This course, part 1 of a 2-course sequence, examines the history of rock, primarily as it unfolded in the United States, from the days before rock (pre-1955) to the end of the 1960s. This course covers the music of Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, Phil Spector, Bob Dylan, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, Cream, and many more artists, with an emphasis both on cultural context and on the music itself. We will also explore how developments in the music business and in technology helped shape the ways in which styles developed. Rock emerged in the mid 1950s as a blending of mainstream pop, rhythm and blues, and country and western--styles that previously had remained relatively separate. This new style became the music of the emerging youth culture and was often associated with teen rebellion. We will follow the story of how this rowdy first wave of rock and roll (1955-59) was tamed in the early 60s but came roaring back with the Beatles and the Rolling Stones and then went psychedelic by the end of the decade.
The Phil Spector Legacy
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From the course by University of Rochester
History of Rock, Part One
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From the lesson
American Responses (1965-67)
Dylan, the Byrds and folk rock. Garage bands in the northwest. Sonny and Cher and the legacy of Phil Spector. TV rock, Paul Revere and the Raiders, and the Monkees. Music in New York and Los Angeles.
Meet the Instructors
John CovachProfessor of Music and Director
Institute for Popular Music
We now turn to a discussion of the Phil Spector legacy.
Remember Phil Spector is the producer from the first half of the 1960s
producing big hits for girl groups and, and later for the Righteous Brothers.
But really seen as one of the iconic
figures and representative figures of that early period.
So he would think given the way story goes that when the Beatles
come along in February of 1964, Phil Spectors is one of the casualties
of, of, of the, of Beatle mania and the British invasion.
He's one, his, his group would be some of the groups that we pushed off the charts.
And that's the way, that's the, an idea you
get from the way the story is usually told.
but in fact, Phil Spector continues to have success with his groups
at the same time as the Beatles are having success with their groups.
And he continued to have hits into 1965 with The
Righteous Brothers "You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling" and The Righteous Brothers
doing "Ebb Tide", which was a number five hit still in 1966.
So the idea that the British invasion totally shut American
artist down or off the charts is a little bit exaggerated
it made a big difference but it, it, it, it,
it's easy to sort of exaggerated that difference a little bit.
Phil Spector has a bit of a legacy in,
in this country that as people who came after him.
Who were very much
influenced by what he did in the early 60s and sort of pushed the ball
a little further down the field in the, in the 60s with the American music.
Interestingly one of the, for me at least, one
of the most significant of these people is Sonny Bono.
Sonny Bono half of the the, the duo, Sonny and Cher had
been Phil Spector's promotion guy on the west coast, and, and his aid.
He was around at Goldstar Studios when Phil was, was recording
a lot of those girl group tracks he ended up singing.
background or playing tambourine or, or whatever on some of those tracks.
And his girlfriend Cher, actually sang back up
on a lot of those girl group tracks
and so, Sonny starts to get the idea well he wants to do what Phil's doing.
He wants to produce and act, he wants to write
his own songs, you know, he wants to, to pretty
much do what Phil's doing.
He's, he's been his apprentice, his assistant all this time.
So the, one of the first attempts is that, is
a song that ref, that responds to the British invasion.
It was sung by Cher, but her name was given as Bonnie Jo
Mason in 1964, and the name of the song was Ringo I Love You.
Well, that one didn't do so good, but when the when
the American response started to happen in 1965
Sonny immediately got on the bandwagon of that.
And had Cher do her own version of All I Really Want to Do.
It was on the charts at the same time as the Byrds version of that tune.
The Byrds, The Byrds it was their followup to Mr
Tambourine Man but 'All I Really want to Do' got pushed
off the charts the Byrds version of all I want
to do got pushed off the charts by the Cher version.
And there's a story I don't know whether it's true or not
of Bob Dylan saying to Roger MceWen how could you let this happen.
You let the Cher version knock the, the Byrds version off.
Of course for Dylan it was all the same because
of course as a songwriter he gets paid either way.
So Sunny, he thinks, well you know, I, I can write one of
these Dylan songs and this, what are, what's the essential elements of these
Dylan songs?
