212-463: " Eight Miles High " is a song by the American rock band the Byrds , written by Gene Clark , Jim McGuinn (later known as Roger McGuinn), and David Crosby . It was first released as a single on March 14, 1966. Musically influenced by sitar player Ravi Shankar and jazz saxophonist John Coltrane , the song was influential in developing the musical styles of psychedelia and raga rock . Accordingly, critics often cite "Eight Miles High" as being
424-799: A bass -heavy sound, with melodic vocals, and 'retro' production, it was pioneered by the Californian bands Kyuss and Sleep . Modern festivals focusing on psychedelic music include Austin Psych Fest in Texas, founded in 2008, Liverpool Psych Fest, and Desert Daze in Southern California. There were occasional mainstream acts that dabbled in neo-psychedelia , a style of music which emerged in late 1970s post-punk circles. Although it has mainly been an influence on alternative and indie rock bands, neo-psychedelia sometimes updated
636-514: A certain degree doesn't care if it's popular. — Bill Wyman in Vulture (2016) The sound of rock is traditionally centered on the amplified electric guitar, which emerged in its modern form in the 1950s with the popularity of rock and roll. It was also greatly influenced by the sounds of electric blues guitarists. The sound of an electric guitar in rock music is typically supported by an electric bass guitar, which pioneered jazz music in
848-561: A chart-topping version of Dylan's " Mr. Tambourine Man " in the summer of 1965. On the Yardbirds, Unterberger identifies lead guitarist Jeff Beck as having "laid the blueprint for psychedelic guitar", and says that their "ominous minor key melodies, hyperactive instrumental breaks (called rave-ups ), unpredictable tempo changes, and use of Gregorian chants" helped to define the "manic eclecticism" typical of early psychedelic rock. The band's " Heart Full of Soul " (June 1965), which includes
1060-454: A cloud and fell a-eight miles high." The independent rock band Okkervil River references "Eight Miles High" in its song "Plus Ones", on the 2007 album The Stage Names . Bruce Springsteen 's song "Life Itself", from his 2009 album Working on a Dream , features guitar playing and production techniques reminiscent of "Eight Miles High" by the Byrds. The Byrds' version of "Eight Miles High"
1272-690: A distinctive brand of electronic rock , known as kosmische musik , or in the British press as " Kraut rock". The adoption of electronic synthesisers , pioneered by Popol Vuh from 1970, together with the work of figures like Brian Eno (for a time the keyboard player with Roxy Music ), would be a major influence on subsequent electronic rock. Psychedelic rock, with its distorted guitar sound, extended solos and adventurous compositions, has been seen as an important bridge between blues-oriented rock and later heavy metal . American bands whose loud, repetitive psychedelic rock emerged as early heavy metal included
1484-506: A distorted guitar riff that replicates the sound of a sitar , peaked at number 2 in the UK and number 9 in the US. In Echard's description, the song "carried the energy of a new scene" as the guitar-hero phenomenon emerged in rock, and it heralded the arrival of new Eastern sounds. The Kinks provided the first example of sustained Indian-style drone in rock when they used open-tuned guitars to mimic
1696-519: A fondness for a good beat, a meaningful lyric with some wit, and the theme of youth, which holds an "eternal attraction" so objective "that all youth music partakes of sociology and the field report ." Writing in Christgau's Record Guide: The '80s (1990), he said this sensibility is evident in the music of folk singer-songwriter Michelle Shocked , rapper LL Cool J , and synth-pop duo Pet Shop Boys —"all kids working out their identities"—as much as it
1908-481: A foundation of simple syncopated rhythms in a 4 meter , with a repetitive snare drum back beat on beats two and four. Melodies often originate from older musical modes such as the Dorian and Mixolydian , as well as major and minor modes. Harmonies range from the common triad to parallel perfect fourths and fifths and dissonant harmonic progressions. Since the late 1950s, and particularly from
2120-628: A frequent addition to the established rock format of guitars, bass, and drums in subsequent progressive rock. Instrumentals were common, while songs with lyrics were sometimes conceptual, abstract, or based in fantasy and science fiction. The Pretty Things ' SF Sorrow (1968), the Kinks' Arthur (Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire) (1969), and the Who 's Tommy (1969) introduced
2332-476: A full poem, eventually setting the words to music and giving them a melody . Clark then showed the song to McGuinn and Crosby. McGuinn suggested that the song be arranged to incorporate Coltrane's influence. Since Clark's death, however, McGuinn has contended it was he who conceived the initial idea of writing a song about an airplane ride and that he and Crosby both contributed lyrics to Clark's unfinished draft. In his book, Mr. Tambourine Man: The Life and Legacy of
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#17327730441312544-463: A household word in New York and Los Angeles ... — Melody Maker , October 1966 Echard writes that in 1966, "the psychedelic implications" advanced by recent rock experiments "became fully explicit and much more widely distributed", and by the end of the year, "most of the key elements of psychedelic topicality had been at least broached." DeRogatis says the start of psychedelic (or acid) rock
2756-630: A key feature of psychedelia. Psychedelic rock reached its apogee in the last years of the decade. 1967 saw the Beatles release their definitive psychedelic statement in Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band , including the controversial track " Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds ", the Rolling Stones responded later that year with Their Satanic Majesties Request , and Pink Floyd debuted with The Piper at
2968-573: A loud amplified sound, often centered on the electric guitar, based on the Chicago blues , particularly after the tour of Britain by Muddy Waters in 1958, which prompted Cyril Davies and guitarist Alexis Korner to form the band Blues Incorporated . The band involved and inspired many of the figures of the subsequent British blues boom, including members of the Rolling Stones and Cream , combining blues standards and forms with rock instrumentation and emphasis. The other key focus for British blues
3180-587: A mainstream audience with hits including " Blowin' in the Wind " (1963) and " Masters of War " (1963), which brought " protest songs " to a wider public, but, although beginning to influence each other, rock and folk music had remained largely separate genres, often with mutually exclusive audiences. Early attempts to combine elements of folk and rock included the Animals' " House of the Rising Sun " (1964), which
3392-495: A major element of progressive rock. From about 1967 bands like Cream and the Jimi Hendrix Experience had moved away from purely blues-based music into psychedelia . By the 1970s, blues rock had become heavier and more riff-based, exemplified by the work of Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple , and the lines between blues rock and hard rock "were barely visible", as bands began recording rock-style albums. The genre
3604-429: A major influence on subsequent electronic rock . With the advent of punk rock and technological changes in the late 1970s, progressive rock was increasingly dismissed as pretentious and overblown. Many bands broke up, but some, including Genesis, ELP, Yes, and Pink Floyd, regularly scored top ten albums with successful accompanying worldwide tours. Some bands which emerged in the aftermath of punk, such as Siouxsie and
3816-410: A more basic form of rock and roll that incorporated its original influences, particularly blues, country and folk music, leading to the creation of country rock and Southern rock. In 1966 Bob Dylan went to Nashville to record the album Blonde on Blonde . This, and subsequent more clearly country-influenced albums, such as Nashville Skyline , have been seen as creating the genre of country folk ,
4028-413: A more extreme variation that was heavier, louder, relied on long jams , focused more directly on LSD, and made greater use of distortion. Music critic Richie Unterberger says that attempts to "pin down" the first psychedelic record are "nearly as elusive as trying to name the first rock & roll record". Some of the "far-fetched claims" include the instrumental " Telstar " (produced by Joe Meek for
4240-486: A multibillion-dollar industry and doubling its market while, as Christgau noted, suffering a significant "loss of cultural prestige". "Maybe the Bee Gees became more popular than the Beatles, but they were never more popular than Jesus ", he said. "Insofar as the music retained any mythic power, the myth was self-referential – there were lots of songs about the rock and roll life but very few about how rock could change
4452-702: A musical manifesto. By the end of the 1960s, psychedelic rock was in retreat. Psychedelic trends climaxed in the 1969 Woodstock Festival , which saw performances by most of the major psychedelic acts, including Jimi Hendrix, Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead. LSD had been made illegal in the United Kingdom in September 1966 and in California in October; by 1967, it was outlawed throughout
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#17327730441314664-534: A national phenomenon. It is often argued that the surf music craze and the careers of almost all surf acts was effectively ended by the arrival of the British Invasion from 1964, because most surf music hits were recorded and released between 1960 and 1965. By the end of 1962, what would become the British rock scene had started with beat groups like the Beatles , Gerry & the Pacemakers and
4876-411: A preacher, prosecutions of Jerry Lee Lewis and Chuck Berry and the breaking of the payola scandal (which implicated major figures, including Alan Freed, in bribery and corruption in promoting individual acts or songs), gave a sense that the rock and roll era established at that point had come to an end. Rock quickly spread out from its origins in the US, associated with the rapid Americanization that
5088-444: A prog rock influence and while ranking among the most commercially successful acts of the 1970s, heralding the era of pomp or arena rock , which would last until the costs of complex shows (often with theatrical staging and special effects), would be replaced by more economical rock festivals as major live venues in the 1990s. The instrumental strand of the genre resulted in albums like Mike Oldfield 's Tubular Bells (1973),
5300-446: A rigidly delineated musical definition." In the opinion of music journalist Robert Christgau , "the best rock jolts folk-art virtues—directness, utility, natural audience—into the present with shots of modern technology and modernist dissociation ". Rock and roll was conceived as an outlet for adolescent yearnings ... To make rock and roll is also an ideal way to explore intersections of sex, love, violence, and fun, to broadcast
5512-405: A rock group with electric bass guitar , drums , and one or more singers. Usually, rock is song-based music with a 4 time signature using a verse–chorus form , but the genre has become extremely diverse. Like pop music , lyrics often stress romantic love but also address a wide variety of other themes that are frequently social or political. Rock was the most popular genre of music in
5724-721: A route pursued by a number of largely acoustic folk musicians. Other acts that followed the back-to-basics trend were the Canadian group the Band and the California-based Creedence Clearwater Revival , both of which mixed basic rock and roll with folk, country and blues, to be among the most successful and influential bands of the late 1960s. The same movement saw the beginning of the recording careers of Californian solo artists like Ry Cooder , Bonnie Raitt and Lowell George , and influenced
