The 1960s didn’t end in 1969. Now, that’s some kind of technical matter for the sticklers who like to point out that the ‘60s ran from 1961-1970, but that’s not what I’m referring to. I’m not a stickler. I think of any decade in much more pedestrian terms. The 1960s should begin in 1960 and end in 1969.
But as a cultural phenomenon, the thing we call the ‘60s ran from about 1963 to 1972. You can quibble on exact years, but that’s close. That’s why I say 1969 didn’t signal the end of the 1960s.
However, it just may have signaled the beginning of the end.
These rock debuts should never be forgotten
In music, it was a heady time. Almost every form of popular music was exploding. The artists who released debut albums in 1969 were astounding. Of course, some of these were from established musicians who were entering a different phase of their careers, but still, just consider….
You want good old-fashioned, blue-based rock? Led Zeppelin arrives. So did Blind Faith, though their arrival coincided with their departure.
How about punk? MC5’s legendary live debut, Kick Out the Jams was released in February. Later that year, The Stooges' self-titled debut hit the streets.
Is prog rock your thing? The debuts from Yes and King Crimson came out.
Just want to hear a great vocalist? Take your pick. Roberta Flack, Koko Taylor, or that blues singer who used to front Big Brother and the Holding Company – Janis something … yeah, her first solo album came out too.
Not to mention the first albums from Crosby, Stills & Nash, Elton John, Santana, Chicago… the freakin’ Allman Brothers! Want to go deeper? Blues from John McLaughlin, German experimentation from Can, and more psychedelia and prog rock than you could deal with no matter how many black lights and lava lamps you had in your dorm room. The Music Emporium, Amon Duul II, East of Eden, Arzachel (or, if you prefer, Uriel).
Still not sold? The Neon Philharmonic released their first two albums in 1969.
We rode into the summer on the smooth pop of the Fifth Dimension, assuring that future held…
“Harmony and understanding – Sympathy and trust abounding – No more falsehoods or derisions – Golden living dreams of visions – Mystic crystal revelation – And the mind’s true liberation…”
Their mashup of “Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In” from the musical Hair sat at number one from mid-April through Memorial Day. The Fifth Dimension wasn’t new, but they sang of all the new things to come. And music fans swallowed it whole.
And yet, despite all that hope and belief, things didn’t exactly turn out that way. The ‘60s died out. The war in Vietnam may have ended a few years later, but the anger at home was just getting revved up. To quote one popular figure from the culture at the time – one Gomer Pyle – “Surprise, surprise!”
The music of youthful rebellion would soon be commodified. Looking backward, it all seems so obvious. At the time … well, people rarely recognize what they are living through. So today we’re going to look back at five other debut albums – apart from the ones referenced above. I think time has kind of forgotten these. A few fans may still recall them, and some proved to be highly influential.
I say people have forgotten because, quite frankly, I can’t remember the last time I heard anyone mention these names – or heard one of the songs playing on my five hundred satellite channels or expertly-curated streaming services. So I’ll toss their names out into the blogosphere. Maybe you’d enjoy discovering them.
Five Leaves Left by Nick Drake
Drake was just 21 and a student at Cambridge when he recorded the bulk of his first album. This was early in the singer-songwriter feeding frenzy that would envelop the music world. Everyone was looking for the new Bob Dylan. Anyone with a guitar was signing a record deal. Few were as talented as Nick Drake.
His producer, Joe Boyd, had worked with great British folk artists like Fairport Convention and that band’s two stars, Sandy Denny and Richard Thompson. So it isn’t surprising that Thompson shows up on the first track of Drake's album. His electric guitar flourishes, giving “Time Has Told Me” some extra life. But that was only scratching the surface of Drake’s output.
Each song operated within a narrow playing field – Drake’s simple acoustic guitar and lonely whispered voice – but each was able to find extraordinary breadth and depth therein. The haunting strings on “River Man” morph into a genuine orchestral sweep on “Way to Blue.” There’s the galloping beat of “Three Hours,” and the wistful “Thoughts of Mary Jane.”
Then there’s the beautifully ephemeral folky “Day is Done,” which makes the similarly-themed “Time in a Bottle” by Jim Croce sound lightweight in comparison.
And I have yet to mention Drake’s exquisite sense of lyric. I’ll just offer this from “Fruit Tree,” which comes toward the end of his debut…
“Forgotten while you’re here, remembered for a while – A much-updated ruin from a much-outdated style – Life is but a memory, happened long ago – Theatre full of sadness for a long-forgotten show.”
Drake wrote that when he was 21, on the cusp of launching his recording career. Five years later, he died from an amitriptyline overdose. The inquest ruled it a suicide. His third and final album, 1972’s Pink Moon, is now considered among the greatest folk albums ever recorded.
Those Who Are About to Die Salute You by Colosseum
This is the original Colosseum – not the second incarnation formed by drummer Jon Hiseman in the mid-70s. Hiseman and sax player Dick Heckstall-Smith had kicked around with some of the UK’s greatest blues rock outfits in the 1960s – outfits headed by Graham Bond and John Mayall – before putting their own band together at the end of the decade.
They added Dave Greenslade on the Hammond organ, Tony Reeves on bass, and James Blake’s dad, James Litherland, on guitar. Litherland also sang.
The opening track established what they would play. It was a Graham Bond song called ”Walking in the Park,” and despite its blues origins, it is pure joy. Heckstall-Smith’s sax is aided by Henry Lowther on trumpet. The beat is unstoppable. Then Litherland’s guitar breaks out a couple of solos. It is rock & roll filtered through the lens of a big jazz band. It is some of the first true jazz rock.