So he starts to kind of to write, and the way he liked to tell the story
was you know, Dylan is always saying this babe,
babe, babe thing, you know "It Ain't Me Babe".
So, he came up with this tune that went, "I Got You Babe".
[LAUGH]
Right?
And for him, him, it was his version sort of like P.F.
Sloan had done with the Barry McGuire hit, "Eve of Destruction".
Of writing what he thought sounded like a Dylan song.
"I Got You Babe" went to number one in
1965, and made, Sunny & Cher, real pop stars.
They, they, they came back with a couple of different hits maybe their
biggest hit after that was a tune from 1967, called The Beat Goes On.
Sonny & Cher early on, I mean, lot-, lot of folks who grew
up with this, with this music cer, certainly grew up in the 70's.
remember Sonny and Cher as being sort of mainstream pop, sort of
host of a variety show that that, that, that played in the 1970s.
But actually in the, in the mid 1960s, they were, they were sort of pioneers in
outrageous Hippie fashion. Already in 1965 and 1966 they were wearing
just crazy clothes. Check it out on the Internet.
See if you can find some images of this.
way before the hippies really sort of hit with all this
stuff in main stream American culture, anyway, in 1967 you could
have gone to Carnabie Street in London and seen some sort
of outrageous sort of things but not like Sonny and Cher.
So bad that there were hotels that wouldn't let them
stay there because of the kinds of things they were wearing.
This kind of thing.
So in many ways Sonny & Cher,
even though they became very mainstream, were edgier, in the moment.
And Sonny Bono, very much, at the, at the center of making all that happen.
Well we wouldn't, if we were talkin' about L.A.
in the 60's, it would be, certainly, be, a grand omission if
we didn't talk about The Beach Boys and the development of their music.
Especially in the, in the, the along the idea of the legacy
of Phil Spector that Ronette's tune 'Be My Baby'.
Remember that by the time 'Be My Baby' came out in 1964 the Beach Boys already
a hit or two but Brian Wilson wasn't doing the wasn't doing the producing at first.
There was somebody else a guy who'd been assigned
by Capital Records their label who was producing and
[UNKNOWN]
was thinking well, I can do this, I can produce this.
He really wanted to be like Sonny Bono did, wanted to be
just like Phil Spector in the sense that he would have his
group, he would write the songs, he would produce them up just
like Phil had done with his famous Wall of Sound kind of thing.
He heard "Be My Baby" and the way Brian tells the story he was so impressed by "Be
My Baby" the first time he heard he was driving the car, he had to stop the car.
He was so afraid he was going to have an accident.
He had
to pull it over to the curb, and just listen to the tune.
And he thought, this is it.
This is exactly, the kind of, he actually wrote a song
that he, that he hoped that the Ronettes would record.
But Phil Spector, did not record it and The Beach Boys ended up recording it.
But very much influenced by Phil Spector and this idea of using
the recording studio to create the biggest and most interesting kind of sound.
And so what happens with the Beach Boys is Brian Wilson who was always
a emotional, fragile and maybe a little bit
emotionally unstable has an episode where he doesn't feel
like, an episode where he cant get on a plane or a freak out on a plane.
Any way the guys decide maybe has maybe the best thing to do
is to get somebody to replace Brian on the road to do the tours.
Brian can stay home, write the songs, work up the arrangements, that kind of thing.
We'll come back from the road, we record up Brian's songs and
then we go out and tour them again with somebody else on base.
In fact, the first base that replaced Brian Wilson
was Glenn Campbell who was at that time, a
session musician doing sessions in LA who went on to be a big star in his own right.
But anyway, Glenn didn't last for very long.
Bruce Johnston eventually replaced Brian on the road.
A fantastic voice too, so he sang on a lot of the stuff.
So, Brian stays home, and he's working in the studio.
Working with Phil Specters.
Musicians, the, the, the top flight musicians
in L.A who were called the wrecking crew.
He's got them, he's working on these
arrangements and Beach Boys arrangements get increasingly ambitious.
Again, under the sight that's kind of what Phil Specter was doing in the studio too.
