Another significant event that occurred in January was the implementation of an FCC regulation forcing broadcasters that owned both AM and FM stations to offer different programming on each, which led to freeform FM radio. San Francisco’s KMPX, Los Angeles’ KPPC, and hundreds of other stations were suddenly

liberated from AM’s stylistic and song-length standards, and they broadcast in relatively noise-free stereo. “That’s what really made the difference,” explains Jefferson Airplane’s Jack Casady. “You’d have DJs that would play whatever they wanted, rather than dealing with playlists and payola. You and the DJ might be ‘enlightened,’ so to speak, and you had a friend who would take you on a musical journey.”

A corresponding shift also took place on stage, as bands no longer felt constrained to play their songs precisely as recorded. “The Airplane, the Dead, Cream, Hendrix—we all started to change things around and extend the solos, and the audience began responding more to the musicianship,” continues Casady. By mid-year, many bands were stretching out on their records as well, exchanging the promise of AM hits for the more musically compelling allure of FM and Album Oriented Rock.

It was also a pivotal year for recording. Although a handful of American studios had already made the leap from four to eight tracks, most of the major studios—and nearly all of their British counterparts—did so late in the year. “The development of the 8-track was the most significant event in recording at the time,” explains producer Norman Smith. “When we only had four tracks, we could submix tracks but you lost some fidelity with each bounce.” UFO founder and producer Joe Boyd agrees, placing the change in a larger context. “If you look at that whole period between 1964 and 1970, you’re going from 2-track to 4-track to 8-track to 16-track to 24-track in the space of six years. There was constant turmoil, accompanied by ever-expanding possibilities.”

Simultaneously, there was a shift from mono to stereo. “At that time there were still mono and stereo versions of records,” says Boyd. “It eventually dawned on people that a mono system could very well play a stereo record, and that’s when you started seeing the term ‘compatible stereo’ printed on record jackets.” Consequently, studio mixers also became more sophisticated, gaining pan pots on individual channels and stereo mix buses, along with expanded EQ and signal-routing capabilities—just the thing to take better advantage of effects devices, and increase the perceived spatiality of spacey music.

The event with the greatest impact on guitarists, however, was arguably the Monterey International Pop Festival, which took place June 16-18. Monterey Pop gave an amazing array of American and English guitarists an opportunity to check each other out live, and, of course, it’s where Jimi Hendrix made his mark in the States. Among the many American performers involved in this 6-string cross-pollination were Mike Bloomfield, Roger McGuinn, David Crosby, Paul Simon, Jerry Garcia, Steve Cropper, Elvin Bishop, John Cipollina, Danny Kalb, and Jorma Kaukonen—most of whom saw Hendrix play for the first time.

Although 1967 was also a great year for jazz—with Miles, Coltrane, Sun Ra, and other giants releasing landmark albums—it was a comparatively uninspiring time for jazz guitar. Pat Martino’s debut and sophomore albums foreshadowed future greatness, as did Joe Pass’ Simplicity. But many heavy jazz cats were either recording lighter fare (such as covers of pop tunes) or were effectively on “hiatus.” Soon, a new generation of psyched-up jazz guitarists would emerge onto the scene—but no jazz guitar albums released in 1967 were deemed influential enough to make the list.

Finally, 1967 saw major changes in journalistic attitudes and print media. Select writers at stalwart British publications such as Melody Maker and New Music Express, began singing the praises of “rock” music, the first issues of Rolling Stone were published, and Guitar Player was launched to serve a burgeoning 6-string community that wished to sound and play better.

