In 1963, there was no Rock yet. Rock was not fully formed, we only had elements of it: Rock ‘n’ Roll, Rhythm & Blues, and dozens of flavors of Pop. You may argue my point; indeed, I hope you will.
I’m kicking around this question: What distinguishes late ‘60s Rock Music from the Rock ‘n’ Roll that Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry and Little Richard were recording in the ‘50s? The Beatles released their first two LPs in 1963 — weren’t they already making Rock then?
Here’s the distinction as I see it: the first Beatles LPs had punch and range, like Buster Keaton’s black and white silent movie, The General; but Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band had an organic wholeness, a broader palette of color and wonder, and a cinematic magic like The Wizard of Oz. In those five years, Rock’s tools, techniques and storytelling grew into a brave new world of expression.
In this diary and many more to come, we’ll be listening to the ‘60s by year and by album, to see how the Rock ‘n’ Roll and Pop of 1963 evolved into the far deeper and more complex Rock of later years.
The West Side Story soundtrack was the best-selling LP of 1962 in the US and in the UK. In 1963, it was again the best-selling LP in the US. It was a magnificent musical, and a brilliant recasting of Romeo and Juliet, filled with killer tunes by Bernstein and Sondheim. It drew on Pop, Jazz, Classical and Latin elements, and it crackled with life and wit. It was hip and happening. But it was not Rock.
So which songs in 1963 were at least heading in the direction of Rock? First though, let’s look at the previous decade, to see how Rock ‘n’ Roll was born, bred, and began to dream of better days.
The Golden Age of Rock ’n’ Roll
This is a prologue. If you just want to hear Rock from 1963, skip right to the next section.
The 20th Century gave birth to most of the music ever made. The first half invented radios, records and jukeboxes that carried all kinds of music around the world, and to every town in America. Blues, Jazz, Gospel, Folk and Country each evolved over these decades, and in the 1950s they all merged to form Rock ‘n’ Roll.
This journey was already then a long and complicated tale, with hundreds of little steps forward (in technique, composition, rhythm and energy), coalescing into a revolution in popular music that went on to transform our whole culture. Historians have written books debating which advances mattered most, and where were the major watersheds. For a quarter hour preface to that debate, here are samples from fifty songs that advanced the roots of Rock ‘n’ Roll, from 1927-49.
What was the first real Rock ‘n’ Roll song? Well, there are a lot of contenders. The title you hear most often is ’Rocket 88’, sung by Jackie Brenston, played by Ike Turner’s Kings of Rhythm. In the spring of ‘51 it sounded like the future. It was #1 on the Billboard R&B chart, and made Sam Phillips (its producer) enough money to build Sun Records. For all this inspiration, Ike earned just $20.
In 1952, Big Mama Thornton’s ‘Hound Dog’ proved a leap forward from R&B towards Rock ‘n’ Roll, and in larger than life rock star attitude. [This song ties into so many elements of Rock’s history that its wikipedia entry is 10 pages, with 3 more of footnotes. It inspired answer songs, disputes about authorship and copyright, and 250 cover versions. One of those was Elvis’s biggest single, which sold 10,000,000 copies, and made #1 in the pop, country and R&B charts, to become "an emblem of the rock 'n' roll revolution".]
In 1954 a storm was gathering, but few discerned what Rock ‘n’ Roll would become. They didn’t know what they had with ‘Rock Around the Clock’; it was originally tossed away as a b-side, and labelled a “fox-trot.” A year later it played behind the opening credits of Blackboard Jungle, which spurred it to become the first Rock ‘n’ Roll #1 — but also wedded this new music to teenage delinquents, in the public eye. However, Rock ‘n’ Roll struck a chord with all the yearning players of tomorrow.
“The birth of Rock ‘n’ Roll for me? Seeing Bill Haley and the Comets in Rock Around the Clock with my best friend at the time. God, that band SWUNG! We were eleven years old.” — Pete Townshend
“It's very hard to tell what made me first decide to play the guitar. Rock Around the Clock by Bill Haley came out when I was ten, and that probably had something to do with it.” — Dave Gimour
Also in ‘54, Elvis Presley (& Scotty & Bill) started finding his own voice on his first single, a cover of Arthur Crudup’s ’That's All Right’. Little Richard started recording in ‘51, but exploded into Rock ‘n’ Roll in ‘55, with ‘Tutti Frutti’. Chuck Berry had done the same a few months earlier with his first single, ’Maybellene’. So in 1955 Rock ‘n’ Roll was the most exciting current in popular music, but listeners and bands still hadn’t got the knack of it. Mostly, it was Rhythm & Blues trying to become something new. American Juke Box operators announced there were 60% more R&B records being selected than a year earlier.
Here in the mid-’50s we find the Golden Age of Rock ‘n’ Roll: Jerry Lee Lewis, Buddy Holly, Fats Domino, Johnny Otis, Bo Diddley, Gene Vincent, Carl Perkins, Eddie Cochran, The Coasters, Jackie Wilson, The Everly Brothers and others were all recording hits that laid a foundation for decades of music to come.