5936-481: A slogan one only began to hear in 1972 or so, mobilized all those eager to believe that idealism had become passe, and once they were mobilized, it had. In popular music, embracing the '70s meant both an elitist withdrawal from the messy concert and counterculture scene and a profiteering pursuit of the lowest common denominator in FM radio and album rock . Rock saw greater commodification during this decade, turning into
6148-416: A specialist in comedy and novelty records , responded to the Beatles' requests by providing a range of studio tricks that ensured the group played a leading role in the development of psychedelic effects. Anticipating their overtly psychedelic work, " Ticket to Ride " (April 1965) introduced a subtle, drug-inspired drone suggestive of India, played on rhythm guitar. Musicologist William Echard writes that
6360-412: A variety of directions, including Dylan and the Byrds, who began to develop country rock . However, the hybridization of folk and rock has been seen as having a major influence on the development of rock music, bringing in elements of psychedelia, and helping to develop the ideas of the singer-songwriter, the protest song, and concepts of "authenticity". Psychedelic music's LSD -inspired vibe began in
6572-529: A variety of sources such as the Tin Pan Alley pop tradition, folk music , and rhythm and blues . Christgau characterizes rock lyrics as a "cool medium" with simple diction and repeated refrains, and asserts that rock's primary "function" "pertains to music, or, more generally, noise ." The predominance of white, male, and often middle class musicians in rock music has often been noted, and rock has been seen as an appropriation of Black musical forms for
Eight Miles High - Misplaced Pages Continue
6784-503: A weekly newsletter circulated to U.S. radio stations. This resulted in "Eight Miles High" being banned in a number of states within a week of the report being published, a factor which contributed to the single's failure to break into the Billboard Top 10. The Byrds and their publicist , Derek Taylor , countered by strenuously denying that the song was drug-related. Taylor issued an indignant press release stating unequivocally that
6996-501: A young, white and largely male audience. As a result, it has also been seen to articulate the concerns of this group in both style and lyrics. Christgau, writing in 1972, said in spite of some exceptions, "rock and roll usually implies an identification of male sexuality and aggression". Since the term "rock" started being used in preference to "rock and roll" from the late-1960s, it has usually been contrasted with pop music, with which it has shared many characteristics, but from which it
7208-400: Is "best listed at 1966". Music journalists Pete Prown and Harvey P. Newquist locate the "peak years" of psychedelic rock between 1966 and 1969. In 1966, media coverage of rock music changed considerably as the music became reevaluated as a new form of art in tandem with the growing psychedelic community. In February and March, two singles were released that later achieved recognition as
7420-540: Is credited with first using the phrase "rock and roll" to describe the music. Four years later, Bill Haley 's " Rock Around the Clock " (1954) became the first rock and roll song to top Billboard magazine's main sales and airplay charts, and opened the door worldwide for this new wave of popular culture. Other artists with early rock and roll hits included Chuck Berry , Bo Diddley , Fats Domino , Little Richard , Jerry Lee Lewis , and Gene Vincent . Soon rock and roll
7632-570: Is featured in the 1983 film Purple Haze . It appears in both the "Le Voyage dans la Lune" and "The Original Wives Club" episodes of the television miniseries From the Earth to the Moon . Rock music Rock is a broad genre of popular music that originated as " rock and roll " in the United States in the late 1940s and early 1950s, developing into a range of different styles from
7844-472: Is generally agreed that garage rock peaked both commercially and artistically around 1966. By 1968 the style largely disappeared from the national charts and at the local level as amateur musicians faced college, work or the draft . New styles had evolved to replace garage rock. Although the first impact of the British Invasion on American popular music was through beat and R&B based acts,
8056-555: Is in the music of Chuck Berry , the Ramones , and the Replacements . The foundations of rock music are in rock and roll, which originated in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s, and quickly spread to much of the rest of the world. Its immediate origins lay in a melding of various black musical genres of the time, including rhythm and blues and gospel music , with country and western . Debate surrounds
8268-561: Is notable for possessing a darker sound and subject matter than many contemporary psychedelic albums, which would become very influential to the later Gothic rock movement. Aided by the No. 1 single, " Light My Fire ", the album became very successful, reaching number 2 on the Billboard chart. In February 1967, the Beatles released the double A-side single " Strawberry Fields Forever " / " Penny Lane ", which Ian MacDonald says launched both
8480-411: Is often distanced by an emphasis on musicianship, live performance, and a focus on serious and progressive themes as part of an ideology of authenticity that is frequently combined with an awareness of the genre's history and development. According to Simon Frith , rock was "something more than pop, something more than rock and roll" and "[r]ock musicians combined an emphasis on skill and technique with
8692-399: Is termed as a rock band or a rock group. Furthermore, it typically consists of between three (the power trio ) and five members. Classically, a rock band takes the form of a quartet whose members cover one or more roles, including vocalist, lead guitarist, rhythm guitarist, bass guitarist, drummer, and often keyboard player or another instrumentalist. Rock music is traditionally built on
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8904-423: Is the Band." Psychedelic rock Psychedelic film Psychedelic rock is a rock music genre that is inspired, influenced, or representative of psychedelic culture, which is centered on perception-altering hallucinogenic drugs. The music incorporated new electronic sound effects and recording techniques, extended instrumental solos, and improvisation. Many psychedelic groups differ in style, and
9116-535: The Billboard Hot 100 . The British Invasion greatly influenced garage bands, providing them with a national audience, leading many (often surf or hot rod groups) to adopt a British influence, and encouraging many more groups to form. Thousands of garage bands were extant in the United States and Canada during the era and hundreds produced regional hits. Despite scores of bands being signed to major or large regional labels, most were commercial failures. It
9328-764: The Allmusic website, has described "Eight Miles High" as "one of the greatest singles of the '60s." Critics often cite "Eight Miles High" as being the first bona fide psychedelic rock song, as well as a classic of the counterculture era . In 1999, the song was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame , an honor reserved for "recordings of lasting qualitative or historical significance that are at least 25 years old." In 2004, Rolling Stone magazine ranked "Eight Miles High" at number 151 on their list of The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time and in March 2005, Q magazine placed
9540-462: The Amboy Dukes and Steppenwolf . From England, two former guitarists with the Yardbirds, Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page , moved on to form key acts in the genre, The Jeff Beck Group and Led Zeppelin respectively. Other major pioneers of the genre had begun as blues-based psychedelic bands, including Black Sabbath , Deep Purple , Judas Priest and UFO . Psychedelic music also contributed to
9752-524: The American folk music revival had grown to a major movement, using traditional music and new compositions in a traditional style, usually on acoustic instruments. In America the genre was pioneered by figures such as Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger and often identified with progressive or labor politics . In the early sixties figures such as Joan Baez and Bob Dylan had come to the fore in this movement as singer-songwriters. Dylan had begun to reach
9964-499: The Billboard Top 10. Commercial radio stations were reluctant to play songs that were over two-and-a-half minutes long during the mid-1960s, and the song suffered from uncoordinated and inefficient promotion by Columbia Records. Teehan's research revealed that "Eight Miles High" failed to reach the Top Five in any of his 23 sample regional markets, and most telling, among the thirty radio stations included within this sample, it reached
10176-587: The British Invasion , which was then dominating the U.S. music charts. Other lyrics in the song that explicitly refer to the Byrds' stay in England include the couplet: "Nowhere is there warmth to be found/Among those afraid of losing their ground", which is a reference to the hostile reaction of the UK music press and to the English group the Birds serving the band with a writ of copyright infringement because of
10388-700: The Fifth Dimension album, "Eight Miles High" also appears on several Byrds' compilations , including: The Byrds' Greatest Hits , History of The Byrds , The Original Singles: 1965–1967, Volume 1 , The Byrds , The Very Best of The Byrds , The Essential Byrds and There Is a Season . "Eight Miles High" has been covered by many different bands and artists including: the Ventures , Leathercoated Minds , East of Eden , Lighthouse , Leo Kottke , Roxy Music , Ride , Stewart / Gaskin , Robyn Hitchcock , Rockfour , Les Fradkin , The Kennedys ,
10600-790: The Grateful Dead , the Steve Miller Band and Country Joe & the Fish . Helms and San Francisco Mime Troupe manager Bill Graham in the fall of 1965 organised larger scale multi-media community events/benefits featuring the Airplane, the Diggers and Allen Ginsberg. By early 1966 Graham had secured booking at The Fillmore , and Helms at the Avalon Ballroom , where in-house psychedelic-themed light shows replicated
10812-544: The Impressions album, can be heard clearly in "Eight Miles High"—most noticeably in McGuinn's recurring twelve-string guitar solo. In addition to this striking guitar motif , the song is also highlighted by Chris Hillman 's driving and hypnotic bass line, Crosby's chunky rhythm guitar playing and the band's ethereal harmonies . "Eight Miles High" also exhibits the influence of sitarist Ravi Shankar, particularly in
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#173277304413111024-763: The Merry Pranksters ) helped thousands of people take uncontrolled trips at Kesey's Acid Tests and in the new psychedelic dance halls. In Britain, Michael Hollingshead opened the World Psychedelic Centre and Beat Generation poets Allen Ginsberg , Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Gregory Corso read at the Royal Albert Hall . Miles adds: "The readings acted as a catalyst for underground activity in London, as people suddenly realized just how many like-minded people there were around. This
11236-659: The Revolver sessions, was the first pop recording to contain reversed sounds. Together with further studio tricks such as varispeed , the song includes a droning melody that reflected the band's growing interest in non-Western musical form and lyrics conveying the division between an enlightened psychedelic outlook and conformism. Philo cites "Rain" as "the birth of British psychedelic rock" and describes Revolver as "[the] most sustained deployment of Indian instruments, musical form and even religious philosophy" heard in popular music up to that time. Author Steve Turner recognises
