The Beatles Artists Notes UNIT 1 PDF

**The Beatles** The Beatles formed in Liverpool, England in 1960. The group's best-known line-up comprised John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr. In March 1957, John Lennon, then aged sixteen, formed a skiffle group with friends from Quarry Bank High School in Liverpool. Th...

**The Beatles** The Beatles formed in Liverpool, England in 1960. The group's best-known line-up comprised John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr. In March 1957, John Lennon, then aged sixteen, formed a skiffle group with friends from Quarry Bank High School in Liverpool. They called themselves the Quarrymen. Fifteen-year-old Paul McCartney joined as a rhythm guitarist shortly after he met Lennon that July. In February 1958, McCartney invited his friend George Harrison to watch the band. The fifteen-year-old auditioned for Lennon, and they eventually enlisted him as their lead guitarist. By January 1959, Lennon\'s Quarry Bank friends had left the group, and he began his studies at Liverpool College of Art. John, Paul, and George, billing themselves as Johnny and the Moondogs, were playing rock and roll whenever they could find a drummer. Lennon\'s art school friend, Stuart Sutcliffe, was persuaded to purchase a bass guitar and joined in January 1960. It was he who suggested changing the band\'s name to *Beatals*, as a tribute to Buddy Holly and the Crickets. In May, they became the Silver Beetles before undertaking a brief tour of Scotland as the backing group for pop singer Johnny Gentle. By the middle of August, they changed their name to *the Beatles*. Allan Williams, the Beatles\' unofficial manager, arranged a residency for them in Hamburg, Germany. Needing a drummer, they hired drummer Pete Best in mid-August 1960. Four days later, the band, now a five-piece, departed for Hamburg, for what would be a 3½-month residency. The Beatles initially played at the Indra Club. After the Indra closed, they moved to the Kaiserkeller. When their employer, Bruno Koschmider, learned they had been performing at the rival Top Ten Club in breach of their contract, he gave the band one month\'s termination notice and reported the underage Harrison, who had obtained permission to stay in Hamburg by lying to the German authorities about his age. Authorities deported Harrison in late November. One week later, Koschmider had McCartney and Best arrested for arson after they set fire to a condom in a concrete corridor. They, too, were deported. Lennon returned to Liverpool in early December, while Sutcliffe remained in Hamburg until late February with his German fiancée Astrid Kirchherr. During the next two years, the Beatles played extended periods in Hamburg. When Sutcliffe decided to leave the band and resume his art studies in Germany, McCartney took up the bass. Producer Bert Kaempfert used the group as Tony Sheridan\'s backing band on a series of recordings for Polydor Records. Credited to \"Tony Sheridan & the Beat Brothers,\" the single \"My Bonnie\" was recorded in June 1961 and released four months later. In November 1961, during one of the group\'s frequent performances at Liverpool's The Cavern Club, they met Brian Epstein, a local record-store owner and music columnist. They appointed him as their manager in January 1962. Epstein encouraged them to adopt a more professional approach to performing. Tragedy greeted them on their third trip to Germany in April 1962, when a distraught Kirchherr met them at the airport with news of Stuart Sutcliffe\'s death the previous day from what was later determined as a brain hemorrhage. Epstein had negotiations with record labels for a recording contract. After a New Year\'s Day 1962 audition, Decca Records rejected the band with the comment \"Guitar groups are on the way out, Mr. Epstein.\" However, three months later, producer George Martin signed the group to EMI's Parlophone label. Martin immediately complained about Best\'s poor drumming and suggested they use a session drummer in his place. Already contemplating Best\'s dismissal, the Beatles replaced him in mid-August with Ringo Starr. A September session yielded a recording of \"Love Me Do.\" Released in early October, \"Love Me Do\" peaked at \#17. After the moderate success of \"Love Me Do,\" the single \"Please Please Me\" met with a more emphatic reception. Released in January 1963, the song reached \#1. The band\'s third single, \"From Me to You,\" came out in April and was also a chart-topping hit, starting an almost unbroken string of seventeen British \#1 singles for the Beatles, including all but one of the eighteen they released over the next six years. Issued in August, the band\'s fourth single, \"She Loves You,\" achieved the fastest sales of any record in the UK up to that time, selling three-quarters of a million copies in under four weeks. It became their first single to sell a million copies and remained the biggest-selling record in the UK until 1978. As their popularity spread, a frenzied adulation of the group took hold. Greeted with riotous enthusiasm by screaming fans, the press dubbed the phenomenon \"Beatlemania.\" EMI\'s American subsidiary, Capitol Records, hindered the Beatles\' releases in the United States for more than a year by initially declining to issue their music. Epstein brought a demo copy of \"I Want to Hold Your Hand\" to Capitol, and the label arranged for a \$40,000 US marketing campaign. Capitol released the single on December 26, 1963, and \"I Want to Hold Your Hand\" sold a million copies, becoming a \#1 hit in the US by mid-January. On February 7, 1964, the Beatles left the UK with an estimated 4,000 fans waving and screaming as the aircraft took off. Upon landing at New York\'s John F. Kennedy Airport, an uproarious crowd greeted them. They gave their first live US television performance two days later on *The Ed Sullivan Show*, watched by approximately 73 million viewers in over 23 million households, or 34% of the American population. Their hairstyle, unusually long for the era, became an emblem of rebellion to the burgeoning youth culture. The group\'s popularity generated unprecedented interest in British music, and many other UK acts subsequently made their American debuts, successfully touring over the next three years in what was termed the British Invasion. The Beatles\' success in the US opened the door for a successive string of British beat groups and pop acts such as the Dave Clark Five, the Animals, Petula Clark, the Kinks, and the Rolling Stones to achieve success in America. During the first week of April 1964, the Beatles held twelve positions on the *Billboard* singles chart, including the top five. Capitol Records\' lack of interest throughout 1963 did not go unnoticed, and a competitor, United Artists Records, encouraged their film division to offer the Beatles a three-motion-picture deal. Directed by Richard Lester, *A Hard Day\'s Night* involved the band for six weeks in March--April 1964 as they played themselves in a musical comedy. The group\'s third studio LP, *A Hard Day\'s Night*, contained songs from the film on side one and other new recordings on side two. The album's ringing guitar sound was primarily the product of Harrison\'s 12-string electric Rickenbacker, a prototype given to him by the manufacturer, which made its debut on the record. In August 1964, a journalist arranged for the Beatles to meet Bob Dylan. Visiting the band in their New York hotel suite, Dylan introduced them to cannabis. Within six months of the meeting, Lennon would be making records on which he openly imitated Dylan\'s nasal drone, brittle strum, and introspective vocal persona, and six months after that, Dylan began performing with a backing band and electric instrumentation dressed in the height of Mod fashion. As a result, the traditional division between folk and rock enthusiasts nearly evaporated, as the Beatles\' fans began to mature in their outlook, and Dylan\'s audience embraced the new, youth-driven pop culture. In early 1965, following a dinner with Lennon, Harrison, and their wives, Harrison\'s dentist secretly added LSD to their coffee. John and George subsequently became regular users of the drug, joined by Starr on at least one occasion. McCartney was initially reluctant to try it but eventually did so in late 1966. He became the first Beatle to discuss LSD publicly, declaring in a magazine interview that \"it opened my eyes\" and \"made me a better, more honest, more tolerant member of society.\" In July 1965, the Beatles\' second film, *Help!*, was released, again directed by Richard Lester. The soundtrack was dominated by Lennon, who wrote and sang lead on most of its songs, including the two singles \"Help!\" and \"Ticket to Ride.\" The band incorporated classical instruments into some arrangements, including a string quartet on the pop ballad \"Yesterday.\" Composed by and sung by McCartney (none of the other Beatles perform on the recording), \"Yesterday\" has inspired the most cover versions of any song ever written. In mid-October, the Beatles entered the recording studio. For the first time when making an album, they had an extended period without other major commitments. Until this time, according to George Martin, \"we had been making albums rather like a collection of singles. Now we were really beginning to think about albums as a bit of art on their own.\" Released in December, *Rubber Soul* was hailed by critics as a major step forward in the maturity and complexity of the band\'s music. After *Help!*\'s foray into classical music, Harrison\'s introduction of a sitar on \"Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)\" marked a further progression outside the traditional boundaries of popular music. Harrison met sitar maestro Ravi Shankar, who agreed to train him on the instrument. In 1966, the Beatles faced a fierce backlash from US religious and social conservatives (as well as the Ku Klux Klan) over a comment Lennon had made in a March interview with British reporter. \"Christianity will go,\" Lennon had said. \"It will vanish and shrink. I needn\'t argue about that; I\'m right and I will be proved right \... Jesus was alright but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It\'s them twisting it that ruins it for me.\" His comments went virtually unnoticed in England, but when a US teenage fan magazine printed them five months later, it sparked a controversy with Christians in America\'s conservative Bible Belt region. Released in August 1966, a week before the Beatles\' final tour, *Revolver* marked another artistic step forward for the group. The album featured sophisticated songwriting, studio experimentation, and a greatly expanded repertoire of musical styles, ranging from innovative classical string arrangements to psychedelia. Among the experimental songs that *Revolver* featured was \"Tomorrow Never Knows,\" the lyrics for which Lennon drew from Timothy Leary\'s *The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead*. Its creation involved eight tape decks distributed about the EMI building, each staffed by an engineer or band member, who randomly varied the movement of a tape loop while Martin created a composite mix of the incoming data. McCartney\'s \"Eleanor Rigby\" made prominent use of a string octet. Harrison\'s emergence as a songwriter was reflected in three of his compositions appearing on the record. Among these, \"Taxman,\" which opened the album, marked the first example of the Beatles making a political statement through their music. Struggling to compete with the volume of screaming fans, the band had grown increasingly bored with the routine of performing live. Recognizing that their shows were no longer about the music, they decided to make the August 1966 tour their last. The band performed none of their new songs on the tour. The band\'s concert at San Francisco's Candlestick Park on August 29, 1966 was their last commercial concert. Freed from the burden of touring, the Beatles embraced an increasingly experimental approach as they recorded *Sgt. Pepper\'s Lonely Hearts Club Band*, beginning in late November 1966. According to engineer Geoff Emerick, the album\'s recording took over 700 hours. The sessions initially yielded the non-album double A-side single \"Strawberry Fields Forever\" / \"Penny Lane\" in February 1967. The *Sgt. Pepper* LP followed with a rush-release in May. The album was the first major pop/rock LP to include its complete lyrics, which appeared on the back cover. The musical complexity of the records, created using relatively primitive four-track recording technology, astounded contemporary artists. Among music critics, acclaim for the album was virtually universal. *Sgt. Pepper* topped the UK charts for 23 consecutive weeks. Two Beatles film projects were conceived within weeks of completing *Sgt. Pepper*, *Magical Mystery Tour*, a one-hour television film, and *Yellow Submarine*, an animated feature-length film. On June 25, the Beatles performed their forthcoming single \"All You Need Is Love\" to an estimated 350 million viewers on *Our World*, the first live global television link. Released a week later, during the Summer of Love, the song was adopted as a flower power anthem. On August 24, the group were introduced to Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in London. The next day, they travelled to Bangor, Wales for his Transcendental Meditation retreat. On August 27, the group was informed their manager, Brian Epstein, had died. The coroner ruled the death an accidental overdose, although it was widely rumored to be a suicide. His death left the group disoriented and fearful about the future. During a band meeting in September, McCartney recommended that the band proceed with the *Magical Mystery Tour* TV special. *Magical Mystery Tour* first aired the day after Christmas to a UK television audience of approximately 15 million. Largely directed by McCartney, the film was the band\'s first critical failure. It was dismissed as \"blatant rubbish\" by the *Daily Express.