We listened to lots of music while assembling this list, sometimes arguing passionately amongst ourselves as titles were proposed and ultimately added or rejected. You may not agree with all of our choices, and that’s okay—but we hope that you’ll have as much fun reading about these records as we did writing about them, and, hopefully, be inspired to do some listening of your own. —Barry Cleveland

More of the Monkees

The Monkees
January 1967

The Monkees had exploded on the scene just a year prior when they released their aptly titled second album, which would go on to sell millions and hit number one in America and the UK. As with their debut, Monkees Peter Tork and Mike Nesmith didn’t play much guitar on More of the Monkees. Instead, a gaggle of killer session guitarists, including Glen Campbell, James Burton, Gerry McGee, Mike Deasy, and Louie Shelton turn in great performances. Shelton, whose phone had scarcely stopped ringing after he played the classic “Last Train to Clarksville” lick, recalls the More sessions. “My gear for all those recordings was an early ’60s Fender Tele and a Fender Super Reverb amp,” he says. “Dave Hassinger was the recording engineer and he loved to use a Neumann U67 on my amp, which was cranked pretty good.”
Burton and Campbell are both on the Mike Nesmith-produced “The Kind of Girl I Could Love,” although it’s unclear which of them played the cool chicken pickin’ solo—a slinky, funky break that would be at home on a Byrds or Eagles record. When you factor in the ringing, jangly tones of “I’m a Believer” and “She,” plus the garage-approved grunginess of “(I’m Not Your) Steppin’ Stone” (not to mention the band’s hit TV show), More of the Monkees probably drew as many kids to the guitar as any album that year.—MB

Buffalo Springfield

Buffalo Springfield
January 1967

Officially formed in April 1966 after assuming a name they’d spotted on a piece of road-paving machinery, Buffalo Springfield rose in short order to become one of America’s most influential bands. A huge amount of talent was compressed into the Springfield’s guitar-and-vocal lineup of Neil Young, Stephen Stills, and Richie Furay (who would later form the band Poco), and the band would break onto the airwaves big-time with the Stills-penned hit single, “For What It’s Worth.” Recorded in early December 1966, “For What It’s Worth” summed up the clash of cultures and ideals that the late ’60s was all about, and, by March 1967, Buffalo Springfield were the toast of the left coast with a certified protest album and a Top-10 hit. The blend of folk, rock, and fuzzed-out, feedback-laced psychedelia they banged out on their Gibsons and Gretsches put them in league with the Byrds as the premier exponents of the California rock sound. The band’s other ’67 release, Buffalo Springfield Again, included cuts such as “Bluebird” and “Mr. Soul” that remain high-water marks in the pantheon of ’60s rock. Buffalo Springfield broke up in 1968, but the musical impact they made in just two years of existence is felt to this day. —AT

The Doors

The Doors
January 1967

The volcanic impact of the Doors’ debut album assaulted hippie culture and pop culture with a beautiful and mysterious singer, a truly original sound, and beguiling songs. But apart from Jim Morrison’s steamy crooning and Ray Manzarek’s organ, a huge component of the Doors psychedelic landscape was due to guitarist Robby Krieger’s broad and eclectic musical tastes. Krieger was a fingerpicker who had studied flamenco, and his parts were often steeped in Eastern motives, bluesy wails, and hypnotic drones. Although musical fusions were a big part of the sound of ’67, few bands brought them to pop radio with the intensity and success of the Doors. —MM

