With pop music since the 50s (when teenagers were invented as a cultural category), the artists each generation grows up on are always from the one before. 16 year old artists aren't the people 16 year olds grow up liking.
So the 60s era, the listeners were Boomers but the artists were Silents. My generation (Gen X) liked performers that were Boomers: Prince, Madonna, U2, REM, Michael Jackson, Bruce Springsteen...Milennials like Gen X performers, etc.
Weird that someone is quibbling about "silents vs boomers" when we're only talking about a difference of 5 years at most. Let's just settle on the "Woodstock generation". I don't know of any attendee or musician who was over 30. Except, presumably, Ravi Shankar.
You mention Ray Davies, so you have no excuse not to have mentioned The Kinks, who released the excellent "Sunny Afternoon" during your favorite 14 months.
I am 47 and don't think this is Boomer nostalgia. But broadly, I think all the bands you mention got even better between 66 and 70, when music in general got a little more serious in the face of Vietnam. We also got Cat Stevens and Pink Floyd (and whoever did Stairway to Heaven) over the same time period. So the view from Gen X is that 65-66 was a great lighting of a fuse that exploded a bomb slightly later.
I feel like the sublime guitar riff in that song sort of underlies everything they did for the next decade. It's a great song, but so overplayed I now sometimes prefer Get Off of My Cloud.
Yes, the four albums from 1968-72 are probably their best. (Let it Bleed is my favorite.) And they didn't even put Honky Tonk Woman or Jumping Jack Flash on those albums.
I've heard Keith Richards is known for saying that on any given night, any band can be the best band in the world. Mick Taylor (who replaced Brian Jones as their lead guitarist) said the Stones were the biggest bunch of amateurs he ever worked with.
"If you look at any list of the best pop songwriters, Lennon/McCartney and Bob Dylan always come out near or at the top. Coincidentally, both reach an artistic peak at almost exactly the same time."
It is most definitely *not* a coincidence. They were communicating with each other, inspiring each other, even collaborating with each other. This was a society, not a set of disaggregated individuals. The London guitar community was very tight-knit, as were the LA and NYC and DET communities, and the story of the mid-60s is the bridging between/across these communities (the Byrds were a critical bridge for the London - California nexus that produced "the nineteen-sixties" as we think of them).
The years you are analyzing are the very peak of record sales of guitar bands. We might think of guitar-based pop and rock as being most culturally dominant by the 1980s, but by then the peak was long over already (hence the nostalgia ads for best-of discs on late-night tv you were once watching).
The mid-1960s where when the most units were moved. Consequently, the biggest records from that era are now "imagined" to be the "best". In reality, they are just the figureheads of larger cultural movements that included them but which they did not create themselves.
Good point about it not being a coincidence--I should have made that clear. (It was clear in the previous post on painting during the Renaissance, which I alluded to.)
Was that really peak record sales? I would have thought the late 60s or early 70s.
You might be thinking early 70s b/c the RIAA begins reporting sales in 1973 and it's been a pretty steady decline since (in terms of unit sales). Peak revenues were in the '90s, when everybody replaced their vinyl with over-priced CDs, but in terms of units shifted it was much earlier.
That's if you're focused on guitar-based pop/rock music, by the '80s sales were dominated by dance/electronic acts, which then evolved into R&B and hip-hop.
The era of the long-playing album is often dated to the Beatles entrance into the US market in 1964. The singer/songwriter period overlaps substantially with the album era, as does the displacement of AM radio by FM radio (which promoted "Album-Oriented Rock" or AOR).
If that was the beginning, then the end was maybe Napster. Albums are anachronistic now (but I still love 'em).
Spotify doesn't want you to figure out how to use it. Spotify wants you to passively consume the "content" its algorithm puts in front of you, which is increasingly AI-generated (thus no royalties).
People thought Spotify was replacing the old Big Labels. No, it's replacing Muzak and AM talk radio.
The introduction of transatlantic 707 jet flights in 1959 introduced an era of Anglophilia as far as California and, I suspect, vice-versa. Glamorous celebrities from across the pond kept showing up all the time.
I'm a quarter-century younger than you, but I'm feeling it too. I was sent that by a student from PR, otherwise I doubt it would've made it onto my radar at all.
I feel the same way about the jazz that came out from 1959 -1961.
Kind of blue, Blues and the Abstract truth, Bill Evans Trio - Sunday at the Village Vanguard, Eric Dolphy - Out There, Thelonious Monk & John Coltrane, John Coltrane - My Favorite Things, Blues & Roots Charlie Mingus, Blues in Orbit Duke Ellington, Charles Mingus Presents Charles Mingus, Ornette Coleman - The Shape of Jazz to Come, Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers - Moanin', Ella Fitzgerald Sings the George and Ira Gershwin Song Book ...and soooo much more.