* The group were less involved with *Yellow Submarine*, which only featured the band appearing as themselves for a short live-action segment. Premiering in July 1968, the film featured cartoon versions of the band members and a soundtrack with eleven of their songs, including four unreleased studio recordings that made their debut in the film. Critics praised the film for its music, humor, and innovative visual style. In February 1968, the Beatles travelled to Maharishi Mahesh Yogi\'s ashram in Rishikesh, India, to take part in a three-month meditation course. However, Ringo left after only ten days, unable to stomach the food, and Paul eventually grew bored and departed a month later. Amid negative rumors about the Maharishi, John left abruptly just two months into the course, bringing an unconvinced George and the remainder of the group\'s entourage with him. McCartney said, \"We made a mistake. We thought there was more to him than there was.\" In May, Lennon and McCartney unveiled the Beatles\' new business venture, Apple Corps. It was initially formed several months earlier as part of a plan to create a tax-effective business structure, but the band wanted to extend the corporation to other pursuits, including record distribution, peace activism, and education. The enterprise drained the group financially with a series of unsuccessful projects handled largely by members of the Beatles\' entourage, who were given their jobs regardless of talent and experience. Among its numerous subsidiaries were Apple Records, Apple Films, Apple Publishing, Apple Electronics, and Apple Retailing, which opened the short-lived Apple Boutique in London. Harrison later said, \"Basically, it was chaos \... John and Paul got carried away with the idea and blew millions, and Ringo and I just had to go along with it.\" From late May to mid-October 1968, the group recorded what became *The Beatles*, a double LP commonly known as \"*The White Album*.\" During this time, relations between the members grew openly divisive. Starr quit for two weeks, leaving his bandmates to record \"Back in the U.S.S.R.\" and \"Dear Prudence\" as a trio. Lennon had lost interest in collaborating with McCartney. Tensions were further aggravated by Lennon\'s romantic preoccupation with avant-garde artist Yoko Ono, whom he insisted on bringing to the sessions despite the group\'s well-established rule that girlfriends were not allowed in the studio. Describing the double album, Lennon later said: \"Every track is an individual track; there isn\'t any Beatle music on it. \[It\'s\] John and the band, Paul and the band, George and the band.\" Issued in November, *The White Album* was the band\'s first Apple Records album release. Although *Let It Be* was the Beatles\' final album release, it was largely recorded before *Abbey Road*. The project\'s impetus came from an idea attributed to McCartney, who suggested they record an album of new material and rehearse it, then perform it before a live audience for the very first time -- on record and on film. Originally intended for a one-hour television program to be called *Beatles at Work*, much of the album\'s content came from studio work beginning in January 1969. It was a time when relations between the Beatles were at their lowest ebb. Lennon described the largely impromptu sessions as \"hell \... the most miserable \... on Earth,\" and Harrison, \"the low of all-time.\" To alleviate tensions within the band and improve the quality of their live sound, Harrison invited keyboardist Billy Preston to participate in the last nine days of sessions. Ultimately, what would be their final live performance was filmed on the rooftop of the Apple Corps building on January 30, 1969. New strains developed between the band members regarding the appointment of a financial adviser, the need for which had become evident without Epstein to manage business affairs. Lennon, Harrison, and Starr favored Allen Klein, who had managed the Rolling Stones and Sam Cooke, but McCartney wanted Lee and John Eastman -- father and brother, respectively, of Linda Eastman, whom McCartney married in March. An agreement could not be reached. On May 8, Klein was named sole manager of the band. McCartney refused to sign the management contract with Klein, but he was out voted by the other Beatles. George Martin was surprised when McCartney asked him to produce another album, as the *Get Back* sessions had been \"a miserable experience\" and he \"thought it was the end of the road for all of us.\" The primary recording sessions for *Abbey Road* began on July 2, 1969. Engineer Geoff Emerick noted that the replacement of the studio's tube mixing console with a transistorized one yielded a less punchy sound. The completion and mixing of \"I Want You (She\'s So Heavy)\" on August 20 was the last occasion on which all four Beatles were together in the same studio. On September 20, Lennon announced his departure to the rest of the group but agreed to withhold a public announcement to avoid undermining sales of the forthcoming album. Released on September 26, 1969, *Abbey Road* sold four million copies within three months and topped the UK charts for a total of seventeen weeks. Its second track, the ballad \"Something,\" was issued as a single -- the only Harrison composition that appeared as a Beatles A-side. For the still unfinished *Get Back* album, one last song, Harrison\'s \"I Me Mine,\" was recorded on January 3, 1970. Lennon, in Denmark at the time, did not participate. In March, manager Allen Klein gave the session tapes to American producer Phil Spector, who had recently produced Lennon\'s solo single \"Instant Karma!\" In addition to remixing the material, Spector edited, spliced, and overdubbed several of the recordings that had been intended as \"live.\" McCartney was unhappy with the producer\'s approach and particularly dissatisfied with the lavish orchestration on \"The Long and Winding Road,\" which involved a fourteen-voice choir and 36-piece instrumental ensemble. McCartney\'s demands that the alterations to the song be reverted were ignored, and he publicly announced his departure from the band on April 10, a week before the release of his first, self-titled solo album. On May 8, 1970, *Let It Be* was released.  McCartney filed suit for the dissolution of the Beatles\' contractual partnership on December 31, 1970. Legal disputes continued long after their break-up, and the dissolution was not formalized until December 29, 1974, when Lennon signed the paperwork terminating the partnership. **The Rolling Stones** The Rolling Stones formed in London in 1962. The band\'s first stable line-up consisted of bandleader Brian Jones (guitar, harmonica, keyboards), Mick Jagger (lead vocals, harmonica), Keith Richards (guitar, vocals), Charlie Watts (drums), Bill Wyman (bass guitar), and Ian Stewart (piano). Keith Richards and Mick Jagger originally became childhood friends and classmates in 1950. In 1954, Jagger's family moved, and the boys lost contact. In the mid-1950s, Jagger formed a band with his friend Dick Taylor. The group mainly played material by Muddy Waters, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Howlin\' Wolf, and Bo Diddley. In 1961, Mick and Keith ran into one another. Mick was carrying albums by Muddy Waters and Chuck Berry. Keith was impressed, and the two began a musical partnership. They played together in a group called The Blues Boys. In March 1962, the Blues Boys read about the Ealing Jazz Club in *Jazz News* newspaper, which mentioned Alexis Korner\'s Blues Incorporated. In April, they visited the club and met the members of Blues Incorporated, who included slide guitarist Brian Jones, keyboardist Ian Stewart, and drummer Charlie Watts. After a meeting with Korner, Jagger and Richards started jamming with the group. Brian Jones and Ian Stewart decided to form a band playing Chicago blues. Soon after, Jagger and Richards joined them. However, Brian and Ian objected to playing the Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley songs preferred by Jagger and Richards. Jones named the band during a phone call to *Jazz News*. When asked by a journalist for the band\'s name, Jones saw a Muddy Waters LP lying on the floor, and one of the tracks was \"Rollin\' Stone.\" The band\'s original rhythm section did not include bassist Bill Wyman, who joined in December 1962, or drummer Charlie Watts, who joined in January 1963. The group\'s then acting manager, Giorgio Gomelsky, secured a Sunday afternoon residency at the Crawdaddy Club in London, in February 1963. In May 1963, the Rolling Stones signed Andrew Loog Oldham as their manager. Oldham was only nineteen, younger than anyone in the band. Initially, Oldham tried applying the strategy used by Brian Epstein, the Beatles\' manager, and have the band members wear suits. He later changed his mind and imagined a band which contrasted with the Beatles, featuring unmatched clothing, long hair, and an unclean appearance. He wanted to make the Stones \"a raunchy, gamy, unpredictable bunch of undesirables\" and to \"establish that the Stones were threatening, uncouth and animalistic.\" He also encouraged the press to use provocative headlines such as: \"Would you let your daughter marry a Rolling Stone?\" Ian Stewart left the official line-up but remained road manager and touring keyboardist.  Decca Records, which had declined to sign a deal with the Beatles, gave the Rolling Stones a recording contract with favorable terms. The band got three times a new act\'s typical royalty rate, full artistic control of recordings and ownership of the recording master tapes. The deal also let the band use non-Decca recording studios. Oldham had no recording experience but made himself the band\'s producer. On June 7, 1963, a cover version of Chuck Berry\'s \"Come On\" became the Rolling Stones\' first single, reaching \#21 on the UK singles chart. Later in 1963, the band had its first big UK concert tour as a supporting act for American stars including Bo Diddley, Little Richard, and the Everly Brothers. During the tour the band recorded their second single, \"I Wanna Be Your Man,\" a song was written for them by John Lennon and Paul McCartney. It reached \#12 on the UK charts. Oldham saw little future for an act that lost significant songwriting royalties by playing covers. Jagger and Richards decided to write songs together. Because the band\'s writing developed slowly, songs on their first album *The Rolling Stones* (1964, issued in the US as *England\'s Newest Hit Makers*), were primarily covers, with only one Jagger/Richards original, \"Tell Me (You\'re Coming Back),\" and two numbers credited to Nanker Phelge, the pen name used for songs written by the entire group. The Rolling Stones\' first US tour in June 1964 was \"a disaster\" according to Wyman. \"When we arrived, we didn\'t have a hit record \[there\] or anything going for us." During the tour they recorded for two days at Chess Studios in Chicago, meeting many of their most important influences. These sessions included what would become the Rolling Stones\' first \# 1 hit in the UK, their cover version of Bobby and Shirley Womack\'s \"It\'s All Over Now.