Psychedelic Rock

'Psychedelic'

Rock

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Quite simply, 'Psychedelic Rock' is the sub genre of Rock wherein, artists influenced

by the developing drug culture of the late 1960s, attempted to reflect hallucinogenic

experiences within their music. While still persisting today, the main period of

Psychedelic Rock was largely in the years 1967 - 1970.

Timothy Leary's Last Trip

Timothy Leary is generally considered the 'God father' of the drug hallucinating, psychedelic rock sub-culture, and in many ways was a founding father of the Hippie movement and Counterculture.

Inspired or influenced by psychedelic drug culture, Psychedelic Rock (PR) attempted

to replicate and enhance the mind-altering experiences of psychedelic drugs within

music. At the time it used new recording techniques and effects and also included non-

Western influences and instruments, such as the ragas and drones of Indian music.

Moody Blues - Legend Of A Mind

PR was pioneered by

musicians including The

Beatles, The Byrds, and The

Yardbirds. It largely emerged

as a Rock genre during the

mid-1960s among Folk Rock

and Blues bands in the

United Kingdom and United

States.

Top 10 Psychedelic Songs

Other bands influencing and being influenced by PR, included the Grateful Dead,

Jefferson Airplane, The Jimi Hendrix Experience, Cream, The Doors and Pink Floyd.

PR reached a peak in between 1967 and 1969 with the Summer of Love and

Woodstock Rock Festival, becoming an international musical movement and associated

with a widespread counter-culture. However it soon went into a decline as attitudes to

drugs changed, some key artists died or were negatively affected by drugs, and a back-

to-basics movement, led surviving by performers emerged to steer Rock into new

musical areas.

PR & Its Drugs

Main Drugs: Cannabis, Benzedrine and

Lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) – or

'Acid'.

'Acid' began to be used in the UK and the

US in the 1950s. It was a hallucinogen,

and often used for mental illness as an

experimental treatment. To quote

Wikipedia: 'In the early 1960s the use of

LSD and other hallucinogens was

advocated by proponents of the new

"consciousness expansion", such as

Timothy Leary, Alan Watts, Aldous

Huxley and Arthur Koestler. Their

writings profoundly influenced the

thinking of the new generation of youth.'

There had long been a culture of drug use

among Jazz and Blues musicians, and, in

the early 1960s, use of drugs (including

cannabis, peyote, mescaline and LSD)

grew among folk and rock musicians,

who also started to include drug

references in their songs.

Jefferson Airplane - White Rabbit

The Beatles - I Am The Walrus

The Beatles & Bob Dylan

Two Famous Originators

Two of the most successful acts in Rock history were also major early instigators of

PR. The Beatles and Bob Dylan both experimented with and made mention of drug use

and its effects in their music. Bob Dylan released "Subterranean Homesick Blues" in

1965, and included the line, "Johnny's in the basement, mixing up the medicine", and

also in his "Mr. Tambourine Man" he stated "Take me on a trip upon your magic

swirling ship". The Beatles, influenced by Dylan (who also apparently introduced them

to cannabis), soon followed suit with drug references and seemingly drug influenced

'psychedelic' sounds in their music. Some such early songs included 'Norwegian Wood',

'Day Tripper', and then many more on Sgt Pepper's and other albums. Some of the

most famous included Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds, Magical Mystery Tour And

others, and perhaps the greatest attempt at psychedelic music was 'A Day In The Life''.

Beach Boys - Good Vibrations

Donovan

As psychedelia emerged

into a mainstream,

commercial force, it

increasingly influenced pop

music, which incorporated

hippie fashions, and the

sounds of sitars, fuzz

guitars, and tape effects.

The Beach Boys' "Good

Vibrations" broke such

new PR ground by

incorporating psychedelic

lyrics and sounds.

Donovan soon followed in

PR such hits, as "Sunshine

Superman" and "Mellow

Yellow" (1966) among

others.

