Folk Rock
Early 1960s
• Initial baby boomers were
approaching college age
• The election of JFK
marked a new, more
idealistic era
• Next 3 years would
witness the Bay of Pigs
Invasion, Cuban Missile
Crisis, the Civil Rights
Movement, the Free
Speech Movement
Teenager Perspective
• Dance music seemed somehow shallow
and trivial
• College students began listening to dustbowl era folksingers/balladeers such as
Pete Seeger and developed an affinity with
the 1950s
• Beat poets as a way of coming to terms
with the turmoil and conflict in this new
world
• New ideals ---- personal authenticity,
individuality, and non-conformity
College Campuses: the
Folk Revival
• Late 1950s to early 1960s – a
number of clean-cut, respectable
groups popularized folk music
• Kingston Trio, The Limelighters,
and the New Christy Minstrels --even though they were bland &
commercialized they made young
college students aware of the folk
tradition
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=UG539yiQt98
Folkies
• Soon discovered “real” folkies of the 1950s
•
•
•
•
Woody Guthrie
Pete Seeger
The Weavers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HCsW0xh
1Mk
Folkies
• Also discovered
Appalachian
folk songs,
bluegrass, & the
blues
• Odetta
(spiritual)
• Bill Monroe
(bluegrass)
• Muddy Waters
(Chicago
Blues)
• John Lee
Hooker
(Southern
“slide guitar”
blues)
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVNeozIH
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• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRCIgwpe
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• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5IOou6q
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• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSnQ0bd
HW0s
Bob Dylan
• At the same time, coffee-houses
sprang up in North Beach, San
Francisco, Greenwich Village
(lower Manhattan), & Venice
Beach
• Bob Dylan (traditional folk music)
• Traveled from Minnesota to New
York City to pay homage to a
dying Woody Guthrie
• After that, Dylan wrote and
performed his own music like
Woody Guthrie
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7qQ6_R
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• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OeP4FFr8
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• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWwgrjjI
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• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dyNya3rCPw
Bob Dylan
• Paved the way for a new
generation of folk/protest
singers
• Joan Baez, Buffy SainteMarie, Phil Ochs, Tom Paxton
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGMHSbc
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• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3AI8PVRr
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• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFFOUkipI
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• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=voqL5ksO
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Folk Style Characteristics
• Voice with simple guitar accompaniment
• Message/protest songs dealing with the aftereffects of the Great Depression, McCarthyism,
bigotry, middle-class conservative values
• Lyrics and attitude are a reaction to the
conservatism and repression of the 1950s
Folk (Bob Dylan) Hot
Spots
1.
CAFÉ WHA?
Dylan played here when he first arrived in NYC
2.
THE GASLIGHT CAFÉ
one of Dylan’s favorite haunts, performers were paid by passing
around a basket
3.
WASHINGTON SQUARE PARK
folksingers gathered here on Sunday afternoons
4.
HOTEL EARLE
Dylan lived here for a short while, room 305
5.
THE BITTER END
played here in 1975 with Patti Smith and Ramblin’ and Jack Elliott
Café Wha?
The Gaslight Café
Washington Square Park
Hotel Earle
The Bitter End
Woody Guthrie
• Woodrow Wilson “Woody” Guthrie (1912-1967)
• Dust bowl era balladeer wrote over 1000 songs
such as This Land is Your Land
• Bob Dylan traveled to NY to see him in the
hospital suffering from Huntington’s disease
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaI5IRuS2
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• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwcKwGS
7OSQ
Pete Seeger
• Another dust-bowl era balladeer
• Wrote:
•
•
•
•
•
If I Had a Hammer
Where Have All the Flowers Gone?
