Acid rock
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Acid rock is a loosely defined type of rock musicTemplate:Sfn that evolved out of the mid-1960s garage punkTemplate:Sfn movement and helped launch the psychedelic subculture. While the term has sometimes been used interchangeably with "psychedelic rock", acid rock also specifically refers to a more musically intense, rawer, or heavier subgenre or sibling of psychedelic rock. Named after lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), the style is generally defined by heavy, distorted guitars and often contains lyrics with drug references and long improvised jams.
Compared to other forms of psychedelic rock, acid rock features a harder, louder, heavier, or rawer sound. Much of the style overlaps with 1960s garage punk, proto-metal, and early heavy, blues-based hard rock. It developed mainly from the American West Coast, where groups did not focus on the novelty recording effects or whimsy of British psychedelia; instead, the subgenre emphasized the heavier qualities associated with both the positive and negative extremes of the psychedelic experience.
As the movement progressed into the late 1960s and 1970s, elements of acid rock split into two directions, with hard rock and heavy metal on one side and progressive rock on the other. In the 1990s, the stoner metal genre combined acid rock with other hard rock styles such as grunge and doom metal, updating the heavy riffs and long jams found in acid rock and psychedelic-influenced metal.
Definitions
Template:See also "Acid rock" as a term was initially (and often still is) loosely defined.Template:Sfn In 1969, as the genre was still solidifying, rock journalist Nik Cohn called it a "fairly meaningless phrase that got applied to any group, no matter what its style".Template:Sfn The term was originally used to describe the background music for acid trips in underground parties in the 1960s (e.g. the Merry Pranksters' "Acid Tests")Template:Sfn and as a catchall term for the more eclectic Haight-Ashbury bands in San Francisco.Template:Sfn The Grateful Dead's Jerry Garcia believed that acid rock is music you listen to while under the influence of acid, further stating that there is no real "psychedelic rock" and that it is Indian classical music and some Tibetan music "designed to expand consciousness".Template:Sfn
The term has often been deployed interchangeably with "psychedelic rock" or "psychedelia", particularly during the genre's nascence.<ref name="syn">Template:Harvnb; Template:Harvnb; Template:Harvnb; Template:Harvnb</ref> However, the distinction between the heavier "acid rock" and the more general or inclusive genre of "psychedelic rock" has been well established.<ref name=AMgenre/> According to Per Elias Drabløs, "acid rock is generally considered a subgenre of psychedelic rock",Template:Sfn while Steve and Alan Freeman state the two terms are more or less synonymous, and that "what is usually referred to as acid rock is generally the more extreme end of [the psychedelic rock genre]".Template:Sfn This would mean psychedelic rock that is heavier, louder, or harder.<ref name=AMgenre>Template:AllMusic</ref>Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn Additionally, music critics later retroactively labelled the bridge between acid rock and later hard rock and heavy metal acts as "heavy psych".<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
When defined specifically as a hard rock variant of psychedelia, acid rock is distinguished as having evolved from the 1960s garage punk movement, with many of its bands eventually transforming into heavy metal acts.Template:SfnTemplate:Refn Percussionist John Beck defines "acid rock" as synonymous with hard rock and heavy metal.Template:SfnTemplate:Refn The term eventually encompassed heavy, blues-based hard rock bands.Template:Sfn Musicologist Steve Waksman wrote that "the distinction between acid rock, hard rock, and heavy metal can at some point never be more than tenuous".Template:Sfn Template:Clear left
Origins and ideology
Many bands associated with acid rock aimed to create a youth movement based on love and peace, as an alternative to workaholic capitalist society.Template:Sfn David P. Szatmary states, "a legion of rock bands, playing what became known as 'acid rock,' stood in the vanguard of the movement for cultural change."Template:Sfn Szatmary also quotes from the San Francisco Oracle, an underground newspaper published between 1966 and 1968, to explain how rock music was perceived at that time and how the acid rock movement emerged: "Rock music is a regenerative and revolutionary art, offering us our first real hope for the future (indeed, for the present)."Template:Sfn