Surrealistic Pillow

Jefferson Airplane
February 1967

Surrealistic Pillow was Jefferson Airplane’s second album, but the first by the classic lineup of guitarist/vocalists Paul Kantner and Jorma Kaukonen, bassist Jack Casady, drummer Spencer Dryden, and vocalists Marty Balin and Grace Slick—all of whom were generally more experienced than most of their Bay Area contemporaries. Casady was a veteran of the diverse Washington, D.C. music scene and had studied jazz guitar before switching to bass, Dryden was an L.A. session drummer with jazz chops, Kaukonen was an accomplished blues and folk fingerpicker, and the others played multiple instruments and had been performing for several years.
Produced by Rick Jarrard and engineered by David Hassinger, Pillow was recorded to 4-track at RCA Victor’s Music Center of the World in late 1966. The production style is vaguely Phil Spector-esque, with every sound immersed in billowing reverb courtesy of the studio’s live echo chamber. Jarrard transmuted the Airplane’s naturally expansive tendencies into manageable and radio-friendly golden nuggets, with most of the album’s 11 songs clocking in at roughly three minutes. “Pillow was a very traditionally recorded album, with some really nice, clean arrangements,” explains Kaukonen. “Since we only had four tracks, we did as much stuff live as possible, with minimal overdubbing.”
Largely due to the runaway success of the singles “Somebody to Love” and “White Rabbit,” Pillow reached #3 on the Billboard charts, bringing San Francisco-style psychedelia to potential hippies throughout the world, and spawning a run of major magazine articles and television appearances. Slick’s captivating voice was front and center on “Somebody” and “Rabbit,” but Kantner’s solid rhythmic foundation, juxtaposed with Kaukonen’s more exploratory excursions and Casady’s driving bass lines—including fuzz bass on the opening cut—imbued the music with uncommon power.
Kaukonen got nearly all of his tones on Pillow by plugging a Gibson ES-345 stereo guitar directly into a solid-state Standel Super Imperial combo. “It had two 15-inch speakers in a closed-back cab and a dandy spring reverb,” recalls Kaukonen. “Later I used an Ampeg Scrambler to get my signature distortion sound, but at that point I got distortion by turning my amp all the way up.” Kantner likely played his Rickenbacker 6- and 12-strings through either Fender Bandmaster (the 3x10 combo) or Vibrolux amps. Casady played a Fender Jazz Bass (customized with a third pickup) through a Fender Showman.
Pillow is chockablock with Kaukonen’s fiery rhythm work, serpentine ornamentation, and vibrato-inflected soloing. Highlights include his brief solo on the intro to “Rabbit,” the pedal steel-like lines on “My Best Friend,” the counterpoint figures and emotive solos on “Somebody” and “3/5 of a Mile in 10 Seconds,” and his acoustic solo composition, “Embryonic Journey,” played on a ’56 Gibson J-50. Jerry Garcia, who gave the record its title, and is credited as “musical and spiritual advisor,” also played some guitar, including the plaintive single-note hook on “Today,” and a nice rhythm part on “Comin’ Back to Me,” where he is joined by Kantner, Balin, and Casady on additional acoustics.
By June, with Pillow still high on the charts and the Summer of Love in full swing, the Airplane had already embarked on the protracted head trip that would culminate in late-December’s avant-psych gem, After Bathing at Baxter’s. But, due to its widespread commercial success, Surrealistic Pillow was the band’s most influential album of the year. —BC

Younger Than Yesterday

The Byrds
February 1967

By the time Younger Than Yesterday hit record store shelves, the Byrds’ sound had become inseparable from the pointed jangle of the Rickenbacker 12-string. And the album’s opening riff, “So You Want to Be a Rock ’n’ Roll Star,” didn’t disappoint, as it’s one of the Byrds’—and the band’s principle sonic architect, Roger McGuinn’s—most identifiable moments. But look deeper into Yesterday’s grooves and you’ll find the first appearance of Clarence White on a Byrds album (most notably on “Time Between” and “The Girl with No Name,” two country-tinged numbers written by Byrds’ bassist and future Flying Burrito Brother, Chris Hillman), great solos by McGuinn (“Why” and “Have You Seen Her Face”), and one of David Crosby’s finest contributions to the Byrds’ canon (“Everybody’s Been Burned,” which sports another great McGuinn solo). For the sessions, Crosby used a Gretsch Country Gentleman (McGuinn used this guitar for the solo on “Have You Seen Her Face”), while McGuinn relied on a couple of Rickenbacker 370/12s. —DF

A Hard Road

John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers
February 1967

For Peter Green, joining John Mayall’s Blues-breakers as Slowhand’s replacement during the “Clapton is God” era of the late ’60’s wasn’t easy. Not only did Mayall’s crowds dwindle at E.C.’s departure, the ones who did show up would taunt the new guitarist. Not cool. But Green turned the naysayers into believers right quick with A Hard Road. Throughout the album, Green sports an obvious Clapton influence, but you can hear that he’s quickly becoming his own man. The reverb-drenched “Supernatural” is the album’s 6-string tour de force, as it displays Green’s melodic inventiveness, as well as his unparalleled vocal-like approach to the guitar, while his version of Freddie King’s “The Stumble” proves that Green was indeed the guy that could make B.B. King sweat. Engineered by Gus Dudgeon, A Hard Road is also a great sounding record. Green’s tones smack you right across the face with quintessential British presence, and midrange squawk. Speculation has Green plugging his Gibson Les Paul into the Holy Grail of Brit blues tone—the KT66-powered Marshall JTM 2x12 combo famously known as the “Bluesbreaker” amp that Clapton used in his tenure with Mayall. Whatever Green used, it doesn’t matter in the end. A Hard Road stands as one of British blues’ crowning achievements. —DF