11448-422: The garage rock / post-punk revival in the 2000s. Since the 2010s, rock has lost its position as the pre-eminent popular music genre in world culture, but remains commercially successful. The increased influence of hip-hop and electronic dance music can be seen in rock music, notably in the techno-pop scene of the early 2010s and the pop-punk-hip-hop revival of the 2020s. Rock has also embodied and served as
11660-417: The protest song , rock music has been associated with political activism , as well as changes in social attitudes to race, sex, and drug use, and is often seen as an expression of youth revolt against adult consumerism and conformity . At the same time, it has been commercially highly successful, leading to accusations of selling out . A good definition of rock, in fact, is that it's popular music that to
11872-528: The tambura on " See My Friends " (July 1965), which became a top 10 hit in the UK. The Beatles' " Norwegian Wood " from the December 1965 album Rubber Soul marked the first released recording on which a member of a Western rock group played the sitar. The song sparked a craze for the sitar and other Indian instrumentation – a trend that fueled the growth of raga rock as the India exotic became part of
12084-408: The "English pop-pastoral mood" typified by bands such as Pink Floyd , Family , Traffic and Fairport Convention , and English psychedelia's LSD-inspired preoccupation with "nostalgia for the innocent vision of a child". The Mellotron parts on "Strawberry Fields Forever" remain the most celebrated example of the instrument on a pop or rock recording. According to Simonelli, the two songs heralded
12296-567: The 13th Floor Elevators in October that year. It was one of the first rock albums to include the adjective in its title, although the LP was released on an independent label and was little noticed at the time. Two other bands also used the word in titles of LPs released in November 1966: The Blues Magoos ' Psychedelic Lollipop , and the Deep 's Psychedelic Moods . Having formed in late 1965 with
12508-454: The 1950s saw the growth in popularity of the electric guitar, and the development of a specifically rock and roll style of playing through such exponents as Chuck Berry, Link Wray , and Scotty Moore . The use of distortion , pioneered by Western swing guitarists such as Junior Barnard and Eldon Shamblin was popularized by Chuck Berry in the mid-1950s. The use of power chords , pioneered by Francisco Tárrega and Heitor Villa-Lobos in
12720-698: The 1970s, including Pink Floyd, Soft Machine and members of Yes . The Moody Blues album In Search of the Lost Chord (1968), which is steeped in psychedelia, including prominent use of Indian instruments, is noted as an early predecessor to and influence on the emerging progressive movement. King Crimson 's album In the Court of the Crimson King (1969) has been seen as an important link between psychedelia and progressive rock. While bands such as Hawkwind maintained an explicitly psychedelic course into
12932-440: The 1970s, most dropped the psychedelic elements in favour of wider experimentation. The incorporation of jazz into the music of bands like Soft Machine and Can also contributed to the development of the jazz rock of bands like Colosseum . As they moved away from their psychedelic roots and placed increasing emphasis on electronic experimentation, German bands like Kraftwerk , Tangerine Dream , Can , Neu! and Faust developed
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#173277304413113144-467: The 19th century and later on by Willie Johnson and Pat Hare in the early 1950s, was popularized by Link Wray in the late 1950s. Commentators have traditionally perceived a decline of rock and roll in the late 1950s and early 1960s. By 1959, the death of Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens in a plane crash, the departure of Elvis for the army, the retirement of Little Richard to become
13356-458: The Animals ) and the Who, whose The Who Sell Out (December 1967) included the psychedelic-influenced " I Can See for Miles " and " Armenia City in the Sky ". Other major British Invasion acts who absorbed psychedelia in 1967 include the Hollies with the album Butterfly , and The Rolling Stones album Their Satanic Majesties Request . The Incredible String Band's The 5000 Spirits or
13568-619: The Bangles and Rain Parade . In the late '80s in the UK the genre of Madchester emerged in the Manchester area, in which artists merged alternative rock with acid house and dance culture as well as other sources, including psychedelic music and 1960s pop. The label was popularised by the British music press in the early 1990s. Erchard talks about it as being part of a "thread of 80s psychedelic rock" and lists as main bands in it
13780-477: The Banshees , Ultravox , and Simple Minds , showed the influence of progressive rock, as well as their more usually recognized punk influences. In the late 1960s, jazz-rock emerged as a distinct subgenre out of the blues-rock, psychedelic, and progressive rock scenes, mixing the power of rock with the musical complexity and improvisational elements of jazz. AllMusic states that the term jazz-rock "may refer to
13992-536: The Beatles employed several techniques in the years up to 1965 that soon became elements of psychedelic music, an approach he describes as "cognate" and reflective of how they, like the Yardbirds , were early pioneers in psychedelia. As important aspects the group brought to the genre, Echard cites the Beatles' rhythmic originality and unpredictability; "true" tonal ambiguity; leadership in incorporating elements from Indian music and studio techniques such as vari-speed, tape loops and reverse tape sounds; and their embrace of
14204-413: The Beatles had employed feedback in " I Feel Fine ", their sixth consecutive number 1 hit in the UK. According to AllMusic , the emergence of psychedelic rock in the mid-1960s resulted from British groups who made up the British Invasion of the US market and folk rock bands seeking to broaden "the sonic possibilities of their music". Writing in his 1969 book The Rock Revolution , Arnold Shaw said
14416-551: The Beatles' album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (May 1967) and the staging of the Monterey Pop Festival in June. Sgt. Pepper was the first commercially successful work that critics recognised as a landmark aspect of psychedelia, and the Beatles' mass appeal meant that the record was played virtually everywhere. The album was highly influential on bands in the US psychedelic rock scene and its elevation of
14628-413: The Beatles' brand of Romanticism as a central tenet of psychedelic rock. Jefferson Airplane's Surrealistic Pillow (February 1967) was one of the first albums to come out of San Francisco that sold well enough to bring national attention to the city's music scene. The LP tracks " White Rabbit " and " Somebody to Love " subsequently became top 10 hits in the US. The Hollies psychedelic B-side "All
14840-401: The Beatles' success in conveying an LSD-inspired worldview on Revolver , particularly with " Tomorrow Never Knows ", as having "opened the doors to psychedelic rock (or acid rock)". In author Shawn Levy 's description, it was "the first true drug album, not [just] a pop record with some druggy insinuations", while musicologists Russell Reising and Jim LeBlanc credit the Beatles with "set[ting]
15052-513: The Beatles, demonstrating "to the rock generation in general that an album could be a major standalone statement without hit singles", such as on The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan (1963). Folk rock particularly took off in California, where it led acts like the Mamas & the Papas and Crosby, Stills, and Nash to move to electric instrumentation, and in New York, where it spawned performers including
15264-579: The Billboard charts in the US. Influenced by Aldous Huxley ’s The Doors of Perception , and with lyrics referencing LSD, it contributed to bringing psychedelia to the mainstream. The Beach Boys' October 1966 single " Good Vibrations " was another early pop song to incorporate psychedelic lyrics and sounds. The single's success prompted an unexpected revival in theremins and increased the awareness of analog synthesizers . As psychedelia gained prominence, Beach Boys-style harmonies would be ingrained into
15476-554: The Byrds ' shift from folk to folk rock from 1965. The psychedelic lifestyle, which revolved around hallucinogenic drugs, had already developed in San Francisco and particularly prominent products of the scene were Big Brother and the Holding Company , the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane . The Jimi Hendrix Experience 's lead guitarist, Jimi Hendrix did extended distorted, feedback-filled jams which became
15688-431: The Byrds adopted rock instrumentation, including drums and 12-string Rickenbacker guitars, which became a major element in the sound of the genre. Later that year Dylan adopted electric instruments, much to the outrage of many folk purists, with his " Like a Rolling Stone " becoming a US hit single. According to Ritchie Unterberger , Dylan (even before his adoption of electric instruments) influenced rock musicians like
15900-502: The Byrds themselves that the U.S. radio ban hurt sales of "Eight Miles High". He points out that although the Gavin Report recommended that radio stations withdraw the single from airplay, many stations did not comply with this suggestion. In addition, he notes that the radio ban was not suggested by the Gavin Report until April 29, 1966, almost seven weeks after the single had been released—ample time for it to have made its mark on
16112-524: The Byrds' Gene Clark , author John Einarson disputes this claim and ponders whether McGuinn's story would be the same if Clark was still alive. The master recording of "Eight Miles High" was recorded on January 24 and 25, 1966, at Columbia Studios in Hollywood. Record producer Allen Stanton guided the band through the recording process. John Einarson has commented that the influence of Coltrane's saxophone playing and, in particular his song "India" from
16324-527: The Byrds' November 1965 tour of the U.S. To alleviate the boredom of traveling from show to show during the tour, Crosby had brought along cassette recordings of Ravi Shankar 's music and the John Coltrane albums Impressions and Africa/Brass , which were on constant rotation on the tour bus. The impact of these recordings on the band would manifest itself in the music of "Eight Miles High" and its B-side " Why "—both of which were influential in
16536-537: The Dominos , followed by an extensive solo career that helped bring blues rock into the mainstream. Green, along with the Bluesbreaker's rhythm section Mick Fleetwood and John McVie , formed Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac , who enjoyed some of the greatest commercial success in the genre. In the late 1960s Jeff Beck , also an alumnus of the Yardbirds, moved blues rock in the direction of heavy rock with his band,
16748-808: The Doors , there were three categories of US psychedelia: the "acid jams" of the San Francisco bands, who favoured albums over singles; pop psychedelia typified by groups such as the Beach Boys and Buffalo Springfield ; and the "wigged-out" music of bands following in the example of the Beatles and the Yardbirds, such as the Electric Prunes , the Nazz , the Chocolate Watchband and the Seeds . The Doors' self-titled debut album (January 1967)
16960-455: The Gates of Dawn . Key recordings included Jefferson Airplane's Surrealistic Pillow and the Doors ' self-titled debut album . These trends peaked in the 1969 Woodstock festival , which saw performances by most of the major psychedelic acts. Sgt. Pepper was later regarded as the greatest album of all time and a starting point for the album era , during which rock music transitioned from
