The Mojo Collection. Various Mojo Magazine
The Masked Marauder; Grace
Running time: 43.30
Current CD: Vanguard VMD79244
Further listening: Try I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-To-Die (1967) for more of the same, albeit with a little more bad-trip darkness
Further reading: www.countryjoe.com (official); www.well.com/~cjfish/ (fan site)
Download: Not currently legally available
Electric Music For The Mind And Body certainly sounds like an 11-song panegyric for LSD but, unusually for 1967, it also acknowledged the real world of Vietnam-era politics. That was largely due to activist/frontman Country Joe McDonald, who’d formed the group in 1965 to play jugband protest songs to Berkeley University beatniks. One, I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-To-Die-Rag, later became the counter-culture’s key anti-war anthem, eclipsing the band’s psychedelic reputation in the process.
A druggy mid-1966 EP, Rag Baby, enjoyed considerable success in and around San Francisco and later that year the Fish were signed to Vanguard.
‘In many ways, Electric Music is fairly unrepresentative of what the band actually sounded like in concert,’ says Barry Melton. ‘When we played live, the amps had a typical overdriven sound that was much more rock’n’roll-ish. But (engineer) Bob DeSousa insisted we turn the amps down very low so that he could maintain separation between the instruments and balance them.’ The result was far more polished and rehearsed than the Fish had intended, but in spring 1967, Electric Music – dressed in one of the era’s more evocative sleeves – was still way ahead of the competition. Taut, psychedelicised R&B (Flying High, Love) and waltz-time craziness (Porpoise Mouth, The Masked Marauder), were complemented by some extraordinary acid-rock excursions (Bass Strings, Section 43 and Grace), where Melton’s highly-strung guitar, Cohen’s asthmatic Farfisa and Joe’s stoner vocals detonated over dreamlike, mock-Eastern rhythms. There was satire here too (Superbird, Flying High), but essentially Electric Music was about the politics of mind-altering drugs.
‘It’s hard to say who was right in the end,’ says the guitarist. ‘Bob may have come up with a more artistic recording, and cleaned us up enough to be commercial. But maybe we were cleaned up so much that we never had the smash success with our records that we had on stage.’ That said, Electric Music was a consistent seller throughout the Summer Of Love, and remains one of the few truly successful US psychedelic albums.
The Hollies
Butterfly
As close as they came to a classic.
Record label: Columbia
Produced: Ron Richards
Recorded: EMI Studios, London; September 1967
Released: October 1967
Chart peaks: None (UK) None (US)
Personnel: Allan Clarke (v, g); Tony Hicks (g); Graham Nash (v, rg); Bernie Calvert (b, k); Bobby Elliott (d)
Track listing: Dear Eloise; Away Away Away; Maker; Pegasus; Would You Believe; Wishyouawish; Postcard; Charlie And Fred; Try It; Elevated Observations; Step Inside; Butterfly
Running time: 31.25
Current CD: EMI 5282452
Further listening: The Special Collection 3-CD boxed set (1997)
Further reading: www.hollies.co.uk
Download: iTunes; HMV Digital
By September 1967, the Indian Summer of Love was in full Technicolor bloom. If Sgt. Pepper psychedelia’s excesses had become public property, The Hollies – in particular Graham Nash – wanted in.
Butterfly, their fourth album of entirely self-penned songs in only two years (credited to the nucleus of Hicks/Clarke/Nash), represented all that was good and bad about British psychedelia. Although a typically well-crafted Hollies record, and blessed with their immaculate three-part harmonies, it features all the trademarks of its time – fairytale lyrics (Pegasus), stuff about being ‘high as the sky’ (Elevated Observations), full orchestral arrangements (Away Away Away) and, inevitably, Eastern instrumentation (Maker). High points include Nash’s intricate Dear Eloise and Butterfly itself, in spite of its ‘lemonade lakes’ and ‘candy floss snow’ (a lower point is Clarke’s embarrassing tale of two rag and bone men, Charlie And Fred). It is also largely Graham Nash’s record: he sings most of the leads and his wistful, winsome qualities prevail.
In the US the album was known as Dear Eloise/King Midas In Reverse and included Nash’s King Midas In Reverse, arguably The Hollies’ finest recorded moment but a relative flop as a single and left off the UK edition. It had been released against the advice of the group’s long-standing producer Ron Richards, who argued that it was too complex for Hollies fans. He was proved right.
Nash, however, wanted to reach beyond the limits of the band’s fanbase. He met David Crosby while attending a Mamas And Papas recording session in LA at the end of 1967, and the seeds of a new collaboration were sown. A follow-up to Butterfly was underway by March 1968 but was soon scrapped. Two new Nash songs (Marrakesh Express and Lady Of The Island) were not even attempted. For the rest of the year Nash’s relationship with the band was increasingly strained. The appeal of the seaside cabaret circuit and a mooted album of Dylan covers led him to leave the band on December 8, whereupon he went straight into rehearsals with Crosby and Stephen Stills. Meantime, The Hollies’ Greatest, their only Number 1 album, was still enjoying a 22-week run in the Top 10.
Frank Sinatra
Francis Albert Sinatra and Antonio Carlos Jobim
The Voice Of The Century’s last consistently great vocal performance.
Record label: Reprise
Produced: Sonny Burke
Recorded: Hollywood, California; January 30–February 1, 1967
Released: October 1967
Chart peaks: 28 (UK) 19 (US)
Personnel: Frank Sinatra (v); Antonio Carlos Jobim (g, v); Claus Ogerman (ar, conductor); orchestra including Dick Noel (tb); Dom Um Romao (d)
Track listing: The Girl From Ipanema; Dindi; Change Partners; Quiet Nights Of Quiet Stars; Meditation; If You Never Come To Me; How Insensitive; I Concentrate On You; Baubles Bangles And Beads; Once I Loved
Running time: 27.47
Current CD: Warner Brothers WB469482
Further listening: Sinatra And Company (1969)
Further reading: Sinatra! The Song Is You: A Singer’s Art (Will Friedwald, 1995)
Download: Not currently legally available
Sinatra came relatively late to the bossa boom. The bewitching melodies of Brazilian composer Antonio Carlos Jobim and sensual slow-motion samba rhythms of bossa nova had been common adult pop currency since Stan Getz, Joao and Astrud Gilberto had popularised them in 1962–63, but Sinatra had been trying different approaches to find a commercial foothold in ‘Beatleland’, as he had it. There was the country rock of half of Sinatra 65 and the Ray Charles-ish blues pop of the single That’s Life that followed the commercial jackpot of Strangers In The Night. All this kept the blue-eyed one on the radio but the albums were lousy, either unsatisfying mishmashes (Sinatra 65, That’s Life) or openly contemptuous