Between The Buttons

The Rolling Stones
February 1967

Before attempting to out psychedelicize everyone with Their Satanic Majesties Request, the Stones released Between the Buttons, an album that finds Keith Richards and the boys reshaping their formative R&B influences into their own rapidly growing oeuvre. Tracked in Los Angeles at RCA Studios and at Pye Studios in London, Buttons contains some of Keef’s most pungent tones. “Miss Amanda Jones” finds Richards delivering his patented Chuck Berry-isms, but with a searing, punky fervor. On “Please Go Home,” Richards not only apes Bo Diddley’s funky jungle groove, but he manages to tap into Diddley’s tonal mojo as well, with a modulated, pulsating tremolo. However, “Cool, Calm, & Collected” and “Something Happened to Me Yesterday” are period pieces of ’67 tweeness, with kazoos and rampant silliness. But with its sneering mix of amphetamine-laced blues and pop songcraft (the U.S. version of the album contained “Let’s Spend the Night Together” and “Ruby Tuesday”), Between the Buttons is a crucial document. —DF

Grateful Dead

Grateful Dead
March 1967

The Dead’s self-titled debut sought to corral the group’s jam-oriented live show onto a recorded format—a task that proved problematic at the time and would remain that way for the rest of the Dead’s history. Though the album featured only two original songs—“The Golden Road (To Unlimited Devotion)” and “Cream Puff War”—the remaining seven cuts reflected the Dead’s wide range of influences and showcased how classic blues and folk tunes such as “Morning Dew,” “Good Morning Little Schoolgirl” (which featured keyboardist/vocalist/harpist Rod McKernan—a.k.a. Pigpen), “Sitting on Top of the World,” and “Viola Lee Blues” (which stretched to an epic ten minutes of trademark jamming) could emerge with newfound power via the Dead’s acid-infused electric sound.
Recorded and mixed in about a week, the album was produced by veteran engineer Dave Hassinger, who had previously worked on records by the Rolling Stones, the Monkees, and Jefferson Airplane. As told in Blair Jackson’s new book Grateful Dead Gear, Hassinger said that he wanted to capture as much as possible of the Dead’s high-energy live show, so the songs were cut live in RCA’s Studio A in Los Angeles on an Ampex 4-track recorder, with the vocals and percussion overdubs added later. Jerry Garcia mainly played a Guild Starfire at the time (though a ’56 Gibson Les Paul Custom he’d acquired may have also seen some action), Bob Weir likely used a vibrato-equipped Rickenbacker 335F, and bassist Phil Lesh nailed down the speedy grooves on a Fender Jazz Bass. The backline would have consisted largely of Fender amplifiers—piggyback Showmans are often seen in photos of the era.
Garcia quipped at the time that the album sounded like one of the band’s “good” live sets, and the throngs of hippies who regularly flocked to see the Dead loved it for what it represented and probably cared less that radio stations largely ignored it. In fact, Grateful Dead proved to be a harbinger of the band’s long, strange trip where performing live would prove to be endlessly more important than album sales or airplay. —AT

