Walrus’ is another classic Beatles overproduction, featuring violins, cellos and horns, the 16-strong Mike Sammes Singers — who whoop and mutter nightmarish backing vocals — and the infamous sweep across the Medium Wave on the fade. All this only serves to cloak a reversion into primal, psychosexual muck — as Lennon repeats throughout: “I’m crying.”
‘Revolution’ — Tomorrow
December 1967
Tomorrow (See For Miles) and Midsummer Night Dreams (Debutante)
Another LP compressed onto a 45, ‘Revolution’ is the second single from one of ‘67’s big hypes. Tomorrow featured future Pretty Thing John ‘Twink’ Adler, future Yes guitarist Steve Howe, and Keith West, whose solo hit, ‘Excerpt From A Teenage Opera’, stalled the group. ‘Revolution’ is absurdly committed to the flower-child ethic, paranoid and gloriously overproduced. This being England, however, revolution was more ameliorist than in the US. Tomorrow’s programme?” All we want is peace to blow our minds.”
‘It’s Alright Ma, It’s Only Witchcraft’ — Fairport Convention
Early 1968
Fairport Convention (Polydor) and Midsummer Night Dreams (Debutante)
‘It’s Alright Ma’ begins with a manifest: “Looking through the window to see which way the wind blows/It seems as though a hurricane is due today/Sunny on the outside, stormy on the inside/Stormy weather’s best for making hay.” A jazzy shuffle breaks into a boogie, then the group explode like they’ve been let out of a cage, with soaring harmonies and acid guitar from Richard Thompson. The source of this freedom? The sound that he found on the ‘Frisco way.
‘Pictures Of Matchstick Men’ — Status Quo
January 1968
Picturesque Matchstickable Messages From The Status Quo (Castle Classics)
Driven by a monster moronic riff, phased and wah-wahed to slice out of your transistor, ‘Pictures’ carries its obsessive nonsense with a certain good humour: “When I look up to the sky/I see your eyes, a funny kind of yellow.” Top 10 UK in February, it occasioned classic TV appearances with the Quo in full 1968 regalia: paisley tunics, frills, centre hair partings, and the astonished grins of five people who couldn’t believe their luck.
‘The Otherside’ — The Apple
Early 1968
An Apple A Day (Repertoire)
Another shamanistic gem from two unlikely sources: produced by future Elton John guitarist Caleb Quaye, released by Kinks/Troggs manager Larry Page. This mournful message from the underworld is The Apple’s moment: “If you see me and I’m coming from the other side/Don’t be sad because I’ll be going with the rising tide/The seeds are sown, the soil has blown my love so far away/To a land where spirits climb halfway to the sky.”
‘Faster Than Light’ — The Mirror
May 1968
The Rubble Collection Vol 1 (Bam Caruso)
Some late acid omnipotence from this Bath group, who appeared nude in their publicity photos. The flip of their only single, ‘Faster Than Light’ is the sort of record that might have got wider exposure if the pirate radio stations had still been broadcasting: Mod pop with an acid sheen, bisected by a transistor-friendly, totally phased drum break that lived up to the title’s promise.
‘Rainbow Chaser’ — Nirvana
May 1968
Travelling On A Cloud (Island)
Another celebration of the shaman who travels on a cloud, backed by a phased orchestra that rips through the speakers like a jet fighter: “Many miles to go/How many bridges do we cross?/Winter rain and snow/Over mountains high and low.” Nirvana had a great streak of elaborate pop psych 45s in 1967/’68. ‘Rainbow Chaser’ was the third and their only Top 40 hit. It epitomises the freedom that the Seattle group of the same name would half-mock, half-ache for 25 years later.
‘Cold Turkey’ — Big Boy Pele
May 1968
Electric Sugarcube Classics (AIP)
No relation to the Plastic Ono Band 45, this is a total one-of-a-kind. Set to a vicious, off-kilter Stax beat, peppered with electronic whirrings and alarms, ‘Cold Turkey’ expands on the drug-equals-love addiction theme with total panache, before being brought to a close by a fuzz explosion that makes everything else pretty redundant.
‘Me My Friend’ — Family
June 1968
Music In A Doll’s House (Se For Miles)
More acid omnipotence from Leicester’s finest and another kitchen-sink production (trumpets, Mellotron, stereo panning, phasing), this time by Traffic’s Dave Mason. Some great vocals from Roger Chapman, some suitably fried lyrics — “Me my friend/I have seen many lands, me my friend/ I have been far and wide/I have sailed many a tide/I have rode many a ride” — all add to a precious classic. The first single from one of the period’s most enduring albums, Music In A Doll’s House.
‘Jugband Blues’ — Pink Floyd
September 1968
Saucerful Of Secrets (EMI)
Possibly the bleakest record ever made, as Syd Barrett withdraws from the group that he created and which was no longer his: “It’s awfully considerate of you to think of me here/And I’m most obliged to you for making it clear that I’m not here.” The song slowly lurches into a Salvation Army band break and a final, shimmering space exploration, before Barrett returns, as if from another song, intoning over an acoustic guitar his judgement on the era whose style he defined: “And what exactly is a dream?/And what exactly is a joke?”