The sound would remain unrelenting. It could tilt toward the blues, as on “Plenty Hard Luck,” or toward psychedelic on “Debut.” It could even dabble in the east on “Mandarin.” Sometimes the horns took the lead, sometimes the rhythm section (as on “The Road She Walked Before”), and sometimes it was guitar blues. But the sound remained integrated.
Colosseum released a few more albums before splitting in the early ‘70s. The members would drift into different bands, with guitarist Clem Clempson, who replaced Litherland for the third album, taking Peter Frampton's place in Humble Pie. Hiseman’s second version of the band leaned in more on the jazz fusion than the jazz-blues-rock of this first album.
The Gilded Palace of Sin by the Flying Burrito Brothers
Of all the genres that were exploding in the late ‘60s, the one that wasn’t was country. Country music played by its own rules and those rules were dictated by conservative men in the offices of Music Row in Nashville. The only Nashville artist of note to release a debut in 1969 was Emmylou Harris.
It would still be a few years before Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings would launch the outlaw country revolution. But there were some younger guys – long-haired folk rock guys from out in California who thought country music could be just as expansive as any genre.
Gram Parsons and Chris Hillman had played together with the Byrds. Parsons had also played with Chris Ethridge in the International Submarine Band. Parsons moved around a lot. By the late sixties, he was ready for something new. Along with Hillman and Ethridge, he recruited pedal steel guitar player Pete Kleinow and the Flying Burrito Brothers were born.
Parsons and Hillman co-wrote and harmonized on “Christine’s Tune." It sounded like a country song, with twang and steel guitar, but it also sounded like a rock & roller with some fuzzy electric guitar as well. A genre that had been nascent had now fully arrived. “Sin City” and “Do Right Woman” were country. “My Uncle” was even more country, except it championed draft-dodging. “Hot Burrito #1” was a pop ballad while “Hot Burrito #2” was jazzier rock. “Hippie Boy” was an organ-propelled anthem.
Parsons did one more album with the Brothers before that wanderlust struck again and he went off on a solo career. Hillman would stay affiliated but would also work with a number of other bands. The Flying Burrito Brother continued putting out country rock, but within a couple of decades, none of the original members remained. Parsons died of an overdose in 1973, about a year before the death of Nick Drake.
Oar by Skip Spence
Before there was Tom Waits, there was Skip Spence. Spence had a fascinating voice, and an even more fascinating, ultimately tragic personal story. He came of age in the Bay Area in the middle of the counter-cultural revolution. He crossed paths with most of the important musical acts. Marty Balin plucked him out of Quicksilver Messenger Service to play drums on the first Jefferson Airplane album. Spence soon left to form Moby Grape, one of the best psychedelic rock bands of its era.
Spence battled mental illness and drug abuse throughout his entire adult life. It reduced his influence with Moby Grape and eventually had him imprisoned and institutionalized. After emerging, he recorded his only solo album, Oar, in 1969. Spence wrote every track and played every instrument. The results are difficult to describe.
This is mournful folk music, as old as time itself, but awash in some psychedelic impulses that make it sound somehow different. “Cripple Creek” takes “Ghost Riders in the Sky” and performs it as though an actual ghost were singing. “Margaret-Tiger Rug” is a twisted music hall, while “Lawrence of Euphoria” could have been prime Dylan. “Books of Moses” is as apocalyptic as one guy with a guitar can be.
LSD did not take Spence quickly, the way other drugs robbed the world of Nick Drake and Gram Parsons. He lingered, at times in poverty, around the edges of the music world into the 90s, before dying of lung cancer when he was 52. A number of musicians who had been influenced by Spence attempted to help him toward the end.
Some of them put together a tribute album called More Oar, shortly before he died in 1999. Artists from Robert Plant to Robyn Hitchcock – from Jay Farrar to Beck – all participated. As did Tom Waits, who often seemed to be channeling Spence in his early recordings.
Tons of Sobs by Free
It’s possible that you have never heard a single song by the four bands previously mentioned. It is likely you know at least one song by Free. “All Right Now,” from their third album, Fire and Water, was a Top Ten hit on both sides of the Atlantic. Rockers like “Wishing Well” and the blues shamble “My Brother Jake” scored in the UK but barely made a dent in the USA.
The desire for a bigger standing in the American market is part of what led half the band – vocalist Paul Rodgers and drummer Simon Kirke – to split off and form the supergroup Bad Company in the second half of the ‘70s.
A year before they scored with “All Right Now,” Free released Tons of Sobs. Rodgers and Kirke were both 20, making them the oldest members of the band. The album was built on Rodgers's powerhouse, expressive baritone and the blues groove set by Kirke and 17-year-old bassist Andy Fraser. Guitarist Paul Kossoff added short, evocative riffs, and Rodgers did the same on piano.
The opening track – Rodgers's original composition “Over the Green Hills (Pt 1)” - set that blues groove in place. Not immune from the times, they would close the album with a slightly more psychedelic Pt. 2. In between, there was a steady diet of solid blues rockers like “Walk in My Shadow” and the Albert King classic “The Hunter,” composed by Booker T. and the MGs.
Free released several more albums but eventually were done in by another drug problem. Kossoff’s addiction was likely a major cause of the pulmonary embolism that took his life in 1976, at 25. By that point, his issues had been one factor in the band’s demise. Creative differences between Rodgers and Fraser also played a role.
While Rodgers and Kirke experienced great success in ensuing years with Bad Company (who are up for induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame this year), Fraser kicked around from band to band for many years, before passing away in 2015.