'A Charlie Brown Christmas' also debuted in 1965 with the jazz score by Vince Guaraldi that is probably the most familiar, popular jazz recording of that era (and kind of deserves to be). What a miracle that that music was commissioned for a children's cartoon.
I occasionally ask my kids (who are in their late 30s) whether they know some random (albeit once-popular and well-known to me) song from the 1960s or 1970s, typically expecting them to say "No". But in fact they've most often said "Of course" and wonder why I'd think otherwise.
"And 60 years ago the music might also have been from the 1960s, but certainly not from 1905."
This is something I'd also noticed and mention to people. I bucket this with another chrono-factoid pattern, usually about movies that are set in "long bygone" days, that I also often share with people, the first example of which I came up with years ago was: The time between when "The Music Man" came out and now (63 years) is 2x (or more) longer than the time between when it came out and the time period it's set in.
I remember arriving at Cornell in 1974 and thought of the infamous takeover of the student union as ancient history (if I thought about it at all, that is). It had happened just five years prior. Only later did I come to realize how recent it must have seemed to the non-transient population.
I once asked my grandmother whether she knowingly met any Civil War veterans--which she clearly could have. But she just thought it was a strange question (and probably said "No").
I have a Dutch friend who has a story that links 3-4 great-aunt and great-uncles back that ends with "and she said she remembered that when _she_ was a little girl she watched Napolean march into Amsterdam".
Yep, if you do the I knew somebody who knew somebody you can get back quite a ways. My grandmother's grandmother was a widow raising 7 children in the middle of the civil war. History isn't as far in the past as my 17yr old self used to think
1905 was just as the record industry was taking off. And up until the early 1950s when LPs first became popular, records were fragile and had short run times. By the 60s and 70s it was actually pretty hard to listen to popular music from before 1950 (much harder than it is today -- during high school, my friends and I certainly never listened to Sinatra, but my son and his friends did). And during the 60s, the early 50s rock music was far from forgotten (Bob Dylan, for example, claims 'Subterranean Homesick Blues' came from Chuck Berry's 'Too Much Monkey Business', while John Lennon's 'Come Together' borrowed so heavily from Berry's 'You Can't Catch Me' that he was ultimately given a songwriting credit and royalties.
Just to add on: Frank Zappa, born in 1940, released his first album, Freak Out, in June of 1966. Never super popular, he was very influential among other musicians and still is.
John Coltrane's most famous album, A Love Supreme, was released in 1965. His greatest album, First Meditations, was recorded in late 1965, and arguably influenced by the times.
I used to run into elderly professional studio guitarists in Sherman Oaks, CA, skinny guys in their late 60s who wore their trade's garb of long hair and leather pants the way firemen all have mustaches. Having played for Zappa was a top credit in their resumes.
Yup, 1965 was the key year. I didn't pay attention to popular music until, say, December 1969, but everything I've learned since points to 1964-1967 with 1965 as central.
You didn't mention the Kinks probably because one of their contributions, inventing metal rock, dates to 1964.
One of the greatest What Ifs in popular music is what if Buddy Holly had never gotten onto the plane and if he would have thrown his hat into the ring of songwriters of this time. I think he could have been the First Generation rock and roller to translate to the 60s. He was such a pop savant people forget how young he was when he died. He would have only been around ~30 years old when Revolver came out, still young and malleable. He had just left hometown Lubbock and moved to the West Village at the time of his death. The scene was obviously having a huge effect expanding his sound and arrangements if you look at the last songs before his death (Raining In My Heart). It's hard not to project forward and imagine where he would have been 5 years later down that path. How would Pet Sounds or Revolver inspired him?
Good point. Clearly there is something of being in the right place at the right time that explains so many all time pop music writers being born around 1940-45. Something "in the air". Perhaps Holly would have sped up the pop revolution.
Ritchie Valens was 17 when he died in Buddy Holly's plane, and he'd already recorded "La Bamba." He was the same age as Lennon, Dylan, McCartney, and Wilson, but he was a star already. He would have been 24 in 1965.
He was a little pudgy, so he doesn't look to us like a rock star, but so was Brian Wilson.
I'm even older than Scott. I've been playing in a band for about 10 years now with people who are just now reaching their forties. I tend to be the only person in the band who wants to do anything that was made after 1980. The vast majority of our songs come from the period 1965 to 1972. Of course Scott's right.