When played live at dance clubs, performances were accompanied by psychedelic-themed light showsTemplate:Sfn in order to replicate the visual effects of the acid experience.Template:Sfn According to Kevin T. McEneaney, the Grateful Dead "invented" acid rock in front of a crowd of concertgoers in San Jose, California on December 4, 1965, the date of the second Acid Test held by author Ken Kesey. Their stage performance involved the use of strobe lights to reproduce LSD's "surrealistic fragmenting" or "vivid isolating of caught moments".Template:Sfn The Acid Test experiments subsequently launched the psychedelic subculture.Template:Sfn Author Steve Turner recognises the Beatles' success in conveying an LSD-inspired worldview on their 1966 album Revolver, especially with the track "Tomorrow Never Knows", as having "opened the doors" to acid rock.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>Template:Refn Former Atlantic Records executive Phillip Rauls recalls: "I was in the music business at the time, and my very first recognition of acid rock ... was, of all people, the Beach Boys and the song 'Good Vibrations' ... That [song's electro theremin] sent so many musicians back to the studio to create this music on acid."Template:SfnTemplate:Refn
According to Laura Diane Kuhn, the heavier form of psychedelic rock known as acid rock developed from the late 1960s California music scene.Template:Sfn The Charlatans were among the first Bay Area acid rock bands. Jefferson Airplane was the first Bay Area acid rock band to sign a major label and achieve mainstream success.Template:Sfn By July 1967, Time magazine wrote, "From jukeboxes and transistors across the nation pulses the turned-on sound of acid-rock groups: the Jefferson Airplane, the Doors, Moby Grape".<ref>Template:Cite magazineTemplate:Subscription required</ref> In 1968, Life magazine referred to the Doors as the "kings of acid rock".<ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref>Template:Refn
Other bands credited with creating or laying the foundation for acid rock include garage rock bands such as the 13th Floor Elevators and Count Five.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn The blues rock group the Paul Butterfield Blues Band are also credited with spawning the harder acid rock sound,<ref name="northjersey">Template:Cite web</ref> and their 1966 instrumental "East-West", with its early use of the extended rock solo, has been described as laying "the roots of psychedelic acid rock"<ref name="paulbutterfield">Template:Cite web</ref> and featuring "much of acid-rock's eventual DNA".<ref name="ultimateclassic">Template:Cite web</ref> The Beatles' June 1967 album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band was a major influence on American acid rock groups.Template:Sfn
Development and characteristics
Garage-psych
Originating in the early 1960s, garage rock was a mainly-American movement that involved R&B-inspired garage bands powered by electric guitars and organs.<ref name="Hann (Garage Punk)"/> It was mainly the domain of untrained teenagers fixated on sonic effects, such as wah-wah and fuzz tone, and relied heavily on riffs.Template:Sfn The music later blurred into psychedelia.<ref name="Hann (Garage Punk)">Template:Cite web</ref> American garage bands retained the rawness and energy of garage rock, while incorporating its use of heavy distortion, feedback, and layered sonic effects into their versions of psychedelic music, which spawned early examples of "acid rock".<ref name=garage>Template:AllMusic.</ref> Bisport and Puterbaugh, who defined acid rock as an intense or raw form of psychedelia, include "garagey" psychedelia under the label of "acid rock" due in part to its "energy and intimation of psychic overload".Template:Sfn Exemplary garage-psych acts include Blues Magoos, the Electric Prunes, and the Music Machine.Template:Sfn