Beatles - Magical Mystery Tour

The Small Faces

Other British PR bands soon followed such as

Cream, Jimmy Hendrix, Traffic, The Who, The

Rolling Stones, The Animals, The Small Faces, and

many more as steadily the Psychedelic influence

became the core of the counterculture. Soon most of

the major British bands became influenced by this

sub-drug hallucinogenic culture. The Yardbirds in

particular, increasingly moved into psychedelic

territory, adding up-tempo improvised "rave ups",

Gregorian chant and world music (in particular

Indian) influences to their songs. They were soon

followed by bands such as Procol Harum, The

Moody Blues and The Nice.

The PR Drug Culture Scene in the US

The popular PR drug culture among musos and their

fans really took off in the US in the mid 1960s, much

of it in San Francisco centered around LSD and its

‘associated psychedelic effects. Wikipedia writes:

‘From 1964, the Merry Pranksters, a loose group

that developed around novelist Ken Kesey,

sponsored the Acid Tests, a series of events based

around the taking of LSD accompanied by light

shows, film projection and discordant, improvised

music known as the psychedelic symphony. The

Pranksters helped popularize LSD use through their

road trips across America in a psychedelically-

decorated school bus, which involved distributing the

drug and meeting with major figures of the beat

movement, and through publications about their

activities such as Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool-

Aid Acid.’ Many other bands became influential in

the hallucenogentic, PR scene in the US including

the Byrds. The San Francisco sound soon developed

which mixed Folk Rock with psychedelic influences.

The Grateful Dead were prominent, as were Country

Joe and the Fish, The Great Society, Big Brother and

the Holding Company, The Charlatans, Moby Grape,

Quicksilver Messenger Service and Jefferson

Airplane. Also add Blue Cheer, Count Five, Iron

Butterfly, Frank Zappa & The Mothers of Invention,

and of course The Doors. The Beach Boys topped it

off with their ‘Pet Sounds’ album which in many

ways heralded the psychedelia movement in

America, 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.'

Cream - Strange Brew

Jimmy Hendrix - Purple Haze

Small Faces - Itchycoo Park

The Doors - Light My Fire

Blue Cheer - Peace of Mind

Traffic - Hole In My Shoe

Rolling Stones - 2000 Light Years

The PR High Point

Psychedelic Rock reached its high point in the last years of the 1960s. In 1967, The

Beatles led the way with many PR hits, topping it off with the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely

Hearts Club Band album, largely seen as their definitive psychedelic statement,

followed up by The magical Mystery Tour. Procul Harum then released, the enigmatic

but extremely popular 'Whiter Shade of Pale', followed by the Rolling Stones answer to

them all with 'Their Satanic Majesties Request, and Pink Floyd produced what is

usually seen as their best psychedelic work 'The Piper at the Gates of Dawn.' Other

lesser bands released similarly quality filled PR albums, marking 1967 as perhaps the

high point of this whole sub-genre.

Procul Harum - A Whiter Shade Of Pale

Pink Floyd - The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn

Demise of Psychedelic Rock (Well Almost)

PR was in steep decline by the end of the 1960s. LSD was criminalised in the US and

UK in 1966. In 1969, the Manson 'Family' murdered Sharon Tate and others, claiming

to have been inspired by Beatles' songs such as "Helter Skelter", in turn thus inspiring

an enormous anti-Hippie backlash. Also in that year the Altamont Free Concert in

California, headlined by The Rolling Stones, turned into a debacle when the Hells

Angels acting as security for the concert stabbed a black fan to death. Also many major

Rock Gods of the era, soon became drug casualties to varying extents- including Brian

Wilson, Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones, Peter Green of Fleetwood Mac, Jimi Hendrix

and Syd Barrett of Pink Floyd. Their subsequent bands soon shifted focus. Others such

as Cream broke up, Janis Joplin also died followed by Jim Morrison of the Doors.

Many surviving acts moved away from psychedelia back into more back-to basics

"roots rock", or traditional-based, whimsical Folk, Progressive Rock and Heavy Rock.

(Older) Cream - Pressed Rat & Warthog

Psychedelic

Rock, with its

distorted guitar

sound, extended

solos and

adventurous

compositions,

has been seen

as an important

bridge between

blues-oriented

(Newer) Gnarls Barkley - Crazy

Rock and later Heavy Metal. And today it still remains an important, though perhaps

less powerful and morally acceptable influence on Modern Western Rock music.

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