(Editors Note: Jon Pennington reaches the half way mark and 1966 in his tracing of influences on modern music)
41. The Kinks
See My Friends / Never Met a Girl Like You Before (1965) [Single]
Ray Davies was awake in the early morning hours on a stopover in Bombay during the Kinks' 1965 Asian tour, when he heard some Indian fishermen chanting as they would cast out their nets and slowly reel them back in. Davies was so intrigued by the chanting that he built a song around it, using his grief over the early death of his older sister Rene as the fuel for the lyrics. The result was a UK single that represented the first successful attempt to incorporate Indian raga and drones into a pop song. We cannot know for sure, but since the song came out several months before the Beatles, Rubber Soul , the Beatles may have had See My Friends in mind when they recorded Norwegian Wood a short time later.
A big booster of the song was Pete Townshend of the Who, who once said, "'See My Friends' was the next time I pricked up my ears and thought, 'God, he's done it again. He's invented something new.' That was the first reasonable use of the drone—far, far better than anything the Beatles did and far, far earlier. It was a European sound rather than an Eastern sound but with a strong, legitimate Eastern influence which had its roots in European folk music." Townshend would later pay tribute to the Kinks' use of drone by writing The Good's Gone for the Who's first LP. According to Barry Fantoni, who knew both the Kinks and the Beatles, the Beatles listened to see my friends and said, "You know this guitar thing that sounds like a sitar. We must get one of those." The song just barely dented the Top Ten in the UK, but lacking the power chord riffage that made the Kinks popular in the US, the single flopped in America.
Chart Position: UK #10, US Did not chart
42. YardbirdsEvil Hearted You / Still I'm Sad (1965) [Single]
The opening guitar sound on the A-side is ahead of its time with a twangy yet metallic sound that both later garage, psych, and heavy metal heads would drool over, while the lyrics have a dark mood that anticipates later Rolling Stones work like Paint It Black by almost a year. Then, in the guitar break in the middle, Jeff Beck pulls off a solo that can only be described as a mash-up of slide guitar and spaghetti western.
The B-side, Still I'm Sad, is even more influential, because it uses a modal structure that de-emphasizes chord changes, thereby anticipating a lot of droning psychedelia to come, even though I believe none of the Yardbirds were using LSD at the time. Unlike the Kinks song, See My Friends, Still I'm Sad bases itself on Gregorian chant instead of raga, but it still maintains the dark mood established by the A-side. One musician who was heavily influenced by Still I'm Sad was a former beatnik jazz snob named Daevid Allen, who claimed that Still I'm Sad was the first record to convince him that rock and pop music had artistic value. Allen would then go on to form the seminal psychedelic and progressive rock bands, Soft Machine and Gong, which might never have happened if he hadn't first heard Still I'm Sad.
Chart Position: UK #3, US Did not chart
43. The Who
My Generation / Shout and Shimmy (1965) [Single]
I see some backlash against the Who's My Generation on rateyourmusic.com, because of its adoption as an anthem by Baby Boomers who failed to fulfill the song's promise to die before they got old, but its musical influence cannot be denied. It uses power chords like the Kinks did, but Pete Townshend also pulled off a guitar solo that incorporated feedback in a more sophisticated way than the Beatles intro to I Feel Fine, while John Entwistle rumbled through what was then a very rare bass solo, a solo that owed its distinctive sound to being played on a Fender jazz bass.
Structurally, the A-side began in the demo stage as a slow talking blues with lyrics that borrowed thematically from Mose Allison's Young Man Blues. In addition, Townshend saw My Generation as his opportunity to write some Dylanesque protest folk, but the Who's manager Christopher Stamp (brother of the actor Terence) wanted a single that fit more closely with the early Who's trademark mod sound. As Stamp demanded more rewrites of the song, Townshend added stutters, which mimicked what mods sounded like when they were "blocked," a slang term for being jacked up on amphetamines. When Daltrey recorded the final take for the lead vocal, he stuttered so much on the line "Why don't you all f-f-fade away?" many listeners thought he was about to drop the F-bomb.