Turn, Turn, Turn
Gauntanamera
We Shall Overcome
• His group, The Weavers, were blacklisted during
the McCarthy hearings
Little Boxes
• Questions the status quo and
“cookie-cutter” conformity of the
1950s
• Shows contempt for upward mobile,
over-materialistic America
•
•
•
•
Play on the golf course
Favorite cocktail drinks
Kids go to the best schools
Selection the “best” and “safe”
majors
• Rejects being compartmentalized
and labeled – “being put in a box”
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1tqtvxG8
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• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlyszPdRTk
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUwUpD_VV0
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2W6dOEd
EAAQ
Folk-Rock
• Between 1965-1969 the social-conscious
message song will hybridize with Rock and Roll
to produce a fundamentally new view of pop
music ----- Folk-Rock
Folk-Rock
(1965-to late ‘60s)
• 1965 – Bob Dylan combined folk music with electric guitar
during the Newport Folk Festival initiating what was to
be the folk rock era
• Folk message combined with the popularity of rock music
merged to create a musical/societal stance that would
ultimately culminate with the Woodstock Nation (1969)
• Rock writers, counterculture
activists, and folkies all found
rock and roll was a perfect
vehicle for bringing forth their
social commentaries
• Folk rock is a turning point of
the 1960s counter-culture
revolution
• Beat aesthetics, folk messages,
and baby-boom rock and roll
merge
• The style consists of message songs with a rock
beat and backup band
• Vocal harmony, sometimes elaborate as in CSN, is a
trademark of the style
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iuLBhxZUkmU
The Byrds
• Notable members---Roger McGuinn (guitar, vocals),
David Crosby (guitar, vocals)
• Formed in 1964
• First successful & influential folk-rock band
• No. 1 hit “Mr. Tambourine Man” put them in direct
competition with the Beatles for popularity in the US
• mid-1960s – the Beatles & the Byrds even sent each
other master tapes to ‘compare notes’
• Other hits – “Turn, Turn, Turn”, “Eight Miles High”,
“So You Want To Be a Rock and Roll Star”
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ymkBEhd
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• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPqAvgN
6Tyw
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4ga_M5
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The Byrds
Frank Zappa
• Los Angeles composer/guitarist/singer
• Group was The Mothers of Invention – defined
1960s intellectualized and experimental rock
• Drew his material from a broad spectrum of
musical interests: jazz, electronics, classical
music, comic parody
• Recorded 55 albums & was highly influential
throughout the 1960-1980s
• Album Freak Out (1966) was partly inspired by
the Beatles Sgt. Pepper album
• However, Zappa gained little chart success
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dcu32QXt
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• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxAceec8
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Garage Bands
• Following the surf-rock craze of the early 1960s –
thousands of teenagers started their own surf-rock
bands
• Many used cheap guitars and low powered amplifiers
• Over-blown speaker cones created a raspy, distorted
tone
• Singers of these band rarely had their own amplifiers
• As the singers competed with guitar players for
volume, they often strained their voices and sang
close to the microphone
• Result was amateurish and crude
• 1963- a few of these bands became popular and started a
wave of garage band hits
• Now frequently called “frat rock”
• Style later evolved into psychedelic garage bands then to
Detroit proto-punk
Acid Rock & Psychedelic
Rock
• LSD (D-lysergic acid diethylamide or ‘acid’) – discovered by
accident in 1943
• Seemed to be a chemical extension of cultural
enlightenment of the early 1960s
• Beat poets experimented with hallucinogens such as
marijuana, hashish, mescaline, & peyote
• 1960s – acid experimentation began on Sunset Strip in L.A.
and quickly moved to the Haight-Ashbury district in San
Francisco
• Novelist Ken Kesey (One Flew Over the Cookoo’s Nest) and
his Merry Pranksters began throwing “Electric Kool-Aid Acid
Test” parties in San Francisco in 1965
Psychedelic
• Term frequently used in conjunction with acid rock
• Imitates how music is perceived when under the influence of mindaltering drugs
• Much use of distortion and sound effects
• Form, rhythm, and time become disjointed and distorted
• Songs tend to have languid melodies, erratic mood swings, and use of
‘freak-out’ sequences
• ‘Freak-out’ – musical tangent --- a long, disjunct jam usually started and
ended with drum cues
• Many of the psychedelic bands had absurd, nonsense group names like –
Strawberry Alarm Clock, Chocolate Watchband, Jefferson Airplane, Nitty
Gritty Dirt Band, and Electric Prunes
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhYLz63c
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• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHhj2gTH
7Yc
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkVFfKezVo
L.A. Acid Rock
• Lightly psychedelic
• Lyrics range from somber and
introspective to wild ‘freakout’ sequences
• 1st popular L.A. acid inspired
song was Mr. Tambourine
Man by the Byrds
• Soon the Mothers of
Invention and the Doors were
producing LSD inspired songs
The Doors
• Members – Jim Morrison (vocals), Ray
Manzarek (organ, electric piano), Robbie
Krieger (guitar), John Densmore (drums)
• Were stylistically ahead of their time mainly
because of Morrison’s psychologically oriented
‘beat’ lyrics
• They were banned from L.A.’s Whiskey a Go
Go after performing “The End” loosely based
on the Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex
The Doors
• Named after Aldous Huxley’s Doors of Perception
and/or William Blake’s “If the doors of perception
were cleansed/All things would appear infinite”
• Led they way to Theatre and Shock Rock
• Important songs--•
•
•
•
•
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Light My Fire
People Are Strange
Hello, I Love You
Touch Me
Love Her Madly
Riders on the Storm
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxizIrbcS
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• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7Jq1xbQ
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• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xuxu0HCr
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The Beat Poets
• A group of American poets who were
disenchanted with the conservatism of the
American status quo emerged in the mid to
late 1950s
• Some members of the broadcast media
referred to them as “Beatniks” in an
attempt to chastise the Beats for what
appeared to be their left-leaning if not
subversive viewpoints
• The term ‘nik’ often was used during the
period to imply communist leanings
Jack Kerouac
• On The Road
• Introduced the phrase
“Beat Generation” in
1948
• Used the term to
characterize a perceived
underground, anticonformist youth
movement in NYC
The Beat Poets
• The literary effects of Beat novels such as
Aldous Huxley’s Doors of Perception and
William S. Burroughs’ Naked Lunch on rock
music were evident throughout the mid1960s
• Naked Lunch described the auditory
impression of mind-altering drug experience
as “heavy metal thunder”
• Term was picked up by the Beat enthusiasts
and subsequently used in Steppenwolf’s
1965 song “Born To Be Wild”
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UWRypq
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The Beat Poets
• Huxley’s novelette The Doors of Perception about
mescaline was influential in the decision of Jim
Morrison and Ray Manzarek to call themselves
The Doors
• In many ways Beat literature has as important an
impact on mid-sixties rock as the absorption of
rhythm and blues had in the mid-fifties rock and
roll
• Beat aesthetic combined with the social & political
consciousness of the 1960s baby boomers led to
the evolution of the hippie counter-culture.