The Velvet Underground and Nico

The Velvet Underground
March 1967

Instead of spending the mid ’60s penning odes to incense and peppermints, the Velvet Underground—featuring lead guitarist/songwriter Lou Reed and rhythm guitarist Sterling Morrison—was busy documenting New York’s East Village scene, crafting songs about such too-radical-for-radio themes as sadomasochism, hard drug use, and overall excess. These were all kryptonite issues for record companies at the time, but thanks in large part to the moral, financial, and artistic support of Andy Warhol and his Exploding Plastic Inevitable, The Velvet Underground and Nico actually made its way to vinyl. Sociological significance aside, this record’s lasting musical weight lies in the fact that Reed and company were also pushing sonic boundaries, melding a garage-rock simplicity with a mastery of dynamics, and fearlessly experimenting with dissonant tones, off-center rhythms, and unusual tunings (check out the all-D “Ostrich Guitar” tuning on “All Tomorrow’s Parties”). Songs range from the dreamily melodic “Sunday Morning” and “I’ll Be Your Mirror” to the frenetic, sometimes brutal guitar-led aural assaults of “Heroin” and “European Son.” Morrison alternated between an early-’60s Gibson SG and Gretsch Tennessean for the majority of the 11 tracks, but switched to a Vox Phantom VI for “Femme Fatale” and “Run Run Run.” Reed did his dirty work with a Gretsch Country Gentleman with built-in preamp, delay, and tremolo effects. Both used Vox Super Beatle amps. Try to name one indie/art-rock/punk/postpunk/ glam/noise/you-name-it band that wasn’t influenced by this record. —KO

West Side Soul

Magic Sam
April 1967

If Muddy Waters was the heart of Chicago blues, then Sam “Magic Sam” Maghett was the soul, and he founded the West side sound along with Otis Rush and Buddy Guy in the late 1950s. Forsaking the old-fashioned country slide work of Waters and Howlin’ Wolf from the South side, they fashioned a “modern” urban style that was inspired by B.B. King and featured heavily reverbed Strats, often in a trio format. West Side Soul is the epitome of that sound and heralded a new era, both with its music and an attitude that was reflective of the black pride movement. In addition, it is hailed as one of the first blues concept albums, as opposed to merely a collection of singles.
West Side Soul features the heart-pounding boogie instrumentals “I Feel So Good” and “Lookin’ Good.” Sam’s 1965 transitional Strat is fat and ringing on the contemporary R&B of “That’s All I Need” and “I Found a New Love,” as well as the searing minor key slow blues of “My Love Will Never Die.” His strutting cover of Robert Johnson’s “Sweet Home Chicago” has become a template for subsequent electric boogie shuffles. —Dave Rubin

I Had Too Much to Dream (Last Night)

The Electric Prunes
April 1967

With a stunning leadoff title track, Electric Prunes’ guitarist Ken Williams kicked off what would become the quintessential psych-punk masterpiece. “For that tune, and most of the record, I used a 1960 Bigsby-equipped Gibson Les Paul that I had just purchased at Ernie Ball’s guitar shop in Canoga Park,” says Williams of the haunting buzzed-out helicopter intro. Williams, together with co-guitarist James “Weasel” Spagnola, make Too Much to Dream a cornucopia of fly-buzzing fuzz and trembling tremolo. “James and I would time the tremolo pulse to each track, being very careful to let things ride on that pulsing pillow of sound,” explains Williams, who would manually adjust the Speed control on his Fender Concert 4x10, while Spagnola plugged his Fender Telecaster and Jaguar into a Magnatone combo. “We would also crank up various small tube amps and lay the headstock of the guitar on the amp to get sustained feedback,” continues Williams, who also plugged into a Fender tape echo, a Maestro Fuzz-Tone, an Arbiter Fuzz Face, and a homemade buzz box. Too Much to Dream reveals more subtle facets of Williams’ playing as well, such as the jazzy octaves on “Train for Tomorrow,” (“I had been learning some Wes Montgomery riffs a few days before we recorded that tune.”), and “Sold to the Highest Bidder,” with its faux-Greek balalaika sounds. “We played that track back at half-speed and I recorded a slow double-picking thing,” says Williams. “When it was played back at normal speed it sounded Greek. We didn’t have a balalaika, so it was a quick fix that worked!” —DF

Wave

Antonio Carlos Jobim
May 1967

Released in the U.S. during the height of Brazil’s bossa nova invasion, Wave is Jobim’s best-known and perhaps finest album. Jobim is one of the founding fathers of bossa nova (which loosely translated means “new wave.”), a style derived from the samba but with more melodic and harmonic complexity and less emphasis on percussion. Jobim’s songs contributed a mellow, strikingly original alternative to traditional Tin Pan Alley jazz and offered a new sound over which jazz musicians could improvise. Bossa nova in its purest form is typically played fingerstyle on a classical guitar accompanied by vocals. On Wave, Jobim contributes not only guitar, but also a simple melodic piano style, some harpsichord, and even a vocal on “Lamento.” The album introduces a couple of now-classic standards, the title track and “Triste.” Frank Sinatra devoted two full LPs to Jobim compositions and many notable guitarists including Laurindo Almeida, Baden Powell, Charlie Byrd, Joe Pass, and classical giant John Williams have covered “Wave.” —Mark C. Davis