In terms of significant trends during that period, I would add that 1965 was the coming of age of Baby Boomers, the largest generation in history and the first that could take prosperity for granted. The Boomers may not have created the music, but they created a massive market to buy it.
Nice post Scott. I was born in ‘73 so grew up on rock bands like Zeppelin, ACDC, Aerosmith, Van Halen. And their stuff stands the test of time. But a lot of the music from the ‘70s and ‘80’s was total crap. (and still is) So yeah, the mid ‘60’s is probably the best overall period for pop & rock (and folk) music creation. The number of brilliant songwriters and bands from that time period is staggering.
It's a bit after the time period you identify, but I'll make a strong argument for Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison being worthy of inclusion in the pantheon of 1960's greatness. Particularly since a few of the songs from that album were released in the 65-66 window. In an alternate timeline, Cash could have made that album a few years earlier, although that would have required less drug use and more responsive management at Columbia.
Striking evidence that the do-called Silent generation was anything but. https://open.substack.com/pub/vpostrel/p/the-most-misnamed-generation?r=zpjg&utm_medium=ios
Very good post. I suppose we instinctively think of this group as boomers because so many of their listeners were born after WWII.
BTW, in a few weeks I'll include Confessions of a Good Samaritan in my next set of film reviews.
With pop music since the 50s (when teenagers were invented as a cultural category), the artists each generation grows up on are always from the one before. 16 year old artists aren't the people 16 year olds grow up liking.
So the 60s era, the listeners were Boomers but the artists were Silents. My generation (Gen X) liked performers that were Boomers: Prince, Madonna, U2, REM, Michael Jackson, Bruce Springsteen...Milennials like Gen X performers, etc.
Weird that someone is quibbling about "silents vs boomers" when we're only talking about a difference of 5 years at most. Let's just settle on the "Woodstock generation". I don't know of any attendee or musician who was over 30. Except, presumably, Ravi Shankar.
You mention Ray Davies, so you have no excuse not to have mentioned The Kinks, who released the excellent "Sunny Afternoon" during your favorite 14 months.
I am 47 and don't think this is Boomer nostalgia. But broadly, I think all the bands you mention got even better between 66 and 70, when music in general got a little more serious in the face of Vietnam. We also got Cat Stevens and Pink Floyd (and whoever did Stairway to Heaven) over the same time period. So the view from Gen X is that 65-66 was a great lighting of a fuse that exploded a bomb slightly later.
There are many other pop artists I could have mentioned.
"I think all the bands you mention got even better between 66 and 70, when music in general got a little more serious in the face of Vietnam."
That used to be my view as well. But now I think 1965-66 was the peak.
"whoever did Stairway to Heaven"
Yup, you're not a boomer. :)
The Rolling Stones in 1968-1972 were better musicians than in 1965, but in historical context, Satisfaction was a great leap forward.
I feel like the sublime guitar riff in that song sort of underlies everything they did for the next decade. It's a great song, but so overplayed I now sometimes prefer Get Off of My Cloud.
Yes, the four albums from 1968-72 are probably their best. (Let it Bleed is my favorite.) And they didn't even put Honky Tonk Woman or Jumping Jack Flash on those albums.
I've heard Keith Richards is known for saying that on any given night, any band can be the best band in the world. Mick Taylor (who replaced Brian Jones as their lead guitarist) said the Stones were the biggest bunch of amateurs he ever worked with.
“(and whoever did Stairway to Heaven)”
Is this a reference to Taurus by Spirit?
No, I forgot about that one--but thanks for digging up who really did Stairway, I knew it was a big name ;)
Well I'll be danged! "I Love My Dog" released 30 September 1966. You might just be onto something here, Scott.
"If you look at any list of the best pop songwriters, Lennon/McCartney and Bob Dylan always come out near or at the top. Coincidentally, both reach an artistic peak at almost exactly the same time."
It is most definitely *not* a coincidence. They were communicating with each other, inspiring each other, even collaborating with each other. This was a society, not a set of disaggregated individuals. The London guitar community was very tight-knit, as were the LA and NYC and DET communities, and the story of the mid-60s is the bridging between/across these communities (the Byrds were a critical bridge for the London - California nexus that produced "the nineteen-sixties" as we think of them).
The years you are analyzing are the very peak of record sales of guitar bands. We might think of guitar-based pop and rock as being most culturally dominant by the 1980s, but by then the peak was long over already (hence the nostalgia ads for best-of discs on late-night tv you were once watching).