But Rock ‘n’ Roll stirred up America, and the squares of the ‘50s pushed back. It wasn’t just young and wild, it looked far too Black and threatening to the mainstream. This is a large, compelling, and tragic theme. I could write the history of Rock ‘n’ Roll and then Rock, from the ‘40s until the Disco and Hip-Hop backlashes, through the lens of American racism and cultural appropriation. For the purpose of this diary, I’ll just point you to the middle of a BBC documentary, and recommend that you watch the first three minutes of this segment. Several people are interviewed; most of the first minute is Sam Phillips, and most of the second is Little Richard. And those are survivors, who rode the juggernaut while many others were crushed under it. Black rock ‘n’ rollers were ripped off by whites and hated by squares — but music also reaches across social boundaries, encouraging self-expression, openness, empathy and, in the long run, it helps unite us all in a common humanity.
Here was a pantheon of young, blazing gods, inspiring a youth movement crossing racial boundaries. They were discovering the pressures of fame, money and sundry temptations. Sharks were exploiting them, and The Man was pushing back against their threat to his status quo. Cosmic misfortune also played a part. The brightest flew too near the sun, and soon began tumbling out of heaven.
In October of ‘57, Little Richard retired to become a preacher (until ’62). In March of ’58, Elvis Presley got drafted. In August his mother died of heart failure, and part of his heart died with her. The army knocked some of the wild youth out of Elvis, which was crucial to his charisma and creative energy. He had ten #1 hits in the two years before his draft; but only eight in the last twenty years of his life. In May of ‘58, word got out that Jerry Lee Lewis had legally married his thirteen-year-old cousin Myra, and the scandal destroyed his career. He was blacklisted from the radio, fell from from $10,000 a night concerts to $250 a night spots in beer joints and small clubs, while most of his friends and supporters abandoned him. February 3, 1959 was "The Day the Music Died", when Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and The Big Bopper were all killed in a plane crash. In December ’59 Chuck Berry was arrested, for transporting a fourteen-year-old across state lines to work as a hatcheck girl at his club.
After I wrote this, Chuck Berry died. So I’m adding four paragraphs. He was a complex man, who suffered lot of racism and exploitation, giving him hard armor against trust. Here’s a longish 2003 NYT article, drawing the contours of his life and psyche: Sweet Tunes, Fast Beats and a Hard Edge.
Still lean and handsome at 76 and probably the most influential rock musician ever, at least this side of Elvis, Mr. Berry remains as suspicious, defiant and guarded offstage as he is mesmerizing on. In a life overshadowed by three prison terms, his own inner demons and the humiliations of racism, he now carefully avoids any public hint of the anger and resentment that seem to lurk just beneath the surface. . . . By the time Mr. Berry left federal prison, he was, by some accounts, a different man.
''Never saw a man so changed,'' Carl Perkins, the songwriter, singer and guitarist, once told Michael Lydon, a journalist, as he recalled a 1964 tour of Britain with Mr. Berry. ''He had been an easygoing guy before, the kinda guy who'd jam in dressing rooms, sit and swap licks and jokes. In England he was cold, real distant and bitter. It wasn't just jail. It was those years of one-nighters; grinding it out like that can kill a man. But I figure it was mostly jail.''
Chuck Berry was the second most influential Rock ’n’ Roll star, after Elvis. Like the Ramones twenty years later, he grabbed the energy of a movement and reduced it to a formula that thousands wanted to copy — thus inspiring all the Rock guitar gods and songwriters of the ‘60s. But the Ramones had earlier examples to draw on: Garage Rock, Iggy & the Stooges, the New York Dolls. Chuck Berry was tailoring a new form out of whole cloth. He made it sound simple, his riffs and rhymes patterned snugly together; but he’s always doing several things at once. A prolific genius.
The dawn of the ’60s saw a plethora of pop, but the thrill and danger of that initial Rock ’n’ Roll tsunami was ebbing away. Along came a new breed of producers, to shape and craft the innovations of the ’50s into “little symphonies for the kids.”
The heart of this is a playlist of 20 songs from 1963.
If you don’t feel like reading any commentary, just listen and watch the videos.
If you are curious for commentary read on. However if you want more of the essence of these songs, then watch them again, listening more closely.
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The Ronettes — Be My Baby
In 1963 Phil Spector was the hippest man in music, and only slightly mad (so far). It took 42 takes of ‘Be My Baby’ to satisfy Spector and, ok, he’d occasionally shoot the studio ceiling to get his Wrecking Crew back in line. "The things Phil was doing were crazy and exhausting," said Larry Levine, Spector's engineer. "But that's not the sign of a nut. That's genius."
Veronica Bennett was, for better and worse, a muse to Spector. When he auditioned the group, she began singing ‘Why Do Fools Fall in Love’ — Phil suddenly jumped up from his seat and shouted: "That's it! That's it! That's the voice I've been looking for!"
