CLASSIC ROCK

[noreply66]

At Motown records,owner Berry Gordy Jr. kept his hit-making machine rolling by pitting his writers and producers against one another.When Smokey Robinson couldn't take the Temptations into the top 10,Gordy handed the writing and production chores to Morman Whitfield,who quickly reestablished the group's prominence with "Ain't Too Proud to Brag and "Beauty Is Only Skin Deep.Whitfield toughened the Temps' sound in (I Know) I'm Losing You by emphasizing the raw,gritty vocals of David Ruffin.

[noreply66]

Motown's most important creative force was the team of Holland-Dozier-Holland,responsible for eight of the label's 12 top-10 hits in 1966.With " You Keep Me Hanging' On," they gave the Supremes,now the most successful female act in pop history,their eighth #1 song.It was the Four Tops ,though who received H-D-H's most imaginative production.Opening with a flute and a galloping rhythem pounded out on a board,"Reach Out I'll Be There" melded dramatic pauses,intense orchestration and Levi Stubb's heated shouting into one of the era's most potent singles.

[noreply66]

Success in the teen-age record market was just one of Gordy's aspirstions for Motown's artists.He established the Artist Development Division (or Motown U ,as it was known) to polish his acts so they would be able to enter the more sophisticated world of adult entertainment.This paid off the Supremes,who performed at Lincoln Center's Philharmonica (now Avery Fisher) Hall and the Copa,sang with Judy Garland at the opening of the Houston Astrodome and had a loaf of bread manufactured in their name.

[noreply66]

1966

More and more soul hits were emanating from the Deep South by 1966,including two of the decades most enduring ballads,"Tell It Like It Is" by Aaron Neville and " When a Man Loves a Woman" by Percy Sledge.A hospital orderly by day,Sledge was singing at a dance when,out of despair over a failing relationship,he improvised the song with his band."Wasn't no heavy thought to it,"Sledge recalls." I was just so darn sad." Following his first national tour,Sledge checked into the most expensive room in the hospital where he worked and let his former bosses wait on him for a week while he recovered from "nervous exhaustion."

[noreply66]

In England,the press reported on a curious phenomenon involving a group of young people who had forsaken civilization and become cave dwellers,or troglodytes.In their honor,manager Larry Page christened his group the Troggs,and they topped the charts with Wild Things,a thundering three-chord rocker featuring an ocarina solo from ex-bricklayer singer Reg Presley.An R.F.K.sound alike parody of Wild Thing by one Senator Bobby followed and was also a hit.

[noreply66]

Primal rockers like "Gloria,I Fought the Law and Dirty Water quickly became standards at frat parties,teen dances and other occasions where rock invited more drinking and dancing than thinking.El Paso's Bobby Fuller was a Buddy Holly adept who,after achieving national stardom with " I Fought the Law" in the mid 60s,was found dead in his car under mysterious circumstances (the cause of death was ruled asphyxiation due to gasoline inhalation).This song by ex-Cricket Sonny Curtis (who also wrote "Love Is All Around," the theme for "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" was first recorded by the Crickets after Buddy Holly's death.

[noreply66]

Chicago's Shadows of Knight were a Stones-influenced band that attained immortality by waxing one of rock's great spellalongs.Gloria, This was a British import courtesy of Van Morrison and Them,whose original 1965 version barely dented the charts in this country.Another group emulating the snarling blues of the Rolling Stones was the Standell,who turned six-note riff into Dirty Water, a punk paean to Bean Town,U.S.A. Larry Tamblyn, brother of actor Russ Tamblyn,and former Mousketeer Dick Dodd were both members of this Los Angeles quartet.

[noreply66]

In 1967,the Standells performed the title track to Riot on Sunset Strip,a teen exploitation film that penetrated,according to its ads,"the mod,mod world of Hippies,Teenyboppers and Pot-Partygoers out for a new thrill or a new kick!" The movie and song were inspired by riots that erupted in the summer of 1966 on Hollywood's Sunset Strip,where hordes of teenagers congregated outside of clubs like The Whiskey,The Trip,Ciro's and It's Boss. Four hundred miles north,in the incense-and drug-infested Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco,even more young people were gathering.If 50s rock 'n' roll had given America youth a new language,the rock of the 60s was about to lunch a whole new subculture.

[The Instructor]

I would have liked to have been around in the 60's to see some of the stuff that went on back then.

[noreply66]

Like so many rock songs of this era,the obtuse lyricism of Eight Miles High(e.g., Plain town know for its sound,in places small faces unbound") invited various interpretations.The Byrds maintained that Eight Miles High described the somewhat foreboding England they encountered on a disastrous United Kingdom tour in late 1965.The song,featuring Roger McGuinn's incredible 12-string-guitar leads inspired by jazz innovator John Coltrane,was perhaps the group's finest moment and the year's most musically single.Thanks partly to the Gavin Report's stigmatization,the record stalled at No.14 on the charts.

[noreply66]

Donovan's Mellow Yellow was also suspect,thanks to a few which seemed to attribute psychedelic properties to bananas,(e.g. "Electrical banana is gonna be a sudden craze").Banana peels were dutifully dried and fultilely smoked all across America before everyone realized that a more satisfying effect was achieved by discarding the peel and eating the fruit.One rumor about the song proved true--Paul McCartney sang backup vocals

[hoodie]

anything that is played by LED

[hoodie]

smoke on the water -deep purple

[hoodie]

white room-cream

[LoganFootball63]

long cool woman (in a black dress) -- The Hollies

[mustang_lvr]

great song there 63

[noreply66]

The clean-cut Association also took some heat for their first hit,Along Comes Mary, widely viewed as an ode to Marijuana.Group member Ted Bluechel later explained that the song"can be about anything you want it to be," noting that many parochial schools named St.Mary's used it at pep rallies.

[noreply66]

1966

Given the atmosphere of freewheeling interpertation it's a small wonder that no one branded the Lovin' Spoonful'sDaydream or the Mama and the Papas'California Dreamin' as products of drug-induced reveries.John Phillps wrote his West Coast fantasy on a dreary winter day while he and Michelle Phillips were living in Manhattan.Shortly there after,the couple hooked up with two folkies,Denny Doherty and Cass Elliot,in the Virgin Islands and there the cascading harmonies of the Mamas and the Papas took shape.

[noreply66]

1966

Though drugs were on(or in) most everybody's mind rock songwritters hardly abanded old-fashion topics like sex.Erotic connotations were obvious in Lou Christie's Lightnin'Strikes and its follows up,Rhapsody in the Rain. In fact,there was such an outcry over Rhapsody that Christie returned to the studio and rewrote passages such as "In this car,our love went too far." These songs,like his earlier material,were penned by Christie and Twyla Herbert,a clairvoyant who claimed she could predict which of his records would become hits.

[mustang_lvr]

1966.........Along comes Mary------------The Association