What a year. And this is just the tip of the iceberg!
The Beatles, Sgt.
Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Parlophone) - Released: May 25,
1967
A concept album about loneliness and alienation
introducing a handful of sad characters that are all marked by destiny,
living their lives under the dark and gloomy skies of the 20th Century,
all heading for the terrifying abyss that succeeds the roaring finale of
“A Day In The Life”.
“Sgt. Pepper” would be quite bleak were it not for
its colourful embellishment and sonic wonders. It sounds happy, its
sounds like a celebration, but it is not, its undercurrents are very
dark. It’s a warning performed as a show, with ringmaster, galloping
horses and all. There’s joy and laughter as well as tears and despair.
Although it was embraced by the hippy trippy summer
of love, “Sgt. Pepper” goes way beyond the flowery naivety of that
particular moment in time. It is a timeless warning addressing all
humankind, magnificently dressed up in music and soundscapes so
wonderful you actually believe it is possible to save the world even if
time is running out. As in all classic tragedies: Catharsis.
Contents: Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club
Band/With a Little Help from My Friends/Lucy in the Sky with
Diamonds/Getting Better/Fixing a Hole/She’s Leaving Home/ Being for the
Benefit of Mr. Kite!/Within You Without You/When I’m Sixty-Four/Lovely
Rita/Good Morning Good Morning/Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
(Reprise)/A Day In The Life
Jimi Hendrixix
Experience, Are You Experienced (Track/Polydor) - Released: May 12, 1967
After three magnificent hit singles in five months,
Jimi’s debut album finally arrived, preceding “Sgt. Pepper” by two short
weeks and joining it as the main soundtrack to ‘the summer of love’.
Most of the tracks are short and loud and focus
almost entirely on Jimi’s extraordinary guitar playing. He made the
electric guitar do things that no one had ever thought possible. It
sounded supernatural and it made guitar heroes like Eric Clapton and
Pete Townshend feel like boy scouts. The bending of the notes, the way
he made them ricochet through the soundscapes, the stuttering, the
riffing, the fiery rhythmic comments, the wailing solos, the
psychedelia. The music is hot and sexy. He played the guitar as if it
was a woman, taking her all the way to ecstasy and beyond. There will
never be anyone like him again.
Contents: Foxy Lady/Manic Depression/Red House/Can
You See Me/Love or Confusion/I Don’t Live Today/May This Be
Love/Fire/3rd Stone from the Sun/Remember/Are You Experienced
Pink Floyd, The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn (Columbia) - Released:
August 5, 1967
Syd Barrett was a dazzling, mind expanding supernova,
astounding, overwhelming, terrifying. Then he imploded and collapsed,
thrown into a disturbed and infantile microcosm, slowly disintegrating,
leaving a curse that was to haunt Pink Floyd forever.
Their recordings from 1967 captures Barrett’s
unfathomable mind drama, the megaton explosions seconds before the
meltdown of his firework-brain turned the genius into a sad and tragic
basket case. But he had this extraordinary shot in him that became “The
Piper At The Gates Of Dawn”.
The album has two personalities: there’s the lengthy
improvisations, obsessive, psychedelic outbursts bathed in feedback and
distortion. And then there’s the whimsical, eccentric, child-like little
songs that are both scary and mysteriously attractive. Probably the
greatest piece of psychedelic rock ever made.
Contens: Astronomy Domine/Lucifer Sam/Matilda
Mother/Flaming/Pow R. Toc H./Take Up Thy Stethoscope and
Walk/Interstellar Overdrive/The Gnome/Chapter 24/The Scarecrow/Bike
The Doors, The Doors (Elektra) - Released: January 4, 1967
The group’s first album, simply titled “The Doors”,
is considered one of rock’s strongest debuts. It provided them with a
worldwide hit, “Light My Fire”, and terrified parents everywhere with
“The End”, clocking in at almost 12 minutes (it’s a half recited poem
set to music based on Sophocles’ tragedy ‘Oedipus the King’).
King Oedipus didn’t know that the man he killed was
his father, neither did he know that the woman he married and who
carried his children was his mother. In Jim Morrison’s dark, Freudian
version ‘the killer’ knows perfectly well who his targets are as he
walks down the hallway, and when he finally enters his mother’s bedroom
the protagonist lets out a bloodcurdling roar of agony that marks one of
rock’s most horrifying moments.