17172-471: The Jeff Beck Group . The last Yardbirds guitarist was Jimmy Page , who went on to form The New Yardbirds which rapidly became Led Zeppelin . Many of the songs on their first three albums, and occasionally later in their careers, were expansions on traditional blues songs. In America, blues rock had been pioneered in the early 1960s by guitarist Lonnie Mack , but the genre began to take off in
17384-506: The Joint " (1949), also covered by Bill Haley & His Comets in 1952; and " Rocket 88 " by Jackie Brenston and his Delta Cats (in fact, Ike Turner and his band the Kings of Rhythm ), recorded by Sam Phillips for Chess Records in 1951. In 1951, Cleveland, Ohio disc jockey Alan Freed began playing rhythm and blues music (then termed " race music ") for a multi-racial audience, and
17596-425: The LP format benefited the San Francisco bands. Among many changes brought about by its success, artists sought to imitate its psychedelic effects and devoted more time to creating their albums; the counterculture was scrutinised by musicians; and acts adopted its non-conformist sentiments. The 1967 Summer of Love saw a huge number of young people from across America and the world travel to Haight-Ashbury, boosting
17808-769: The Layers of the Onion (July 1967) developed their folk music into a pastoral form of psychedelia. Many famous established recording artists from the early rock era also fell under psychedelia and recorded psychedelic-inspired tracks, including Del Shannon 's "Color Flashing Hair", Bobby Vee 's "I May Be Gone", The Four Seasons ' " Watch the Flowers Grow ", Roy Orbison 's "Southbound Jericho Parkway" and The Everly Brothers ' "Mary Jane". According to author Edward Macan, there ultimately existed three distinct branches of British psychedelic music. The first, dominated by Cream ,
18020-503: The Lovin' Spoonful and Simon and Garfunkel , with the latter's acoustic " The Sounds of Silence " (1965) being remixed with rock instruments to be the first of many hits. These acts directly influenced British performers like Donovan and Fairport Convention . In 1969 Fairport Convention abandoned their mixture of American covers and Dylan-influenced songs to play traditional English folk music on electric instruments. This British folk-rock
18232-498: The Merry Pranksters. Their stage performance involved the use of strobe lights to reproduce LSD's "surrealistic fragmenting" or "vivid isolating of caught moments". The Acid Test experiments subsequently launched the entire psychedelic subculture . Psychedelia. I know it's hard, but make a note of that word because it's going to be scattered round the in-clubs like punches at an Irish wedding. It already rivals "mom" as
18444-584: The Moody Blues , Pink Floyd, Procol Harum and the Nice , was influenced by the later music of the Beatles. Several of the post- Sgt. Pepper English psychedelic groups developed the Beatles' classical influences further than either the Beatles or contemporaneous West Coast psychedelic bands. Among such groups, the Pretty Things abandoned their R&B roots to create S.F. Sorrow (December 1968),
18656-554: The Postmarks and Steve Hunter . Hüsker Dü released the song as a single prior to the release of their Zen Arcade LP in 1984. The song was covered in 1969 by Golden Earring , who included a nineteen-minute version on their Eight Miles High album. The Emerson, Lake & Palmer spinoff group 3 recorded the song with revised lyrics on their 1988 album, To the Power of Three . Crowded House with Roger McGuinn covered
18868-476: The Rolling Stones and the Yardbirds , were much more directly influenced by rhythm and blues and later blues music. Soon these groups were composing their own material, combining US forms of music and infusing it with a high energy beat. Beat bands tended towards "bouncy, irresistible melodies", while early British blues acts tended towards less sexually innocent, more aggressive songs, often adopting an anti-establishment stance. There was, however, particularly in
19080-533: The Searchers from Liverpool and Freddie and the Dreamers , Herman's Hermits and the Hollies from Manchester. They drew on a wide range of American influences including 1950s rock and roll, soul, rhythm and blues, and surf music, initially reinterpreting standard American tunes and playing for dancers. Bands like the Animals from Newcastle and Them from Belfast , and particularly those from London like
19292-620: The Seeds ) to near-studio musician quality (including the Knickerbockers , the Remains , and the Fifth Estate ). There were also regional variations in many parts of the country with flourishing scenes particularly in California and Texas. The Pacific Northwest states of Washington and Oregon had perhaps the most defined regional sound. The style had been evolving from regional scenes as early as 1958. "Tall Cool One" (1959) by
19504-520: The Stone Roses , Happy Mondays and Inspiral Carpets . The rave -influenced scene is widely seen as heavily influenced by drugs, especially ecstasy ( MDMA ), and it is seen by Erchard as central to a wider phenomenon of what he calls a "rock rave crossover" in the late '80s and early '90s UK indie scene, which also included the Screamadelica album by Scottish band Primal Scream . In
19716-548: The Top 10 on only seven of them (23%). The song's use of Indian and free-form jazz influences, along with its impressionistic lyrics, were immediately influential on the emerging genre of psychedelic rock. Accordingly, some authors and music historians, including Eric V. D. Luft, Domenic Priore , and Dwight Rounds, have described "Eight Miles High" as being the first bona fide psychedelic rock song. In his book Riot On Sunset Strip: Rock 'n' Roll's Last Stand in Hollywood , Priore cites
19928-745: The Tornados in 1962) and the Dave Clark Five 's "massively reverb-laden" " Any Way You Want It " (1964). The first mention of LSD on a rock record was the Gamblers ' 1960 surf instrumental "LSD 25". A 1962 single by the Ventures , " The 2000 Pound Bee ", issued forth the buzz of a distorted, "fuzztone" guitar, and the quest into "the possibilities of heavy, transistorised distortion" and other effects, like improved reverb and echo, began in earnest on London's fertile rock 'n' roll scene. By 1964 fuzztone could be heard on singles by P.J. Proby , and
20140-623: The Turkish rock scene with artists such as Cem Karaca , Mogollar , Barış Manço and Erkin Koray. In Brazil, the Tropicalia movement merged Brazilian and African rhythms with psychedelic rock. Musicians who were part of the movement include Caetano Veloso , Gilberto Gil , Os Mutantes , Gal Costa , Tom Zé , and the poet/lyricist Torquato Neto , all of whom participated in the 1968 album Tropicália: ou Panis et Circencis , which served as
20352-470: The U.S. and much of the Western world from the 1950s to the 2010s. Rock musicians in the mid-1960s began to advance the album ahead of the single as the dominant form of recorded music expression and consumption, with the Beatles at the forefront of this development. Their contributions lent the genre a cultural legitimacy in the mainstream and initiated a rock-informed album era in the music industry for
20564-543: The UK, Music Echo described the song as "wild and oriental but still beaty". The publication also suggested that with the release of "Eight Miles High" the Byrds had jumped ahead of the Beatles in terms of creativity, saying "[By] getting their single out now they've beaten the Beatles to the punch, for Paul [McCartney] admitted recently that the Liverpool foursome are working on a similar sound for their new album and single." In recent years, Richie Unterberger , writing for
20776-630: The US and reached the top 30 in the UK. Contributing to psychedelia's emergence into the pop mainstream was the release of the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds (May 1966) and the Beatles' Revolver (August 1966). Often considered one of the earliest albums in the canon of psychedelic rock, Pet Sounds contained many elements that would be incorporated into psychedelia, with its artful experiments, psychedelic lyrics based on emotional longings and self-doubts, elaborate sound effects and new sounds on both conventional and unconventional instruments. The album track " I Just Wasn't Made for These Times " contained
20988-524: The US top ten, and three platinum albums. While psychedelic rock wavered at the end of the 1960s, psychedelic soul continued into the 1970s, peaking in popularity in the early years of the decade, and only disappearing in the late 1970s as tastes changed. Songwriter Norman Whitfield wrote psychedelic soul songs for The Temptations and Marvin Gaye . Many of the British musicians and bands that had embraced psychedelia went on to create progressive rock in
21200-676: The US was becoming dominated by lightweight pop and ballads, British rock groups at clubs and local dances were developing a style more strongly influenced by blues-rock pioneers, and were starting to play with an intensity and drive seldom found in white American acts; this influence would go on to shape the future of rock music through the British Invasion . The first four years of the 1960s has traditionally been seen as an era of hiatus for rock and roll. More recently some authors have emphasised important innovations and trends in this period without which future developments would not have been possible. While early rock and roll, particularly through
21412-619: The USSR and South Africa from 1955 to 1957, influencing the globalisation of rock. Johnny O'Keefe 's 1958 record " Wild One " was one of the earliest Australian rock and roll hits. By the late 1950s, as well as in the American-influenced Western world, rock was popular in communist states such as Yugoslavia, and the USSR, as well as in regions such as South America. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, American blues music and blues rock artists, who had been surpassed by
21624-479: The United States. In 1969, the murders of Sharon Tate and Leno and Rosemary LaBianca by Charles Manson and his cult of followers , claiming to have been inspired by The Beatles' songs such as " Helter Skelter ", has been seen as contributing to an anti-hippie backlash. At the end of the same year, the Altamont Free Concert in California, headlined by the Rolling Stones, became notorious for
21836-751: The Wailers and " Louie Louie " by the Kingsmen (1963) are mainstream examples of the genre in its formative stages. By 1963, garage band singles were creeping into the national charts in greater numbers, including Paul Revere and the Raiders (Boise), the Trashmen (Minneapolis) and the Rivieras (South Bend, Indiana). Other influential garage bands, such as the Sonics (Tacoma, Washington), never reached
22048-730: The World Is Love" (February 1967) was released as the flipside to the hit single " On a Carousel ". Pink Floyd's " Arnold Layne " (March 1967) and " See Emily Play " (June 1967), both written by Syd Barrett , helped set the pattern for pop-psychedelia in the UK. There, "underground" venues like the UFO Club , Middle Earth Club , The Roundhouse , the Country Club and the Art Lab drew capacity audiences with psychedelic rock and ground-breaking liquid light shows . A major figure in
22260-408: The Yardbirds and Hendrix, was founded on a heavy, electric adaptation of the blues played by the Rolling Stones, adding elements such as the Who's power chord style and feedback. The second, considerably more complex form drew strongly from jazz sources and was typified by Traffic, Colosseum , If , and Canterbury scene bands such as Soft Machine and Caravan . The third branch, represented by
22472-527: The advent of rockabilly, saw the greatest commercial success for male and white performers, in this era, the genre was dominated by black and female artists. Rock and roll had not disappeared entirely from music at the end of the 1950s and some of its energy can be seen in the various dance crazes of the early 1960s, started by Chubby Checker 's record " The Twist " (1960). Some music historians have also pointed to important and innovative technical developments that built on rock and roll in this period, including