The Beatles, Motown, and every other producer studied Spector’s hits. ‘Be My Baby’ was a peak of his craft, and one of the first songs that he crammed a whole orchestra into (also the first track Cher ever sang on). Brian Wilson listened to ‘Be My Baby’ thousands of times; ‘Don’t Worry Baby’ is his boy’s reply to it. Wilson called ‘Be My Baby’ the greatest pop record ever made, and said “I was unable to really think as a producer, until I really got familiar with Phil Spector’s work.”
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The Crystals — Da Doo Ron Ron
Spector didn’t invent the original Wall of Sound, Richard Wagner did that a century earlier. Wagner brought many innovations and, I think, influenced Rock even more than Bach or Beethoven did. In order to immerse the audience in his operas, he darkened his auditorium and moved the orchestra. Before, the musicians had played from backstage, accompanying the singers; Wagner introduced the orchestra pit, building a wall of sound that the singers’ voices had to fight their way through.
Spector called his technique “A Wagnerian approach to Rock ’n’ Roll.” He built a dense Wall of Sound by cramming more instruments into his Gold Star Studios than should have fit there: up to five guitars, three pianos, three basses, three saxophones, two trumpets, two trombones, and various percussion instruments. It shouldn’t have worked. A producer usually aims for clarity, but Spector ended up with a murky, oversaturated stew. That complexity was why it took 42 takes to weave his magic just right. At his best, he achieved a sound everyone copied, but no one could match.
Sonically, this dense wall of sound from bass to treble retained more of its flavor, from a jukebox, in a car in busy traffic, or even coming out of a tiny radio. Sonic density across the whole spectrum also made for a stronger radio signal, that carried better over long distances without fading out.
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dusty springfield — i only want to be with you
On New Year’s Day ‘64, this was the second song ever played on ‘Top of the Pops.’ (The first was the Rolling Stones, singing Lennon and McCartney’s ‘I Wanna Be Your Man’). ‘I Only Want to Be with You’ is baroque pop, elevated by a powerhouse tune with layers of horns, strings, choir and percussion. This was a polished, articulate English version of Spector’s Wall of Sound.
Soon I’ll have diaries on ‘Rock Music in 1964’, and so on. Those later diaries will include more British songs — this one has just 6 British songs out of 20 (and only 3 of these 6 made the US charts). The USA created and owned Rock ’n’ Roll in the ‘50s, and it took British bands years to catch up. Dusty was a pilgrim, with the third hit of the British Invasion (‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’ and ‘She Loves You’ were already in the Billboard charts when this song arrived).
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martha & the vandellas — heat wave
You already know the Motown Sound because, like the Beatles, you’ve heard it on soundtracks and radios for your whole life. Motown had 110 Top 10 singles from ‘61 to ‘71, and most of them are in here — If you don’t own any Motown then buy this, which is probably the greatest box set ever: Hitsville USA: The Motown Singles Collection 1959–1971
The Motown Sound: Motown specialized in a type of soul music it referred to with the trademark "The Motown Sound". Crafted with an ear towards pop appeal, the Motown Sound typically used tambourines to accent the back beat, prominent and often melodic electric bass-guitar lines, distinctive melodic and chord structures, and a call-and-response singing style that originated in gospel music. In 1971, Jon Landau wrote in Rolling Stone that the sound consisted of songs with simple structures but sophisticated melodies, along with a four-beat drum pattern, regular use of horns and strings and "a trebly style of mixing that relied heavily on electronic limiting and equalizing (boosting the high range frequencies) to give the overall product a distinctive sound, particularly effective for broadcast over AM radio". Pop production techniques such as the use of orchestral string sections, charted horn sections, and carefully arranged background vocals were also used. Complex arrangements and elaborate, melismatic vocal riffs were avoided. Motown producers believed steadfastly in the "KISS principle" (keep it simple, stupid). Despite the growth of popular music being written and performed by black artists, the songs would not become popular or recognized unless the music was being performed by white performers. However, the Motown Sound became distinctly unique, making it impossible for white performers to replicate its sound. The "real" Motown Sound became more favorable than the altered renditions.
Martha & the Vandellas were a magnificent band who got short shrift at Motown. They had great songs and big hits for a few years. But in 1965, Diana Ross started dating Berry Gordy, the Motown Boss. Production and songwriting was channelled toward the Supremes, and there was no longer much room in the limelight for Martha & the Vandellas. Personally, I think Martha Reeves had the best natural voice and perhaps the most vocal talent, of all the fine female singers at Motown.
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marvin gaye — can i get a witness
But Marvin may have been the finest Motown singer of all. He looks heavenly in this video: what a face, frame and grace. But so much trouble in his heart. He was raised in public housing in a slum. His father was a Pentecostal minister who gave him brutal whippings for small mistakes. Marvin later said it was like “living with a king, a very peculiar, changeable, cruel, and all powerful king." He felt that had his mother not consoled him and encouraged his singing, he would have killed himself. In his teens, his father frequently kicked him out of the house, until he left home at 17.