\" Their fifth UK single, a cover of Howlin' Wolf\'s \"Little Red Rooster\" was released in November 1964 and became their second \#1 hit in the UK. The single \"The Last Time,\" released in February 1965 was the first Jagger/Richards composition to reach \#1 on the UK charts. It reached \# 9 in the US and was later identified by Richards as \"the bridge into thinking about writing for the Stones. It gave us a level of confidence; a pathway of how to do it.\" The Stones' first international hit was \"(I Can\'t Get No) Satisfaction,\" recorded in May 1965 during their third North American tour. Richards recorded the guitar riff that drives the song with a fuzzbox. It was their first \#1 in the US where it spent four weeks at the top of the *Billboard* Hot 100. The song's "No, no, no!" declaration stood in opposition to The Beatles' "Yeah, yeah, yeah!" The album *Aftermath*, released in the late spring of 1966, was the first LP to be composed entirely of Jagger/Richards songs. It reached \#1 in the UK and \#2 in the US. Jones\' contributions expanded beyond guitar and harmonica. To the Middle Eastern-influenced \"Paint It, Black\" he added sitar. He added dulcimer to the ballad \"Lady Jane\" and marimba to \"Under My Thumb.\" The Stones\' success on the American singles charts peaked during this era. \"19th Nervous Breakdown\" reached \#2, \"Paint It, Black\" reached \#1, \"Mother\'s Little Helper\" reached \#8, and \"Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby, Standing in the Shadow?\" reached \#9. In 1965, Oldham had hired Allen Klein as his business manager. On Oldham\'s behalf, Klein renegotiated the Rolling Stones\' contract with Decca. Over the next two years, Oldham\'s relations with the Stones were strained by his drug use and inattention to the group\'s needs. The album *Between the Buttons* was Andrew Oldham\'s last venture as the Rolling Stones\' producer. The US version included the double A-side single \"Let\'s Spend the Night Together\" and \"Ruby Tuesday,\" which went to \#1. When the band went to New York to perform the songs on *The Ed Sullivan Show*, they were ordered to change the lyrics of the refrain of \"Let\'s Spend the Night Together\" to \"let\'s spend some time together.\" In early 1967, Jagger, Richards and Jones began to be hounded by authorities over their recreational drug use. On February 12, police raided a party at Keith Richards\' home. No arrests were made at the time, but Jagger, Richards, and their friend art dealer Robert Fraser were subsequently charged with drug offences. Andrew Oldham was afraid of being arrested and fled to America, leaving Allen Klein to deal with the problem. Oldham was forced to resign as manager of the Rolling Stones in late 1967 and sold his rights to the group\'s music to Allen Klein the following year. On May 10, 1967, the day Jagger, Richards, and Fraser were arraigned on drug charges, Brian Jones\' house was raided by police. He was arrested and charged with possession of cannabis. Three of the five Stones now faced drug charges. Jagger and Richards were tried at the end of June. Jagger received a three-month prison sentence for the possession of four amphetamine tablets. Richards was found guilty of allowing cannabis to be smoked on his property and sentenced to a year in prison. Both Jagger and Richards were imprisoned at that point but were released on bail the next day. On July 31, the appeals court overturned Richards\' conviction and reduced Jagger\'s sentence to a conditional discharge. Jones\' trial took place in November 1967. In December, after appealing the original prison sentence, Jones received a £1,000 fine and was put on three years\' probation, with an order to seek professional help. The band released *Their Satanic Majesties Request* in December 1967. It drew unfavorable reviews and was widely regarded as a poor imitation of the Beatles\' *Sgt. Pepper\'s Lonely Hearts Club Band*. The album was recorded while Jagger, Richards, and Jones were awaiting their court cases. The band parted ways with Oldham during the sessions. *Satanic Majesties* became the first album the Rolling Stones produced on their own.  The band spent the first few months of 1968 working on material for their next album. Those sessions resulted in the song \"Jumpin\' Jack Flash,\" released as a single in May. The subsequent album, *Beggars Banquet*, an eclectic mix of country and blues-inspired tunes, marked the band\'s return to their roots. It was also the beginning of their collaboration with producer Jimmy Miller. It featured the lead single \"Street Fighting Man\" (which addressed the political upheavals of May 1968) and \"Sympathy for the Devil.\" By the time of *Beggars Banquet*\'s release, Brian Jones was only sporadically contributing to the band. His drug use had become a hindrance, and he was unable to obtain a US visa. Richards reported that in a June meeting with Jagger, Watts, and himself at Jones\' house, Jones admitted that he was unable to go on the road again and left the band saying, \"I\'ve left, and if I want to I can come back.\" On July 3, 1969, less than a month later, Jones drowned under mysterious circumstances in the swimming pool at his home. The band auditioned several guitarists as a replacement for Jones before settling on Mick Taylor, who was recommended to Jagger by John Mayall. The Rolling Stones were scheduled to play at a free concert in London\'s Hyde Park, two days after Jones\' death, and they decided to go ahead with the show as a tribute to him. The concert, their first with new guitarist Mick Taylor, was performed in front of an estimated 250,000 fans. The Stones\' last album of the sixties was *Let It Bleed* which reached \#3 in the US. It featured \"Gimme Shelter\" and \"You Can\'t Always Get What You Want\" (with accompaniment by the London Bach Choir). Brian Jones and Mick Taylor are both featured on the album. Just after the US tour ended, the band performed at the Altamont Free Concert at the Altamont Speedway, about fifty miles east of San Francisco. The Hells Angels biker gang provided security. A fan, Meredith Hunter, was stabbed and beaten to death by the Angels as the Rolling Stones performed. In 1970 the band wanted out of contracts with both Allen Klein and Decca Record but still owed them a single. To get back at the label and fulfil their final contractual obligation, the band came up with the track \"Schoolboy Blues,\" deliberately making it as crude as they could in hopes of forcing Decca to keep it \"in the vaults.\" Amid contractual disputes with Klein, they formed their own record company, Rolling Stones Records. *Sticky Fingers*, released in March 1971, the band\'s first album on their own label, featured an elaborate cover designed by Andy Warhol. The album's \"Brown Sugar\" and \"Wild Horses\" were recorded at Alabama\'s Muscle Shoals Sound Studio during the 1969 American tour. The album continued the band\'s immersion into heavily blues-influenced compositions. It's noted for its \"loose, ramshackle ambience\" and marked Mick Taylor\'s first full release with the band. *Sticky Fingers* reached \#1 in the US. Following the release of *Sticky Fingers*, the Rolling Stones left England after receiving advice from their financial manager. He recommended they go into tax exile before the start of the next financial year. The band had learned they had not been paid for seven years, and the UK government was owed a relative fortune. The Stones moved to the South of France, where Richards rented the Villa Nellcôte and sublet rooms to band members and their entourage. Using the Rolling Stones Mobile Studio, they held recording sessions in the basement. The resulting double album, *Exile on Main St.*, was released in May 1972 and reached \#1 in the US. Near the end of 1974, Mick Taylor began to lose patience after years of feeling like a \"junior citizen in the band of jaded veterans.\" The band\'s situation made normal functioning complicated, with members living in different countries, and legal barriers restricting where they could tour. In addition, drug use was starting to affect productivity, and Taylor felt some of his own creative contributions were going unrecognized. At the end of 1974, Taylor quit the Rolling Stones. The Stones needed a new guitarist, and when Ronnie Wood auditioned, everyone agreed he was the right choice.  He had already recorded and played live with Richards and had contributed to the recording and writing of the track \"It\'s Only Rock \'n Roll.\" He had declined Jagger\'s earlier offer to join the Stones because of his commitment to The Faces. Wood officially joined the Rolling Stones in 1975 for their upcoming Tour of the Americas, which was a contributing factor in the disbandment of The Faces. Unlike the other band members, however, Wood was a salaried employee, which remained the case until the early 1990s, when he finally joined the Stones\' business partnership. **The Kinks** The Kinks formed in Muswell Hill, north London, in 1964 by brothers Ray Davies and Dave Davies The Davies brothers were born in suburban North London, the youngest and the only boys among their family\'s eight children. At home the brothers were immersed in a world of varied musical styles, from the music hall of their parents\' generation to the jazz and early rock and roll their older sisters enjoyed. Both Ray and Dave learned to play guitar, and they played skiffle and rock and roll together. With bassist Pate Quaife on board, they performed under several names before (temporarily) settling on the Ravens. American record producer Shel Talmy began working with the band. The group unsuccessfully auditioned for various record labels until early 1964, when Talmy secured them a contract with Pye Records. They acquired a new drummer, Mick Avory, after seeing an advertisement he'd placed in *Melody Maker.* Around this period, the Ravens decided on a new, permanent name: The Kinks.  The band\'s first single was a cover of the Little Richard song \"Long Tall Sally,\" released in February 1964. The single was almost completely ignored. When their second single, \"You Still Want Me,\" failed to chart, Pye Records threatened to annul the group\'s contract unless their third single was successful. \"You Really Got Me,\" a Ray Davies song, influenced by American blues and the Kingsmen\'s version of \"Louie Louie,\" was released in August 1964 and reached \#1 on the UK singles chart. It also made the Top 10 in the United States. Guitarist Dave Davies and achieved the loud, distorted guitar tone by slicing the speaker cone of his amplifier with a razor blade. Their debut LP, simply titled *Kinks,* consisted largely of covers and revamped traditional songs. It was released on October 2, 1964, reaching \#4 on the UK chart. The group\'s fourth single, \"All Day and All of the Night,\" another Ray Davies hard rock tune, was released three weeks later, reaching \#2 in the UK, and \#7 in the United States. An intensive performing schedule saw them headline package tours throughout 1965. Tensions were rising within the band, and, famously, there was an on-stage fight between Avory and Dave Davies. After finishing the first song, Davies insulted Avory and kicked over his drum set. Avory retaliated by hitting Davies with his hi-hat stand, rendering him unconscious. Avory fled in fear he'd killed his bandmate, and Davies received 16 stitches to his head. Following a mid-year tour of the United States, the American Federation of Musicians refused permits for the group to appear in concerts there for the next four years, effectively cutting off the Kinks from the main market for rock music at the height of the British Invasion. Although neither the Kinks nor the union revealed a specific reason for the ban, at the time it was widely attributed to their rowdy on-stage behavior. A stopover in Bombay, India, during the band\'s Australian and Asian tour led Davies to write the song \"See My Friends,\" released as a single in July 1965. This was one of the first pop songs of the period to display the direct influence of traditional music from India. Davies had written \"See My Friends\" with a raga feel after hearing the early morning chants of local fishermen. The Beatles\' "Norwegian Wood," which famously used the sitar, was recorded well after the Kinks\' "See My Friends" was released.  