There are lighter tracks on this superb album, stuff
you can dance to, but eventually you will always return to “The End”. A
stunning achievement it was, years later it was used in the opening
sequence of the movie ‘Apocalypse Now’ (1979).
Contents: Break on Through (To the Other Side)/Soul
Kitchen/The Crystal Ship/Twentieth Century Fox/Alabama Song (Whisky
Bar)/ Light My Fire/Back Door Man/I Looked at You/End of the Night/Take
It As It Comes/The End
Bob Dylan, John Wesley Harding (Columbia/CBS) - Released: December
27, 1967
When he finally returned (from the noisy city), he
did it gently (to the wooden hills of Woodstcok). His voice had turned
into an unfamiliar clear tenor. Some of the lyrics were humble and in
wonder, religious like, but with an admonitory and moralizing undertone.
A few Kafka references are thrown in for good measure (“Drifter’s
Escape” is clearly influenced by “The Trial”: the Trial was bad
enough, but this is ten times worse…).
The extremes are represented by the apocalyptic and
irresistibly hypnotic “All Along The Watchtower” (one of Dylan’s most
economical and frightening lyrics) and the sweet country-ballad “I’ll Be
Your Baby Tonight” (which closes the album and points towards the next).
Contents: John Wesley Harding/As I Went Out One
Morning/I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine/All Along the Watchtower/The
Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest/Drifter’s Escape/Dear Landlord/I
Am a Lonesome Hobo/I Pity the Poor Immigrant/The Wicked Messenger/Down
Along the Cove/I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight
The Velvet Underground: The Velvet Underground & Nico (Verve) -
Released: March 12, 1967
One of the most influental rock albums of all time.
Completely ignored when it was released, but attaining a cult status of
herculean proportions as the 70’s arrived. Lou Reed and John Cale
started here.
Contents: Sunday Morning/I’m Waiting for the
Man/Femme Fatale/Venus in Furs/Run Run Run/All Tomorrow’s
Parties/Heroin/There She Goes Again/I’ll Be Your Mirror/The Black
Angel’s Death Song/European Son
The Who, The Who Sell Out (Track) - Released: December 15, 1967
Purports to be a broadcast by pirate radio station
Radio London, capturing the swinging 60’s in all its glory. It’s simply
impossible not to love this wonderful album.
Contents: Armenia City in the Sky/Heinz Baked
Beans/Mary Anne with the Shaky Hand/Odorono/Tattoo/Our Love Was/ I Can
See for Miles/Can’t Reach You/Medac/Relax/Silas Stingy/Sunrise/Rael (1
and 2)
Procol Harum, Procol Harum (Regal Zonophone) -
Released: December, 1967
Proving there was much more to them than “A Whiter
Shade Of Pale”, this is a fantastic musical journey. Deeply fascinating
lyrics, a marvellous singer, keyboards galore and a guitar player who
adds a blistering raw nerve to the proceedings.
Contents: Conquistado/She Wandered Through the Garden
Fence/Something Following Me/Mabel/Cerdes (Outside the Gates Of)/A
Christmas Camel/Kaleidoscope/Salad Days (Are Here Again)/Good Captain
Clack/Repent Walpurgis
Cream: Disraeli Gears (Polydor) - Released: November 10, 1967.
Cream’s crowning moment, mixing their heavy electric
blues with huge doses of psychedelia. They hit bull’s eye. Eric Clapton
proves that he could hold his own, even if Hendrix had arrived.
Contents: Strange Brew/Sunshine of Your Love/World of
Pain/Dance the Night Away/Blue Condition/Tales of Brave
Ulysses/SWLABR/We’re Going Wrong/Outside Woman Blues/Take It
Back/Mother’s Lament
The Kinks: Something Else By The Kinks (PYE) - Released: September
15, 1967
More magnificent social satire and wonderful stories
of everyday people, and although it is a dark record it’s got “Waterloo
Sunset” on it.
Contents: David Watts/Death of a Clown/Two Sisters/No Return/Harry
Rag/Tin Soldier Man/Situation Vacant/Love Me Till the Sun Shines/Lazy
Old Sun/Afternoon Tea/Funny Face/End of the Season/Waterloo Sunset
