1967: The Velvet Underground and Nico by the Velvet Underground, and Are You Experienced by the Jimi Hendrick Experience
This is also why you get fifteen albums. I copped out. How can I choose between one of the most influential albums ever recorded and the debut of the greatest practitioner of rock and roll’s fundamental instrument? Dylan may have brought folk protest to rock & roll, but Lou Reed ripped the cover off a Pandora’s Box of available subject matter.
After the Banana album, everything was fair game. Reed’s love of old school garage rock and John Cale’s love of the avant-garde created a one-of-a-kind soundscape for those lyrics. As for Hendrix, he was both a technical wizard and a visionary.
No one has gotten more raw sound out of an electric guitar. The opening riff of “Fire” is rock and roll. “Purple Haze,” “Manic Depression,” “Hey Joe” – is there a better opening trio on any album?
1968: The Kinks are the Village Green Preservation Society by the Kinks
Rock fans love to argue about the first “concept” album. Zappa and the Beatles often claim the honor. Freak Out! and Sgt Pepper came out before the Kinks’ VGPS. But Ray Davies did it better. When it came to songwriting, Ray Davies did it better than just about anyone who ever lived.
The band that had almost invented punk music with “You Really Got Me” a few years earlier, crafted this marvelous tribute to the nostalgic British society that Davies would pine for and rip to shreds in much of his best work. Rock, pop, and folk all blended into one beautiful memory.
Extra bite: 1968: At Folsom Prison by Johnny Cash
One of the greatest live albums ever recorded, as well as one of the most culturally significant pop recordings ever made. The audacity of Johnny Cash – going into a prison (which happened to be featured in one of his early hits) – and doing a live show for the incarcerated.
Cash wasn’t rock and roll, but he wasn’t exactly country either. He was a hybrid, and in his world, his music was for the downtrodden and forgotten. Punk rock doesn’t develop without this album.
As for the songs, “Folsom Prison Blues,” “Cocaine Blues,” and the break on Merle Travis’ “Dark as a Dungeon” are true gems. “Long Black Veil” and “25 Minutes to Go” are about prisoners awaiting execution. Playing them in a prison is as rock and roll as it will ever get.
1969: Led Zeppelin by Led Zeppelin
Subsequently known as Led Zeppelin I, the debut from perhaps the greatest rock & roll band of all time announced that the genre had hit its adulthood. Four absolute masters of their craft came together to create the ideal blend of blue-flavored hard rock.
Playing mostly original tunes supplemented by a couple of old standards, Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, John Paul Jones, and John Bonham redefined just how hard a band could rock while remaining accessible to the public. Page was a known commodity by this point, but he clearly stepped out from the shadows of Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck to establish himself as a guitar god.
From the propulsive “Communication Breakdown” to the moody “Dazed and Confused,” this stands as one of the great debuts in rock history.
There you go. 15 gems that give you a taste of rock & roll’s evolution in its most important decade, with a few other extra-genre selections to remind us that rock & roll was not alone in the 1960s.