The Soundtrack of the Summer of Love
So Friday was the 40th anniversary of the release of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. We’ve thus hit the 40th of the Summer of Love (everyone knows that summer really starts Memorial Day weekend). But the whole thing was more of a gradual process. Here’s my somewhat eccentric perspective on it.
This came out in February 1967 – yes, a bit of an early start. It left no doubt that something new was happening in the Bay Area. And consider that the hits – “Somebody to Love” and “White Rabbit” – dated from the previous year and new singer Grace Slick’s earlier band, The Great Society. Yup, the Summer of Love was a culmination.
Where other psychedelic bands were being constrained, Hendrix could let it all hang out. You could consider this the real beginning of the Summer of Love if not for the fact that it was released on May 12 in the U.K., but not until August 23 in the U.S. And we didn’t even get the same album as the Brits – some moron decided that Americans didn’t want to hear the blues, so “Red House” was excised against Hendrix’s wishes. Two other tracks were also cut, making room for the three hit singles “Hey Joe,” “Purple Haze,” and “The Wind Cries Mary.” Happily, we can listen to all the tracks plus the singles’ B-sides on the current CD edition
The fledgling genre of progressive rock got a kickstart from the success of “A Whiter Shade of Pale” (released May 12), which hit #1 on the British singles chart on June 10, the fastest selling single in the history of Decca (Deram was their progressive subsidiary). Combining white soul singing with Bach, featuring organ and piano along with the guitar stylings of Robin Trower, plus Keith Reid’s enigmatic poetry, it’s been said to have inspired John Lennon to write “I Am the Walrus” and to be Bernie Taupin’s favorite song.
Love? How about sarcasm? May 26 brought this album’s opening track, “Plastic People,” an attack on consumer culture and complacency that includes the telling accusation “you think we’re singin’ ‘bout someone else.” And musically Frank Zappa was way ahead of the curve (the Mothers’ ‘66 debut, Freak Out!, could be considered the first progressive rock album). Inspired not by LSD but by the avant-garde, his music was full of sudden shifts and disjunctures (such as how the Stravinsky quote in “Invocation & Ritual Dance of the Young Pumpkin” leads into a soprano sax/guitar rave-up), colorful textures unlike anything else in rock at the time, and the most bitingly witty meta-art lyrics around.
June 1 was not the release date of the Beatles’ first psychedelic album. That was Revolver, the previous year, and that’s a much better record. But there’s no denying the cultural impact of this half-baked concept album. “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” is a milestone of psychedelia, and “A Day in the Life” is an undeniable masterpiece.
Also in June came the first backlash. Columbia released five singles from this album on the same day (with B-sides, that’s nearly the whole LP), which gave off a stench of hype that was anathema to the hippies. So an album that in retrospect is considered among the best to come out of its scene was a conspicuous commercial failure. Rock and blues mix with the freaked mind of Skip Spence in an energetic yet discomforting hybrid.
July 14 brought the international debut of this Australian band. They’d come to England in ‘66 and absorbed the new sounds, then synthesized them with their Beatlesque tunefulness. “To Love Somebody” and “New York Mining Disaster 1941” (still two of their finest efforts) may not show it, but this album is psychedelic, as the most cursory listen to the Gregorian chant and Mellotron, etc. on “Every Christian Lion Hearted Man Will Show You” shows.
British psychedelia was rather different from American psych, much more so than the Beatles hinted, and on August 5 the world got to hear the new sound when Pink Floyd debuted. Led by the ill-fated Syd Barrett, who wrote all but one song on this masterpiece, the Floyd explored far spacier realms on the droning lead track “Astronomy Domine” and the inexorably powerful “Interstellar Overdrive.” There was an element of stoned whimsy that occasionally hinted at more sinister shadows, as on “Lucifer Sam.” And there’s Rick Wright’s eerie, wheezing organ textures, the often-overlooked ingredient in a style that was unique – until lots of people started imitating it.
Closing out this summer of music in September was one of the stranger albums even by the standards of that time. Fans of psychedelia found it easy to dig the freaky guitar on “Electricity.” And while Beefheart’s odd lyrics came from genuine outsider weirdness rather than chemicals, their skewed perepective fit right into what was happening.
Here’s a bit of surprising perspective: this was the only psychedelic song to reach #1 in 1967 on the American singles chart (the week of November 25). It had a convoluted origin, starting that spring – when the band was known as Thee Sixpence – as an instrumental co-written by guitarist Ed King (later of Lynyrd Skynyrd) and keyboardist/vocalist Mark Weitz. Lyrics by non-band members were grafted on, which pissed off the members, who refused to sing it; since it was just going to be a B-side, they let a 16-year-old friend, Greg Munford, sing it. To make matters worse, King and Weitz had their songwriting credits left off, which cost them plenty of royalties when the local release was picked up by Uni and went nationwide, by which time the band had its new name and history was made.