‘Fire’ — The Crazy World Of Arthur Brown
September 1968
The Crazy World Of Arthur Brown (Polydor)
Driven by Vincent Crane’s monster organ riff, ‘Fire’ can now sound ludicrous, if only because it was the first to mine the fertile seam of English Gothic. It wasn’t so at the time. The charismatic Arthur Brown — with flaming headset — would shriek and twist in a truly chilling, demonic performance that burned the song’s curses into your brain: “Fire; to destroy all that you’ve done.” A harbinger of riot and disturbance, and a massive hit (Number 1 UK; Number 2 US) in that season of the Democrats’ convention in Chicago.
’1983…(A Merman I Should Turn To Be)/Moon, Turn The Tides…Gently Gently Away’ — The Jimi Hendrix Experience
October 1968
Electric Ladyland (MCA)
At 14.38, Hendrix’s fullest journey into the underworld. The story-line is simple: facing Armageddon, Hendrix decides to return with his girlfriend to the sea, the source of all life. By the time we get to ‘Moon, Turn The Tides’, we’re in underwater currents. As Harry Shapiro writes: “At one point the tapes are slowed down and then speeded up again to represent a shoal of fish swimming up to investigate these strange beings that have joined their world. Their curiosity satisfied, they swim away.” Mixed in one complete take in an 18-hour session.
‘Diamond Hard Blue Apples Of The Moon’ — The Nice
November 1968
The Nice Collection (Castle Communications)
Flip The Nice’s kitsch version of Leonard Bernstein’s ‘America’ and you get this soul-inflected pop/psych gem, which begins and ends with electronic noises that Hendrix wouldn’t have been ashamed of. In between you get some delightful, Mellotron-drenched nonsense — about circles, heroes, black cats and, yes, the diamond hard blue apples of the moon — that a year before might have been unremarkable but that in mid-1968 sounded like the penultimate gasp of an endangered species.
‘Can’t Find My Way Home’ — Blind Faith
August 1969
Blind Faith (Polydor) and Midsummer Night Dreams (Debutante)
Blind Faith were the first official UK supergroup, pulling in Eric Clapton and Ginger Baker from Cream, Ric Grech from Family and Steve Winwood from Traffic. Buried in the hype was this lament for a time past, sung by a Winwood adrift on stormy seas: “I’m wasted and I can’t find my way home.” This isn’t an exercise to fill out an album, it’s a matter of life and death, an intensity which makes you realise how much the latter few years had meant and how much had already been lost.
Psychedelia Revisited
‘Nude Photo’ – Rhythim Is Rhythim
1986 (Transmat US import)
Detroiter Derrick May took techno, the city’s emergent electronic disco, into the abstract territory of the id with his early Rhythm Is Rhythm releases. ‘Nude Photo’ predated acid house’s overt psychedelia and still astounds today. Bass notes sweep around a metronomic 808 drum machine pattern; tinny grace notes and a laughing female voice embellish the apparently random melody, and the whole arrangement is backlit by inhuman, oddly fatalistic strings. Where the best of the original psychedelia gave the listener a holiday from selfhood, ‘Nude Photo’ lets the listener try on a whole new personality too: that of a horny machine.
‘Acid Trax’ – Phuture
1987 (Trax US import)
Various Artists album: Flux Trax (EXP)
When the synth manufacturer Roland built a set of controls into its TB-303 Bassline machine, the programmer could now alter the sound of notes while they were being played. By 1986, artists like Phuture’s DJ Pierre found that this 303 squelch could roughly simulate the sensory distortion produced by taking Ectasy. ‘Acid Trax’ is prototypical of the sound: a simple melody churning over and over on the 303, until repetition and the constant tweaking of the sound carries listeners into a mental space outside time. And when the British club audience came through a ‘70s revival phase and began to disinter ‘60s iconography, acid house was born — a shift in British music culture more profound and wide-ranging than any since the original Summer of Love.
‘Voodoo Ray’ – A Guy Called Gerald
Various Artists album: Definitive House Mastercuts Vol 1 (Mastercuts/Beechwood)
One of the first British techno records, the nine-note signature melody, wordless female voices and crisp, spacey beats of ‘Voodoo Ray’ seem hardly psychedelic at all. This frisky dance tune makes no attempt to derange the senses, and neither are there any lyrics save the title vocal sample, reputedly taken from a Derek & Clive sketch. But ‘Voodoo Ray’ is second-generation psychedelia, for an era whose attitudes to perception were defined by Ecstasy (euphoric, communal, a personality reinforcer) rather than acid (introspective, random, the dismantler of the self), and its world just as transcendent as that of any psychedelic rock record. It had to be: Gerald Simpson was working in a McDonald’s in Manchester at the time.