Chart Position: US #74, UK #2
44. MonksComplication / Oh, How to Do Now (1965) [Single]
Over a decade before Malcolm McLaren conceived of the Sex Pistols as the world's greatest rock 'n' roll swindle, Karl Remy and Walther Niemann, two German admen with avant-garde aspirations, approached a quintet of recently discharged American GI's who were playing German nightclubs as The Torquay 5. Shortly afterward, Remy and Niemann drafted a manifesto in which the group would disavow its former identity as the Torquays, only to be reborn as The Monks. To publicize their new identity, the ex-Torquays, who at the time still sported their regulation Army buzz cuts, went to the barber and had the top of their scalps shaved off in the style of the medieval tonsure worn by clerics in the Dark Ages. In this way, the Monks embodied a proto-skinhead aesthetic that was even more of an extreme anti-Beatles statement than either the Rolling Stones or the Sonics.
As for the music, the instrumental bed on both the A-side and the B-side consisted of a twin organ and guitar attack with the reverberating organ piling onto a feedbacking guitar. The original inspiration for the drumming was the Merseybeat popular in the German nightclubs where the Torquays got their start, but by the time they became the Monks, the drum sound had been distilled into something more primitive and metronomic. Lyrics were either repetitive chanting or black-humored nihilism, something the Monks could get away with because, as an English-speaking band on a German label, not many German teenagers could understand the full implications of the lyrics anyway.
Complication and Oh, How to Do Now are both definitive statements of the Monks' aesthetic, but Complication also contains lyrics like "People kill./People will, for you…People go/To their deaths for you." that reflected that Monks' status as pissed off ex-GI's who weren't exactly thrilled with the Vietnam War. The Monks might not fit the image of longhaired hippie protesters, but they made a rock 'n' roll antiwar statement in both Complication and the album track Monk Time (What army?/Who cares what army?/Why do you kill all those kids over there in Vietnam?) all the way back in 1965, a year before more explicitly countercultural bands like the Fugs were doing so.
Chart Position: Did not chart in the US or UK
45. Gypsy TripsRock 'n' Roll Gypsies / Ain't It Hard (1965) [Single]
Ain't It Hard by the Gypsy Trips is the missing link in the evolution from folk rock to psychedelia. The Gypsy Trips were a male/female folk rock duo in the mold of Sonny & Cher, Lyme & Cybelle, or Friend & Lover, but with a harder Dylanesque edge. Roger Tillison, the male half of the duo, affects a nasal Dylan imitation, while his girlfriend Terrye Newkirk sings along in a reedy high-pitched soprano, like a bizarro world version of a Dylan/Baez duet. In the lyrics, which resemble Dylan circa Subterranean Homesick Blues, the duo sings "And your brother's in the bathroom with acid is head. And there's nowhere to go because the town's all dead," which may be the first explicit reference to "acid" as LSD in a pop song. The addition of keyboard sounds played backward heightens to the protopsychedelic feel. For a song released in 1965 that mentions "acid," Gyspy Trips also sounds surprisingly contemporary, similar to what the White Stripes might do if Meg White could actually sing.
Chart Position: Did not chart in US or UK
46. The Great SocietySomeone to Love / Free Advice (1965) [Single]
In 1965, the lead vocalist of Jefferson Airplane was a woman named Signe Anderson, who reminds me a little bit of Gale Garnett (of "We'll Sing in the Sunshine" fame), and the band's harmonies were influenced mainly by We Five (of "You Were on My Mind" fame). RCA Records offered this early incarnation of Jefferson Airplane a record deal and tried to publicize the group with buttons that said JEFFERSON AIRPLANE LOVES YOU. In response, another San Francisco band, the Great Society, printed buttons that said THE GREAT SOCIETY DOESN'T LIKE YOU VERY MUCH AT ALL.
The actual release date is difficult to pin down, but the Great Society recorded Someone to Love and Free Advice sometime back in December 1965. The A-side, Someone to Love, was written by Darby Slick after his live-in girlfriend decided she wasn't coming back home after hooking up with another guy. The song itself has a minor key raga feel, but in a much less polished manner than other similar experiments by the Beatles or the Kinks. For example, Darby Slick remembers that he was knocked on his heels when he heard the first note of his guitar solo coming out of the studio speakers, so much so that he did the entire solo while staggering backwards.