So, if you think about tracks like, California Girls, which is kind of
a familiar surf kind of tune but now with new kinds of sophistication in
terms of the instrumentation and the big introduction that occurs and the various
kinds of things that happen, you can see that surf music is really starting
to get ambitious.
Well, the real point of of arrival for the, for the Beach Boys and for Brian
Wilson, in many ways isthe track Pet, is, is the album Pet Sounds from 1966.
Some of the tracks you may know from that album are,
'Sloop John B', 'Wouldn't It Be Nice' and 'God Only Knows'.
In Pet Sounds, Brian Wilson really creates something like
a kind of a concept album but it wasn't thought of as a concept album at the time.
The way he thought of it was, he saw The Beatles' Rubber
Soul and he said, you know, there's an album where the Beatles
have really put all the songs together where the sum is, the
sum of the parts is, is greater than any of the individual.
pieces, and so he wanted to do that with Pet Sounds, and so
he did but the album is full of all kinds of studio, experimentation.
really in many ways, the guys were a bit frustrated
with the other guys.
The Beach Boys were a bit frustrated with Brian, 'cuz he
would have things on the recordings that they couldn't do live.
And they thought well this sounds fantastic in the studio
but Brian how are we going to perform this stuff.
I mean, we've got to play this stuff for people, you know.
What followed right after Pet Sounds was Good Vibrations
and in many ways they thought that was just impossible.
What followed Good Vibrations was supposed to be called Smile.
But we'll talk about that when we talk
about the competition between the Beatles and the,
and the Beach Boy during the early psychedelic
period getting into the late 66 and 1967.
We'll wait for week seven on that, but
I think probably now, it's important to point
out that the, the Beach Boys were not only competing with the Beatles on the charts.
But they were competing with the Beatles on their own label.
The Beatles in this country were on Capitol
Records and the Beach Boys were on Capitol Records.
And the Beach Boys had been on Capitol
Records before the be, before the Beatles came along.
during that period when Capitol wouldn't release any Beatles mu, music.
and so along comes The Beatles and they haven't
just The Beach Boys have not just gotta fight
for the attention of the fans, but they've gotta
fight for the attention of their own record company.
Interesting like the Kingston Trio was also on Capitol at the same
time so a real cluster of im, of important figures are coming together.
some of the other L.A acts that's is
probably worth mentioning and thinking about Gary Lewis
& the Playboys.
this group fronted by a, a young guy Gary
Lewis who was the son of popular comedian Jerry Lewis.
in many ways this is a, a, a replay of the story that we told about Ricky Nelson
in the sense that remember when we talked about
Ricky Nelson, we said that his dad was Ozzy Nelson.
Of course Ozzy Nelson was very hooked up inside the business and was able to help.
Make it so that Ricky Nelson could have a singing career.
Same thing with, with Gary Lewis.
His, his dad Jerry Lewis in the 60's was, you know, one
of those kind of guys in Hollywood who was very hot, and, and,
very much sort of wired inside that business and all that kind
of thing, so he was able to help his son quite a bit.
The tune this diamond ring was a number one hit for Gary Lewis, The Playboys
in 1965, 'She's Just My Style' a number, a number three hit for them in 1965.
Another guy coming out of
L.A Johnny Rivers had a couple of hits.
Interestingly his, his first big album was a live album.
We'll see this, it turns out, at the end of
the 70s, where a couple of big acts really sort
of break through break big on the scene because of
live albums, and the most important being Frampton Comes Alive, right?
And Peter Frampton had a number of albums out before Frammpton Comes Alive.
But here, Johnny Rivers has got an album,
an album Live At The Whisky, and his first couple
of hits are, are hits, are covers of Chuck Barry tune.
So, Memphis from 1964 and Maybelline from 1964.
But probably, Johnny Rivers, it will always be remembered for his version
of the song, 'Secret Agent Man', which got to number three in
1966 and is has become one of those evergreen kind of songs
that plays on oldies stations and classic rock stations now all the time.
So, that concludes our, our consideration of, of Los Angeles and the,
and the Phil Spector Legacy. Let's see what was happening back East on
the East Coast during
these same years.
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