22684-462: The aim of spreading LSD consciousness, the Elevators commissioned business cards containing an image of the third eye and the caption "Psychedelic rock". Rolling Stone highlights the 13th Floor Elevators as arguably "the most important early progenitors of psychedelic garage rock". Donovan 's July 1966 single " Sunshine Superman " became one of the first psychedelic pop/rock singles to top
22896-794: The approach of 1960s psychedelic rock. Neo-psychedelia may include forays into psychedelic pop, jangly guitar rock, heavily distorted free-form jams, or recording experiments. Some of the scene's bands, including the Soft Boys , the Teardrop Explodes , Wah!, Echo & the Bunnymen , became major figures of neo-psychedelia. In the US in the early 1980s it was joined by the Paisley Underground movement, based in Los Angeles and fronted by acts such as Dream Syndicate ,
23108-613: The area's population from 15,000 to around 100,000. It was prefaced by the Human Be-In event in January and reached its peak at the Monterey Pop Festival in June, the latter helping to make major American stars of Janis Joplin , lead singer of Big Brother and the Holding Company , Jimi Hendrix , and the Who . Several established British acts joined the psychedelic revolution, including Eric Burdon (previously of
23320-450: The avant-garde. In Unterberger's opinion, the Byrds , emerging from the Los Angeles folk rock scene, and the Yardbirds, from England's blues scene , were more responsible than the Beatles for "sounding the psychedelic siren". Drug use and attempts at psychedelic music moved out of acoustic folk-based music towards rock soon after the Byrds, inspired by the Beatles' 1964 film A Hard Day's Night , adopted electric instruments to produce
23532-432: The better known Columbia release. That opinion was echoed by Crosby, who commented, "It was a stunner, it was better, it was stronger. It had more flow to it. It was the way we wanted it to be." This original version of "Eight Miles High" was eventually released on the 1987 archival album Never Before and was also included as a bonus track on the 1996 Columbia/Legacy CD reissue of Fifth Dimension . "Eight Miles High"
23744-585: The biggest selling rock band of all time and they were followed into the US charts by numerous British bands. During the next two years British acts dominated their own and the US charts with Peter and Gordon , the Animals, Manfred Mann , Petula Clark , Freddie and the Dreamers, Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders , Herman's Hermits, the Rolling Stones, the Troggs , and Donovan all having one or more number one singles. Other major acts that were part of
23956-619: The centre of influence had moved from London to California by 1967, it was British acts like the Beatles and the Rolling Stones that helped inspire and "nourish" the new American music in the mid-1960s, especially in the formative San Francisco scene. The music scene there developed in the city's Haight-Ashbury neighborhood in 1965 at basement shows organised by Chet Helms of the Family Dog ; and as Jefferson Airplane founder Marty Balin and investors opened The Matrix nightclub that summer and began booking his and other local bands such as
24168-461: The chart. Their first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show on 9 February 1964, drawing an estimated 73 million viewers (at the time a record for an American television program) is considered a milestone in American pop culture. During the week of 4 April 1964, the Beatles held 12 positions on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart, including the entire top five. The Beatles went on to become
24380-426: The charts. Teehan has uncovered evidence showing "Eight Miles High" was already decelerating on the national charts before the end of April 1966. Having examined the local music surveys and the Billboard regional retail sales charts as they relate to the national charting of "Eight Miles High", Teehan found that the progressive, complex and uncommercial nature of the song was a much bigger factor in its failure to reach
24592-424: The delights and limitations of the regional , and to deal with the depredations and benefits of mass culture itself. — Robert Christgau in Christgau's Record Guide (1981) Unlike many earlier styles of popular music, rock lyrics have dealt with a wide range of themes, including romantic love, sex, rebellion against " The Establishment ", social concerns, and life styles. These themes were inherited from
24804-533: The development of British psychedelia was the American promoter and record producer Joe Boyd , who moved to London in 1966. He co-founded venues including the UFO Club, produced Pink Floyd's "Arnold Layne", and went on to manage folk and folk rock acts including Nick Drake , the Incredible String Band and Fairport Convention. Psychedelic rock's popularity accelerated following the release of
25016-405: The development of the musical styles of psychedelic rock , raga rock , and psychedelic pop . Clark began writing the song's lyrics on November 24, 1965, when he scribbled down some rough ideas for later development, after a discussion with guitarist Brian Jones , before the Byrds made a concert appearance supporting the Rolling Stones . Over the following days, Clark expanded this fragment into
25228-402: The droning quality of the song's vocal melody and in McGuinn's guitar playing. However, the song does not actually feature the sound of the sitar , despite the Byrds having appeared brandishing the instrument at a contemporary press conference held to promote the single. In a 1966 promotional interview, which was added to the expanded CD reissue of the Fifth Dimension album, Crosby said that
25440-399: The earlier 1960s psychedelic rock musicians were based in folk , jazz , and the blues , while others showcased an explicit Indian classical influence called " raga rock ". In the 1960s, there existed two main variants of the genre: the more whimsical, surrealist British psychedelia and the harder American West Coast " acid rock ". While "acid rock" is sometimes deployed interchangeably with
25652-580: The early 1960s experimented with unusual recording techniques, including backwards tapes, and novel instrumental accompaniment including flute and sitar. His nineteen-minute "The Great San Bernardino Birthday Party" "anticipated elements of psychedelia with its nervy improvisations and odd guitar tunings". Similarly, folk guitarist Sandy Bull 's early work "incorporated elements of folk, jazz, and Indian and Arabic -influenced dronish modes". His 1963 album Fantasias for Guitar and Banjo explores various styles and "could also be accurately described as one of
25864-441: The early 1960s work of Davy Graham , who adopted modal guitar tunings to transpose Indian ragas and Celtic reels. Graham was highly influential on Scottish folk virtuoso Bert Jansch and other pioneering guitarists across a spectrum of styles and genres in the mid-1960s. Jazz saxophonist and composer John Coltrane had a similar impact, as the exotic sounds on his albums My Favorite Things (1960) and A Love Supreme (1965),
26076-455: The early 1970s among existing blues-rock and psychedelic bands, as well as newly formed acts. The vibrant Canterbury scene saw acts following Soft Machine from psychedelia, through jazz influences, toward more expansive hard rock, including Caravan , Hatfield and the North , Gong , and National Health . The French group Magma around drummer Christian Vander almost single-handedly created
26288-460: The early 1970s, Robert Christgau wrote in Christgau's Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies (1981): The decade is, of course, an arbitrary schema itself—time doesn't just execute a neat turn toward the future every ten years. But like a lot of artificial concepts—money, say—the category does take on a reality of its own once people figure out how to put it to work. "The '60s are over,"
26500-462: The early stages, considerable musical crossover between the two tendencies. By 1963, led by the Beatles, beat groups had begun to achieve national success in Britain, soon to be followed into the charts by the more rhythm and blues focused acts. " I Want to Hold Your Hand " was the Beatles' first number one hit on the Billboard Hot 100 , spending seven weeks at the top and a total of 15 weeks on
26712-463: The electronic treatment of sound by such innovators as Joe Meek , and the elaborate production methods of the Wall of Sound pursued by Phil Spector . The instrumental rock and roll of performers such as Duane Eddy , Link Wray and the Ventures was further developed by Dick Dale , who added distinctive "wet" reverb , rapid alternate picking, and Middle Eastern and Mexican influences. He produced
26924-512: The essence of psychedelic rock. Music historian George Case recognises Rubber Soul as the first of two Beatles albums that "marked the authentic beginning of the psychedelic era", while music critic Robert Christgau similarly wrote that "Psychedelia starts here". San Francisco historian Charles Perry recalled the album being "the soundtrack of the Haight-Ashbury , Berkeley and the whole circuit", as pre-hippie youths suspected that
27136-522: The example set by the Beatles ' 1965 LP Rubber Soul in particular, other British rock acts released rock albums intended as artistic statements in 1966, including the Rolling Stones ' Aftermath , the Beatles' own Revolver , and the Who 's A Quick One , as well as American acts in the Beach Boys ( Pet Sounds ) and Bob Dylan ( Blonde on Blonde ). Garage rock was a raw form of rock music, particularly prevalent in North America in
27348-539: The fatal stabbing of black teenager Meredith Hunter by Hells Angels security guards. George Clinton 's ensembles Funkadelic and Parliament and their various spin-offs took psychedelia and funk to create their own unique style, producing over forty singles, including three in the US top ten, and three platinum albums. Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys, Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones, Peter Green and Danny Kirwan of Fleetwood Mac and Syd Barrett of Pink Floyd were early "acid casualties", helping to shift
27560-422: The first British band to have the term "psychedelic" applied to one of its songs. On "Eight Miles High", Roger McGuinn 's 12-string Rickenbacker guitar provided a psychedelic interpretation of free jazz and Indian raga , channelling Coltrane and Shankar, respectively. The song's lyrics were widely taken to refer to drug use, although the Byrds denied it at the time. "Eight Miles High" peaked at number 14 in
27772-485: The first bona fide psychedelic rock song, as well as a classic of the counterculture era . The song was subject to a U.S. radio ban shortly after its release, following allegations published in the broadcasting trade journal the Gavin Report regarding perceived drug connotations in its lyrics . The band strenuously denied these allegations at the time, but in later years both Clark and Crosby admitted that
27984-486: The first example of a psychedelic rock opera. The US and UK were the major centres of psychedelic music, but in the late 1960s scenes developed across the world, including continental Europe, Australasia, Asia and south and Central America. In the later 1960s psychedelic scenes developed in a large number of countries in continental Europe, including the Netherlands with bands like The Outsiders , Denmark, where it
28196-568: The first psychedelic hits: the Yardbirds' " Shapes of Things " and the Byrds' " Eight Miles High ". The former reached number 3 in the UK and number 11 in the US, and continued the Yardbirds' exploration of guitar effects, Eastern-sounding scales, and shifting rhythms. By overdubbing guitar parts, Beck layered multiple takes for his solo, which included extensive use of fuzz tone and harmonic feedback. The song's lyrics, which Unterberger describes as "stream-of-consciousness", have been interpreted as pro-environmental or anti-war. The Yardbirds became