A significant stylistic shift in the Kinks\' music became evident in late 1965. Recordings of the era exemplified the development of Davies\' songwriting style, from hard-driving rock numbers toward songs rich in social commentary, observation, and idiosyncratic character study, all with a uniquely English flavor. Before the recording sessions for the band's fourth album, Ray Davies suffered a nervous and physical breakdown, caused by the pressures of touring, writing, and ongoing legal squabbles. During his months of recuperation, he wrote several new songs and pondered the band\'s direction. \"Sunny Afternoon\" was a dry run for the LP *Face to Face*, which displayed Davies\' growing ability to craft musically gentle yet lyrically cutting narrative songs about everyday life and people. The single was the biggest UK hit of summer 1966, topping the charts and displacing the Beatles\' \"Paperback Writer.\" The song\'s popularity proved to Davies and the Kinks\' managers that the group could find success with this style of songwriting. The new album would follow this pattern, as would the group\'s recorded output for the next five years. The songs on the 1967 album, *Something Else by the Kinks*, developed the musical progressions of *Face to Face*. The single \"Waterloo Sunset\" was released in May 1967. The lyrics describe two lovers passing over a bridge, with a melancholic observer reflecting on the couple, the Thames, and Waterloo station. Ray Davies claimed in a 2008 interview, \"It was a fantasy about my sister going off with her boyfriend to a new world and they were going to emigrate and go to another country.\" The single was one of the Kinks\' biggest UK successes and went on to become one of their most popular and best-known songs.  Beginning early in 1968, the group largely retired from touring, instead focusing on work in the studio. As the band was not available to promote their material, subsequent releases met with little success. In the face of the band\'s declining popularity, Davies continued to pursue his personal songwriting style while rebelling against the heavy demands placed on him to keep producing commercial hits. The group continued to devote time to the studio, centering on a slowly developing project of Ray\'s called *Village Green*. *\ Village Green* eventually morphed into their next album, *The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society*, released in late 1968 in the UK. A collection of thematic vignettes of English town and hamlet life, it was assembled from songs written and recorded over the previous two years. It was greeted with almost unanimously positive reviews from both UK and US rock critics yet failed to sell strongly. Though a commercial disappointment, *Village Green* was embraced by the new underground rock press when it came out in January 1969 in the United States, where the Kinks began to acquire a reputation as a cult band. In early 1969, Pete Quaife told the band he was leaving. The other members did not take his statement seriously until an article appeared in *New Musical Express* featuring Quaife\'s new band, Maple Oak, which he had formed without telling the rest of the Kinks. Ray pleaded with him to return for the sessions for their upcoming album, but Quaife refused. Davies immediately called John Dalton and asked him to join. Dalton remained with the group until 1976. Ray travelled to Los Angeles in April 1969 to help negotiate an end to the American Federation of Musicians\' ban on the group, opening up an opportunity for them to return to touring in the US. The group\'s management quickly made plans for a North American tour to help restore their standing in the US. Before their return, the Kinks recorded another album, *Arthur (Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire)*. Conceived as the score for a proposed but unrealized television drama, much of the album revolved around themes from the Davies brothers\' childhood. The Kinks embarked on their tour of the US in October 1969. The tour was generally unsuccessful, as the group struggled to find cooperative promoters and interested audiences. June 1970 saw the release of the single \"Lola,\" an account of a confused romantic encounter with a transvestite, that became both a UK and a US Top 10 hit, helping return the Kinks to the public eye. The accompanying album *Lola Versus Powerman and the Moneygoround, Part One* was released in November 1970. It was a critical and commercial success, charting in the Top 40 in the US, making it their most successful album since the mid-1960s. Before the end of 1971, the Kinks signed a five-album deal with RCA and received a million-dollar advance, which helped fund the construction of their own recording studio, Konk. Their debut for RCA, *Muswell Hillbillies*, was replete with the influence of music hall and traditional American musical styles, including country and bluegrass.  In 1973, Ray Davies dived headlong into the theatrical style, beginning with the rock opera *Preservation*, a sprawling chronicle of social revolution, and a more ambitious outgrowth of the earlier *Village Green Preservation Society* ethos. In conjunction with the *Preservation* project, the Kinks\' line-up was expanded to include a horn section and female backup singers, essentially reconfiguring the group as a theatrical troupe. *Preservation Act 1* (1973) and *Preservation Act 2* (1974) received generally poor reviews. **The Who** The Who formed in London in 1964. Their classic line-up consisted of lead singer Roger Daltrey, guitarist, singer, and songwriter Pete Townshend, bass guitarist and singer John Entwistle, and drummer Keith Moon.  The founding members of the Who, Roger Daltrey, Pete Townshend, and John Entwistle, grew up in Acton, London and went to Acton County Grammar School. Townshend and Entwistle became friends in their second year of Acton County and formed a trad jazz group. Both were interested in rock. Entwistle struggled with playing the guitar due to his large fingers and switched to bass. After Acton County, Townshend attended Ealing Art College, a move he later described as profoundly influential on the course of the Who. Daltrey, who was in the year above, had moved to Acton from a more working-class area. He had trouble fitting in at the school and discovered gangs and rock and roll. He was expelled at 15 and found work on a building site. In 1959 he started the Detours, the band that was to evolve into the Who. Daltrey spotted Entwistle by chance on the street carrying a bass and recruited him into the Detours. In mid-1961, Entwistle suggested Townshend as a guitarist. Daltrey was considered the leader and, according to Townshend, \"ran things the way he wanted them.\" In February 1964, the Detours became aware of the group Johnny Devlin and the Detours and changed their name. Townshend and his room-mate Richard Barnes spent a night considering names, including \"No One\" and \"The Group.\" Townshend preferred \"The Hair,\" and Barnes liked \"The Who\" because it \"had a pop punch.\" Daltrey chose \"The Who\" the next morning. During a gig with a stand-in drummer in late April 1964, the band first met Keith Moon. Moon grew up in Wembley and had been drumming in bands since 1961. He was performing with a semi-professional band called the Beachcombers and wanted to play full-time. Moon played a few songs with the group, breaking the bass drum pedal and tearing a drumhead. The band were impressed with his energy and enthusiasm and offered him the job. The Who changed managers to Peter Meaden. He decided that the group would be ideal to represent the growing mod movement in Britain which involved fashion, scooters, and music genres such as rhythm and blues, soul, and beat. He renamed the group the High Numbers, dressed them up in mod clothes, secured an audition with Fontana Records, and wrote the lyrics for both sides of their single \"Zoot Suit\" / \"I\'m the Face\" to appeal to mods. Although Meaden tried to promote the single, it failed to reach the top 50, and the band reverted to calling themselves the Who. Meaden was replaced as manager by two filmmakers, Kit Lambert and Chris Stamp. They were looking for a young, unsigned rock group that they could make a film about. Lambert related to Townshend and his art school background and encouraged him to write songs. The band changed their set towards soul, rhythm and blues, and Motown covers and created the slogan \"Maximum R&B.\" During a performance in June 1964, Townshend accidentally broke the head of his guitar on the low ceiling of the venue. Angered by the audience\'s laughter, he smashed the instrument on the stage, then picked up another guitar and continued the show. The following week, the audience were keen to see a repeat of the event. Moon obliged by kicking his drum kit over, and auto-destructive art became a feature of the Who\'s live set. By late 1964, the Who were becoming popular in London\'s Marquee Club. Lambert and Stamp attracted the attention of the American producer Shel Talmy, who had produced the Kinks. Townshend had written a song, \"I Can\'t Explain,\" that deliberately sounded like the Kinks to attract Talmy\'s attention. Talmy saw the group in rehearsals and was impressed. He signed them to his production company, and \"I Can\'t Explain\" was recorded in early November 1964 at Pye Studios. \"I Can\'t Explain\" became popular with pirate radio stations. Pirate radio was important for bands as there were no commercial radio stations in the UK, and BBC Radio played little pop music. The group gained further exposure when they appeared on the television program *Ready Steady Go!* Enthusiastic reception on television and regular airplay on pirate radio helped the single slowly climb the charts in early 1965 until it reached the top 10. The single, \"My Generation,\" was released in October 1965. Townshend had written it as a slow blues, but after several abortive attempts, it was turned into a more powerful song with a bass solo from Entwistle. The song featured a vocal stutter (to simulate the speech of a mod on amphetamines) and two key changes. Townshend insisted in interviews that the lyrics \"Hope I die before I get old\" were not meant to be taken literally. Peaking at \# 2, \"My Generation\" is the group\'s highest-charting single in the UK. The self-titled debut album, *My Generation,* was released in late 1965. After *My Generation*, the Who fell out with Talmy, which meant an abrupt end to their recording contract. The Who were signed to Robert Stigwood\'s label, Reaction. To alleviate financial pressure on the band, Lambert arranged a song-writing deal which required each member to write two songs for the next album. Entwistle contributed \"Boris the Spider\" and \"Whiskey Man\" and found a niche role as second songwriter. The band found they needed to fill an extra ten minutes, and Lambert encouraged Townshend to write a longer piece, \"A Quick One, While He\'s Away.