1966 by Jon Savage

Author:Jon Savage [Jon Savage]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780571277643
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Published: 2015-03-16T04:00:00+00:00

Look at pictures of any young American group from 1966 and you’ll see Brian Jones bowl cuts, Mick Jagger’s slouch and shaggy mane, striped T-shirts, tailored mod jackets, polka-dot shirts, pointed ‘fruit boots’ and a general air of surly disdain. They came from all over the country, in their thousands: We the People from Florida; the Del-Vetts from Chicago; Mouse and the Traps from Texas; the Groupies from the New York area; and the Golliwogs from Oakland, to name but a few better known examples.

Most of their records took from their British models and added an American teen attack, winding up the fuzz guitars, rave-ups, choppy chords and rebarbative lyrics into a pure distillation of the teenage Now. Tough post-Brit R&B wasn’t the only option: also part of the mix were the minor-chord moods premiered by the Zombies, Byrds jingle-jangle and the first hints of psychedelia, expressed through raga-like overtones and punk-mystical lyrics.

There was one element that distinguished the American rockers from their UK counterparts: the almost ubiquitous use of the electric organ – usually a Farfisa or a Vox Continental – which usually gave a sinuous, if not sinister, undertow to proceedings. In the mid-1960s, the drive-in was a major teen venue in the US, and a constant diet of horror movies satisfied both the needs for sexual experimentation and the perennial teen penchant for living at the extremes.

Typical of these films is Carnival of Souls. Filmed in Kansas, Herk Harvey’s low-budget 1962 movie is a chilling example of the genre, full of supernatural phenomena that culminate with the appearance of dead souls in a deserted amusement park. The score relies on wispy organ motifs to give the sense of the church denied, fuelling a whole Satan-referencing subgenre that includes the Satans’ ‘Making Deals’ and ‘Speak of the Devil’ by Things to Come.

This was a style that synthesised a wide variety of elements in American teen culture, both high and low, both elitist and populist. But things were moving so fast that, by the early autumn of 1966, it was under enormous pressure from the competing demands of psychedelic experimentation and the underlying imperative of directness and simplicity. What to sing about? Inner or outer space, girls or drugs, the parents or the system – the dilemmas were acute.

One record in particular caught that moment of compression. Released in mid-1966, the Roosters’ ‘One of These Days’ was perfectly poised between glistening Byrds twelve-string jangle and surf kinetics, between high Hollies harmonies and punk-mystical lead vocals, between teen yearning and universal protest: ‘One of these days when I’m of age / And nobody can tell me what to do.’

The Roosters were a teenage group from Westchester, a neighbourhood hard by Los Angeles airport. They’d started out in surf groups, then had their heads turned by the Beatles and the Byrds. Close to the LA music industry, they quickly found a manager and a record label, Progressive Sounds of America. In a quick four-hour session, the band recorded two tracks: ‘One

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.