The mid-1960s where when the most units were moved. Consequently, the biggest records from that era are now "imagined" to be the "best". In reality, they are just the figureheads of larger cultural movements that included them but which they did not create themselves.
Good point about it not being a coincidence--I should have made that clear. (It was clear in the previous post on painting during the Renaissance, which I alluded to.)
Was that really peak record sales? I would have thought the late 60s or early 70s.
You might be thinking early 70s b/c the RIAA begins reporting sales in 1973 and it's been a pretty steady decline since (in terms of unit sales). Peak revenues were in the '90s, when everybody replaced their vinyl with over-priced CDs, but in terms of units shifted it was much earlier.
That's if you're focused on guitar-based pop/rock music, by the '80s sales were dominated by dance/electronic acts, which then evolved into R&B and hip-hop.
The era of the long-playing album is often dated to the Beatles entrance into the US market in 1964. The singer/songwriter period overlaps substantially with the album era, as does the displacement of AM radio by FM radio (which promoted "Album-Oriented Rock" or AOR).
If that was the beginning, then the end was maybe Napster. Albums are anachronistic now (but I still love 'em).
I still buy CDs. I never figured out how to use Spotify.
Spotify doesn't want you to figure out how to use it. Spotify wants you to passively consume the "content" its algorithm puts in front of you, which is increasingly AI-generated (thus no royalties).
People thought Spotify was replacing the old Big Labels. No, it's replacing Muzak and AM talk radio.
The introduction of transatlantic 707 jet flights in 1959 introduced an era of Anglophilia as far as California and, I suspect, vice-versa. Glamorous celebrities from across the pond kept showing up all the time.
PS, you might appreciate Bad Bunny's recent short film, linking these themes to demographic change in Puerto Rico.
This is a cultural phenomenon on the level of the Rolling Stones, and it's in a format you can still recognize, Mr Jones.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLSzEYVDads
Ha! I'm definitely that guy.
I'm a quarter-century younger than you, but I'm feeling it too. I was sent that by a student from PR, otherwise I doubt it would've made it onto my radar at all.
Correct, and the Beatles and Brian Wilson were very much aware of what each other were doing. "Pet Sounds" in particular.
I feel the same way about the jazz that came out from 1959 -1961.
Kind of blue, Blues and the Abstract truth, Bill Evans Trio - Sunday at the Village Vanguard, Eric Dolphy - Out There, Thelonious Monk & John Coltrane, John Coltrane - My Favorite Things, Blues & Roots Charlie Mingus, Blues in Orbit Duke Ellington, Charles Mingus Presents Charles Mingus, Ornette Coleman - The Shape of Jazz to Come, Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers - Moanin', Ella Fitzgerald Sings the George and Ira Gershwin Song Book ...and soooo much more.
I wish I had a better ear for music.
'A Charlie Brown Christmas' also debuted in 1965 with the jazz score by Vince Guaraldi that is probably the most familiar, popular jazz recording of that era (and kind of deserves to be). What a miracle that that music was commissioned for a children's cartoon.
1959 jazz blows minds 66 years later. Have you browsed
https://the1959project.com/
nice!
Nice analysis.
I occasionally ask my kids (who are in their late 30s) whether they know some random (albeit once-popular and well-known to me) song from the 1960s or 1970s, typically expecting them to say "No". But in fact they've most often said "Of course" and wonder why I'd think otherwise.
"And 60 years ago the music might also have been from the 1960s, but certainly not from 1905."
This is something I'd also noticed and mention to people. I bucket this with another chrono-factoid pattern, usually about movies that are set in "long bygone" days, that I also often share with people, the first example of which I came up with years ago was: The time between when "The Music Man" came out and now (63 years) is 2x (or more) longer than the time between when it came out and the time period it's set in.
I recall in the 1960s thinking that WWI was far in the past. But the 1960s were closer to WWI than they were to today.
As the digital world accelerates, I feel like cultural evolution in the world of atoms (say clothing) is actually slowing down.
I remember arriving at Cornell in 1974 and thought of the infamous takeover of the student union as ancient history (if I thought about it at all, that is). It had happened just five years prior. Only later did I come to realize how recent it must have seemed to the non-transient population.
I once asked my grandmother whether she knowingly met any Civil War veterans--which she clearly could have. But she just thought it was a strange question (and probably said "No").
I have a Dutch friend who has a story that links 3-4 great-aunt and great-uncles back that ends with "and she said she remembered that when _she_ was a little girl she watched Napolean march into Amsterdam".