\" The suite of song fragments is about a girl who has an affair while her lover is away but is ultimately forgiven. The album was titled *A Quick One* and reached \# 4 in the UK charts. By 1966, the mod movement was becoming unfashionable, and the Who found themselves in competition on the London circuit with groups including Cream and The Jimi Hendrix Experience. Lambert and Stamp realized that commercial success in the US was paramount to the group\'s future and arranged for a short package tour in New York. The group\'s performances, which still involved smashing guitars and kicking over drums, were well received and led to their first major US appearance at the Monterey Pop Festival. The group, especially Moon, were not fond of the hippie movement and thought their violent stage act would stand in sharp contrast to the peaceful atmosphere of the festival. Jimi Hendrix was also on the bill that evening. Townshend and Hendrix argued about who should go on stage first, with the Who winning a coin toss and choosing to play before Jimi. Their appearance at Monterey gave the band recognition in the US. The Who recorded their next single, \"I Can See for Miles,\" which Townshend had written in 1966 but had avoided recording until he was sure it could be produced well. Townshend called it \"the ultimate Who record" and was disappointed it reached only \# 10 in the UK. It became their best-selling single in the US, reaching \# 9. Lambert and Stamp formed a record label, Track Records, with distribution by Polydor. As well as signing Jimi Hendrix, Track became the imprint for all the Who\'s UK output until the mid-1970s. By 1968 Townshend had stopped using drugs and became interested in the teachings of Indian spiritual master Meher Baba. In August, he gave an interview to *Rolling Stone* describing in detail the plot of a new album project and its relationship to Baba\'s teachings. *Tommy* would be an album about the life of a deaf, dumb, and blind boy and his attempt to communicate with others. Townshend later said, \"I wanted the story of *Tommy* to have several levels...a rock singles level and a bigger concept level.\" The album was released in May 1969 with the accompanying single, \"Pinball Wizard.\" *Tommy* sold 200,000 copies in the US in its first two weeks and was a critical smash. The *Tommy* tour included shows in European opera houses and saw the Who become the first rock act to play at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City. In August, the Who performed at the Woodstock Festival, despite being reluctant. Woodstock has been regarded as culturally significant, but the Who were critical of the event. Daltrey declared it as \"the worst gig \[they\] ever played,\" and Townshend said, \"I thought the whole of America had gone mad.\" A more enjoyable appearance came a few weeks later at the second Isle of Wight Festival in England, which Townshend described as \"a great concert." According to Townshend, at the end of the Isle of Wight gig, the field was covered in rubbish left by fans which inspired the line \"teenage wasteland\" from their single \"Baba O\'Riley.\" During the latter part of 1970, Townshend plotted a follow up *Tommy*. *Lifehouse* was to be a multi-media project symbolizing the relationship between an artist and his audience. He developed ideas in his home studio, and the Young Vic theatre in London was booked for a series of experimental concerts. Townshend approached the gigs with optimism, and the rest of the band were just happy to be gigging again. Eventually, the others complained to Pete that the project was too complicated, and they should simply record another album. Things deteriorated until Townshend had a nervous breakdown and abandoned *Lifehouse.* The album they recorded was mostly *Lifehouse* material, with one unrelated song by Entwistle, \"My Wife.\" It was released as *Who\'s Next* in August 1971 and reached \#1 in the UK and \# 4 in the US. On September 6, 1978, Keith Moon attended a party held by Paul McCartney. Returning to his flat, Moon took 32 tablets of clomethiazole which had been prescribed to combat his alcohol withdrawal. He passed out and was discovered dead later that day. The band vowed to continue, and Townshend asked Kenney Jones, previously of Small Faces and Faces, to be their drummer. Jones officially joined the band in November 1978. **Small Faces** Small Faces were from London, founded in 1965. Their classic lineup consisted of Steve Marriott, Ronnie Lane, Kenney Jones, and Ian McLagan. The group chose the name Small Faces because of the members\' small physical stature, and a \"Face\" was somebody special in Mod circles as a leader, someone to look up to. The band\'s early set included R&B and soul classics. The band signed a contract with management impresario Don Arden, and they were signed to Decca Records. Their debut single was in 1965 with \"Whatcha Gonna Do About It,\" a Top 20 UK singles chart hit. Marriott and Lane are credited with creating the instrumental to the song, \"borrowing\" the guitar riff from the Solomon Burke record \"Everybody Needs Somebody to Love.\" Small Faces hit the charts with their third single, \"Sha-La-La-La-Lee,\" released on January 28, 1966. The song was a big hit in Britain, peaking at \#3 in the UK singles chart. Their first album, *Small Faces*, released in May 1966, was also a considerable success. By 1966, despite scoring many successful singles, including four UK Top 10 chart hits, the group still had little money. After a confrontation with their manager, they broke with both Arden and Decca Records. They were offered a deal with the newly established Immediate label, formed by ex-Rolling Stones manager Andrew Loog Oldham. The band\'s single \"Itchycoo Park,\" released on August 11, 1967, was the first of the band\'s two charting singles in the US, reaching \#16 in January 1968. The single was a bigger hit in Britain, peaking at \# 3. \"Itchycoo Park\" was the first British single to use flanging, the technique of playing two identical master tapes simultaneously but altering the speed of one of them very slightly, which yields a distinctive comb-filtering effect. The single \"Lazy Sunday,\" released in 1968, was a music-hall style song released by Immediate against the band\'s wishes. It was written by Marriott, inspired by the feuds with his neighbors and recorded as a joke. The single reached \#2 in the UK charts. At home in England, their career reached an all-time high after the release of their classic psychedelia-influenced album *Ogdens\' Nut Gone Flake* on May 24, 1968. It stayed at \#1 in the UK Albums Chart for six weeks but reached only \#159 in the US. The two-act concept album consisted of six original songs on side one and a psychedelic fairy tale on side two relating the adventures of \"Happiness Stan\" and his need to find out where the moon went when it waned. Critics were enthusiastic, and the album sold well, but the band were confronted by the practical problem that they had created a studio masterpiece which was virtually impossible to recreate on the road. *Ogdens\'* was performed as a whole just once, live in the studio on the BBC television program *Colour Me Pop*. Marriott officially quit the band at the end of 1968, walking off stage during a live New Year\'s Eve gig. Citing frustration at their failure to break out of their pop image and their inability to reproduce the more sophisticated material properly on stage, Marriott was already looking ahead to a new band, Humble Pie, with Peter Frampton. After Small Faces split, Lane, Jones, and McLagan joined forces with two former members of The Jeff Beck Group, singer Rod Stewart and guitarist Ronnie Wood. This lineup would change their name to The Faces. **The Animals** The Animals formed in Newcastle upon Tyne during 1962 and 1963, when Eric Burdon joined the Alan Price Rhythm and Blues Combo. The original line-up was Eric Burdon (vocals), Alan Price (organ and keyboards), Hilton Valentine (guitar), John Steel (drums), and Chas Chandler (bass). The Animals\' success in their hometown and a connection with Yardbirds manager Giorgio Gomelsky motivated them to move to London in 1964 in the immediate wake of Beatlemania and the beat boom take-over of the popular music scene. The Animals performed fiery versions of the staple rhythm and blues repertoire, covering songs by Jimmy Reed, John Lee Hooker, Nina Simone, and others. June 1964 saw the release of the transatlantic \#1 hit \"House of the Rising Sun.\" Burdon\'s vocals and the dramatic arrangement, featuring Alan Price\'s organ, created arguably the first folk rock hit. There is ongoing debate regarding the Animals\' inspiration for their arrangement of the song, which has variously been ascribed to prior versions by Bob Dylan, folk singer Dave Van Ronk, blues singer Josh White (who recorded it twice in 1944 and 1949), and Nina Simone (who recorded it in 1962 on *Nina at the Village Gate*). The Animals\' two-year chart career, produced by Mickie Most, featured intense, gritty covers such as Sam Cooke\'s \"Bring It On Home To Me\" and the Nina Simone-popularized number "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood." In contrast, their album tracks stayed with rhythm and blues, with John Lee Hooker\'s \"Boom Boom\" and Ray Charles\' \"I Believe to My Soul\" as notable examples. By May 1965, the group was starting to feel internal pressures. Alan Price left due to personal and musical differences as well as fear of flying. Mick Gallagher filled in for him on keyboards for a short time until Dave Rowberry replaced him and was on hand for the hit songs \"We Gotta Get out of This Place\" and \"It\'s My Life.\" Many of the Animals\' hits had come from Brill Building songwriters recruited by Mickie Most. The group, and Burdon in particular, felt this too creatively restrictive. As 1965 ended, the group ended its association with Most, signed a new deal with their American label MGM Records. MGM Records producer Tom Wilson gave them more artistic freedom. A leftover rendition of Goffin--King\'s \"Don\'t Bring Me Down\" was the last hit as the Animals. The next single, \"See See Rider,\" was credited to *Eric Burdon & the Animals*. By September 1966, the original version of the group had split up. Even by the standards of the day, when artists tended to be financially naïve, the Animals made very little money, eventually claiming mismanagement and theft on the part of their manager Michael Jeffery. A new group was formed under the name Eric Burdon and Animals (or sometimes Eric Burdon and the New Animals) in December 1966 and changed direction. The hard driving blues was transformed into Burdon\'s version of psychedelia as he relocated to California and became a spokesman for the Love Generation. Early performances of this group did not include any of the hits for which the original Animals had become known. There were further changes to this lineup, and by December 1968, these Animals had dissolved. **The Yardbirds** The Yardbirds formed in London in 1963. The band\'s core lineup featured vocalist and harmonica player Keith Relf, drummer Jim McCarty, rhythm guitarist/bassist Chris Dreja, and bassist/producer Paul Samwell-Smith. The band is known for starting the careers of three of rock\'s most famous guitarists: Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, and Jimmy Page. The group achieved notice on the burgeoning British rhythm and blues scene when they took over as the house band at the Crawdaddy Club in Richmond, succeeding the Rolling Stones. Their repertoire drew from the Chicago blues of Howlin\' Wolf, Muddy Waters, Bo Diddley, Sonny Boy Williamson II, and Elmore James. Original lead guitarist Top Topham left and was replaced by Eric Clapton in October 1963. Crawdaddy Club impresario Giorgio Gomelsky became the Yardbirds manager and first record producer. Under Gomelsky\'s guidance, the Yardbirds toured Britain as the back-up band for blues legend Sonny Boy Williamson II in December 1963 and early 1964. The Yardbirds signed to EMI\'s Columbia label in February 1964 and recorded live tracks at the legendary Marquee Club in London. The resulting album of mostly American blues and R&B covers, *Five Live Yardbirds,* was released nine months later, and it failed to enter the UK albums charts. The Clapton line-up recorded two singles, the blues covers \"I Wish You Would\" and \"Good Morning, School Girl,\" before scoring their first major hit with \"For Your Love,\" a Graham Gouldman composition with a prominent harpsichord. \"For Your Love\" hit \#1 in the UK and Canada and reached \#6 in the United States. Clapton, a blues purist, hated it, and he abruptly left the band on March 25, 1965, the day the single was released. Soon Clapton joined John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers. His replacement, Jeff Beck played his first gig with the Yardbirds only two days after Clapton\'s departure. The Yardbirds began to experiment with eclectic arrangements reminiscent of Gregorian chants and various European and Asian styles while Beck infused a pervasive Middle Eastern influence into the mix. Jeff\'s fuzz-tone guitar riff on \"Heart Full of Soul\" helped