Classic Rock 1968: The Beat Goes On

Artists

Album Info

Release Date: 1989

Labels: Warner Special Products, Time Life Music

Volume 11 of a 30 volume set.

Track durations obtained from software.

Issued with an 8 page booklet & no barcode
No mastering code or Specialty Records Corporation logo

Produced in cooperation with Warner Special Products

Printed on back cover inlay:
Manufactured for Time-Life Music by Warner Special Products, a Warner Communications Company
℗ 1989 Warner Special Products

Booklet:
Time Life Music:
The Author:
Joe Sasfy is a regular contributor to "The Washington Post", and his articles have also appeared in "Musician, Country Music and Creem". He is chief consultant for both the Classic Rock and the Rock 'n' Roll Era series.

Time-Life Music wishes to thank William L. Schurk of the Music Library and Sound Recordings Archives, Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, Ohio, for providing valuable reference material.

Time-Life Music is a division of Time-Life Books Inc. © 1989 Time-Life Books Inc.
Printed in U.S.A.
Time-Life is trademark of Time Incorporated U.S.A.

Cover art by Ned Shatzer © 1989 Time-Life Books Inc.

Manufactured for Time-Life Music by Warner Special Products,
a Warner Communications Company
℗ 1989 Warner Special Products

Printed on CD:
Manufactured by Warner Special Products, a division of Warner Communications, Inc.
℗ 1989 Warner Special Products
Made in U.S.A.

Complete liner notes:

In 1968, the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy inspired two of the year's biggest hits, Dion's Abraham, Martin and John and the Rascals' People Got to Be Free. Whereas the former projected a weary melancholy, the latter was so irresistibly upbeat that it served as one of the era's top dance records. Atlantic was reluctant to release such a "political" song, but People Got to Be Free proved to be a near-perfect blend of message, melody and soul groove. The Rascals' Felix Cavaliere, the primary author, later said, "This is one song that I would like to leave behind that I feel strongly about."

The universal appeal achieved by People Got to Be Free was rare in an era when fewer and fewer releases could transcend the cultural divisions inherent in the burgeoning pop marketplace. Not many songs could reach a 14-year-old teeny-bopper, a 22-year-old hippie and a 30-year-old black at once. In 1968, a twist of the AM radio dial could create dramatic segues from the banality of the Turtles' Elenore to the portentous excess of Deep Purple's Hush to the ominous throb of Marvin Gaye's I Heard It through the Grapevine.

By 1968, many of rock's more progressive acts were ignoring singles altogether, leaving Top 40 radio to groups and producers catering to the tastes of young teenagers. A new genre of lightweight but danceable pop ditties emerged that was somewhat derogatorily labeled "bubblegum." Like many advertising jingles, bubblegum hits such as Green Tambourine by the Lemon Pipers were so insistent and catchy that even a tie-dyed hippie might find himself singing one in the shower. In truth, the Lemon Pipers aspired to heavier musical statements and recorded Green Tambourine only because they feared losing their contract with Buddah Records if they refused.

Tommy James and the Shondells also endured the scornful bubblegum tag, yet I Think We're Alone Now and Mony Mony have outlasted much of the more ambitious (and pretentious) music of the late-'60s counterculture legends. While writing the song in New York City, James searched for a clever girl's name to use in the title, something on the order of Sloopy from Hang On Sloopy. Stepping out onto the terrace of his apartment, he spotted at the top of the Mutual of New York Insurance Company building a large neon sign flashing "M.O.N.Y." Thus the song's heroine was born.

Bend Me, Shape Me by Chicago's American Breed typified the clean-cut pop-rock that was gaining more air play in 1968. The group eventually moved to Los Angeles and, after several personnel changes, emerged as Rufus, starring Chaka Khan. With Elenore, the all too clever Turtles actually wrote a romantic pop song that was a parody of a romantic pop song. If their somewhat subtle satire went over most teenagers' heads, the song at least captured their hearts.

Not all AM radio was so lightweight in 1968. In fact, rumblings from what would become the heaviest of rock genres - heavy metal - were first heard this year via hard-rock progenitors Cream, Iron Butterfly, Vanilla Fudge and Steppenwolf (their first single, Born to Be Wild, yielded the phrase "heavy metal thunder"). Steppenwolf, named after the Hermann Hesse novel, scored two more major hits, Magic Carpet Ride and Rock Me, before John Kay's politically oriented songs rendered them more of an underground FM radio act.