28408-498: The first record, and worldwide hit, for the Virgin Records label, which became a mainstay of the genre. Instrumental rock was particularly significant in continental Europe, allowing bands like Kraftwerk , Tangerine Dream , Can , Focus (band) and Faust to circumvent the language barrier. Their synthesiser-heavy " krautrock ", along with the work of Brian Eno (for a time the keyboard player with Roxy Music ), would be
28620-652: The first use of theremin sounds on a rock record. Scholar Philip Auslander says that even though psychedelic music is not normally associated with the Beach Boys, the "odd directions" and experiments in Pet Sounds "put it all on the map. ... basically that sort of opened the door – not for groups to be formed or to start to make music, but certainly to become as visible as say Jefferson Airplane or somebody like that." DeRogatis views Revolver as another of "the first psychedelic rock masterpieces", along with Pet Sounds . The Beatles' May 1966 B-side " Rain ", recorded during
28832-669: The focus of the respective bands of which they had been leading figures. Some groups, such as the Beatles, the Jimi Hendrix Experience and Cream, broke up. Hendrix died in London in September 1970, shortly after recording Band of Gypsys (1970), Janis Joplin died of a heroin overdose in October 1970 and they were closely followed by Jim Morrison of the Doors , who died in Paris in July 1971. By this point, many surviving acts had moved away from psychedelia into either more back-to-basics " roots rock ", traditional-based, pastoral or whimsical folk,
29044-455: The folk scene. The first group to advertise themselves as psychedelic rock were the 13th Floor Elevators from Texas. The Beatles introduced many of the major elements of the psychedelic sound to audiences in this period, such as guitar feedback , the Indian sitar and backmasking sound effects . Psychedelic rock particularly took off in California's emerging music scene as groups followed
29256-400: The format of rock operas and opened the door to concept albums , often telling an epic story or tackling a grand overarching theme. King Crimson 's 1969 début album, In the Court of the Crimson King , which mixed powerful guitar riffs and mellotron , with jazz and symphonic music , is often taken as the key recording in progressive rock, helping the widespread adoption of the genre in
29468-402: The genre in its American form represented generational escapism , which he identified as a development of youth culture's "protest against the sexual taboos, racism, violence, hypocrisy and materialism of adult life". American folk singer Bob Dylan 's influence was central to the creation of the folk rock movement in 1965, and his lyrics remained a touchstone for the psychedelic songwriters of
29680-534: The genre include: The term "psychedelic" was coined in 1956 by psychiatrist Humphry Osmond in a letter to LSD exponent Aldous Huxley and used as an alternative descriptor for hallucinogenic drugs in the context of psychedelic psychotherapy . As the countercultural scene developed in San Francisco, the terms acid rock and psychedelic rock were used in 1966 to describe the new drug-influenced music and were being widely used by 1967. The two terms are often used interchangeably, but acid rock may be distinguished as
29892-458: The impetus was soon taken up by a second wave of bands that drew their inspiration more directly from American blues , including the Rolling Stones and the Yardbirds . British blues musicians of the late 1950s and early 1960s had been inspired by the acoustic playing of figures such as Lead Belly , who was a major influence on the Skiffle craze, and Robert Johnson . Increasingly they adopted
30104-402: The invasion included the Kinks and the Dave Clark Five . The British Invasion helped internationalize the production of rock and roll, opening the door for subsequent British (and Irish) performers to achieve international success. In America it arguably spelled the end of instrumental surf music, vocal girl groups and (for a time) the teen idols , that had dominated the American charts in
30316-565: The label is often applied spuriously. Originating in the mid-1960s among British and American musicians, the sound of psychedelic rock invokes three core effects of LSD: depersonalization , dechronicization (the bending of time), and dynamization (when fixed, ordinary objects dissolve into moving, dancing structures), all of which detach the user from everyday reality. Musically, the effects may be represented via novelty studio tricks, electronic or non-Western instrumentation, disjunctive song structures, and extended instrumental segments. Some of
30528-517: The label were R&B oriented white rock bands that made use of jazzy horn sections, like Electric Flag , Blood, Sweat & Tears and Chicago , to become some of the most commercially successful acts of the later 1960s and the early 1970s. British acts to emerge in the same period from the blues scene, to make use of the tonal and improvisational aspects of jazz, included Nucleus and the Graham Bond and John Mayall spin-off Colosseum . From
30740-446: The late 1950s and 1960s. It dented the careers of established R&B acts like Fats Domino and Chubby Checker and even temporarily derailed the chart success of surviving rock and roll acts, including Elvis. The British Invasion also played a major part in the rise of a distinct genre of rock music, and cemented the primacy of the rock group, based on guitars and drums and producing their own material as singer-songwriters. Following
30952-565: The late 1960s. Virtuoso sitarist Ravi Shankar had begun in 1956 a mission to bring Indian classical music to the West, inspiring jazz, classical and folk musicians. By the mid-1960s, his influence extended to a generation of young rock musicians who soon made raga rock part of the psychedelic rock aesthetic and one of the many intersecting cultural motifs of the era. In the British folk scene, blues, drugs, jazz and Eastern influences blended in
31164-464: The latter influenced by the ragas of Shankar, were source material for guitar players and others looking to improvise or "jam". One of the first musical uses of the term "psychedelic" in the folk scene was by the New York-based folk group The Holy Modal Rounders on their version of Lead Belly 's ' Hesitation Blues ' in 1964. Folk/avant-garde guitarist John Fahey recorded several songs in
31376-567: The loss of some key individuals, and a back-to-basics movement led surviving performers to move into new musical areas. The genre bridged the transition from early blues and folk-based rock to progressive rock and hard rock , and as a result contributed to the development of sub-genres such as heavy metal . Since the late 1970s it has been revived in various forms of neo-psychedelia . As a musical style, psychedelic rock incorporated new electronic sound effects and recording effects, extended solos, and improvisation. Features mentioned in relation to
31588-410: The loudest, wildest, most electrified fusion bands from the jazz camp, but most often it describes performers coming from the rock side of the equation." Jazz-rock "...generally grew out of the most artistically ambitious rock subgenres of the late '60s and early '70s", including the singer-songwriter movement. Many early US rock and roll musicians had begun in jazz and carried some of these elements into
31800-476: The many recordings which have been suggested as "the first rock and roll record ". Contenders include " Strange Things Happening Every Day " by Sister Rosetta Tharpe (1944); " That's All Right " by Arthur Crudup (1946), which was later covered by Elvis Presley in 1954; " The House of Blue Lights " by Ella Mae Morse and Freddie Slack (1946); Wynonie Harris ' " Good Rocking Tonight " (1948); Goree Carter 's "Rock Awhile" (1949); Jimmy Preston 's " Rock
32012-674: The mid-1950s by white singers such as Carl Perkins , Jerry Lee Lewis, Buddy Holly and with the greatest commercial success, Elvis Presley . Hispanic and Latino American movements in rock and roll, which would eventually lead to the success of Latin rock and Chicano rock within the US, began to rise in the Southwest ; with rock and roll standard musician Ritchie Valens and even those within other heritage genres, such as Al Hurricane along with his brothers Tiny Morrie and Baby Gaby as they began combining rock and roll with country- western within traditional New Mexico music . In addition,
32224-609: The mid-1960s the Left Banke , the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and the Beach Boys, had pioneered the inclusion of harpsichords , wind , and string sections on their recordings to produce a form of Baroque rock and can be heard in singles like Procol Harum 's " A Whiter Shade of Pale " (1967), with its Bach -inspired introduction. The Moody Blues used a full orchestra on their album Days of Future Passed (1967) and subsequently created orchestral sounds with synthesizers. Classical orchestration, keyboards, and synthesizers were
32436-479: The mid-1960s and so called because of the perception that it was rehearsed in the suburban family garage. Garage rock songs often revolved around the traumas of high school life, with songs about "lying girls" and unfair social circumstances being particularly common. The lyrics and delivery tended to be more aggressive than was common at the time, often with growled or shouted vocals that dissolved into incoherent screaming. They ranged from crude one-chord music (like
32648-435: The mid-1960s as acts developed a sound similar to British blues musicians. Key acts included Paul Butterfield (whose band acted like Mayall's Bluesbreakers in Britain as a starting point for many successful musicians), Canned Heat , the early Jefferson Airplane , Janis Joplin , Johnny Winter , the J. Geils Band and Jimi Hendrix with his power trios , the Jimi Hendrix Experience (which included two British members, and
32860-401: The mid-1960s onwards, rock music often used the verse–chorus structure derived from blues and folk music, but there has been considerable variation from this model. Critics have stressed the eclecticism and stylistic diversity of rock. Because of its complex history and its tendency to borrow from other musical and cultural forms, it has been argued that "it is impossible to bind rock music to
33072-425: The mid-1960s, particularly in the United States and the United Kingdom. It has its roots in rock and roll, a style that drew directly from the genres of blues , rhythm and blues , and country music . Rock also drew strongly from genres such as electric blues and folk , and incorporated influences from jazz and other musical styles. For instrumentation, rock is centered on the electric guitar , usually as part of
33284-414: The new music genre zeuhl with their first albums in the early 1970s. Greater commercial success was enjoyed by Pink Floyd, who also moved away from psychedelia after the departure of Syd Barrett in 1968, with The Dark Side of the Moon (1973), seen as a masterpiece of the genre, becoming one of the best-selling albums of all time. There was an emphasis on instrumental virtuosity, with Yes showcasing
33496-554: The new music. In Britain the subgenre of blues rock, and many of its leading figures, like Ginger Baker and Jack Bruce of the Eric Clapton -fronted band Cream , had emerged from the British jazz scene. Often highlighted as the first true jazz-rock recording is the only album by the relatively obscure New York–based the Free Spirits with Out of Sight and Sound (1966). The first group of bands to self-consciously use
33708-438: The newer psychedelic pop. In 1967, psychedelic rock received widespread media attention and a larger audience beyond local psychedelic communities. From 1967 to 1968, it was the prevailing sound of rock music, either in the more whimsical British variant, or the harder American West Coast acid rock. Music historian David Simonelli says the genre's commercial peak lasted "a brief year", with San Francisco and London recognised as