to introduce Indian-influenced guitar stylings to the pop charts in the summer of 1965. A Bo Diddley cover, \"I\'m a Man,\" featured the Yardbirds\' signature \"rave-up,\" where the tempo shifted to double time and Relf\'s harmonica and Beck\'s scratching guitar raced to a climax before falling back into the original beat. The band embarked on their first US tour in late August 1965. There were three more US tours during Beck\'s time with the band and a brief European tour in April 1966. The single \"Shapes of Things\" was released in February 1966. Reaching \#3 on the UK charts and \#11 in the US, \"Shapes\" was also the Yardbirds\' first self-penned hit, the previous three UK A-sides having been written by Graham Gouldman. Relf\'s vague anti-war protest lyrics and Beck\'s feedback-driven, Middle Eastern-influenced solo reflected the band\'s early embrace of psychedelia. Sessions were held in April 1966 and produced the album *Yardbirds*. It is commonly referred to as \"Roger the Engineer,\" which were the words scrawled under a cartoon of engineer Roger Cameron that appears on the cover of the UK release. In the US, an abridged version of the album, minus the cartoon cover art, was released as *Over Under Sideways Down*. The recording session marked the Yardbirds\' split with their manager, Giorgio Gomelsky, as writer Simon Napier-Bell took over management and shared production credit with the group's bassist Paul Samwell-Smith. The band, led by Relf and McCarty, eschewed cover material, writing the entire album themselves. They were alotted one week to record the album. *Roger the Engineer* was released in June 1966. Soon afterwards, Samwell-Smith quit the band and embarked on a career as a record producer. Jimmy Page, who was at the show, agreed that night to play bass until rhythm guitarist Chris Dreja could rehearse on the instrument. The band toured with Page on bass, and Beck and Dreja on guitars, playing dates in Paris, the UK, the Midwestern US, and the California coast. Beck fell ill late in the latter tour and was hospitalized in San Francisco. Page took over as lead guitarist on August 25, and Dreja switched to bass. After the Yardbirds reunited in London, Dreja remained on bass and the group\'s dual lead guitar attack was born. The Beck--Page lead guitar tandem created the avant-garde psychedelic rock single \"Happenings Ten Years Time Ago\" (with future Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones on bass instead of Dreja), which the band recorded in July and September 1966. The single\'s UK B-side was \"Psycho Daisies\" featuring Beck on vocals and lead guitar and Page on bass. They also recorded "Stroll On," a reworking of Tiny Bradshaw\'s \"Train Kept A-Rollin\'.\" The Beck--Page line-up recorded little else in the studio. The Yardbirds opened for the Rolling Stones\' 1966 UK tour and then headed back to the US for a show at the Fillmore West in San Francisco and a slot on Dick Clark\'s \"Caravan of Stars\" tour. After a few shows with the Caravan, Jeff Beck stormed out and headed back to San Francisco. The band continued on the tour as a quartet with Page as sole lead guitarist. In late November, Beck officially left the band. The Yardbirds finished their remaining US dates and headed back to the UK for more shows. Beck continued as a solo artist. Meanwhile, the act\'s commercial fortunes were declining. \"Happenings Ten Years Time Ago\" had only reached \#30 on the US Hot 100 and had fared worse in Britain. After the disappointing sales of \"Happenings,\" the March 1967 single \"Little Games\" flopped so badly in the UK that EMI did not release another Yardbirds record there until after the band broke up. Their final album, *Little Games*, was released in July 1967, again only in the US. It was a commercial and critical non-entity. The Yardbirds spent much of the rest of that year touring in the US with new manager Peter Grant, their live shows becoming heavier and more experimental. The band rarely played their 1967 Mickie Most-produced singles on stage, preferring to mix the Beck-era hits with blues standards and experimental psychedelia. By 1968, the psychedelic blues rock of Cream and the Jimi Hendrix Experience was enormously popular, yet Relf and McCarty wished to pursue a style influenced by folk and classical music. Page wanted to pursue \"heavy\" music. Dreja was developing an interest in photography. By March, Relf and McCarty had decided to leave but were persuaded by the other two to stay at least for one more American tour. This version of The Yardbirds played their final shows in June-July 1968. Page and Dreja, with a tour of Scandinavia scheduled for late summer 1968, saw the break-up as an opportunity to put a new lineup together with Page as producer and Grant as manager. They added the then-unknown vocalist Robert Plant. Plant, in turn, recommended his childhood friend John Bonham as a drummer. Dreja bowed out to pursue a career as a rock photographer. Bassist/keyboardist/arranger John Paul Jones (who had worked with Page on countless sessions, including several with the Yardbirds) approached Page and offered his services. Rehearsals began in mid-August 1968. In early September, Page\'s revised Yardbirds embarked as The New Yardbirds on the Scandinavian tour, after which the band returned to the UK to record and produce the debut Led Zeppelin album. **Them** Them formed in Belfast, Northern Ireland, in April 1964 when Van Morrison responded to an advert for musicians to play at a new R&B club at the Maritime Hotel. The club needed a band for its opening night. Morrison created a new band out of The Gamblers, an East Belfast group formed in 1962, as The Gamblers morphed into Them. The band\'s strong R&B performances at the Maritime attracted attention. They performed without a setlist, and Morrison ad-libbed, creating his songs live as he performed. While the band did covers, they also played some of Morrison\'s early songs. The debut of Morrison\'s \"Gloria\" took place on stage here. Sometimes, depending on his mood, the song could last up to twenty minutes. Morrison has said, \"Them lived and died on the stage at the Maritime Hotel,\" believing the band did not manage to capture the spontaneity and energy of their live performances on their records. Van's statement also reflected the instability of the Them line-up, with numerous members passing through the ranks after the definitive Maritime period. Decca Records signed Them to a two-year contract. Their first recording session took place in London on July 5, 1964. \"Turn on Your Love Light\" and \"Gloria\" were recorded during this session as were both sides of their first single, \"Don\'t Start Crying Now\" / \"One Two Brown Eyes.\" Their next single, a cover of Big Joe Williams\'s \"Baby, Please Don\'t Go,\" peaked at \#10 on the UK Singles Chart. The single's B-side was the garage band classic, \"Gloria,\" that went on to become a rock standard. In January 1965, Them toured England for a second time. Them earned a reputation for bad manners and sarcasm in their interviews. Billy Harrison said the attitude problem may have been caused by anti-Irish sentiments on the continent at the time.  Their next release was Them\'s biggest hit in the UK, \"Here Comes the Night.\" The producer was also the writer of the song, Bert Berns, an American, who had also co-written \"Twist and Shout.\" It charted in the UK at \#2 and went to \#24 in the U.S.  The band released their first album, *The Angry Young Them*, in June 1965. The group was marketed in the United States as part of the British Invasion. After the success of \"Here Comes the Night,\" the band scored a chart hit again later in 1965 with \"Mystic Eyes,\" which reached \#33 in the US. The group's second album, *Them Again*, was released in April, and the band began a US tour in May 1966. Unfortunately, disputes erupted among band members and management over money, and the band broke apart. Van Morrison went on to great success and fame as a solo artist. **The Spencer Davis Group** The Spencer Davis Group was formed in Birmingham in 1963, by Spencer Davis (guitar), brothers Steve Winwood (vocals, keyboards, guitar) and Muff Winwood (bass guitar), and Pete York (drums). At the time, Steve Winwood was only 14 years old. In 1964, they signed their first recording contract after Chris Blackwell of Island Records saw them in a local club. Blackwell also became their producer. The group\'s first professional recording was a cover version of John Lee Hooker's \"Dimples.\" At the end of 1965 they gained their first UK \#1 single with \"Keep On Running,\" a song written and first recorded by Jackie Edwards. In 1966, they followed this with \"Somebody Help Me,\" also written by Edwards. Due to lack of promotion, none of their early singles gained airplay or entered the American charts. By the end of 1966 and the beginning of 1967, the group released two more hits, \"Gimme Some Lovin\'\" and \"I\'m a Man.\" Both of them sold over one million copies and were awarded gold record status. These tracks proved to be their two best-known successes, especially in the US. Jimmy Miller, later known for his work with The Rolling Stones, was their producer. Steve Winwood left to form Traffic in 1967. His brother, Muff, moved into the music industry working in A&R at Island Records.  The Spencer Davis Group continued with a succession of replacement musicians but broke up in July 1969. **Traffic** Traffic formed in April 1967 by Steve Winwood, Jim Capaldi, Chris Wood, and Dave Mason. They began as a psychedelic rock group and diversified their sound by incorporating jazz and improvisational techniques. Their first three singles were \"Paper Sun,\" \"Hole in My Shoe,\" and \"Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush.\" Traffic disbanded in 1969 when Winwood joined the short-lived supergroup Blind Faith. They reunited in 1970 to release the album *John Barleycorn Must Die*. The band\'s line-up varied from this point until they disbanded again in 1974.  **The Hollies** The Hollies formed in 1962. They are known for their distinctive three-part vocal harmony style. Allan Clarke and Graham Nash founded the band as a Merseybeat-type music group in Manchester.  Clarke and Nash were best friends from primary school, and they began performing together during the skiffle craze of the late 1950s. Eventually they became a vocal and guitar duo modelled on the Everly Brothers. In 1962, the two joined a Manchester band, the Deltas. The Deltas first called themselves The Hollies for a December 1962 gig. In January 1963, The Hollies performed at the Cavern Club in Liverpool, where they were seen by Parlophone assistant producer Ron Richards, who had been involved in producing the first Beatles session.  Richards signed the group and continued to produce them until 1976 (and once more in 1979). A song from the audition, a cover of the Coasters\' 1961 single \"(Ain\'t That) Just Like Me,\" was released as their debut single in May 1963 and hit \#25 on the UK Singles Chart. Their second single, another cover of the Coasters, this time 1957\'s \"Searchin\',\" hit \#12. They then scored their first British Top 10 hit in early 1964 with a cover of Maurice Williams and the Zodiacs\' \"Stay,\" which reached \#8 in the UK. Their debut album, *Stay with The Hollies*, released on January 1, 1964, went to \#2 on the UK album chart. Known for doing cover versions, they followed up with \"Just One Look\" (February 1964, UK \#2), a song that had already had top 10 success in the US for Soul star Doris Troy.  The Hollies began writing and performing a substantial amount of original material, written by the group\'s songwriting team of Clarke, Nash, and lead guitarist Tony Hicks. The Hollies were one of the last of the major British Invasion groups to have significant chart success in the United States. Finally, theybroke through in North America with an original song that they requested from Manchester's Graham Gouldman who had written the hits "For Your Love" and "Heart Full of Soul" for The Yardbirds. Gouldman's \"Look Through Any Window\" broke The Hollies into the US Top 40 at \#32 in January 1966. \"Bus Stop,\" another Gouldman song, gave The Hollies their first US top ten single, reaching \#5. As a result, the *Bus Stop* album, climbed to \#75 - the group\'s first album to enter the US Top 100.  