Also debuting in 1968 was Deep Purple, a British quintet that became one of the great heavy-metal groups of the '70s, earning the title of "loudest rock band" in the Guinness Book of World Records. Their first single was a cover version of Joe South's Hush (earlier a minor hit for Billy J. Royal) featuring organist Jon Lord, whose neoclassical keyboard stylings gave Deep Purple an "artsy" aura. However, by 1971 guitarist Ritchie Blackmore had effectively reduced the band's sound to a few chords and lots of decibels.

Though Joe Cocker was still a year away from his incredible performance at Woodstock, he made the American charts for the first time in 1968 with a cover of the Beatles' With a Little Help from My Friends. Heavily indebted to Ray Charles, Cocker transformed the song, which had featured Ringo's deadpan rendition, into an intense gospel plea with a little help from musician friends like guitarist Jimmy Page. By 1970, the year of his Mad Dogs and Englishmen tour with Leon Russell, Cocker had perfected the histrionic vocal style and spastic stage presence that turned him into a counterculture hero.

The psychedelic era brought more experimental production techniques to records by the Small Faces, whose Itchycoo Park incorporated electronic phase shifting to evoke the experience of being stoned. These little big men (all four members were under five feet six, hence the name) reigned as one of London's top mod bands in the mid-'60s. The group fell apart in 1969 when lead singer Steve Marriott left to form Humble Pie with Peter Frampton, but soon regained its footing after newcomers Rod Stewart and Ron Wood took control. An especially unlikely source of druggy pop was Kenny Rogers and the First Edition, who were organized by ex-members of the New Christy Minstrels. Though Just Dropped In made timely use of far-out lyrics and a taped electric-guitar intro played backwards, the First Edition quickly developed a more middle-of-the-road country-rock sound. Even party records were not immune to psychedelic touches, which may explain why the Human Beinz successfully updated the Isley Brothers' 1963 dance number Nobody but Me with a little feedback and fuzz-tone guitar. This Cleveland bar band also had to update the song's litany of dances, replacing the passe twist, popeye and mashed potatoes with the shake, shingaling and boogaloo. Conventional inebriants received their due in 1968 thanks to the Fireballs' raucous "ode de vin," Bottle of Wine. This was the same New Mexico band that had several instrumental hits in 1959 and 1960 (Torquay, Bulldog), played the overdubs on a number of Buddy Holly's posthumous releases and topped the charts in 1963 with Sugar Shack.

The hippest dance music of the era belonged to Sly and the Family Stone, whose first big seller, Dance to the Music, revealed Sly's flair for innovative vocal and instrumental arrangements. In September 1968, the group's first English tour fell apart when bassist Larry Graham was arrested for possession of grass. It was Graham's percussive (i.e., slapping and popping) playing that defined "funky" for a generation of bass guitarists.

A lighter and sweeter brand of soul music cropped up in songs like the O'Kaysions' Girl Watcher. The coolest groove of all was struck by Young-Holt Unlimited in their breezy instrumental Soulful Strut. Bassist Eldee Young and drummer Red Holt had been two thirds of the Ramsey Lewis Trio before they teamed up with pianist Ken Cragen to form Young-Holt Unlimited. The horn charts on Soulful Strut were by Sonny Sanders, who co-wrote the tune with Eugene Record of the Chi-Lites.

The influence of Sly Stone and progressive rock on black music accounted for bolder production approaches. In Philadelphia, two of the most important producers of the '70s, Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff, formed their own company and struck gold with Cowboys to Girls by the Intruders. At Motown, producer Norman Whitfield dressed up the Temptations' I Wish It Would Rain with the sounds of seagulls, thunder and rain. Nick Ashford and Valerie Simpson created a flute-and-string arrangement to buoy the romantic give-and-take of Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell in Ain't Nothing like the Real Thing.

As good a year as it was for rock and soul music, almost nothing on the AM or FM radio matched the chilling intensity of Marvin Gaye's I Heard It through the Grapevine. Norman Whitfield had overseen a saucier performance of the song (which he wrote with Barrett Strong) by Gladys Knight and the Pips, and it reached No. 2 in 1967. Gaye's version, with its sinister tom-toms, piano and bass, was actually made first, but languished in the vaults until 1968. It held the No. 1 spot for seven weeks and was the biggest hit of Motown's first 20 years. "Voodoo music," guitarist Mike Bloomfield called it.

- Joe Sasfy