Part 1.
A linguistic conceit that I started to notice in my youth was the term "golden age," which was casually and frequently tossed around by adults, particularly in the media, to describe what they perceived to have been a better time in the not-too-distant past. In the late 1960s, for example, the golden age of baseball meant the 1920s of Babe Ruth and Rogers Hornsby; by the 1970s, it had become the 1930s of Lou Gehrig and Dizzy Dean. Hollywood's golden age was considered the 1930s--especially 1939, the year of The Wizard of Oz, Stagecoach, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, and the then-excessively beloved epic, Gone with the Wind. The golden age of radio was the 1930s and pre-TV 1940s. The golden age of television referred to that medium's embryonic years--the late '40s and early '50s--when the likes of Uncle Miltie, Sid Caesar, Howdy Doody, and Lucy ruled the ever-growing number of small screens in homes throughout America; later, it alluded to TV across the entire decade of the 1950s.
The origins of the phrase date back to ancient Greece and the works of the 8th century B.C. poet Hesiod, who envisioned the history of humanity up to that point as being encompassed in five ages, the first of which was the Golden Age: a time of peace, happiness, prosperity, and harmony with nature and the gods. Historians later utilized the concept to delineate eras or epochs throughout human history when certain civilizations or nations enjoyed a level of cultural, scientific, or economic prominence or enlightenment that is seldom realized. Like the Renaissance. However, Ada Palmer, a Renaissance scholar at the University of Chicago, claims that such golden ages have never really existed, that they were only myths propagated by various powers that be through the years, often for political reasons.
Anyway, that late 20th century perception of "golden age" that I recall from my younger days also applied to popular music. Bear with me here.
In the 1970s, when a wave of 1950s nostalgia hit the public and struck a chord with the Silent Generation--those born from roughly the late 1920s to the mid-1940s--the "golden age of rock 'n' roll" referred to the mid-to-late '50s. Suddenly, performers who had become passé in the "Swingin' Sixties," like Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, Bill Haley, Little Richard, Fats Domino, and Jerry Lee Lewis--the accepted founders of rock 'n' roll--were en vogue once again. Beginning sometime later, though, as baby boomers reached middle age, that 1950s golden age of rock 'n' roll was marginalized and eventually nearly forgotten in favor of the era that spawned what is now called "classic rock," which apparently currently represents the genre's golden age.* As Oscar Levant said, "Happiness isn't something you experience; it's something you remember."
*I've never known Gen-Xers to use terminology like "golden age," but have heard more than a few members of that self-consciously cynical cohort wax nostalgic about the '90s.
Similarly marginalized in more recent years is the pop-rock music of the mid-1960s. Tucked between the British Invasion and psychedelia, this brief but visionary epoch doesn't fit neatly into any existing streaming or radio subgenres, shrouding it from mainstream visibility. With no curated outlets spotlighting it, it's virtually nonexistent to modern, algorithm-guided audiences. Exacerbating its plight is a comparatively overwhelming enthusiasm, particularly among baby boomers, for what immediately followed it: Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, the Monterey Pop Festival, the Summer of Love, Woodstock, the rise of FM radio, prog rock, and heavy metal, the Velvet Underground, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Cream, the Doors, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Led Zeppelin, et al.--the dawn of classic rock.
Since the 1980s, give or take, the late 1960s through the 1970s has represented, thanks to the commercial engines that tend to drive our perception of popular culture, the de facto golden age of rock. A lot of great music came out of that decade-or-so. Yet I can think of no more innovative, creative, and interesting time in the history of the genre since Elvis, Scotty, and Bill got together with Sam Phillips than the ~fifteen-month stretch that predated the perceived classic rock era: roughly from the summer of 1965 into the fall of 1966. Before that fleeting but wildly transformative span of time, there was rock 'n' roll. Afterwards, it was rock.