33920-571: The next several decades. By the late 1960s " classic rock " period, a few distinct rock music subgenres had emerged, including hybrids like blues rock , folk rock , country rock , Southern rock , raga rock , and jazz rock , which contributed to the development of psychedelic rock , influenced by the countercultural psychedelic and hippie scene . New genres that emerged included progressive rock , which extended artistic elements, heavy metal , which emphasized an aggressive thick sound, and glam rock , which highlighted showmanship and visual style. In
34132-504: The opening couplet : "Eight miles high and when you touch down, you'll find that it's stranger than known." Although commercial airliners fly at an altitude of six to seven miles, it was felt that "eight miles high" sounded more poetic than six and also alluded to the title of the Beatles ' song " Eight Days a Week ". According to Clark, the lyrics were primarily his creation, with a minor contribution being Crosby's line, "Rain grey town, known for its sound"—a reference to London as home to
34344-404: The origins of glam rock , with Marc Bolan changing his psychedelic folk duo into rock band T. Rex and becoming the first glam rock star from 1970. From 1971 David Bowie moved on from his early psychedelic work to develop his Ziggy Stardust persona, incorporating elements of professional make up, mime and performance into his act. The jam band movement, which began in the late 1980s,
34556-471: The psychedelic rock and the Canterbury scenes came Soft Machine, who, it has been suggested, produced one of the artistically successfully fusions of the two genres. Perhaps the most critically acclaimed fusion came from the jazz side of the equation, with Miles Davis , particularly influenced by the work of Hendrix, incorporating rock instrumentation into his sound for the album Bitches Brew (1970). It
34768-527: The record's experimental fusion of eastern and western music. However, although Kempton was the first person to use the term raga rock in print, she actually borrowed the phrase from the promotional material the Byrds' press office had supplied to accompany the "Eight Miles High" single release. In a 1968 interview for the Pop Chronicles radio documentary , McGuinn denied that the song was an example of raga rock, while Crosby, speaking in 1998, dismissed
34980-582: The regional hit " Let's Go Trippin ' " in 1961 and launched the surf music craze, following up with songs like " Misirlou " (1962). Like Dale and his Del-Tones , most early surf bands were formed in Southern California, including the Bel-Airs , the Challengers , and Eddie & the Showmen . The Chantays scored a top ten national hit with " Pipeline " in 1963 and probably the best-known surf tune
35192-455: The release of "Eight Miles High" and Clark's departure, the Byrds never again managed to place a single in the Billboard Top 20. The Byrds performed "Eight Miles High" on a number of television programs during the 1960s and 1970s, including Popside , Drop In , Midweek , and Beat-Club . The song became a staple of the band's live concert repertoire until their final disbandment in 1973. A sixteen-minute live version of "Eight Miles High"
35404-400: The rise of rock and roll in the US, found new popularity in the UK, visiting with successful tours. Lonnie Donegan 's 1955 hit " Rock Island Line " was a major influence and helped to develop the trend of skiffle music groups throughout the country, many of which, including John Lennon 's Quarrymen (later the Beatles ), moved on to play rock and roll. While former rock and roll market in
35616-475: The romantic concept of art as artistic expression, original and sincere". In the new millennium, the term rock has occasionally been used as a blanket term including forms like pop music, reggae music , soul music , and even hip hop , which it has been influenced with but often contrasted through much of its history. Christgau has used the term broadly to refer to popular and semipopular music that caters to his sensibility as "a rock-and-roller", including
35828-468: The same era, and by percussion produced from a drum kit that combines drums and cymbals. This trio of instruments has often been complemented by the inclusion of other instruments, particularly keyboards such as the piano, the Hammond organ , and the synthesizer. The basic rock instrumentation was derived from the basic blues band instrumentation (prominent lead guitar, second chordal instrument, bass, and drums). A group of musicians performing rock music
36040-555: The second half of the 1970s, punk rock reacted by producing stripped-down, energetic social and political critiques. Punk was an influence in the 1980s on new wave , post-punk and eventually alternative rock . From the 1990s, alternative rock began to dominate rock music and break into the mainstream in the form of grunge , Britpop , and indie rock . Further fusion subgenres have since emerged, including pop-punk , electronic rock , rap rock , and rap metal . Some movements were conscious attempts to revisit rock's history, including
36252-459: The similarities in their names. In addition, "Round the squares, huddled in storms/Some laughing, some just shapeless forms" describes fans waiting for the band outside hotels, while the line "Sidewalk scenes and black limousines" refers to the excited crowds that jostled the band as they exited their chauffeur-driven cars. Although the basic idea for the song had been discussed during the band's flight to England, it did not begin to take shape until
36464-427: The single were mostly positive, with Billboard magazine describing the song as a "Big beat rhythm rocker with soft lyric ballad vocal and off-beat instrumental backing." Cash Box described the single as a "rhythmic, shufflin’ blues -soaked affair with some real inventive riffs." Record World magazine also praised the song, commenting "It's an eerie tune with lyrics bound to hypnotize. Will climb heights." In
36676-498: The singles format to albums and achieved cultural legitimacy in the mainstream. Led by the Beatles in the mid-1960s, rock musicians advanced the LP as the dominant form of recorded music expression and consumption, initiating a rock-informed album era in the music industry for the next several decades. Progressive rock, a term sometimes used interchangeably with art rock , moved beyond established musical formulas by experimenting with different instruments, song types, and forms. From
36888-413: The skills of both guitarist Steve Howe and keyboard player Rick Wakeman , while Emerson, Lake & Palmer were a supergroup who produced some of the genre's most technically demanding work. Jethro Tull and Genesis both pursued very different, but distinctly English, brands of music. Renaissance , formed in 1969 by ex-Yardbirds Jim McCarty and Keith Relf, evolved into a high-concept band featuring
37100-412: The song as the one that kicked off the psychedelic craze, explaining "prior to 'Eight Miles High,' there were no pop records with incessant, hypnotic basslines juxtaposed by droning, trance-induced improvisational guitar." The song was responsible for the naming of the musical subgenre raga rock, when journalist Sally Kempton, in her review of the single for The Village Voice , used the term to describe
37312-493: The song at his concerts. Crosby has revisited "Eight Miles High" infrequently during his post-Byrds career, but it was performed during Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young 's reunion tour of 2000, with Neil Young handling McGuinn's guitar solo, while the other three members sang the song's three-part harmonies. The Byrds' bass player , Chris Hillman, also recorded an acoustic version of "Eight Miles High" as part of his 2005 album, The Other Side . In addition to its appearance on
37524-429: The song at number 50 on their list of the 100 Greatest Guitar Tracks . During the same month that "Eight Miles High" was released as a single, the Byrds' primary songwriter, Gene Clark, left the band. His fear of flying was given as the official reason for his departure, but other factors, including his tendency toward anxiety and paranoia, as well as his increasing isolation within the group, were also at work. Following
37736-400: The song on their I Feel Possessed EP . Don McLean 's song " American Pie " makes reference to "Eight Miles High" with the lines "The Birds [ sic ] flew off with a fall-out shelter / Eight miles high and falling fast." The First Edition 's 1968 hit, " Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In) ", contains a reference to the song with the line "I tripped on
37948-408: The song was about the band's trip to England and not drug use. However, by the early 1980s, both Crosby and Clark admitted that the song was not entirely as innocent as they had originally declared. Crosby said: "Of course it was a drug song! We were stoned when we wrote it." Clark was less blunt, explaining in an interview that "it was about a lot of things. It was about the airplane trip to England, it
38160-400: The song was at least partly inspired by their drug use. The failure of "Eight Miles High" to reach the Billboard Top 10 is usually attributed to the broadcasting ban, but some commentators have suggested the song's complexity and uncommercial nature were greater factors. "Eight Miles High" reached number 14 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and number 24 on the UK Singles Chart . The song
38372-408: The song's ending made him "feel like a plane landing." An earlier version of "Eight Miles High" was recorded with Al Schmitt at RCA Studios in Los Angeles on December 22, 1965, but Columbia Records refused to release that recording because it had not been produced at a Columbia-owned studio. McGuinn has since said he believes this original version of the song to be more spontaneous sounding than
38584-439: The songs were inspired by drugs. Although psychedelia was introduced in Los Angeles through the Byrds, according to Shaw, San Francisco emerged as the movement's capital on the West Coast. Several California-based folk acts followed the Byrds into folk rock, bringing their psychedelic influences with them, to produce the " San Francisco Sound ". Music historian Simon Philo writes that although some commentators would state that
38796-458: The stage for an important subgenre of psychedelic music, that of the messianic pronouncement". Echard highlights early records by the 13th Floor Elevators and Love among the key psychedelic releases of 1966, along with "Shapes of Things", "Eight Miles High", "Rain" and Revolver . Originating from Austin, Texas, the first of these new bands came to the genre via the garage scene before releasing their debut album, The Psychedelic Sounds of
39008-408: The term "psychedelic rock", it also refers more specifically to the heavier, harder, and more extreme ends of the genre. The peak years of psychedelic rock were between 1967 and 1969, with milestone events including the 1967 Summer of Love and the 1969 Woodstock Festival , becoming an international musical movement associated with a widespread counterculture before declining as changing attitudes,
39220-439: The term entirely, saying "they kept trying to label us; every time we turned around, they came up with a new one ... it's a bunch of bullshit." Nonetheless, the experimental nature of the song placed the Byrds firmly at the forefront of the burgeoning psychedelic movement, along with the Yardbirds , the Beatles, Donovan and the Rolling Stones, who were all exploring similar musical territory concurrently. Contemporary reviews for