Yes, It's amazing to think that US history is just three 80-year lifespans.
and president john tyler's grandson recently passed away this year. its quite amazing!
Yep, if you do the I knew somebody who knew somebody you can get back quite a ways. My grandmother's grandmother was a widow raising 7 children in the middle of the civil war. History isn't as far in the past as my 17yr old self used to think
1905 was just as the record industry was taking off. And up until the early 1950s when LPs first became popular, records were fragile and had short run times. By the 60s and 70s it was actually pretty hard to listen to popular music from before 1950 (much harder than it is today -- during high school, my friends and I certainly never listened to Sinatra, but my son and his friends did). And during the 60s, the early 50s rock music was far from forgotten (Bob Dylan, for example, claims 'Subterranean Homesick Blues' came from Chuck Berry's 'Too Much Monkey Business', while John Lennon's 'Come Together' borrowed so heavily from Berry's 'You Can't Catch Me' that he was ultimately given a songwriting credit and royalties.
Just to add on: Frank Zappa, born in 1940, released his first album, Freak Out, in June of 1966. Never super popular, he was very influential among other musicians and still is.
John Coltrane's most famous album, A Love Supreme, was released in 1965. His greatest album, First Meditations, was recorded in late 1965, and arguably influenced by the times.
Both good choices.
I used to run into elderly professional studio guitarists in Sherman Oaks, CA, skinny guys in their late 60s who wore their trade's garb of long hair and leather pants the way firemen all have mustaches. Having played for Zappa was a top credit in their resumes.
I second that emotion.
I see that Brian Wilson just died. RIP.
Great post. Great humor at the end.
Yup, 1965 was the key year. I didn't pay attention to popular music until, say, December 1969, but everything I've learned since points to 1964-1967 with 1965 as central.
You didn't mention the Kinks probably because one of their contributions, inventing metal rock, dates to 1964.
Yes, they could have been included. (Ray Davies was on my songwriter list.)
One of the greatest What Ifs in popular music is what if Buddy Holly had never gotten onto the plane and if he would have thrown his hat into the ring of songwriters of this time. I think he could have been the First Generation rock and roller to translate to the 60s. He was such a pop savant people forget how young he was when he died. He would have only been around ~30 years old when Revolver came out, still young and malleable. He had just left hometown Lubbock and moved to the West Village at the time of his death. The scene was obviously having a huge effect expanding his sound and arrangements if you look at the last songs before his death (Raining In My Heart). It's hard not to project forward and imagine where he would have been 5 years later down that path. How would Pet Sounds or Revolver inspired him?
Good point. Clearly there is something of being in the right place at the right time that explains so many all time pop music writers being born around 1940-45. Something "in the air". Perhaps Holly would have sped up the pop revolution.
Ritchie Valens was 17 when he died in Buddy Holly's plane, and he'd already recorded "La Bamba." He was the same age as Lennon, Dylan, McCartney, and Wilson, but he was a star already. He would have been 24 in 1965.
He was a little pudgy, so he doesn't look to us like a rock star, but so was Brian Wilson.
I'm even older than Scott. I've been playing in a band for about 10 years now with people who are just now reaching their forties. I tend to be the only person in the band who wants to do anything that was made after 1980. The vast majority of our songs come from the period 1965 to 1972. Of course Scott's right.
Excellent article.
In terms of significant trends during that period, I would add that 1965 was the coming of age of Baby Boomers, the largest generation in history and the first that could take prosperity for granted. The Boomers may not have created the music, but they created a massive market to buy it.
Nice post Scott. I was born in ‘73 so grew up on rock bands like Zeppelin, ACDC, Aerosmith, Van Halen. And their stuff stands the test of time. But a lot of the music from the ‘70s and ‘80’s was total crap. (and still is) So yeah, the mid ‘60’s is probably the best overall period for pop & rock (and folk) music creation. The number of brilliant songwriters and bands from that time period is staggering.
I like some of the "New Wave" stuff from the 70s (Costello, Parker, etc.)
Agree. Those guys wrote some great tunes. Also Nick Lowe, Talking Heads.
Loved. Your. Post 💕
It's a bit after the time period you identify, but I'll make a strong argument for Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison being worthy of inclusion in the pantheon of 1960's greatness. Particularly since a few of the songs from that album were released in the 65-66 window. In an alternate timeline, Cash could have made that album a few years earlier, although that would have required less drug use and more responsive management at Columbia.
Yes, there was lots of great stuff in other parts of the 60s as well, especially the late 60s.
for sure - im recently very into in a gadda da vida which i know from the simpsons ( being a very late gen x-er)