1965--The Most Revolutionary Year in Music

December 8, 2014
Five decades ago, the Beatles kicked off the year 1965 in popular music with “I Feel Fine,” which, music writer Jackson notes, was the first intentional use of feedback on a record. According to this uneven narrative, in 1965, the escalation of the Vietnam War, fighting in the streets of L.A. and Detroit, and political strife fueled a revolution in popular music, igniting the Rolling Stones, the Byrds, the Supremes, Otis Redding, and Buck Owens, among many others. Jackson narrates the well-trod evolution of music season by season and month by month, resulting in sometimes repetitive history. He emphasizes the ways that music develops as one artist hears another’s riff or lyric and builds a new sound on it. For example, when Brian Wilson heard the Lovin’ Spoonful’s “You Didn’t Have to Be So Nice,” it inspired him to write “God Only Knows,” the centerpiece of Pet Sounds. Roger McGuinn went out and bought a Rickenbacker electric 12-string guitar after he heard George Harrison playing one, and the jangly sound soon became McGuinn’s trademark with the Byrds. Despite the book’s flaws, Jackson’s rapid-fire jaunt through the musical highlights of 1965—the rise of Motown and Stax Records, the early music of David Bowie, the arrival of the Bakersfield sound—is a helpful survey for readers unfamiliar with the history of popular music. Agent: Charlie Viney, Viney Agency.

December 1, 2014
Lively though superficial survey of the annus mirabilis that brought us "Eve of Destruction," "Like a Rolling Stone" and "Help!"Journalist/filmmaker Jackson doesn't serve up much of a thesis beyond the rather vaporous observation that the year 1965 "is the moment in rock history when the Technicolor butterfly burst out of its black-and-white cocoon." Put another way, enough musicians had dropped acid by then to alter the course of pop music, which had been spinning through cycles of folk, R&B, jazz and rock and was now making a melange of all of them, courtesy of inchoate groups as far afield from each other as the Mothers of Invention, the Doors and the Velvet Underground-and atop the stack, as ever, the indomitable Beatles. There's not much new in the individual bits of data assembled here, though Jackson's gleanings are sometimes pleasing. High points include the makings of the Beatles' song that would become "Drive My Car," a recording which John Lennon sagely said, "It needs cowbell," and of the anthemic "Eve of Destruction," which the Byrds and their lesser peers the Turtles (then the Tyrtles) rejected-and wisely, for, as the latter's Howard Kaylan said, "whoever recorded this song was doomed to have only one record in their/his career." The year was light on hard-charting women, though Jackson does a solid job covering the hit-makers, including a very young Cher and an ever-so-earnest Mary Travers. The author occasionally stretches a little too far: If a cigar is sometimes just a cigar, then the white shirt of "Satisfaction" might just be a shirt and not an occult commentary on racism, and it's downright silly to claim that Dylan's "From a Buick Six" is "a psychic flash of the motorcycle accident that will take Dylan off the road a year later." Good enough as far as it goes, but Peter Guralnick and Greil Marcus can rest easy, unthreatened by competition here.

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February 15, 2015

Author and journalist Jackson (Still the Greatest: The Essential Songs of the Beatles' Solo Careers) makes the case that 1965 was an exceptionally pivotal year in popular music in this entertaining synthesis of cultural and social history. The titans of 1960s rock (Bob Dylan, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones) released some of their most historic recordings during 1965, which are examined closely, as are debuts from the Byrds and the Who and exciting new music from the Beach Boys and the Supremes. Jackson also surveys a wide swath of music encompassing Motown, R&B, pop, folk rock, country, jazz, easy listening, ska, and garage rock, illuminating dozens of songs, albums, and movements that would influence both the present and the future of music. Moving chronologically the author explores the key releases and figures in all these genres and intersperses background sketches on some of the major historical events of this iconic year from civil rights to Vietnam and from the miniskirt to pop art. VERDICT Utilizing myriad sources, memoirs, and articles, Jackson weaves the story of a year in which a combination of forces that included a sense of experimentation and revolution and the thriving of a competitive spirit among musicians combined with rapidly moving social changes to forever shape American musical culture. It will appeal to music fans and those interested in the Sixties.--James Collins, Morristown-Morris Twp. P.L., NJ

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

January 1, 2015
A lot of revolutionary things happened in the musical world during the pivotal year of 1965. That was the year, Jackson argues, that rock and roll evolved into the premiere art form of its time and accelerated the drive for personal liberty throughout the Western world. New sounds were explored while the civil rights movement reached its apotheosis; Motown savored the height of its popularity; James Brown invented funk; and country outlaws, including Johnny Cash, rebelled against the sterile Nashville sound. Jackson proceeds season by season. In winter 1965, Dylan records Bringing It All Back Home, the Brill Building songwriters and the Beach Boys offer an American alternative to the ubiquitous British Invasion, and John Coltrane releases his classic Love Supreme. Spring brings the Byrds' shimmering jingle-jangle guitar sound and the Rolling Stones' Satisfaction. In summer, Dylan turns electric at the Newport Folk Festival and is booed. As autumn begins, folk-rock tops the charts. The year ends with the Beatles' release of Rubber Soul. Jackson presents a thoroughly entertaining romp through one mighty year in pop-music history.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)