39432-558: The three-octave voice of Annie Haslam . Most British bands depended on a relatively small cult following, but a handful, including Pink Floyd, Genesis, and Jethro Tull, managed to produce top ten singles at home and break the American market. The American brand of progressive rock varied from the eclectic and innovative Frank Zappa , Captain Beefheart and Blood, Sweat & Tears , to more pop rock orientated bands like Boston , Foreigner , Kansas , Journey , and Styx . These, beside British bands Supertramp and ELO , all demonstrated
39644-398: The two key cultural centres. Compared with the American form, British psychedelic music was often more arty in its experimentation, and it tended to stick within pop song structures. Music journalist Mark Prendergast writes that it was only in US garage-band psychedelia that the often whimsical traits of UK psychedelic music were found. He says that aside from the work of the Byrds, Love and
39856-409: The vehicle for cultural and social movements, leading to major subcultures including mods and rockers in the U.K., the hippie movement and the wider Western counterculture movement that spread out from San Francisco in the U.S. in the 1960s, the latter of which continues to this day. Similarly, 1970s punk culture spawned the goth , punk, and emo subcultures. Inheriting the folk tradition of
40068-438: The very first psychedelic records". Barry Miles , a leading figure in the 1960s UK underground , says that " Hippies didn't just pop up overnight" and that "1965 was the first year in which a discernible youth movement began to emerge [in the US]. Many of the key 'psychedelic' rock bands formed this year." On the US West Coast, underground chemist Augustus Owsley Stanley III and Ken Kesey (along with his followers known as
40280-424: The visual effects of the psychedelic experience. Graham became a major figure in the growth of psychedelic rock, attracting most of the major psychedelic rock bands of the day to The Fillmore. According to author Kevin McEneaney, the Grateful Dead "invented" acid rock in front of a crowd of concertgoers in San Jose, California on 4 December 1965, the date of the second Acid Test held by novelist Ken Kesey and
40492-406: The wider experimentation of progressive rock, or riff-based heavy rock. Following the lead of Hendrix in rock, psychedelia influenced African American musicians, particularly the stars of the Motown label. This psychedelic soul was influenced by the civil rights movement , giving it a darker and more political edge than much psychedelic rock. Building on the funk sound of James Brown , it
40704-418: The work of the Beach Boys , formed in 1961 in Southern California. Their early albums included both instrumental surf rock (among them covers of music by Dick Dale) and vocal songs, drawing on rock and roll and doo wop and the close harmonies of vocal pop acts like the Four Freshmen . The Beach Boys first chart hit, " Surfin ' " in 1961 reached the Billboard top 100 and helped make the surf music craze
40916-533: The work of established performers such as the Rolling Stones' Beggar's Banquet (1968) and the Beatles' Let It Be (1970). Reflecting on this change of trends in rock music over the past few years, Christgau wrote in his June 1970 "Consumer Guide" column that this "new orthodoxy" and "cultural lag" abandoned improvisatory, studio-ornamented productions in favor of an emphasis on "tight, spare instrumentation" and song composition: "Its referents are '50s rock, country music, and rhythm-and-blues, and its key inspiration
41128-404: The world, except as a new brand of painkiller ... In the '70s the powerful took over, as rock industrialists capitalized on the national mood to reduce potent music to an often reactionary species of entertainment—and to transmute rock's popular base from the audience to market." Roots rock is the term now used to describe a move away from what some saw as the excesses of the psychedelic scene, to
41340-462: Was John Mayall ; his band, the Bluesbreakers , included Eric Clapton (after Clapton's departure from the Yardbirds) and later Peter Green . Particularly significant was the release of Blues Breakers with Eric Clapton (Beano) album (1966), considered one of the seminal British blues recordings and the sound of which was much emulated in both Britain and the United States. Eric Clapton went on to form supergroups Cream, Blind Faith , and Derek and
41552-460: Was 1963's " Wipe Out ", by the Surfaris , which hit number 2 and number 10 on the Billboard charts in 1965. Surf rock was also popular in Europe during this time, with the British group the Shadows scoring hits in the early 1960s with instrumentals such as " Apache " and " Kon-Tiki ", while Swedish surf group the Spotnicks saw success in both Sweden and Britain. Surf music achieved its greatest commercial success as vocal pop music, particularly
41764-473: Was a major influence on subsequent rock-influenced jazz artists, including Herbie Hancock , Chick Corea and Weather Report . The genre began to fade in the late 1970s, as a mellower form of fusion began to take its audience, but acts like Steely Dan , Frank Zappa and Joni Mitchell recorded significant jazz-influenced albums in this period, and it has continued to be a major influence on rock music. Reflecting on developments that occurred in rock music in
41976-432: Was about drugs, it was about all that. A piece of poetry of that nature is not limited to having it have to be just about airplanes or having it have to be just about drugs. It was inclusive because during those days the new experimenting with all the drugs was a very vogue thing to do." Research analyst Mark Teehan, writing for Popular Musicology Online, has challenged the widely held view among critics, music historians and
42188-430: Was also included on the band's third album, Fifth Dimension , which was released on July 18, 1966. "Eight Miles High" became the Byrds' third and final U.S. Top 20 hit, and was their last release before the departure of Clark, who was the band's principal songwriter at the time. The song's lyrics are, for the most part, about the group's flight to London in August 1965 and their accompanying English tour, as hinted at by
42400-418: Was also the year that London began to blossom into colour with the opening of the Granny Takes a Trip and Hung On You clothes shops." Thanks to media coverage, use of LSD became widespread. According to music critic Jim DeRogatis , writing in his book on psychedelic rock, Turn on Your Mind , the Beatles are seen as the "Acid Apostles of the New Age". Producer George Martin , who was initially known as
42612-424: Was continued in the 1970s by figures such as George Thorogood and Pat Travers , but, particularly on the British scene (except perhaps for the advent of groups such as Status Quo and Foghat who moved towards a form of high energy and repetitive boogie rock ), bands became focused on heavy metal innovation, and blues rock began to slip out of the mainstream. By the 1960s, the scene that had developed out of
42824-449: Was founded in Britain), and Band of Gypsys , whose guitar virtuosity and showmanship would be among the most emulated of the decade. Blues rock bands from the southern states, like the Allman Brothers Band , Lynyrd Skynyrd , and ZZ Top , incorporated country elements into their style to produce the distinctive genre Southern rock . Early blues rock bands often emulated jazz, playing long, involved improvisations, which would later be
43036-522: Was included on the Byrds' (Untitled) album in 1970, and another live version was released as part of the 2008 album, Live at Royal Albert Hall 1971 . The song was performed by a reformed lineup of the Byrds featuring Roger McGuinn , David Crosby, and Chris Hillman in January 1989. The song remained a favorite of Clark's during his post-Byrds solo career and he often performed it at his concert appearances until his death, in 1991. McGuinn also continues to perform an intricate acoustic guitar rendition of
43248-441: Was influenced by the Grateful Dead 's improvisational and psychedelic musical style. The Vermont band Phish developed a sizable and devoted fan following during the 1990s, and were described as "heirs" to the Grateful Dead after the death of Jerry Garcia in 1995. Emerging in the 1990s, stoner rock combined elements of psychedelic rock and doom metal . Typically using a slow-to-mid tempo and featuring low-tuned guitars in
43460-682: Was pioneered by Steppeulvene , Yugoslavia, with bands like Kameleoni , Dogovor iz 1804. , Pop Mašina and Igra Staklenih Perli , and Germany, where musicians fused music of psychedelia and the electronic avant-garde. 1968 saw the first major German rock festival , the Internationale Essener Songtage [ de ] in Essen , and the foundation of the Zodiak Free Arts Lab in Berlin by Hans-Joachim Roedelius , and Conrad Schnitzler , which helped bands like Tangerine Dream and Amon Düül achieve cult status. A thriving psychedelic music scene in Cambodia , influenced by psychedelic rock and soul broadcast by US forces radio in Vietnam,
43672-523: Was pioneered by artists such as Sinn Sisamouth and Ros Serey Sothea . In South Korea, Shin Jung-Hyeon , often considered the godfather of Korean rock, played psychedelic-influenced music for the American soldiers stationed in the country. Following Shin Jung-Hyeon, the band San Ul Lim (Mountain Echo) often combined psychedelic rock with a more folk sound. In Turkey, Anatolian rock artist Erkin Koray blended classic Turkish music and Middle Eastern themes into his psychedelic-driven rock, helping to found
43884-419: Was pioneered from about 1968 by Sly and the Family Stone and The Temptations . Acts that followed them into this territory included Edwin Starr and the Undisputed Truth . George Clinton 's interdependent Funkadelic and Parliament ensembles and their various spin-offs took the genre to its most extreme lengths, making funk almost a religion in the 1970s, producing over forty singles, including three in
44096-407: Was released on March 14, 1966, in the U.S. and May 29, 1966, in the UK, reaching number 14 on the Billboard Hot 100, and number 24 on the UK Singles Chart . The song was also included on the band's third album, Fifth Dimension , which was released on July 18, 1966. Following its release, the band faced allegations of advocating the use of recreational drugs in Bill Gavin's Record Report ,
44308-411: Was taken up by bands including Pentangle , Steeleye Span and the Albion Band , which in turn prompted Irish groups like Horslips and Scottish acts like the JSD Band , Spencer's Feat and later Five Hand Reel , to use their traditional music to create a brand of Celtic rock in the early 1970s. Folk-rock reached its peak of commercial popularity in the period 1967–68, before many acts moved off in
44520-548: Was taking place globally in the aftermath of the Second World War . Cliff Richard is credited with one of the first rock and roll hits outside of North America with " Move It " (1959), effectively ushering in the sound of British rock . Several artists, most prominently Tommy Steele from the UK, found success with covers of major American rock and roll hits before the recordings could spread internationally, often translating them into local languages where appropriate. Steele in particular toured Britain, Scandinavia, Australia,
44732-439: Was the first commercially successful folk song to be recorded with rock and roll instrumentation and the Beatles " I'm a Loser " (1964), arguably the first Beatles song to be influenced directly by Dylan. The folk rock movement is usually thought to have taken off with the Byrds ' recording of Dylan's " Mr. Tambourine Man " which topped the charts in 1965. With members who had been part of the café-based folk scene in Los Angeles,
44944-430: Was the major force in American record sales and crooners , such as Eddie Fisher , Perry Como , and Patti Page , who had dominated the previous decade of popular music, found their access to the pop charts significantly curtailed. Rock and roll has been seen as leading to a number of distinct subgenres, including rockabilly, combining rock and roll with "hillbilly" country music, which was usually played and recorded in
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