How Did Psychedelic Rock Start?
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Psychedelic rock, also referred to as psychedelia, is a diverse style of rock music that is inspired by or influenced by psychedelic culture and attempts to replicate and enhance the mind-altering experiences of psychedelic drugs.
Psychedelic Rock Basics
Psychedelic rock, also known as “acid rock”, is a style of rock music characterized by distorted guitars, trippy lyrics, and mind-bending visual effects. The genre is indebted to the pioneering work of bands like The Beatles, The Doors, and Pink Floyd.
What is Psychedelic Rock?
Psychedelic rock is a style of rock music that is inspired or influenced by psychedelic culture and attempts to replicate and enhance the mind-altering experiences of psychedelic drugs. It emerged in the mid-1960s among folk rock and blues-rock bands in Britain and the United States.
Key Characteristics of Psychedelic Rock
Psychedelic rock is a style of rock music that is inspired or influenced by psychedelic culture and attempts to replicate and enhance the mind-altering experiences of psychedelic drugs. It often uses new recording techniques and effects, electronic instruments, and incorporates elements of other genres like folk, jazz, and world music. Psychedelic rock developed in the mid-1960s with bands such as the Beatles, the Byrds, and the Rolling Stones creating some of the first recordings in the genre. The style reached its peak of popularity in the late 1960s with artists such as Jimi Hendrix, Cream, Pink Floyd, and Sly & the Family Stone.
The Origins of Psychedelic Rock
Psychedelic rock, also called psychedelia, is a style of rock music characterized by the use of psychedelic drugs, particularly LSD, as a way of enhancing the experience of a live performance. The music is intended to replicate and enhance the experience of a psychedelic drug trip. The first psychedelic rock band is generally considered to be The Grateful Dead, who began playing in 1965.
Early Influences
Psychedelic rock is a style of rock music that emerged in the mid-1960s and became widely popular in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The style is defined by a combination of musical experimentation, distorted electric guitars, extended jams, and mind-altering substances.
Psychedelic rock emerged during a time of social upheaval. The early 1960s were a period of political turmoil and cultural change. Young people were pushing against the traditional values of their parents and grandparents. They were experimenting with new styles of music, fashion, anddrugs.
The first wave of psychedelic rock was led by American bands such as The Byrds, The Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, and The Doors. These bands combined elements of folk music, blues, country, jazz, and Eastern music with electric guitars, feedback, and other studio techniques to create a new sound. They also incorporated themes from literature and philosophy into their lyrics.
The second wave of psychedelic rock was led by British bands such as Pink Floyd, Primal Scream, and Syd Barrett’s Pink Floyd. These bands took the sound of the American psychedelic bands and added their own unique elements to create a new sound.
Psychedelic rock has had a significant influence on subsequent genres of music including punk rock, alternative rock, grunge, Riot Grrrl,and shoegaze.
The British Invasion
Psychedelic rock, revolutionary style of rock music popular in the late 1960s that was largely inspired by hallucinogens, or so-called mind-expanding drugs such as marijuana and LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide; “acid”), and that reflected changes in the lifestyles and values of young people at the time. Psychedelic music emerged during the British Invasion of the mid-1960s, when rock bands from England—notably the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and the Who—began to break through in the United States with a rawer, harder-edged kind of rock than had been heard before. These groups were quickly followed by bands from America—notably Jefferson Airplane, Moby Grape, and the Grateful Dead—that blended traditional rock with other styles to create new sounds. The best psychedelic records were marked by extended improvisation, unusual instrumentation (sitar, mellotron), sound effects (feedback, backward masking), studio techniques (e.g., automatic double tracking), and an interest in Eastern religions and philosophy. At its core psychedelic rock is based on distorted electric guitars played to generate feedback with heavy use of reverb, echo effect pedals and improvised soloing; it sometimes made use of electronic instruments such as synthesizers.
The Summer of Love
The Summer of Love was a social phenomenon that occurred during the summer of 1967, when as many as 100,000 people, mostly young people sporting hippie fashion and behavior, converged in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury neighborhood. Although hippies also gathered in many other places in the U.S., Canada and Europe, San Francisco was at that time the most publicized location for hippie activity. The Haight-Ashbury district was popularized by music groups such as the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane.
The Legacy of Psychedelic Rock
Psychedelic rock, which is also sometimes referred to as “acid rock”, is a type of rock music that emerged in the mid-1960s. This genre of music is characterized by its use of feedback, distorted guitars, and extended solos. Psychedelic rock often makes use of psychedelic and mind-altering drugs, such as LSD, in order to create a “trip-like” experience.
Psychedelic Rock Today
Psychedelic rock, also referred to as psychedelia, is a diverse style of rock music that was inspired, influenced, or representative of psychedelic culture, which is centred around perception-altering hallucinogenic drugs. The music is intended to replicate and enhance the mind-altering experiences of psychedelic drugs. Psychedelic rock developed in the mid-1960s amidst the era’s social and cultural upheavals and reached the height of its popularity between 1967 and 1969.
Although the style had faded from the pop charts by the early 1970s, it left a significant legacy on subsequent developments in popular music. Psychedelic rock influenced artists as diverse as David Bowie, George Clinton, Patti Smith, members of Kiss and Alice Cooper; it also played an important role in the formation of genres like space rock, krautrock and glam rock.
In the 1990s and 2000s, psychedlia underwent something of a revival thanks to bands such as Spacemen 3 and The Flaming Lips. More recently, classic psychedlia has been appropriated by 2010s indie pop acts such as Temples and Tame Impala.