Absolutely Free

The Mothers of Invention
May 1967

In a huge discography that contains such 6-string-centric albums as Guitar and Shut Up ’N Play Yer Guitar, Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention’s second record, Absolutely Free, may not peg the guitar meter quite so much. But closer inspection finds some sweet guitar nuggets. The track “Invocation & Ritual Dance of a Young Pumpkin” sports an extended solo in which FZ’s clean-yet-squawky guitar sound (his trusted Gibson ES-5 Switchmaster, no doubt) points the way to the more “tweezed” tones for which he would ultimately be known. “Status Back Baby” shows Zappa’s spiffy ensemble guitar work, with carefully crafted, interweaving lines, and “Brown Shoes Don’t Make It” sports a deceivingly heavy riff. The CD reissue of the album adds “Why Don’tcha Do Me Right?,” which the Mothers released a month before Absolutely Free hit the shelves. This bluesy stomper shows Zappa had his singular style pretty-much sussed out by this time, with its gnarly tone, f**k you attitude, and bizarre-yet-beautiful phrasing. —DF

Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band

The Beatles
June 1967

“It was going to be a record created in the studio, and there were going to be songs that couldn’t be performed.” So said George Martin about the Beatles’ masterpiece, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Fed up with the gilded cage that their fame had built around them, the members of the biggest band in the world were determined to move away from the two guitars/bass/drums format that had worked so brilliantly for them in order to explore more elaborate orchestrations, new keyboard sounds, and exotic Eastern instruments. The Beatles were also eager to use the recording studio as an instrument in itself. Ironically, one of the biggest guitar stories to come out of the Summer of Love was the relative lack of guitar on Sgt. Pepper.
That’s not to say that there aren’t classic guitar moments on Sgt. Pepper. The clanging 6-string intro to “Getting Better” is as Beatle-y as anything they’ve done. John Lennon’s “A Day in the Life” has him strumming his Gibson J-160E. He would play that guitar—with George Harrison on his J-160E—on “Lovely Rita” as well. Paul McCartney cut a pair of guitar solos—on “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!” and “Good Morning, Good Morning”—with a Fender Esquire (a right-handed model strung lefty) plugged into a Selmer Zodiac Twin 50 Mark II. They also had their Epiphone Casinos, Harrison’s Gibson SG, and a variety of Vox amps (such as the 100-watt Defiant and 70-watt Conqueror models) at their disposal, but it’s impossible to say exactly when they were used. Andy Babiuk, author of Beatles Gear, sums it up: “They don’t even know what they played on a lot of these tunes. They were so intent on not doing what they had done before that the instrument choices were pretty random.”
By 1967, it wasn’t exactly newsworthy that the Beatles could craft cool guitar parts. What did raise eyebrows was the increased presence of Indian instruments such as the sitar, tambura, and dilruba on the Harrison contributions. Beatles fans were treated to these sounds on previous recordings, including “Norwegian Wood” and “Love You To,” but the Quiet Beatle really went off on the Sgt. Pepper track “Within You Without You.” The dreamy tune features several guest musicians but Harrison himself lays down droning tambura lines and beautiful sitar in addition to his acoustic guitar.
The Beatles grabbed yet another piece of the psychedelic pie with Lennon’s amazing “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.” The guitar parts in this keyboard-driven tune only add to the depth and vibe, with Harrison hypnotically echoing the vocal with fuzzed-out single-note lines.
To put it simply, Sgt. Pepper is one of the most important albums of all time. This record forever changed the way the world played, listened to, and recorded music. Sgt. Pepper proves that, whether or not the Beatles were bigger than Jesus, they were certainly bigger than any one instrument. They hardly needed to touch a guitar to reinvent it. —MB

