A sort of linguistic conceit that I started to notice in my youth was a frequent and liberal use of the term "golden age," which was casually employed by adults to describe what they perceived to be a better time in the not-too-distant past. Aside from politics, you don't hear it as much anymore.* 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 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 across America; later, it alluded to the entire decade of the 1950s.
*An apparent exception is in the world of comic book collecting, about which I admittedly know next to nothing.
Though the phrase was often used to signal the importance of a time when entertainment, sports, lifestyles--whatever--were supposedly better or more idyllic than the current age, its origins date back to ancient Greece and the works of the poet Hesiod, who envisioned the history of humanity up to that point as being encompassed in five ages. The first of these 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.
But for our purposes, "golden age," as cultivated by the masses and media of the latter decades of the last century, is a liquid phenomenon, with each new generation having a different perception of exactly what era was "golden." It's usually determined by a time when members of a particular age group were young and relatively innocent--what Shakespeare called "salad days."
It applied to popular music, too. 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, 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 known more than a few members of that cohort to wax nostalgic about the '90s.
Maybe it's just me, but in recent years it seems as though the pop-rock music of the mid-1960s is often passed over 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, the Velvet Underground, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Cream, the Doors, et al.--the era that's considered the seminal phase of what came to be known as classic rock. Since the 1990s, 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 new "golden age of rock" (there is no more "roll"). 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 brief but wildly transformative span of time, there was "rock 'n' roll" music. Afterwards, it was "rock." I love the pop, R&B, and rock 'n' roll of the late '50s-early '60s, but the radical conversion that young people's music underwent mid-decade was the creative equivalent of going from suborbital flight to space travel, and it appears to have been denied its place in pop culture history. 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.
Consider the following. 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 debut LP, My Generation, followed later that month by the Byrds' highly influential 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 Beach Boys' transcendent masterpiece Pet Sounds came out in March and the Rolling Stones' first all-self-composed LP, Aftermath, arrived in April. Dylan's double-LP pièce de résistance, Blonde on Blonde, dropped in June (or July, depending on the source). The Yardbirds' "Roger the Engineer" (US title: Over Under Sideways Down) and John Mayall's Blues Breakers with Eric Clapton both emerged in July. Then came the Beatles' game-changing Revolver (its UK incarnation is, in my opinion, their best) in early August--not to mention their May 1966 single, "Paperback Writer"/"Rain" (the B-side of which in particular explored new sonic territory). And the Kinks' Face to Face hit the streets in late October. Not only were these extraordinary records (and timeless ones--most still sound fresh and vital today), 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.
The Black music scene was arguably more vibrant than it had ever been, outside of the jazz world. 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. Berry Gordy's Motown hit factory was perhaps at its peak, with Stevie Wonder (Uptight, May '66) and Marvin Gaye (Moods of Marvin Gaye, also May '66) moving forward creatively, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles releasing the hit laden Going to a Go-Go (November '65), and the Supremes ("I Hear a Symphony," "You Can't Hurry Love") and the Temptations ("Beauty is Only Skin Deep," "(I Know) I'm Losing You") at or near their zeniths in popularity. Artists at the Atlantic and Stax-Volt labels, like Otis Redding (Otis Blue, September '65) and Wilson Pickett (The Exciting Wilson Pickett, August 1966) et al., were enjoying heydays (Aretha Franklin was still about a year away from stardom), helping establish soul music as a commercial as well as an artistic presence to be reckoned with.
Top 40 radio, while encompassing the experimental and innovative (like the aforementioned "Rain," the Byrds' John Coltrane-inspired "Eight Miles High," and the Beach Boys' six-months-in-the-making immersive soundscape, "Good Vibrations"), the personal and introspective ("I Am a Rock" by Paul Simon, "Monday, Monday" by the Mamas and the Papas, the Beatles' "Help!," "We Can Work It Out," and "Nowhere Man"), a future feminist anthem ("These Boots Are Made for Walkin'" by Nancy Sinatra), the socially conscious (the Kinks' "A Well Respected Man," the Yardbirds' feedback-infused (courtesy of Jeff Beck) "Shapes of Things," Paul Revere and the Raiders' anti-drug "Kicks," the Stones' addiction-themed "Mother's Little Helper"), bluesy pop (the Lovin' Spoonful's "Summer in the City"), and deep soul (Jimmy Ruffin's "What Becomes of the Broken Hearted," Smokey Robinson and the Miracles' "The Tracks of My Tears," Wilson Pickett's "634-5789 (Soulsville, U.S.A.)," Ike and Tina Turner's Phil Spector-produced epic "River Deep--Mountain High"), it still held forth with catchy pop tunes (the Monkees' "The Last Train to Clarksville," the Vogues' "You're the One," the Lovin' Spoonful's "Do You Believe in Magic," the Fortunes' "You've Got Your Troubles," Petula Clark's "I Couldn't Live Without Your Love"), and straightforward rock 'n' roll (the Stones' "Get Off of My Cloud," "19th Nervous Breakdown," and "Paint It Black," the Bobby Fuller Four's "I Fought the Law," the Who's "My Generation," the Beatles' "Ticket to Ride" and "Day Tripper," the Young Rascals' R&B-tinged "Good Lovin'"). And speaking of the Rolling Stones, what many deem the quintessential rock song, encapsulating the anxieties and frustrations of young people of the mid-20th century Western world, was released in the summer of 1965: "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction."
