The album comes of age
Before the mid-1960s, the pop single was the main product of the music business. Albums were often collections of a hit or two surrounded by filler, and many artists had little say over how they were put together. By 1967 that was changing quickly. A growing number of rock musicians treated the long-playing record as a complete work, with a considered running order, cover art and, increasingly, a studio that was used as an instrument in its own right.
The best-known example is the Sgt. Pepper album by the Beatles, released in Britain on 1 June 1967. Its wraparound sleeve, printed lyrics and linked sequence of songs made it look and feel like a statement rather than a pile of singles. It was not the only ambitious record of the period, and it built on earlier work such as the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds and the Beatles’ own Revolver, both from 1966. But it arrived at a moment when audiences were ready to take pop seriously, and the wider Beatles influence on how records were made and marketed was large.
The year’s other landmark rock albums show how varied the ambition was. In rough order of release:
- The Doors’ self-titled debut (January), a darker, theatrical Los Angeles sound.
- Jefferson Airplane’s Surrealistic Pillow (February), which carried “Somebody to Love” and “White Rabbit” into the American charts.
- The Velvet Underground and Nico (March), which sold modestly at first but was later seen as hugely influential.
- Are You Experienced, the Jimi Hendrix Experience debut (released in Britain in May, in the United States later in the summer).
- Pink Floyd’s debut, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn (August).
- Cream’s Disraeli Gears (November).
Psychedelia and its limits
The word “psychedelic” was attached to a great deal of 1967’s music, and it did describe something real: long improvisations, unusual instruments such as the sitar, distorted guitars, tape manipulation and lyrics about altered perception. It grew out of the interests of the American counterculture, particularly around San Francisco, and of a London scene that overlapped with it. The wider context of psychedelic experimentation is a subject of its own, and not every musician who used the style took drugs or wanted to be identified with them.
It is also easy to overstate how dominant this sound was. Much of what people actually bought and heard in 1967 was not psychedelic at all. Chart success went to a mix of pop, country-influenced material, Motown and other soul, and novelty items. The Monkees, a group assembled for television, outsold many of the credible rock bands; the Monkees television band is a reminder that the commercial pop machine was alive and well beside the underground.
Soul and rhythm and blues
Soul music had one of its strongest years. Aretha Franklin moved to Atlantic Records and, with producer Jerry Wexler and a group of Southern session musicians, made records that established her as the leading female voice in the genre. Her version of “Respect”, an Otis Redding song, became one of the signature recordings of the decade. Redding himself was reaching a wider white audience, and his Monterey set in June was a high point before his death in a plane crash in December 1967, at the age of 26. “(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay,” recorded shortly before, was released after his death.
Motown, Stax and Atlantic were also writing a soundtrack for a country in the midst of a long argument over race, even when the songs themselves were not political.
A new festival culture
In June 1967 the Monterey Pop Festival in California brought together rock, soul, folk and Indian classical music in front of a large, enthusiastic audience. It helped launch the American careers of Hendrix and Janis Joplin and showed that a rock festival could be organised, profitable for charity and peaceful. Almost at the same time, the idea of the Summer of Love in San Francisco was spreading through newspapers and television, drawing young people to the Haight-Ashbury district and giving the music a physical home.
Radio and the press
How people heard music was changing as well. In Britain the offshore pirate stations were outlawed in August, and the BBC launched Radio 1 at the end of September. In the United States the foundations of album-oriented FM rock were being laid. In November a new music publication in San Francisco, Rolling Stone magazine, published its first issue, giving the audience a serious press of its own.
Other voices
Not all of the year’s important music belonged to the youth boom. Bob Dylan stayed out of the public eye after his 1966 motorcycle accident and then released a quiet record at the end of the year. The jazz saxophonist John Coltrane died in July, and the folk singer Woody Guthrie, an early influence on Dylan, died in October. Their deaths were reminders that the music of 1967 grew from older traditions even as it appeared to break with them.
Why it still matters
It is tempting to treat 1967 as a single moment when everything changed, but the picture is more gradual. Many of the ideas were in place in 1965 and 1966, and much of the experimentation faded or was absorbed by the industry within a few years. What 1967 did achieve was to establish, for a wide audience, that popular music could be serious, personal and ambitious, and that a record, a concert or a radio station could be built around that idea.