If Darby Slick sounds familiar, it's because his sister-in-law Grace Slick was the lead singer on the A-side. She sings in a narrow vocal range, but with just the same amount intensity, power, and icy cool reserve that she brought to her vocal work in Jefferson Airplane. In fact, Grace Slick would leave the Great Society shortly thereafter to replace Signe Anderson in Jefferson Airplane, taking two of the strongest songs from the Great Society's repertoire with her. Jefferson Airplane would change the pronoun of the A-side song to Somebody to Love, but otherwise the song was not that much different than the song that gave Jefferson Airplane its first Top Ten hit. The other song that Grace Slick brought from the Great Society with her, White Rabbit, provided Jefferson Airplane with its second Top Ten hit.
The Great Society's B-side, Free Advice, was perhaps even too weird for the newly psychedelicized Jefferson Airplane to assimilate. Inspired by Darby Slick's relationship troubles with the same live-in girlfriend who inspired Somebody to Love, Free Advice was even more musically radical with a guitarist David Minor singing an octave lower than usual range, while Grace Slick sings scat jazz raga counterpoint that circles around the main melody like a whirling dervish. Even though the San Francisco Sound was still yet in its embryonic stages, the full dementia of that city's acid rock sound would never be captured so perfectly on a 45 again.
47. Prince BusterAl Capone / One Step Beyond (1965) [Single]
I'm not sure if this came out in 1964 or 1965, but even if you leave a margin of error for a year or two, this record was quite ahead of its time. The A-side, Al Capone, anticipated gangsta rappers identifying with Al Capone and Scarface by at least 25 years. The music is classic horn-fueled ska, but Prince Buster adds the sounds of screeching tires and percussive sounds that sound like somebody cocking a rifle. It's mostly instrumental, but Prince Buster's asides ("Al Capone, guns cannot hurt you!") make it more badass than 95% of American or British rock and R&B of the time. Certainly, Twin Tone records thought so. When that label kicked off the second-wave British ska revival in the 1970s, the first 45 single they released was the Specials, Gangsters, which borrows liberally from Prince Buster's Al Capone.
The B-side, One Stop Beyond, is even more recognizable, because the second wave ska band Madness (which named itself after another Prince Buster song) revived it as the title tune of their debut album. For maximum impact on paving the way for the second wave ska revival, there is no two-sided 45 rpm single more influential than Prince Buster's Al Capone/One Step Beyond. And since he's responsible for the second wave ska revival, I suppose Prince Buster is also response for the American third wave ska revival that gave us No Doubt and all those frat boys who want to be the Mighty Mighty Boss Tones, but I'm in a good mood today, so I won't hold that against him.
Chart Position: UK #18, US Did not chart
48. The 13th Floor ElevatorsYou're Gonna Miss Me / Tried to Hide (1966) [Single]
Listening to You're Gonna Miss Me is like finding a transitional fossil, where you can witness the exact moment where garage rock turns into psychedelia. The original version of You're Gonna Miss Me by the Texas garage band, the Spades, showcases the bluesy lead vocal of Roky Erickson accompanied by Dwayne Eddy/Venture-style guitar twang, tight harmonies, harmonica, and tom tom drumming. After Roky Erickson left the Spades to join forces with the members of a jug band called the Lingsmen, the new group rechristened itself the 13th Floor Elevators with new contributions from Tommy Hall as lyricist, hype man, and jug player. When the 13th Floor Elevators recorded Roky's You're Gonna Miss Me as their debut single, the song changed slightly, but those slight changes made all the difference in transforming garage rock into acid rock.
The Elevators version of You're Gonna Miss Me has a less twangy guitar sounds with chords that reverberate with more power on the downstroke. The simpler drumming of the Spades version has been enhanced by drummer John Ike Walton's snare attack, while still retaining some of the tom tom rhythms of the original. The instrumental section toward the end includes more frenzied harmonica and guitar playing, while Roky Erickson's vocal incorporates more screams and yelps, which he had adopted from imitating James Brown. The lyrics from the Spades to 13th Floor Elevators versions have barely changed if at all, but the implications are totally different. When Roky sings "I'm not comin' home" on the Spades version, the implication is the standard R&B/garage "I'm not comin' home you two-timin' woman so you better be sorry." When Roky sing "I'm not com in' home" on the Elevators version, the implication is "I'm not comin' home, because I'm literally losing my mind due to my own insanity and massive LSD intake."