Marvin contended with artistic and emotional struggles for the rest of his too brief life. But he transcended them frequently in his music, notably with What’s Going On. Berry Gordy refused to release the title single — he said it was "too political" for radio. So Marvin went on strike, until Berry gave in. It turned out Marvin was right, he’d invented where ‘70s Soul was heading. What’s Going On broke the boundaries of the ‘60s hit formula, paving the way for Stevie Wonder’s imperial phase.
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eddie holland — leaving here
Motown was a meteor that smashed our world, killed off dinosaurs, and gave birth to new branches in the kingdom of life. They changed how music was made and sold, Rock and the ‘60s, American culture and especially race relations. As I write more diaries on ‘60s Rock, I will return to all these topics. For now, just a glimpse of those changes, from inside the Hit Factory:
Smokey Robinson: “I recognized the bridges that we crossed, the racial problems and the barriers that we broke down with music. I recognized that because I lived it. I would come to the South in the early days of Motown and the audiences would be segregated. Then they started to get the Motown music and we would go back and the audiences were integrated and the kids were dancing together and holding hands.”
These last three are my favorite Motown songs from ‘63. They all have strong melodies, bursting with energy (Motown’s hit formula); but they’re also rougher-edged than a lot of Motown songs, more like Stax. All three of these songs were written and produced by Holland–Dozier–Holland, who were the main creative team at Motown in ‘63, alongside Smokey Robinson.
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rufus thomas — walking the dog
Motown called themselves “Hitsville”, and modeled their production line on Detroit’s car companies; Stax Records called themselves “Soulsville”, and aimed for a broader, funkier Memphis stew. They didn’t cleave tightly to a hit formula; their music had less polish and more humanity; their company and players were inter-racial; they stretched further, into blues, jazz, gospel and funk. If you don’t own any Stax, start with this splendid 2CD overview: Stax 50: A 50th Anniversary Celebration
Phil Spector’s house band was the Wrecking Crew, Motown’s was the Funk Brothers, Stax had Booker T. & the M.G.'s — they had their own career, and also played on almost all of Stax’s other hits.
The Stax house band's working methods were unusual for popular music recording at the time, and it was this that attracted the interest of Atlantic Records' Jerry Wexler. . . . the Stax sessions ran as long as was needed, the musicians moved freely between the control room and the studio floor, and all were free to make suggestions and contributions as they worked up what are known as head arrangements, in which none of the musicians' parts were written down and nothing was worked out in advance.
Stax's unusual working methods first came to Wexler's attention in the fall of 1963. He was expecting a new single from Carla Thomas, but when he contacted Stax he was told that they had been unable to record for two weeks because of faults in the recording equipment, so he immediately flew Atlantic's highly skilled house engineer Tom Dowd down to Memphis that Friday. Dowd had the equipment fixed within two days, and on the Sunday he was able to act as engineer during the creation of a new Rufus Thomas track. He was amazed by the loose, improvisational feel of the session and by the way Thomas and the musicians developed and recorded the song: Thomas simply sang through the new number for the band once or twice, humming suggestions for their parts and sounding the rhythm by clacking his teeth close to their ears. Once the new head arrangement was established, Dowd started recording, and Thomas and the band nailed the song in just two takes. When Dowd returned to New York the next day he had the tape of Thomas' breakthrough hit ‘Walking the Dog’, which Jim Stewart lauded as the best-sounding record Stax had yet produced. Wexler later commented: “Memphis was a real departure, because Memphis was a return to head arrangements, to the set rhythm section away from the arranger. It was a return to the symbiosis between the producer and the rhythm section. It was really something new.”
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the rolling stones — come on
Chuck Berry wrote this song when he was fighting off the “transporting a fourteen-year-old across state lines” case, and his career was in the doldrums. Berry’s song reeks of all the hard luck and frustration he was struggling through at the time.
The Stones’ style and technique had a long evolution ahead, but this first step captured some of their early energy and excitement; though only a fraction of what they were stewing up live onstage. This song aimed for a poppy sound, to break through and get the Stones played on the radio. However, their mission was to sound authentically bluesy, so they dropped this song and never played it live. Later in the decade, they’d branch out in many directions, several of them poppier than this.
This cover was the Rolling Stones’ first single; their fifth would be another Berry song, ‘Carol.’ Brian Jones didn’t sing on many songs, but he added high-pitched backing vocals here. Their ‘Come On’ captured the same dead-ending feeling as Berry’s version, but with a faster, harder-edged sound.
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the beach boys — surfin’ u.s.a.
This one, on the other hand, sounds just the way Chuck wrote it. ‘Surfin’ U.S.A.’ is a rip-off of Berry’s ‘Sweet Little Sixteen’, which Brian Wilson just added new lyrics to. From ‘66 on, it was credited to Wilson/Berry. Listening to these versions side by side, Berry’s inimitable guitar playing stands out, and Lafayette Leake’s boogie-woogie piano; on the Beach Boys’, Brian Wilson was already playing nimble bass, and he complements Mike Love’s vocals with falsetto in the choruses.