While all of these works contributed to the collective tectonic shift that was taking place, three albums stand above the rest as the driving forces of this period of concentrated musical creativity: Pet Sounds, Blonde on Blonde, and Revolver. Each was arguably the apotheosis of its respective artist's career. Each was a wellspring of inventiveness, innovation, and originality, and each served as an inspirational stepping-off point for all that was to follow in the rock music world. Significantly, there was an intermingling of influence between the authors of these three landmark LPs, which hinged on the Beatles. Brian Wilson, the Beach Boys' heart, soul, and brains, was motivated by Rubber Soul to create Pet Sounds; the Beatles in turn were moved to do him one better with Sgt. Pepper. Part of John Lennon's inspiration for "I'm a Loser," "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away," and "Norwegian Wood" was Dylan, who had been compelled to adapt his musical style to electric rock after hearing the Beatles in 1964. Dylan: "We were driving through Colorado, we had the radio on, and eight of the Top 10 songs were Beatles songs . . . 'I Wanna Hold Your Hand,' all those early ones. They were doing things nobody was doing. Their chords were outrageous, just outrageous, and their harmonies made it all valid . . . I knew they were pointing the direction the music had to go." Pet Sounds and Revolver are discussed elsewhere on this website. I will attempt to give Dylan and Blonde on Blonde something remotely close to their due here.
Rock's first double album, Dylan's magnum opus was culled from somewhere on the murky borders of rock 'n' roll, amidst its folk-blues origins, and seethed in a Nashville melting pot to fashion what Dylan later described as "that thin, wild mercury sound"--making it, in some ways, the most radical of the three. Produced by Bob Johnston, who had been in the control booth for nearly 90% of Highway 61 Revisited, and supported by some of Nashville's top session musicians, along with keyboardist Al Kooper and guitarist Robbie Robertson, Dylan would later say of the result, "The closest I ever got to the sound I hear in my mind was on individual bands in the Blonde on Blonde album."
Since arriving on the music scene in the early 1960s, Bob Dylan had always been the "serious" songwriter-performer, a folk singer / Beat poet / civil rights troubadour bringing the message of change to (primarily American) society at large, forcing it to look into the mirror and see what horrors it had wrought. By mid-1965, after his much-discussed jump to rock 'n' roll and its inherent electricity (in every sense of the word), he suddenly commanded the ears of a much wider audience as he stood, a lone figure, at rock's bully pulpit. Jules Siegel summated in The Saturday Evening Post in July of 1966:
"'Like a Rolling Stone' climbed rapidly to the top of the charts. It was followed by 'Positively 4th Street' and then by 'Ballad of a Thin Man,' and Dylan's lead was soon followed by other songwriters released from the inane bondage if the 'I Love You, Teen Queen' straitjacket. Soon the airwaves were full of songs about the war in Vietnam, or civil rights, or the general disorder of the world and society in America."
Blonde on Blonde's songs range from the achingly personal ("Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands") to rollicking pop ("I Want You") to parody ("Rainy Day Women Nos 12 & 35") to pastiche ("4th Time Around"--an acerbic response to "Norwegian Wood"?) to the bitingly beautiful ("Just Like a Woman") to flat-out rock ("Obviously 5 Believers") to scintillating blues-rock (the epic "Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again") to haunting, transcendent poetry ("Visions of Johanna," a song only Dylan could have written). To paraphrase a Bob Dylan title of many decades later (by way of Walt Whitman), it contains multitudes.
Before the album was even out, though, what was perhaps the watershed moment of the entire Dylan mythos, if not of post-Beatles' U.S. invasion rock 'n' roll music, occurred on May 16 during a performance in England at the Manchester Trade Hall. Nearing the end of the European leg of a world tour, Dylan had been on the receiving end of a lot of heckling while performing an electric set with the Hawks (who would soon be known as The Band). It culminated with a young Brit in the audience yelling out, "Judas"--presumably a reference to Dylan's leaving folk music behind in favor of rock the previous summer. Dylan and the Hawks' response has become the stuff of legend, as they burst into a scorched earth rendition of "Like a Rolling Stone," following a now-famous, scathing retort to the heckler from Dylan. For decades it was thought that the concert had taken place at Royal Albert Hall in London, thanks to a bootleg record of the entire show that circulated under that title. It was officially released commercially as Volume 4 of Dylan's ongoing Bootleg Series in 1998.
Nearly sixty years later, some now prefer the more mature Dylan's intensely personal and reflective Blood on the Tracks, created after the dust of the '60s had settled and artists were looking more inward, as his signature statement. For me, it's the blast furnace of Blonde on Blonde, a record that was seemingly molded in real time* as the maelstrom of that decade began its pull, that brandishes Dylan at his most urgent and essential, at his Sturm und Drang apex. As Blonde on Blonde was part of an organic movement that set in motion the transformation of the world's youth from apathy to concern to involvement, and youth music from pop to rock, it seems fitting to designate it as the crowning achievement of Dylan's career.
*In fact, Dylan reportedly wrote, altered, and/or finished many of Blonde's songs during late nights in the recording studio while his team of topflight Nashville musicians bided their time (on the clock).
I'm not sure if "golden age" can rightly apply to an era of something as wide-ranging as rock music and the supposedly rebellious ethos it represents. There was a TV documentary in 1979, hosted by Jeff Bridges, called The Heroes of Rock and Roll; David Bowie later expressed disdain for the title phrase, which he perceived to be oxymoronic. A healthy disdain should probably also be exercised regarding labels such as "golden age" or "classic" when they're used to describe an aspect or period of rock (and/or roll). Whatever phraseology is apt, there have been precious few stages of intensified forward movement in this music at any given time in its seventy-plus year history. To my way of thinking, none was so pronounced or profound as that year-and-a-half stretch of 1965-66. It doesn't need a label, but it should be remembered--and lauded.
© Jon Oye, 2025
All records, sheet music book, and The Saturday Evening Post are from my collection.
Rolling Stones photo source: https://x.com/showgan14/status/1145353274322612224
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