The radical conversion that young people's music underwent mid-decade was the creative equivalent of advancing from suborbital flight to space travel. It was then that popular music, fueled by the social, political, and cultural turmoil that was brewing at the time (in some cases with an assist from mind-altering chemicals) started being about something more than just romantic love. Likewise, the sound, the shapes and textures of the music, as well as arrangements and often instrumentation, began to vary, develop, and expand beyond the parameters of what was known up till then.
Bob Dylan released the rock benchmark LP Highway 61 Revisited (whose centerpiece was the revolutionary single, "Like a Rolling Stone") in August of 1965. The Beatles' Help! came out in the same month. The Yardbirds' Having a Rave Up hit the streets in November. Rubber Soul, a Beatles turning point, was out on December 3rd, as was the Who's first LP, My Generation, followed later that month by the Byrds' second highly influential folk-rock long-player, Turn! Turn! Turn! Simon and Garfunkel's The Sounds of Silence and the hard-rocking, blues-driven Them Again both appeared in January of 1966. The Young Rascals' and Love's eponymous debuts were available in March. The Rolling Stones' first all-self-composed LP, Aftermath, came out in April and the Beach Boys' transcendent masterpiece Pet Sounds arrived in May. Dylan's double-LP pièce de résistance, Blonde on Blonde, dropped in late June,* a week before Freak Out!, the Mothers of Invention's maiden voyage. The Yardbirds' "Roger the Engineer" (US title: Over Under Sideways Down) and John Mayall's Blues Breakers with Eric Clapton both emerged in July, as did the Byrds' third consecutive great album, the proto-psychedelic Fifth Dimension. Then came the Beatles' game-changing Revolver (its UK incarnation is, in my opinion, their best), which featured the bold, avant-garde "Tomorrow Never Knows," in early August--not to mention their May 1966 single, "Paperback Writer"/"Rain" (the B-side of which also explored new sonic territory). And the Kinks' Face to Face was on the streets in late October, with Buffalo Springfield's self-titled first LP following closely on its heels. Not only were these extraordinary records (and timeless ones--most still sound fresh and vital today, all nostalgia aside), but nearly all of them were also steps forward creatively for their respective artists, in an era that was off the charts as far as breaking new musical ground.
*For some reason, the U.S. release date of Blonde on Blonde was long thought to have been May 16, 1966 (coincidentally--or not--the day Pet Sounds was released), but evidence shows that it was out no earlier than June 20th.
R&B had come a long way since the mid-1950s, when it was still referred to as "race" music, and the popular music being created by Black artists in 1965-66 was arguably more vibrant than it had been at any time since the flourishing years (some would say golden age) of jazz in the 1920s and '30s. James Brown was still proving he was The Hardest Working Man in Show Business, touring relentlessly and releasing three LPs between November 1965 and March 1966, plus the evergreen hit "I Got You (I Feel Good)" in October of '65. Berry Gordy's Motown hit factory in Detroit was at its peak. Stevie Wonder (Uptight, May '66) and Marvin Gaye (Moods of Marvin Gaye, also May '66) were moving forward creatively, while Smokey Robinson and the Miracles released the hit laden Going to a Go-Go in November of '65. The Supremes (I Hear a Symphony, February '66; The Supremes A' Go-Go, August '66), the Four Tops ("Reach Out I'll Be There," August '66), and the Temptations (Gettin' Ready, June '66, and an early portent of funk, "(I Know) I'm Losing You," November '66) were all at or near their zeniths in popularity. Gloria Jones, whose 1960s recordings would fuel the Northern Soul movement in England in the early 1970s, released her first album, Come Go with Me, on LA's Uptown Records label in 1966. Artists at Atlantic and Stax-Volt, like Sam & Dave (Hold On, I'm Comin', April 1966), Wilson Pickett (The Exciting Wilson Pickett, August '66), and Otis Redding (Otis Blue, September '65 and The Otis Redding Dictionary of Soul, October '66) et al., were also raising the bar for soul music (Aretha Franklin was still about a year away from stardom), further solidifying the genre's legacy as a significant commercial and artistic presence.