Guitarist David Marks: "The energy on the ‘Surfin' U.S.A.’ session was very upbeat and happy. That's where that chemistry thing kicks in again. . . . there was a certain energy on that track that was a one-of-a-kind happening. It wasn't perfect in a technical sense, but the vibe was something special that had a lasting effect." On top of that infectious energy, Brian was just finding his stride as a producer. He weaves a lot of elements into this mix, and ends up with a bright, shiny pop sound.
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the trashmen — surfin’ bird
This song is perfect, stupid fun. I was a green fifteen when I stumbled across this, via a Cramps cover version, on a 12” with their equally deranged ‘Human Fly.’ It was unlike any music I’d heard before. The Trashmen’s video, even more deranged than the song itself, is icing on an exploding cake. Rock doesn’t have to make sense, it’s commitment that counts. Or maybe getting committed.
The Trashmen were from Minneapolis. The feeling of ‘Surfin’ Bird’ was inspired by a road trip to California in the spring of ‘63, and the music and lyrics sprang from two songs by a doo wop group, The Rivingtons. Here are their two source songs, ‘Papa-Oom-Mow-Mow’ & ‘The Bird's The Word.’ The originals are infectious, and The Rivingtons have more technique than The Trashmen — but it’s the latter’s manic energy that engraved ‘Surfin’ Bird’ into history books, and our memories.
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the kingsmen — louie louie
‘Louie Louie’ and ‘Surfin’ Bird’ were two of the first Garage Rock singles; they were the vanguard of an influential style, which also was a root source of Punk. As with ‘Surfin’ Bird’, the chaotic energy here is infectious. The vocals sound slurred, almost drunken. Jack Ely was wearing braces, and the mic was hung from the ceiling far above him, to create a better “live feel” of Ely inside the band. He had to stand on his toes and lean his head back: “It was more yelling than singing, 'cause I was trying to be heard over all the instruments.”
That sloppy sound was key to the single’s success. It was a regional hit in the Northwest, until Boston’s biggest DJ played it as his “Worst Record of the Week.” A rumor grew that the unclear lyrics were obscene, and square outrage (it was banned by the Indiana governor) made the song hot. Then it took off, spending six weeks at #2 in the charts. The FBI spent 31 months investigating the lyrics, at every speed they could think of, but they were "unable to interpret any of the wording in the record." The lyrics are innocent (except for the drummer yelling "Fuck!" after dropping his drumstick at the 0:54 mark). It’s about a sailor who spends three days traveling to Jamaica to see his girl.
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heinz — just like eddie
Joe Meek, the producer, was a weird amateur English Phil Spector. Spector was personally weird; so was Meek, but he was equally weird in his musical taste and sonic experiments. Spector worked with the best session musicians in LA; Meek built a DIY studio in a flat above a handbag shop. He didn’t craft a hit formula, he was on a quest to create a unique "sonic signature" for each distinct record he produced. He jerry-rigged electronic devices, and pioneered multi-tracking, compression, reverb and echo. Just like Spector, Meek was a visionary, haunted by demons, with a tragic demise in the end.
This diary has taken me more hours and weeks than any other I’ve written — I wandered down so many paths of research. Joe Meek’s life and music were the most fascinating. He absolutely deserves a diary of his own. The least I can do is point you to three peaks of his singular genius. Here is John Leyton with ‘Johnny Remember Me’, about Johnny being haunted by his dead girlfriend. It was banned by the BBC, but kicked off a transatlantic fad of “death discs.” Haunting in two ways: like all of Meek’s best work, it’s full of unforgettable hooks. Meek’s most immortal song was a space-age instrumental that he made a thematic video for in 1962. It was the first British Rock #1 in the US charts, a year before the Invasion. Here is much of that video: The Tornados’ ‘Telstar.’
Central to Meek’s tragedy was being gay when that was illegal. He had an unrequited passion for the Tornados’ bassist, Heinz Burt, which he poured into making Heinz a star. He got him to peroxide his hair, plucked him for a solo career, then gave him several singles and this big hit. 18 year old Ritchie Blackmore plays guitar, but you won’t see him in the video, taken from the biopic Telstar: The Joe Meek Story. However, that is a young James Corden on drums. The ‘Just Like Eddie’ bridge effectively samples Eddie Cochran’s biggest hit; yet again, Meek was twenty years ahead of his time.
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dave clark five — glad all over
Released in December ‘63, this song followed right after Dusty Springfield, both on the first ‘Top of the Pops’ and in the British Invasion. The video plays like an ad for the band, America, and the British Invasion. Engineer Adrian Kerridge developed a massive drum sound for this track, which became known as the “Tottenham Sound.” Dave Clark, the drummer: “I knew that we needed a song with the thumps in. we had been playing dance halls and we were getting a great audience response to the stomping things we were doing. . . . 'Glad All Over' didn't take long at all to write. Your best songs are the ones you seem to do very quickly. It was a great hook, and a very simple one.”
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the beatles — she loves you
Beatlemania came to a boil with this, the most popular British single up to 1963. It remained the top-selling British single until 1977, when Paul’s ‘Mull of Kintyre’ dethroned it. Heh. ‘She Loves You’ is a landmark in Rock and pop history; Wikipedia nicely summarizes its creation and impact.