Moby Grape

Moby Grape
June 1967

Beset by personal problems, an ugly management contract, and record-company gaffes (such as releasing four singles simultaneously), Moby Grape seemed doomed from the start. But the band managed to produce a debut album that is considered one of the best musical moments to emerge from the San Francisco scene. With three guitarists (Jerry Miller, Peter Lewis, and legendary crazy person Skip Spence) intermingling wildly creative and propulsive parts with five-part vocal harmonies, songs such as “Omaha” explode with energy and passion, as well as evoke the hippie mish-mash of rock, country, folk, and blues without degenerating into jammy excess. —MM

We Are Paintermen

The Creation
June 1967

Given the collision of experimental frenzy and pop smarts throughout 1967, it’s a real head-scratcher why the Creation didn’t become a worldwide smash. The band’s songwriting was fabulously catchy, the ensemble’s sound was as powerful as anything the Who unleashed at the time, and the group possessed one of the most creative guitarists of the era in Eddie Phillips. On “Making Time,” for example, Phillips performs the main riff by attacking the strings on his Gibson ES 335 (played through a 100-watt Marshall, using a custom treble booster built by Les Coulson) with a violin bow (long before Jimmy Page adopted the trick), and his use of controlled feedback on other songs was absolutely mesmerizing. Expand your mind further by watching live performance videos of the Creation on YouTube. —MM

Little Games

The Yardbirds
July 1967

Although it’s easily their least commercially successful record, Little Games is a fascinating album that signals the end of the Yardbirds and the beginnings of what was to become Led Zeppelin. Tracked at London’s De Lane Lea studio over three months, Little Games is the only Yardbirds’ studio album featuring Jimmy Page as the sole guitarist. And although some of the material disappoints, Page never does. “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Sailor” finds Pagey harnessing the violin bow/Vox wah shtick that would serve him well for the next ten years in Zep, while the honking slide of “Drinking Muddy Water” simply kills with a combination of flutey fuzz and Tele steeli-ness. In fact, Page’s tones throughout are some of the best he ever recorded—and that’s saying a lot. Equipped with a ’59 Fender Telecaster (a gift from former Yardbird Jeff Beck), a Vox Phantom XII electric 12-string, and Vox AC30s, Page’s secret weapons were a Sola Sound Tone Bender MKII fuzz and the aforementioned Vox wah. Produced by Mickey Most, Little Games also features the acoustic number “White Summer,” a tune that showed Page’s fascination with Middle Eastern modality, as well as his formidable Bert Jansch-inspired acoustic chops. —DF

Are You Experienced

The Jimi Hendrix Experience
August 1967

Let’s face it, many quintessential albums from 1967 sound dated. But not Are You Experienced. There is not a single Summer of Love stereotype—no sitar, no bubble-gum melody, no vaudeville tune—anywhere. All killer, no filler. Tracked in England at various studios, (Pye, Regent, Kingway, and Olympic, among others), it’s amazing to note the speed with which Are You Experienced actually came together. Hendrix arrived in London on September 24, 1966. He plays with Mitch Mitchell and Noel Redding for the first time on October 5. After a few gigs (mostly in France), the band entered Kingway Studios and tracked “Hey Joe” on October 23. So in less than a month, Hendrix and the Experience had begun the creative process for what was to be the electric guitar’s most powerful statement. And the guy hadn’t even written “Purple Haze” yet.
Recorded on 4-track, with tape delay, compression, EQ, and panning for “effects,” Are You Experienced features the classic Hendrix setup—Fender Stratocaster (with a rosewood fretboard) into a Marshall stack. Yet at a gig outside of London at a venue called Chiselhurst Caves in December of 1966, a young electronics tweaker by the name of Roger Mayer gave Hendrix a trippy frequency doubler device that produced a tone an octave higher than the played note. This box later became the Octavia. You can hear it all over the album, most notably on “Fire” and “Purple Haze” (also, listen closely under the solo—it’s all slacked string sickness!). “Jimi also used a modified Arbiter Fuzz Face,” says Mayer, “as well as other distortions and drivers that I made for the sessions.”
Although Are You Experienced dropped jaws because of the never-before-heard sonic debauchery of tunes like “I Don’t Live Today,” “Love or Confusion,” and “Manic Depression” (you can hear the 25-watt Celestion speakers crumbling under the sheer weight of volume on these cuts), it’s the album’s more tender tracks that reveal the real breadth of Hendrix’s talent. “The Wind Cries Mary” (which producer Chas Chandler claimed was tracked in 20 minutes) is a textbook example of how Hendrix took the hip comping of 6-string soul brothers such as Curtis Mayfield and twisted the style to fit his own tunes. One track that stands apart from the rest is “May This Be Love,” a tune that Hendrix fills out with brilliant, chiming Strat tones and a solo that may be one of his most lyrical and most concise melodic statements. What makes this timeless debut even more amazing, however, is the fact that Hendrix was such a product of his time—honing his craft on the chitlin’ circuit, backing up vocalists, and playing blues and R&B tunes. And then bam—from seemingly out of nowhere, a first album drops with classic tunes, otherworldly tones, and a fully formed guitar style that still sounds fresh, 40 years on. —DF