The earliest known use of the terms "garage punk" or "garage rock" appeared in Lenny Kaye's track-by-track liner notes for the 1972 anthology compilation Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era, 1965-1968, to describe a song by the Shadows of Knight, as "classic garage punk". At the time, the term "punk rock" referred to the garage rock of the 1960s, with the compilation's liner notes containing one of the earliest known uses of the term.<ref name="austen">Template:Cite book</ref><ref name="billboard">Template:Cite magazine</ref>Template:Sfn Musicologist Simon Frith cites Nuggets, as a showcase for the garage psychedelia of the 1960s, with the compilation epitomizing an overlap between 1960s garage rock and early psychedelia.Template:SfnTemplate:SfnTemplate:Sfn Bands such as the Count Five, with their 1966 single "Psychotic Reaction", contained some of the earliest characteristics that would later come to define acid rock, such as the emphasizing of guitar feedback and distortion over traditional rock instrumentation.Template:Sfn
Another group included on the Nuggets album, the 13th Floor Elevators from Austin, Texas, began as a straight garage rock band before becoming one of the original early acid rock bands and pioneers of psychedelic rock in general, with a sound consisting of guitar effects, screeching vocals, and "occasionally demented" lyrics.Template:Sfn Their debut album, The Psychedelic Sounds of the 13th Floor Elevators, featuring the garage rock hit "You're Gonna Miss Me", was among the earliest psychedelic rock albums.<ref name=miss>Template:Cite web</ref>Template:Sfn At around the same time, New York City's the Blues Magoos were referring to their wailing garage and blues rock as "psychedelic music", which would also be increasingly labeled "acid rock".Template:Sfn
Distinctions from other psychedelic rock
Acid rock often encompasses the more extreme side of the psychedelic rock genre, frequently containing a loud, improvised, and guitar-centered sound.Template:Sfn Alan Bisbort and Parke Puterbaugh write that acid rock "can best be described as psychedelia at its rawest and most intense ... Bad trips as well as good, riots as well as peace, pain as well as pleasure - the whole spectrum of reality, not just the idyllic bits, were captured by acid rock."Template:Sfn "Acid rock" has also been described as more heavily electric and containing more distortion ("fuzz") than typical psychedelic rock.Template:Sfn By the late 1960s, in addition to the deliberate use of distortion and feedback, acid rock was further characterized by long guitar solos and the frequent use of electronic organs.Template:Sfn Lyric references to drug use were also common, as exemplified in Jefferson Airplane's 1967 song "White Rabbit" and Jimi Hendrix Experience's 1967 song "Purple Haze".Template:Sfn Lyrical references to drugs such as LSD were often cryptic.Template:Sfn
At a time when many British psychedelic bands played whimsical or surrealistic psychedelic rock, many 1960s American rock bands, especially those from the West Coast, developed a rawer or harder version of psychedelic rock containing garage rock energy.<ref name=garage/> When contrasted with whimsical British psychedelia, this harder American West Coast variant of psychedelic rock has been referred to as acid rock.Template:SfnTemplate:Refn American psychedelic rock and garage bands such as the 13th Floor Elevators epitomized the frenetic, darker and more psychotic sound of American acid rock, a sound characterized by droning guitar riffs, amplified feedback, and guitar distortion.<ref name="britannica"/> Hoffman writes that acid rock lacked the recording studio "gimmickry" that typified the more Beatles-influenced strain of psychedelic rock, though acid rock experimented in other ways with electrified guitar effects.Template:Sfn
Tonal distortion was also one of the defining characteristics of the San Francisco Sound.Template:Sfn The acid rock of the San Francisco Sound heavily incorporated musical improvisation, jamming, repetitive drum beats, experimental sound and tape effects, and intentional feedback.Template:Sfn San Francisco acid rock generally took a non-commercial approach to song-writing: it often involved almost free jazz-like, free-form hard rock improvisations alongside distorted guitars, and lyrics often were socially conscious, trippy, or anti-establishment.Template:Sfn Many of the musicians in the scene, including bands such as the Charlatans and the Quicksilver Messenger Service, became involved in Ken Kesey's LSD-driven psychedelic scene, known as the Merry Pranksters.Template:Sfn
Transition to hard rock and heavy metal