In July of ‘63, the Beatles were already starting to become Rock Gods. Their engineer, Geoff Emerick, wrote a book (Here, There and Everywhere), about his experience of and insights into the Beatles’ personalities and music, and especially the nuts and bolts of crafting their sound. Here are his teenage impressions of the day ‘She Loves You’ was recorded:
‘In those early days of Beatlemania, there always seemed to be at least a hundred girls camped outside the studio in hopes of seeing one or more of the group dash to or from their cars. How they knew when the Beatles were due to come in was a complete mystery to us—their sessions were always booked under the pseudonym “The Dakotas” (after the band that sometimes accompanied Billy J. Kramer)—but clearly the fans had some kind of network because they’d always begin arriving an hour or so before the group did. Despite the size of the crowd, there were only ever four or five policemen assigned to control them, which always struck me as being ludicrously inadequate. On this particular day, the Beatles had, unusually, shown up several hours before the session to pose for pictures in an alleyway behind the studio, giving the girls plenty of time to call their friends, and that had swelled the crowd even more than usual. By climbing on top of the walls around the studio perimeter, the girls could see them, and the four Beatles had been waving and smiling to them throughout the afternoon, adding fuel to the fire.
‘That was the backdrop to the explosion that was about to occur. It all started innocuously enough. As John, Paul, and George tuned up in the studio, Norman noticed that the microphone on the bass amplifier was distorting, so he asked me to go downstairs and move it back a few inches, Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Mal and Neil go out of the studio door, no doubt heading for the canteen to fetch the first of an endless stream of cups of tea for the four musicians. On this day, though, they wouldn’t be gone for long.
‘ “FANS!!”
‘There was no mistaking Big Mal’s booming voice as he shot back through the door, tailed closely by a breathless Neil. The four Beatles stopped what they were doing and stared at him.
‘ “What the bloody hell are you on about?” Lennon demanded.
‘Before Mal could get the answer out, the studio door flew open again and a determined teenage girl sprinted in, heading straight for a bewildered-looking Ringo hunched behind his drum kit. Instinctively Neil launched himself at her in a perfect American football-style tackle and brought her to the ground before she could reach her quarry. It all seemed to be happening in slow motion before my widened eyes.
‘As Mal dragged the sobbing teenager out the door, Neil caught his breath and broke the news: somehow the huge crowd of girls that had been gathered outside had overpowered the police and broken through the front door. The canteen was swarming with them, and dozens of rabid fans were racing around the EMI facility in desperate search of the Fab Four. . . .
‘Curious as to what the fuss was all about, I poked my head out the door. What I saw astounded, amazed, and frightened me . . . but it also made me burst out in laughter. It was an unbelievable sight, straight out of the Keystone Kops: scores of hysterical, screaming girls racing down the corridors, being chased by a handful of out-of-breath, beleaguered London bobbies. Every time one would catch up with a fan, another two or three girls would appear, racing past, screeching at the top of their lungs. The poor copper wouldn’t know whether to let go of the nutter he was struggling with and go after the others, or whether to keep his grip on the bird in hand.
‘As I wandered down the hallway, I could see the scene being repeated everywhere. Doors were opening and slamming shut with alarming regularity, terrified staffers were having their hair pulled (just in case they happened to be a Beatle in disguise), and everyone in sight was running at top speed. The fans were totally out of control—Lord knows what they would have done to the four Beatles if they had actually gotten their hands on them. The grim determination on their faces, punctuated by squalls of animal-like screaming, made the whole thing even more bizarre. . . .
‘There’s no doubt in my mind that the excitement of that afternoon helped spark a new level of energy in the group’s playing. “She Loves You” was a fantastic song, with a powerhouse beat and a relentless hook—Norman and I immediately agreed that it was destined to be a hit, for sure—but there was also a level of intensity in the performance that I had not heard before . . . and, frankly, rarely heard since. I still judge that single to be one of the most exciting recordings of the Beatles’ entire career.’
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tito puente — oye como va
"Oye como va" means "Hey, how's it going?"; "Oye como va mi ritmo" means "Listen to how my rhythm goes."
This is the 15th song here, but the first lasting longer than 2:45. 1963 Pop prioritized cookie-cutter radio product over individual artistic expression. The 20 songs here are the best ear-cookies I could find, and they each cram a lot of individual art into their cookie moulds. Now we need an empanada in this mix. Tito Puente was a son of Puerto Rican immigrants, raised in Spanish Harlem; but ‘Oye Como Va’ is a Cuban cha-cha. Tito’s orchestra foreground flute and horns, while the backbone of the song is its sinuous Latin rhythm. A glorious sound, unlike anything in the charts.
