Origins in Folk Rock, Garage Rock  & Surf Rock

The music at the time that the psychedelic age had begun was folk rock moderately paced and a smooth, peaceful sound which was compatible with marijuana smoking and acid dropping.  Then there was garage rock or early hard rock that was still popular as well as soul music which peaked during the mid-sixties.

Just like with other sub-genres the Beatles had something to do with the creation of the sub-genre known as “Psychedelic Rock”.

Lennon started the experimentations with folk songs like “Norwegian Wood”,” You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away” and “Ticket to Ride”, now he took it one step further with recording instruments backwards on tape creating very eerie and uncommon sounds to give a surreal effect is evident of the song “Rain”. This is the beginning of art in rock and roll. Much of Lennon’s music in the mid-sixties was influenced by the then-current sounds of music going on in America. Bob Dylan, The Byrds, and the San Franciscan scene influenced the Beatles to have been folkier in 1965. There then developed a back and forth competition as to who could come up with the more innovative sound.

The Beatles sound clearly had started to change from straight-up rock & roll to a more folk rock and country mix manifested on albums like “Beatles 65′”, “Help”, “Beatles VI” and the masterful “Rubber Soul”, this was reciprocated with America’s Byrds albums “Mr. Tambourine Man”, “Turn, Turn, Turn!”, “The Fifth Dimension” and “Younger Than Yesterday” and Bob Dylan’s triumvirate of albums “Bringing It All Back Home”, “Highway 61” and 1966’s “Blonde on Blonde” which are all key albums in folk rock.

Psychedelic Rock 2: The Beatles

There are several John Lennon songs that really take you on a trip without ingesting a drug; one song is “Strawberry Fields Forever”. As a child, I was very attracted to this song for its surreal nature. I had first heard “Strawberry Fields” in 1978 after knowing the Beatles radio hits like “I Wanna Hold Your Hand”, “She Loves You”, “Help” & “Yesterday” for some time and thinking of them as a band everyone liked but were boring to kids. That changed the day I heard the Beatles “psychedelic” period sequel to what was known as Mach 1 or “Tomorrow Never Knows”.

At the time in 1978 when I first heard “Strawberry Fields”, I was ten, more into Kiss and the hard rock we heard on the radio like James Gang, Heart, Boston, Bad Company and Thin Lizzy.  I heard “Strawberry Fields” off of very good equipment for 1978. I heard what sounded like a surreal almost cartoonish landscape of sound and detail that I had not heard before. The music to me seemed to become more three dimensional, drawn out, in-depth with pinpoint fidelity.

The drums fidelity and depth of the sound were improved to unbelievable proportions during a mad rush of technology in the mid-sixties due to the need for better more powerful live and recording equipment as was discovered by the Beatles, Stones and the rest of the Brits.

Most of the 1966 classic Beatles album “Revolver” was filled with references to mind-expanding and altering drugs. Yet the Beatles had become so well respected internationally not as rock & rollers but serious composers and musicians rivaling many of America’s great songwriters and even past European classical composers. They also had the master recording producer George Martin who was able to mask of the questionable lyrics and embed many sound effects in the mix.

Lennon’s dabbling in the Avant Gard was tolerated in 1966 when the psychedelic phase was new and fresh. With the Beatles ear and attention to detail on the psychedelic albums brought to me a profound depth of structure in, three-dimensional music.

All of the other wave nuances on sound became alive and more noticeable. Music seemed to take on qualities of color and light and have more aesthetic qualities like synesthesia.

Psychedelic Rock 3: From The Mid-Sixties to Sgt. Peppers

The experimentation went on with the Stones, Kinks, Yardbirds and the Who all trying to one-up each other in the successive releases of late 1965 through to 1967. Songs like the stones “Satisfaction”, “19th Nervous Breakdown”, “Paint It Black” and “Mother’s Little Helper”; The Yardbirds “Shape Of Things and; The Who’s “I Can See For Miles”, “Armenia In The Sky” and “Pictures of Lily”.

Music became more ethereal, abstract, beyond dimension, philosophically aesthetic and more dependent on the conceptual or non-material. Music accompanied by words casting the same spells our ancestors felt when they had their drum circles and chants, the same conjuring goes on.

“Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band” is mistaken for being a concept album, it is a very loose concept album at best, but the first truly commercially successful conceptual album goes to either the Who’s for 1967s”The Who Sell Out” album and indeed later the rock opera  1969s “Tommy”.  Or Frank Zappa with “Freak Out” in 1966 and indeed the rest of his catalog for his conceptual continuity.

Psychedelic Rock: Proto-Prog Rock

The music had taken a different turn with “Strawberry Fields” in pop a song such as this to hit #8 is truly remarkable. Really the 1966 album Revolver changed what a pop rock & roll band could do in the mid-sixties in terms of album-oriented rock and what can be referred to as ‘classic rock”. With the release of “Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band” album rock would go on well into the 80’s with many triumphs as well as misses.

Many of the albums in the psychedelic age were loose conceptual albums pushed in Britain by The Kinks, The Small Faces and other minor British bands. There were many great one-offs in 1967 like

Pink Floyd would emerge from psychedelia London to be re-invented and re-invented again in the early 70’s hard rock, prog rock and arena rock. Floyd spawning on other British prog rockers Yes, King Crimson, ELP, and other hard rock and heavy metal bands.

Led Zeppelin, Vanilla Fudge and Deep Purple helped to keep the psychedelic element in hard rock music as blues heavy Black Sabbath started its own genre of true “heavy metal”, soon to be accompanied by Judas Priest, Motorhead and Iron Maiden.