There are many ways to slice and dice music history. Andrew
Grant Jackson does it by zeroing in on one year in his new book, 1965 The Most
Revolutionary Year in Music. While some might counter that the Summer of Love
or the first wave of Beatlemania were bigger, Brown lays out a convincing case.
The year began with Dylan’s Bringing It All Back Home, The
Temptations’ My Girl and The Beach Boys Pet Sounds. It ended with the Beatles
Rubber Soul. Along the way, The
Stones came up with Satisfaction, Otis Redding asked for Respect, James Brown
announced Poppa’s Got a Brand New Bag,
and the Mommas and Poppas beguiled us with California Dreaming. And that’s just for starters.
Throw in The Byrds, The Kinks, The Who, The Lovin’ Spoonful,
The Animals, The Velvet Underground, Wilson Pickett, Barry McGuire, Simon and Garfunkel and even a Sinatra
comeback.
Fueling the creativity was the roller coaster of politics
and violence of 1965: The assassination of Malcom X, Selma, the swelling tide
of American troops going to Vietnam, Watts, Medicare and the Voting Rights Act.
Jackson has done his research (he has written two books
about the Beatles) and has footnotes for every anecdote in this tapestry of
exquisite rock and roll trivia. Here are a few examples.
--Stephen Stills flunked his audition for The Monkees TV
show but recommended his friend, Peter Tork.
--Roger McGuinn discovered the Byrds’ signature 12-string
sound after seeing George Harrison playing a Rickenbacker in Hard Days Night.
--Animals manager Mickie Most flew to New York to buy Brill
Building songs from Don Kirshner, including “We Gotta Get Outta This Place” and
“It’s My Life.” He passed on “Kicks,” which went to Paul Revere and The
Raiders.
--Dylan road manager Bobby Neuwirth to Carole King: “You’re
the chick who writes songs for bubblegum wrappers, right?”
There are also funny scenes such as Dylan turning the
Beatles on to pot in a New York Hotel room and how Johnny Cash started a 500 acre forest fire in
California that cost him $82,000 fines for scattering 44 Condors.
Best of all is the way Jackson traces the creative process
of the song writers and their times.
He devotes a chapter to how Satisfaction started with Keith Richards’
midnight guitar riff, evolved by a pool in Florida, went from folk song to rock
during sessions in Chicago and LA and was completed when a roadie offered a
fuzz distortion box to the band.
The result in Jackson’s words was how “…the Stones found
their golden formula, mixing the beat of Motown, the lyrics of Dylan and Berry
and the novelty of new technology to synthesize their own style of
R&B/pop/rock.”
Jackson also documents how the sting of being booed at the
Newport Folk Festival and the subsequent harassment drove Dylan into the studio
where in three days he created Highway 61 Revisited. That escalated the music
competition toward year’s end when Brian Wilson declared (after first hearing
Norwegian Wood on his car radio), “We gotta beat the Beatles.” Many people think he did, with his next
album, “Pet Sounds.”