You probably know Santana’s 1970 reworking of ‘Oye Como Va’. Santana forged a distinctive style out of many Rock elements, with Latin rhythms and percussion at its heart. They brought that sound into mainstream Rock, and influenced bands and listeners everywhere. On his last album, Tito Puente said to the Birdland audience: "Beautiful Santana. He put our music, Latin Rock, around the world, man. And I'd like to thank him publicly 'cause he recorded the tune and he gave me credit as the composer of the tune. So since that day all we play is Santana music."
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johnny cash — ring of fire
Johnny Cash always walked his own line, answering to his muse instead of fashion. He added mariachi trumpets to ‘Ring of Fire’ because he heard them in a dream.
June Carter and Johnny were each married to someone else in ‘63, but there was chemistry between them. Johnny was exciting, dangerous and unstable. June saw the phrase "Love is like a burning ring of fire" in a book of Elizabethan poetry, then wrote this song while driving around aimlessly one night, worried about Johnny’s wild ways, and her irresistible attraction to him.
When June’s sister needed one more song to complete her album, June finished ‘Ring of Fire’ with Merle Kilgore’s help, then handed it over to Anita. Johnny loved the song, dreamed of it with horns, then told Anita "I'll give you about five or six more months, and if you don't hit with it, I'm gonna record it the way I feel it." Anita’s version tanked; but Johnny’s was a Country #1 for seven weeks in the summer of '63, breathing new life into his career. Later in ‘63, Cash recorded a Spanish version.
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roy orbison — mean woman blues
Elvis and Jerry Lee each recorded this song in ‘57 — but Roy was the first to score a hit with it. Elvis once said Roy’s voice was the greatest and most distinctive he had ever heard. Orbison is known for that monumental voice, and his mastery of it. Before this song, he had twelve hits, half of them Top Ten. But those were mostly ballads or pop; ‘Mean Woman Blues’ was straightforward Rock ‘n’ Roll, a rare style for Orbison.
I love this sublime video and performance. Orbison plays a mean guitar, he has the band and the audience in the palm of his hand, and he conducts the song just where he needs it to go. He purrs, as in ‘Pretty Woman’; but he did it here first. Roy’s ‘Mean Woman Blues’ is supple, swinging, flawless.
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bob dylan — a hard rain’s a-gonna fall
In Rock history, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan was the most influential LP of 1963. Yes, even more than the Beatles’ first LPs: it was more original, and further ahead of the mainstream. But it’s not a pretty LP, and this is one of the uglier songs on it; unless you’re inured to or fond of Dylan’s abrasive folk singing. This song is raw, bleeding, romantic, inchoate, a reaching towards meanings beyond our ken. Dylan is our great white Jewish soul singer, a barbaric yawper over the rooftops of our minds.
But I don’t want to sell Bobby short, so here are two prettier songs from the LP: ‘Don't Think Twice, It's All Right’, and a sweet Canadian VHS of him singing ‘Girl from the North Country.’ On Freewheelin' Dylan committed to his muse, and set out to find his voice; or rather, with his mercurial soul, voices. This was Dylan’s second LP; his first had only two songs he’d written, and sold a scant 5,000 copies. Dylan needed to make his mark here. He devoted himself to writing, editing, performing, trying new paths, then scrapping flawed songs. He did this for a year, with eight recording sessions spaced throughout it. In the end he found a plethora of voices, and collected thirteen disparate gems. This LP established Dylan as a spokesman for his generation, much to his own chagrin. Dylan wrote: "The press never let up. Once in a while I would have to rise up and offer myself for an interview so they wouldn't beat the door down. Later an article would hit the streets with the headline "Spokesman Denies That He's A Spokesman". I felt like a piece of meat that someone had thrown to the dogs."
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the chantays — pipeline
‘Pipeline’ was the first Surf Rock song to hit the charts, although Dick Dale had been exploring this soundscape for a couple of years already. The Beach Boys were about to bastardize Surf Rock into a mainstream pop phenomenon, but it started quite differently, as an instrumental exploration of the power and glory of guitars. Early Surf Rock foregrounded guitar sounds, boosted and distorted them with newfangled technology, and swirled Middle Eastern and Mexican influences into the tunes.
The Chantays wanted to capture the sound of crashing waves. They put their bass and rhythm guitars and electric piano at the front of the mix, and achieved a fresh, distinctive sound. I don’t think the ocean sounds like that, but they did capture the propulsive thrill of surfing and the natural flow of big waves. The Chantays inspired many imitations and cover versions, but never had another hit.
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doctor who theme — Delia Derbyshire
What an eerie, visionary tune. This is the song here farthest ahead of 1963. While Dylan was pushing the boundaries of Rock songwriting, the Doctor Who theme had a more oblique impact. It blew the minds of children watching a weekly SF series, leaving uncanny echoes in their imagination. Some of those echoes returned almost two decades later, in music by Gary Numan, Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, Depeche Mode, The Human League, Simple Minds, Ultravox and others.