San Francisco Sound
• Musical & cultural magnet in the mid-60s
• Style is a loose-knit combination of folk,
blues, jazz, Bluegrass, and hard rock
• Main venues – Avalon Ballroom & the
Fillmore Auditorium
• Performers frequently added visual effects
to their performances (slide projections &
experimental film)
• Trend led to the development of light
shows & a shift from dance music to music
for listening/experience
San Francisco Sound
• First major acid rock band – Jefferson Airplane
• At the height of acid rock there were about
500 bands in San Francisco
Jefferson Airplane
• Formed in San
Francisco in 1965
• Pioneer of
counterculture
psychedelic rock
• 1st from the San
Francisco scene to
achieve mainstream
success
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2EdLasOr
G6c
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXmrMMY
pQL4
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WANNqrvcx0
Jimi Hendrix
• Members of the Jimi Hendrix
Experience: Jimi Hendrix (guitar,
vocal), Noel Redding (bass), Mitch
Mitchell (drums)
• Heavily influenced by the British
blues tradition
• Hendrix defined 60s guitar playing
• Not so much a pattern players as a
conceptualist, was after a “sound”
and he would use or invent any
technique or device that would
provide it for him
Jimi Hendrix
• Along with Pete Townshend,
popularized “sculptured
sound/noise” in rock music
• Style became a model for the next
generation’s guitar players
• Greatest hits – Hey Joe, Purple
Haze, Foxy Lady, The Wind Cries
Mary, All Along the Watchtower
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03yPUlBE
5OU
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjwWjx7C
w8I
Grateful Dead
• Original members--- Jerry Garcia (guitar), Phil Lesh (bass), Bob
Weir (guitar), Bill Kreutzmann (drums), Ron ‘Pigpen’ McKernan
(keyboards)
• One of the world’s loudest bands
• One of the longest surviving rock acts
• Institution as well as a band
• Most loyal of all fan-clubs – “Family” or “Deadheads”
• Best selling and most successful live band of all time
• Hits – Truckin’, Sugar Magnolia, Casey Jones, Touch of Grey
• Biggest market was in concert tapes; there are even audio feeds
(for a fee) at the concerts
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5jn58DZ6
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• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JT8zLTaK
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• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8dcQHy
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1965-1970
The Festival Years
1965 Newport Folk
Festival
• Newport, Rhode Island
• Attendance – 71,000
• July 1965
• Performers – Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger, Peter
Paul and Mary, Joan Baez
Monterey International
Pop Festival
• Monterey, California
• Attendance – 200,000
• June 1967
• Performers – Jefferson Airplane, Big Brother
and the Holding Co. (Janis Joplin), Grateful
Dead, Jimi Hendrix, Otis Redding, The Who,
Ravi Shankar
Woodstock Music & Art
Fair
• Bethel, New York
• Attendance – 450,000
• August 1969
• Performers – Richie Havens; Country Joe and
the Fish; Crosby, Stills, & Nash; The Who;
Santana; Jefferson Airplane; Sly and the Family
Stone; Jimi Hendrix; Grateful Dead; Joe Cocker
Altamont Festival
• Altamont, California
• Attendance – 300,000
• December 1969
• Performers – Rolling Stones, Jefferson
Airplane, Tina Turner, Flying Burrito Brothers
Isle of Wight Festival
• English Channel
• Attendance – 600,000
• August 26-30, 1970
• Performers – Jimi Hendrix, The Doors, The Who,
Joni Mitchell, Emerson Lake and Palmer, Sly & the
Family Stone, Moody Blues, Jethro Tull
• Last performance for Morrison & Hendrix
Flower Power
• Commercialization and marketing
of Hippie subculture
• Ballad oriented, flower power
melodies are very sing, songy
• Tunes are “laid back”
• No wild, screaming guitar work
• Lyrics tend to reflect peace, good
will, and hopeful optimism
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDl8ZPm3Gr
U
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5bUmx-hk-c
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7sjSHazjrWg
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tvu3xiFmfDU
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-aK6JnyFmk
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJ_WG3d3GL
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