In October 1966, the group\'s fifth album, *For Certain Because*, became their first album consisting entirely of original compositions by Clarke, Nash, and Hicks. Released in the US as *Stop! Stop! Stop!*, it reached \#91 and spawned a US release-only single, \"Pay You Back with Interest,\" which was a modest hit, peaking at \#28. Nash\'s attempt to expand the band\'s range with a more ambitious composition, \"King Midas in Reverse,\" was a relative failure, only reaching \#18 in the UK charts. The Hollies then released the ambitious, psychedelic album *Butterfly*, retitled for the US market as *King Midas in Reverse/Dear Eloise*, but it failed to chart. The failure of \"King Midas in Reverse\" had increased tension within the band, with Clarke and Hicks wanting to record more \"pop\" material than Nash did. Matters reached a head when the band rejected Nash\'s \"Marrakesh Express\" and then decided to record an album made up entirely of Bob Dylan covers. Nash made no secret of his disdain for the idea and repeatedly clashed with producer Ron Richards. Nash officially left the group to move to Los Angeles. He joined with former Buffalo Springfield guitarist Stephen Stills and ex-Byrds singer and guitarist David Crosby to form Crosby, Stills & Nash, which released \"Marrakesh Express\" as its debut single. Graham Nash was replaced in The Hollies in January 1969 by Terry Sylvester, formerly of the Escorts and the Swinging Blue Jeans. Sylvester also substituted for Nash as part of the group\'s songwriting team. Nash\'s departure saw The Hollies again turn to outside writers for their single A-sides, but the group\'s British chart fortunes rallied during 1969 and 1970, and they scored four consecutive UK Top 20 hits in this period. The emotional ballad \"He Ain\'t Heavy, He\'s My Brother,\" written by Bobby Scott and Bob Russell, featured the piano playing of Elton John. It reached \#3 in the UK and \#7 in the US. Like Graham Nash before him, front man Allan Clarke by 1971 was growing frustrated, and he too began clashing with producer Ron Richards over material. Clarke departed from The Hollies in December 1971, a move which surprised both the band\'s fans and the public in general. Clarke decided to rejoin the band the summer of 1973. In 1974 they scored what was to be their last major new US and UK hit single with the Albert Hammond/Mike Hazlewood-composed love song \"The Air That I Breathe.\" It reached \#3 in the US. **The Zombies** The Zombies formed in 1962 in St Albans and were led by keyboardist/vocalist Rod Argent and vocalist Colin Blunstone. After winning a beat-group competition sponsored by the London *Evening News*, they signed a recording contract with Decca and recorded their first hit, \"She\'s Not There.\" It was released in mid-1964 and peaked at \#12 in the UK, becoming their only UK Top 40 hit. The tune began to catch on in the United States and eventually climbed to \#2 in early December 1964. It sold over one million copies and was awarded a gold disc. Like many other British groups, the Zombies travelled to the United States to tour on the momentum of their hit single. On January 12, 1965 the band made their first in-person appearance on US television on the first episode of NBC\'s *Hullabaloo*. They played \"She\'s Not There\" and their new single \"Tell Her No\" to a screaming, hysterical audience full of teenage girls. Their second US single, \"Tell Her No,\" written by Rod Argent, became another big seller in 1965, peaking at \#6 on the *Billboard* Hot 100 in March. Subsequent recordings such as \"She\'s Coming Home,\" \"Whenever You\'re Ready,\" \"Is This the Dream,\" \"Indication,\" and \"Gotta Get a Hold of Myself\" failed to achieve the success of the previous two singles. In 1967, frustrated by their continuing lack of success, the Zombies signed a recording contract with CBS Records for whom they recorded the album *Odessey and Oracle* at EMI\'s Abbey Road studios. (*Odyssey* was accidentally misspelled by Terry Quirk who designed the cover). The band\'s budget did not stretch to session musicians, so they used a Mellotron to fill out their arrangements. According to Argent, they used John Lennon\'s Mellotron, which had been left in the studio after the Beatles\' sessions for *Sgt. Pepper\'s Lonely Hearts Club Band*.  With the band experiencing a declining demand for live appearances, they split up after a final gig in mid-December 1967. *Odessey and Oracle*, the band\'s swansong, was released in April 1968 and sold poorly. It was only given a US release because musician Al Kooper, then signed to Columbia Records, convinced his label of the album\'s merits. One of its tracks, \"Time of the Season,\" written by Argent, was released as a single in 1968 and spent a long period as a \'sleeper.\' Eventually, in 1969, it grew to become a nationwide hit in the US, peaking at \#3. The original line-up declined to regroup for concerts following the belated American success of \"Time of the Season.\" In turn, various concocted bands tried to capitalize on the success and falsely toured under the band\'s name. In a scheme organized by Delta Promotions, an agency that also created fake touring versions of The Animals and The Archies, two fake Zombie line-ups were touring simultaneously in 1969, one hailing from Texas, the other from Michigan. The Texas group featured bassist Dusty Hill and drummer Frank Beard, soon to be members of ZZ Top. **Bee Gees** The Bee Gees were a music group formed in 1958. Their lineup consisted of brothers Barry, Robin, and Maurice Gibb. Born on the Isle of Man to English parents, the Gibb brothers lived in England until the late 1950s. There, in 1955, they formed the skiffle/rock and roll group the Rattlesnakes. In August 1958, the Gibb family emigrated to Queensland, Australia. After achieving some chart success in Australia as the Bee Gees, they returned to the UK in January 1967. Before their departure, they sent demos to Brian Epstein, who managed the Beatles. Epstein passed the demo tapes to Robert Stigwood, who had recently joined Brian's NEMS Enterprises. After an audition with Stigwood in February 1967, the Bee Gees signed a five-year contract whereby Polydor Records would release their records in the UK, and Atco Records would do so in the US. Work quickly began on the group\'s first international album. \"New York Mining Disaster 1941\" was issued to radio stations with a blank white label listing only the song title. Some DJs immediately assumed this was a new single by the Beatles and started playing the song in heavy rotation. This helped the song climb into the top 20 in both the UK and US. No such chicanery was needed to boost the Bee Gees\' next single, \"To Love Somebody,\" into the US Top 20. Originally written for Otis Redding, \"To Love Somebody,\" a soulful ballad sung by Barry, has since become a pop standard covered by many artists. The parent album, *Bee Gees 1st* peaked at \#7 in the US. In February 1968, *Horizontal* repeated the success of their first album, featuring the group\'s first UK \#1 single \"Massachusetts.\" The album had a more rock sound than their previous release, and it reached \#12 in the US. Further Bee Gees chart singles followed: \"I\'ve Gotta Get a Message to You,\" their second UK \#1 (\#8 US), and \"I Started a Joke\" (\#6 US), both culled from the band\'s third album *Idea*. *Idea* was another top 20 album in the US. Their next album evolved into the double-album *Odessa*. An ambitious project, originally intended as a concept album on the loss of a fictional ship in 1899, it created tension and disagreements in the band regarding the album\'s direction and choice of singles. The album was not well received by the public or the music press on release and led to a decline in the group\'s fortunes. However, the album has since received positive critical attention, and is regarded by many as their most significant Sixties release. Robin began to feel that Robert Stigwood, the Bee Gees manager, had been favoring Barry as the front man. \"First of May\" with lead vocals by Barry was released as a single from *Odessa*. Its B-side was \"Lamplight\" on which Robin sang lead. There was conflict because Robin wanted his song to be the album\'s first single, while Barry preferred his. Stigwood chose \"First of May\" for the A-side, relegating \"Lamplight\" to the B-side. As a result, Robin quit the band. While Robin pursued his solo career, Barry and Maurice continued on as the Bee Gees recording their next album, *Cucumber Castle*. After the album was released in early 1970, it seemed that the Bee Gees were finished. On December 1, 1969, Barry and Maurice parted ways professionally. In mid 1970, the group reunited. Barry announced that the Bee Gees \"will never, ever part again.\" Their ninth album, *Trafalgar*, was released in late 1971. The single \"How Can You Mend a Broken Heart\" was their first to hit \#1 on the US charts. At Eric Clapton\'s suggestion, the brothers moved to Miami, Florida, early in 1975 to record at Criteria Studios. After starting off with ballads, they eventually crafted more dance-oriented disco songs, including their second US \#1, \"Jive Talkin\',\" and US \#7 \"Nights on Broadway.\" The band liked the resulting new sound. The public agreed by sending the LP *Main Course* up the charts. This album included the first Bee Gees songs wherein Barry used falsetto, something that became a trademark of the band. Bee Gees agreed to participate in the creation of the *Saturday Night Fever* soundtrack. It was the turning point of their career. The cultural impact of both the film and the soundtrack was seismic throughout the world, prolonging the disco's mainstream appeal. The band\'s involvement in the film did not begin until post-production when producer Robert Stigwood commissioned the Bee Gees to create the songs for the film. The brothers wrote the songs \"virtually in a single weekend.\" Fueled by the film\'s success, the soundtrack broke multiple industry records, becoming the highest-selling album in recording history to that point. With more than 40 million copies sold, *Saturday Night Fever* is among music\'s top five best-selling soundtrack albums.  **Donovan** Donovan Phillips Leitch (born May 10, 1946) is a Scottish singer, songwriter and guitarist. Emerging from the British folk scene, he reached fame in the United Kingdom in early 1965. His most successful early singles were the UK hits \"Catch the Wind,\" \"Colours,\" and \"Universal Soldier.\" His material revealed the influence of Woody Guthrie and Ramblin\' Jack Elliott, who had also influenced Bob Dylan. Dylan comparisons followed for some time. In late 1965, Donovan split with his original management and signed with Ashley Kozak, who was working for Brian Epstein\'s NEMS Enterprises. In turn he was introduced to producer Mickie Most, who had chart-topping productions with the Animals, Lulu, and Herman\'s Hermits. Most produced all Donovan\'s recordings during this period. By 1966, Donovan had shed the Dylan/Guthrie influences and become one of the first British pop musicians to adopt flower power. He immersed himself in jazz, blues, Eastern music, and the new generation of counterculture-era US West Coast bands such as Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead. He was entering his most creative phase as a songwriter and recording artist, working with Mickie Most and with arranger John Cameron. Their first collaboration was \"Sunshine Superman,\" one of the first psychedelic pop records (recorded in December 1965). It was released in the US as a single in June 1966. It was a success, selling 800,000 in six weeks and reaching \# 1 (his only US \#1). The song is generally considered to be one of the first examples of the musical genre that came to be known as psychedelia. Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones, later of Led Zeppelin, play on the recording. On the *Sunshine Superman* album, a full rock band backs up Donovan on many of the songs. The album also features the sitar, which was played by American folk-rock singer Shawn Phillips, and is one of the first pop albums extensively to use the sitar and other unique musical instruments. On October 24, 1966, Epic released the single \"Mellow Yellow,\" arranged by John Paul Jones. The song was rumored to be about smoking dried banana skins, which was believed to be a hallucinogenic drug in the 1960s, though this has since been debunked. In his autobiography Donovan explained \"electrical banana\" was a reference to a \"yellow-colored vibrator." The song became Donovan\'s signature tune in the US, reaching \# 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 and earning a gold record award. In March Epic released the *Mellow Yellow* LP which reached \#14 in the US album charts, plus a non-album single, \"Epistle to Dippy,\" a Top 20 hit in the US.  In mid-1966, Donovan became the first high-profile British pop star to be arrested for possession of cannabis. His arrest proved to be the first in a long series involving the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. Although Donovan\'s was not as sensational as the later arrests of Jagger and Richards, he was refused entry to the US until late 1967. As a result, he could not appear at the Monterey International Pop Festival in June that year. Donovan\'s May 1968 single was the psychedelic \"Hurdy Gurdy Man.\" Donovan considered giving it to Jimi Hendrix, but when Mickie Most heard it, he convinced Donovan to record it himself. Donovan tried to get Hendrix to play, but he was on tour. Jimmy Page is credited with playing electric guitar on the song. The single reached \#5 in the US and the album *The Hurdy Gurdy Man* reached \#20. In late 1969, Donovan's relationship with Mickie Most ended after an argument over a recording session in Los Angeles. The two reunited in early 1973. **Pink Floyd** Pink Floyd formed in London in 1965. Gaining a following as a psychedelic pop group, they were distinguished for their extended compositions, sonic experimentation, philosophical lyrics, and elaborate live shows. They became a leading band of the progressive rock genre. Pink Floyd were founded by students Syd Barrett (guitar, lead vocals), Nick Mason (drums), Roger Waters (bass guitar, vocals), and Richard Wright (keyboards, vocals). In 1963, Roger Waters and Nick Mason met while studying architecture at the London Polytechnic. They played music together in a group, and Richard Wright, a fellow architecture student, joined later that year. Barrett, two years younger, had moved to London in 1962 to study at the Camberwell College of Arts. Waters and Barrett were childhood friends. Waters had often visited Barrett and watched him play guitar at Syd's mother\'s house. In early 1965, Barrett became the band\'s frontman. Later that year, they became the resident band at the Countdown Club near Kensington High Street in London, where from late night until early morning they played three sets of 90 minutes each. Spurred by the group\'s need to extend their sets to minimize song repetition, the band realized that songs could be extended with lengthy solos. The group first referred to themselves as the Pink Floyd Sound in late 1965. Barrett created the name on the spur of the moment. The name is derived from the given names of two blues musicians whose Piedmont blues records Barrett had in his collection, Pink Anderson and Floyd Council. The group\'s repertoire consisted mainly of rhythm and blues songs. In December 1966, Peter Jenner, a lecturer at the London School of Economics, noticed them. Jenner was impressed by the sonic effects Barrett and Wright created, and, with his business partner and friend Andrew King, became their manager. The pair had little experience in the music industry and used King\'s inheritance to set up Blackhill Enterprises, purchasing new instruments and equipment for the band. Jenner suggested they drop the \"Sound\" part of their band name, thus becoming the Pink Floyd. Under Jenner and King\'s guidance, the group became part of London\'s underground music scene, experimenting with long instrumental excursions and effective light shows. Their set included more Barrett originals, many of which would be included on their first album. In 1967, Pink Floyd began to attract the attention of the music industry. They signed with EMI and released their first single, \"Arnold Layne,\" on March 10, 1967. The song's references to cross-dressing led to a ban by several radio stations. However, the single still peaked in the UK at \#20. Pink Floyd\'s second single, \"See Emily Play,\" was released on June 16, 1967. It fared slightly better than \"Arnold Layne\", peaking at \#6 in the UK. They appeared on the BBC\'s *Top of the Pops*, a popular program that controversially required artists to mime their singing and playing. Pink Floyd returned for two more performances, but by the third, Barrett had begun to unravel, and the band first noticed significant changes in his behavior. By early 1967, he was regularly using LSD, and Mason described him as \"completely distanced from everything going on.\" The band recorded their first album at EMI's Abbey Road Studios in London. *The Piper at the Gates of Dawn,* was released in August 1967. It was produced by EMI producer Norman Smith, who had engineered The Beatles' recordings up through *Rubber Soul.* The album peaked at \#6, spending 14 weeks on the UK charts. Barrett\'s mental breakdown was by then causing serious concern. The group initially hoped that his erratic behavior would be a passing phase, but that was not the case. Forced to cancel Pink Floyd\'s appearance at the prestigious National Jazz and Blues Festival, King informed the music press that Barrett was suffering from nervous exhaustion. The band began their first tour of the US in October. As the tour went on, Barrett\'s condition grew steadily worse. During appearances on the Dick Clark and Pat Boone TV shows, Barrett confounded his hosts by not responding to questions and staring into space. He refused to move his lips when it came time to mime \"See Emily Play\" on Boone\'s show. After these embarrassing episodes, King ended their US visit and immediately sent them home to London. Soon after their return, they supported Jimi Hendrix during a tour of England, but Barrett\'s depression only worsened as the tour continued. In December 1967, reaching a crisis point with Barrett, Pink Floyd added guitarist David Gilmour as the fifth member. Gilmour already knew Barrett, having studied with him at Cambridge Tech in the early 1960s. The two had performed at lunchtimes together with guitars and harmonicas, and later hitch-hiked and busked their way around the south of France. In January 1968, Blackhill Enterprises announced Gilmour as the band\'s newest member. According to Jenner, the group planned that Gilmour would \"cover for \[Barrett\'s\] eccentricities.\"  It was suggested Syd could continue as a nonperforming songwriter, but even this proved too difficult. This signaled the end of Barrett\'s tenure with Pink Floyd. Waters later said, \"He was our friend, but most of the time we now wanted to strangle him.\" In early March 1968, Pink Floyd met with Jenner and King to discuss the band\'s future, and Barrett agreed to leave. Jenner and King believed Barrett was the creative genius of the band. They decided to represent him and end their relationship with Pink Floyd. Blackhill announced Barrett\'s departure on April 6, 1968. After his withdrawal, the burden of lyrical composition and creative direction fell mostly on Waters. While playing on the university circuit, they avoided Barrett songs in favor of Waters and Wright material such as \"It Would Be So Nice\" and \"Careful with That Axe, Eugene.\" In 1968, Pink Floyd returned to Abbey Road Studios to record their second album, *A Saucerful of Secrets*. The album included Barrett\'s final contribution to their discography, \"Jugband Blues.\" Waters began to develop his own songwriting, contributing \"Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun,\" \"Let There Be More Light,\" and \"Corporal Clegg.\" Wright composed \"See-Saw\" and \"Remember a Day.\" Wright recalled Norman Smith\'s attitude about the sessions, \"Norman gave up on the second album...he was forever saying things like, \'You can\'t do twenty minutes of this ridiculous noise\'\". Released in June 1968, the album peaked at \#9, spending 11 weeks on the UK chart. \"Careful with That Axe, Eugene\" was first released in 1968 as the B-side to the single \"Point Me at the Sky.\" A longer, live version can be found on the group's 1969 double-album *Ummagumma*. The band also recorded it for the live film *Pink Floyd Live at Pompeii* in 1971.  **The Moody Blues** The Moody Blues formed in Birmingham, England, in 1964, initially consisting of keyboardist Mike Pinder, multi-instrumentalist Ray Thomas, guitarist Denny Laine, drummer Graeme Edge, and bassist Clint Warwick.  The band soon obtained London-based management and signed a recording contract. It was their second single, \"Go Now\" (originally recorded by American R&B singer Bessie Banks) that launched their career. The single became a hit in Britain (where it remains their only \#1 single) and in the United States where it reached \#10. Their debut album, *The Magnificent Moodies*, contained the hit single together with one side of classic R&B covers and a second side with four Laine-Pinder originals. After that, the group released a series of relatively unsuccessful singles, and the Moody Blues seemed to be disintegrating. The group re-formed in November 1966. The new members were bassist John Lodge and guitarist Justin Hayward. The band realized their style of American blues covers and novelty tunes wasn't working and decided to perform primarily original material.  The Moody Blues\' contract was set to expire, and they owed Decca a lot of money. The second album had never materialized. However, they had the support of Decca A&R manager Hugh Mendl, who had been instrumental in the establishment of London/Decca\'s new subsidiary label Deram Records. With Mendl\'s backing, the Moody Blues were offered a deal to make a rock and roll version of Antonín Dvořák\'s *New World Symphony* to promote the company\'s new Deramic Stereo Sound audio format^.^ In return, the group would be forgiven their debt. The band agreed but insisted they be given artistic control. The group was unable to complete the project, and it was abandoned. However, they managed to convince Peter Knight, who had been assigned to arrange and conduct the orchestral interludes, to collaborate on a recording that used the band\'s original material instead. Released in November 1967, *Days of Future Passed* peaked at \#27 on the British LP chart. Five years later it reached \#3 on the *Billboard* chart in the US. The concept album was a song cycle that takes place over the course of a single day. It was recorded using the London Festival Orchestra, a loose affiliation of Decca\'s classical musicians given a fictitious name, to provide an orchestral linking framework to the Moodies\' songs. Strings were added to the latter portion of Hayward\'s \"Nights in White Satin,\" but the orchestra and group never performed together on the recording. The album, plus two singles therefrom, \"Nights in White Satin\" and \"Tuesday Afternoon,\" took time to find an audience. \"Nights in White Satin\" made only \# 19 on the British singles chart in early 1968. However, the British public eventually learned to appreciate \"Nights in White Satin.\" It went to \#9 on re-issue in December 1972 and is now regarded as the Moody Blues signature song. In the US, \"Nights in White Satin\" did not make the *Billboard* Hot 100 in 1968, although it reached \#2 on re-release in 1972. **Procol Harum** Procol Harum formed in 1967. Their best-known recording is the 1967 hit single \"A Whiter Shade of Pale,\" one of the few singles to have sold over 10 million copies. Although noted for their baroque and classical influence, Procol Harum\'s music is described as psychedelic rock and proto-prog. In April 1967, Gary Brooker began working as a singer-songwriter and formed Procol Harum with Keith Reid (poet), Hammond organist Matthew Fisher, guitarist Ray Royer, and bassist David Knights. At Olympic Studios, with session drummer Bill Eyden, the group recorded \"A Whiter Shade of Pale.\" The track was completed in two takes, with no subsequent overdubbing. It was released on May 12, 1967 and reached \#1 in the UK and Canada. It did almost as well in the United States, reaching \#5. In Australia, it was \#1 for many weeks, setting a record of 8 weeks in