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Heavy metal evolved from psychedelic music and acid rockTemplate:Sfn and added psychedelic/acid rock to the basic structure of blues rock.Template:Sfn In the 1960s, the heavy, blues-influenced, psychedelic hard rock sound of bands such as the Jimi Hendrix Experience, Deep Purple, and Cream was classified as acid rock.Template:Sfn Other acid rock groups such as Blue Cheer, Iron Butterfly, and Vanilla Fudge served as examples of early heavy metal, or proto-metal, creating stripped-downed, loud, intense, and "fuzzy" acid rock or hard rock.Template:Sfn Bands such as Blue Cheer, Cream, and the hard rock group The Amboy Dukes have all been described as "leading practitioners" of the harder variant of psychedelic rock known as "acid rock".Template:Sfn Many acid rock bands would subsequently become heavy metal bands.<ref name=AMgenre />
The influence of acid rock was evident in the sound of heavy metal in the 1970s.Template:Sfn Iron Butterfly's "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida" is sometimes described as an example of the transition between acid rock and heavy metalTemplate:Sfn or the turning point in which acid rock became "heavy metal".<ref name="houstonpress">Template:Cite web</ref> "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida" serves a notable example of 1960s and early 1970s acid rock or heavy psychedelia, and the band would continue to experiment with distorted, "fuzzy", heavy psychedelia into the 1970s.Template:Sfn Both Iron Butterfly's 1968 album In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida and Blue Cheer's 1968 album Vincebus Eruptum have been described as influential in the transition of acid rock into heavy metal.Template:Sfn Heavy metal's acid rock origins can further be seen in the loud acid rock of groups such as Steppenwolf, who contributed their song "Born to Be Wild" to the soundtrack of the 1969 film Easy Rider, which itself glamorized the genre.Template:Sfn Ultimately, Steppenwolf and other acid rock groups such as Cream, the Jimi Hendrix Experience, and Led Zeppelin paved the way for the electrified, bluesy sound of early heavy metal.Template:Sfn
Coven is an American rock band formed in Chicago in the late 1960s. They had a top 40 hit in 1971 with the song "One Tin Soldier", the theme song of the movie Billy Jack.In addition to pioneering occult rock with lyrics and aesthetics that explicitly dealt in themes of Satanism and witchcraft, they are recognized by metal fans and metal historians as being the band that introduced the "Sign of the horns" to rock, metal and pop culture, as seen on their 1969 debut album release Witchcraft Destroys Minds & Reaps Souls.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> By the early 1970s, bands such as Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath combined the loud, raw distortion of acid rock with occult lyrics, further forming a basis for the genre now known as "heavy metal".Template:Sfn At a time when rock music began to turn back to roots-oriented soft rock, many acid rock groups instead evolved into heavy metal bands.Template:Sfn As its own movement, heavy metal music continued to perpetuate characteristics of acid rock bands into at least the 1980s,Template:Sfn and traces of psychedelic rock can be seen in the musical excesses of later metal bands.Template:Sfn In the 1990s, the stoner metal genre combined acid rock with other hard rock genres such as grunge, updating the heavy riffs and long jams found in the acid rock and psychedelic-influenced metal of bands such as Black Sabbath, Blue Cheer, Hawkwind, and Blue Öyster Cult.<ref name=AMStonerrock/>
In addition to hard rock and heavy metal, acid rock also gave rise to the progressive rock movement.Template:Sfn In the 1970s, elements of psychedelic music split into two notable directions, evolving into the hard rock and heavy metal of Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, and Led Zeppelin on one side and into the progressive rock of bands such Pink Floyd and Yes on the other.Template:Sfn Bands such as Yes, Pink Floyd, King Crimson, and Emerson, Lake, and Palmer kept the psychedelic musical movement alive for some time, but eventually moved away from drug-themed music towards experiments in electronic music and the addition of classical music themes into rock music.Template:Sfn
List of artists
Footnotes
References
Bibliography
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