‘In The Name Of Love’ – Swan Lake
1988 (Warlock US import)
The psychedelia of the ‘60s sought to prove that the ego and the real world were illusions. Armed with the technology of sampling and the ideology of postmodemism, the psychedelic experimenters of the ‘80s and ‘90s wanted not to deny reality but endlessly to remake it. Swan Lake was one of many aliases for house producer Todd Terry, and ‘In The Name Of Love’ — though built strictly for the dancefloor — is a sampladelic tour de force. Yello, The Thompson Twins, an arsenal of effects and nervy, circular melodies combine into a record that sounded like the whole world of popular culture shouting at once — a vision as utopian to the ‘90s as on English country garden was to the ‘60s.
‘Paul’s Boutique’ – The Beastie Boys
1989
Paul’s Boutique (Capitol)
The least likely psychedelic explorers of all — two years previously they’d toured the world with ‘Fight For Your Right (To Party)’ and a giant hydraulic penis — the Beasties’ second album was fashioned from so many samples that copyright lawyers recoiled in horror. Also launching the career of collaborators The Dust Brothers, it did for the hip hop sampler’s art what Pet Sounds and Sgt Pepper did for the rock album. Paul’s Boutique turned New York into an urban Pepperland, a day-glo playground for B-boys where race dissolved and the imagination reigned. Without it, such tributaries of psychedelic dance as trip-hop and chemical beats would have been uthinkable.
‘A Huge Ever Growing Pulsating Brain That Rules From The Centre Of The Ultraworld’ – The Orb
1990
The Orb’s Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld (Big Life)
Pink Floyd and Lee Perry obsessives The Orb share the honours for making the first ambient house music with The KLF’s pure trance series, but their debut psychedelic epic ‘Pulsating Brain’ was more than a Floyd pastiche. Based around church bells, and a Minnie Riperton sample, it created the weightless but never structureless template that was later to be traduced into formulaic whole-noise shtick. Not only did The Orb reinvent English whimsy for a less innocent generation, they made if funny too.
‘Energy Flash’ – Beltram
1991 (R&S)
Jimi Hendrix understood that punishing repetition of a simple tune could be more psychoactive than any shapeless freakout or rustic reverie. Techno rediscovered this fact with a vengeance — who better at infinite repetition than a machine? ‘Energy Flash’ is less a tune than an insistent palpitation in the bass register. Effects and distortion arc across, but the low-end trance implacably draws us into the throbbing of our own ribcage and temples. Trance creates a private mental space in a room full of sweating people, something which the original psychedelia — rooted between the real world and the chaotic landscape of the unconscious — rarely could.
‘Analogue Bubblebath Vol 1′ – The Aphex Twin
1992 (Mighty Force)
Where so much of the mind-altering dance music of the ‘90s relies on sensory overload and displacement of the ego through force majeure, Aphex Twin Richard James instead used minimal instrumentation, unpretentious sounds and surreptitious melody to find a crack in the listener’s psyche. Insofar as the songs are about anything, they’re often about the instruments that made them. Here they create such an abstract little world in this sharp pause breaking the hectic pace of dance music — and the life it mirrors — that we begin to question both by default.
‘Cowgirl’ – Underworld
1994
Dubnobasswithmyheadman (Junior Boys’ Own)
The first psychedelic revolution was overwhelmingly middle-class and pastoral — that’s how we got prog rock. Acid house and the new psychedelia, on the other hand, are working-class and urban, and have produced an inner-city psychedelia of dislocated love songs to dirt and randomness. Underworld are its masters, spewing out street imagery over relentless 10-minute techno tracks like automatic writing. They are reticent on the subject of drugs but their music is acknowledged to be probably the most accurate depiction of the Ecstasy experience. Repetition reigns in ‘Cowgirl’, as it does in the MDMA-dosed mind, in two colliding phrases capturing the self-abstraction of Ecstasy and trance culture: “An eraser of love…I’m invisible.”
‘The Private Psychedelic Reel’ – The Chemical Brothers
1997
Dig Your Own Hole (Virgin)
Today’s dance music is not about escaping rock, but finding a roundabout route back to rock’s psychedelic phase. The final component — a renewed reverence for the most powerful psychoactive of all, The Beatles — ironically came courtesy of that most conventional rock band, Oasis. They made The Beatles cool again, but The Chemical Brothers dug out their subversive, revolutionary, psychedelic edge. ‘The Private Psychedelic Reel’ concludes a lineage starting with The Beatles’ ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’, which obsessed Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons; the Chemicals’ own Number 1 hit ‘Setting Sun’ (a trifle which used ‘Tomorrow’ as a jump-off point for a song Noel Gallagher could sing); and the Chemical Brothers’ unreleased (indeed, unreleasable) acid house cut-up of ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ itself. ‘The Private Psychedelic Reel’ synthesises all three into a multi-sensory trip-hop-techno-hip-hop-raga fugue, an eight-minute crescendo where ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ mantra of “Turn off your mind, relax and float downstream” is violently remade for an era which has lost its faith in nirvana. Reel passes the simplest test of psychedelia (it makes you feel like you’re on drugs when you’re not) and opens up the canyon of your mind, and makes it more real than reality.
Excerpted from I Want To Take You Higher: The Psychedelic Era 1965-1969 by The Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame & Museum, published by Chronicle Books.