And then there's that insane whirly noise that Tommy Hall makes with his jug that's all over both the A-side and B-side. You could say it's a nod to the jug band tradition that Tommy Hall came from, but urban legend also has it that the Elevators needed the jug to hide their weed from Texas narcs.
The B-side is similarly as great as the A-side, but its version of Tried to Hide is actually faster and rawer than the version that made it into the Elevators first LP. Eventually, You're Gonna Miss Me would get released in 1966 on at least three different record labels, including HBR, which was owned by the Hanna-Barbera animation studios. Given its patchy distribution history, it's a wonder the 13th Floor Elevators amassed as much regional airplay as they did with You're Gonna Miss Me, but they never got close to the Top 40 as they would have if their distribution had been coordinated better.
Chart Position: US #55, UK Did not chart
49. The ByrdsEight Miles High / Why? (1966) [Single]
In the fall of 1965, the Byrds would ride around in their tour van, high on marijuana and LSD, while listening to cassettes of both Ravi Shankar and John Coltrane. The combination was especially influential on the Byrds' songwriting, because both Shankar and Coltrane played in a style different than most mainstream pop music of the day, using a modal structure that kept songs in the same chord for extended periods of time. The Byrds had just come back from an unsuccessful August 1965 tour in England, where they faced a backlash from critics who thought they were presumptuously trying to portray themselves as an American successor to the Beatles. Gene Clark, who would later leave the Byrds partially because of his fear of flying, wrote a song based on the UK tour experience, using a transatlantic flight to London as the opening metaphor of Eight Miles High.
McGuinn claimed that Eight Miles High was merely a reference to the airplane's height off the ground with a little poetic license to make the words fit the music, but the Shankar and Coltrane that the group listened to during their drug haze in the fall of 1965 also exerted their influence. In fact, you could say that the A-side, Eight Miles High, is Roger McGuinn trying to play guitar like John Coltrane plays sax, while the B-side, Why, represents McGuinn's attempt to play guitar like Ravi Shankar plays sitar. The raga rock the group created represented a radical new direction for the Byrds as well as pop music as a whole, but not all of their fan base was willing to go along with them, and they never hit the Top Twenty in the US again.
Chart Position: US #14, UK #24
50. LoveHey Joe / My Little Red Book (1966) [Single]
I'm dating this March 1966 to coincide with the US single release of My Little Red Book/Message to Pretty, but I'm keeping the slot for the UK single release of Hey Joe/My Little Red Book. The UK A-side is Love's garage rock arrangement of the folk song Hey Joe, which inspired legions of other garage and psych bands to take up the song, although Love's recording of the song got preempted by another L.A. group, the Leaves. The Jimi Hendrix version is based on a slower arrangement of the song that hearkens back to American folk singer Tim Rose, while Love's version is a speedier, higher octane version of the Byrds jangle sound popular at the time.
The UK B-side, My Little Red Book, was originally a melodramatic tune written by Burt Bacharach for the British Invasion group Manfred Mann to put on the What's New Pussycat? soundtrack. But by the time Love got ahold of the tune, they completely transformed the song, turning the lovelorn Manfred Mann version into a saga of a man driven crazy by both lost love and the lust for the women he's going to date to get back at the woman who dumped him. The bassline and drums thump all the sentimentality out of the song, while lead singer Arthur Lee vocal's are groundbreaking, as a rare example of a black guy fronting a predominantly white rock band. If American garage rock was all about American white guys imitating British white guys imitating American black guys, then Arthur Lee was the logical next step in the evolution: a black guy who sounded like a white guy trying to sound like a black guy. Every black rock 'n' roller from Lenny Kravitz to the guys in TV on the Radio owes a debt to what Arthur Lee accomplished on this single.
Chart Position: US #52, UK Did not chart