Though electronic composer Delia Derbyshire has been referred to as "the unsung heroine of British electronic music," it wouldn't be a stretch to expand upon the accolade and call her an unsung heroine of music, period -- regardless of nationality, regardless of field. The leading light of the BBC's Radiophonic Workshop throughout the '60s and the first half of the '70s, Derbyshire's most notorious work is the instantly recognizable theme for the infamous science fiction program Dr. Who. But Derbyshire was no mere flash in the pan. She was a great talent and a great mind, and she should be regarded with the likes of Karlheinz Stockhausen and Raymond Scott as one of the key figures to push electronic music forward.
The Doctor Who theme was solely credited to Ron Grainer, as composer. But he composed a skeleton, then Derbyshire added all the imagination, experiment and hard work that made this theme shimmer and haunt us. I’m excerpting Derbyshire’s entire process from Wikipedia; you may not be familiar with every term, but you’ll grasp the many layers of her creative accomplishment.
Each note was individually created by cutting, splicing, speeding up and slowing down segments of analogue tape containing recordings of a single plucked string, white noise, and the simple harmonic waveforms of test-tone oscillators which were used for calibrating equipment and rooms, not creating music. The main, pulsing bassline rhythm was created from a recording of a single plucked string, played over and over again in different patterns created by splicing copies of the sound, with different pitches and notes achieved by playing the sample in different speeds. The swooping melody and lower bassline layer were created by manually adjusting the pitch of oscillator banks to a carefully timed pattern. The non-swooping parts of the melody were created by playing a keyboard attached to the oscillator banks. The rhythmic hissing sounds, "bubbles" and "clouds", were created by cutting tape recordings of filtered white noise.
Once each sound had been created, it was modified. Some sounds were created at all the required pitches direct from the oscillators, others had to be repitched later by adjusting the tape playback speed and re-recording the sound onto another tape player. This process continued until every sound was available at all the required pitches. To create dynamics, the notes were re-recorded at slightly different levels.
Each individual note was then trimmed to length by cutting the tape, and stuck together in the right order. This was done for each "line" in the music – the main plucked bass, the bass slides (an organ-like tone emphasising the grace notes), the hisses, the swoops, the melody, a second melody line (a high organ-like tone used for emphasis), and the bubbles and clouds. Most of these individual bits of tape making up lines of music, complete with edits every inch, still survive.
This done, the music had to be "mixed". There were no multitrack tape machines, so rudimentary multitrack techniques were invented: each length of tape was placed on a separate tape machine and all the machines were started simultaneously and the outputs mixed together. If the machines didn't stay in sync, they started again, maybe cutting tapes slightly here and there to help. In fact, a number of "submixes" were made to ease the process – a combined bass track, combined melody track, bubble track, and hisses.
Grainer was amazed at the resulting piece of music and when he heard it, famously asked, "Did I write that?" Derbyshire modestly replied, "Most of it." However the BBC, who wanted to keep members of the Workshop anonymous, prevented Grainer from getting Derbyshire a co-composer credit and a share of the royalties.
To put Derbyshire’s vision and hard work in perspective, consider that three years after this the Beatles, George Martin, Geoff Emerick and several others at Abbey Road achieved a fraction as much with their tape experiments, on ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ and the rest of Revolver. Which earned them praise worldwide, and inspired many other Rock bands to try tape manipulations.
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Dear Readers & Listeners, thank you for sharing your time and attention. I poured lots of thought, work and love into this diary. I suspect that, for 90% of kossacks, this diary is just too damn long.
If you want to say a brief hello, or thanks, or “How could you leave out James Brown, or Patsy Cline, or . . .”, then I’ll be glad to read and learn. Though if I forgot someone essential to Rock in 1963, or the Golden Age of Rock ‘n’ Roll, you could just make the case for them in your comment. If you do respond to my fervor for Rock with a substantial comment of your own, I will answer it. But please be patient, as it may take me half a day to do so. I have had my vision.
Tuesday, Apr 18, 2017 · 12:45:09 AM +00:00 · Brecht
I am well satisfied with this essay, and delighted with all the songs, ideas and passion so many kossacks added in their comments. I did think later that it could have used a conclusion tying all twenty songs together — but I was spent, I had nothing, I needed sleep.
Today I read a marvelous Dylan interview, in which he riffed poetically on the Golden Age of Rock ‘n’ Roll. Dylan is true and eternal, and his words make a fair dessert here:
Q: As a kid, did rock and roll feel like a new thing to you or an extension of what was already going on?
Dylan: Rock and roll was indeed an extension of what was going on – the big swinging bands – Ray Noble, Will Bradley, Glenn Miller, I listened to that music before I heard Elvis Presley. But rock and roll was high energy, explosive and cut down. It was skeleton music, came out of the darkness and rode in on the atom bomb and the artists were star headed like mystical Gods. Rhythm and blues, country and western, bluegrass and gospel were always there – but it was compartmentalized – it was great but it wasn’t dangerous. Rock and roll was a dangerous weapon, chrome plated, it exploded like the speed of light, it reflected the times, especially the presence of the atomic bomb which had preceded it by several years. Back then people feared the end of time. . . . Jerry Lee Lewis came in like a streaking comet from some far away galaxy. Rock and roll was atomic powered, all zoom and doom. It didn’t seem like an extension of anything but it probably was.