Born Under a Bad Sign

Albert King
August 1967

The left-handed Albert King was an excellent if unknown jump and slow blues guitarist from St. Louis before he signed with Stax Records in 1966. In a brilliant executive decision, King was hooked up with the Stax house band of Booker T. & the MG’s. The selection of singles they cut in 1966 and 1967 were collected for the landmark Born Under a Bad Sign, an album which sanctioned the marriage between Memphis soul and the funky blues that seemed to pour out of King like steaming hot molasses. The big man totally dominated “Lucy,” his ’58/’59 Gibson Flying V, while punishing his beefy Acoustic 260 bass head (through a 261 cabinet) with torturous bends of a minor third or more. His unique “womanly” tone and vocal style of phrasing caught the ear of Eric Clapton, who quickly covered “Born Under a Bad Sign” with Cream in 1968, and later Stevie Ray Vaughan, who mimicked King in virtually every slow blues he ever played. From the stinging, epochal full-step bend that kicks off the title track through “Crosscut Saw,” “As the Years Go Passing By,” and “Oh Pretty Woman” (all of which have entered the lexicon as must-know classics), this album is arguably the most influential postwar electric blues recording of all time. —Dave Rubin

The Trip

Electric Flag with Mike Bloomfield
August 1967

Whether Mike Bloomfield saw it as an opportunity to explore the psychedelic territory of his buddy Jimi Hendrix, or as a test run for his new eclectic horn band, the Electric Flag, The Trip lives up to its name. As the soundtrack for the Peter Fonda/Dennis Hopper acid exploitation film, it allowed “Bloomers” to indulge a dizzying array of styles on his P-90 powered Les Paul goldtop, a ’burst with PAFs, or a rosewood-fretboard Tele through a Fender Twin Reverb. “Peter’s Trip” is orchestral and cinematic, with long, sustained guitar lines. “Green and Gold” is Mariachi-flavored, “Hobbit” utilizes disorienting sound effects and feedback, while “Fewghh” contains gothic organ and dissonant, jazzy guitar lines. Bloomfield gets funky on “Fine Jung Thing,” shows his R&B chops on the ’60s soul/rock of “Practice Room,” and blasts like a jackhammer on the frenetic “Flash, Bam, Pow.” “Gettin’ Hard,” a “Hoochie Coochie Man” sound-alike, finds him ripping the blues with abandon and is worth the price of admission alone. Bloomfield would go on to score other features (including porn films in the ’70s), but The Trip remains his most audacious guitar project, one that he called some of his best recorded work. —Dave Rubin

Future

The Seeds
August 1967

In 1966, the Seeds—featuring Jan Savage on guitar—released the abrasive single “Pushin’ Too Hard,” which remains a proto-punk landmark. Muddy Waters even called the Seeds, “America’s own Rolling Stones.” Like the Stones, the Seeds embraced the Beatles’ psychedelic ideas in 1967, but the Seeds didn’t abandon their raunchy, bluesy roots. After the hippie poetry of “March of the Flower Children—Introduction” gives way to the sitar drone of “Travel with Your Mind,” the Seeds return to raunch and roll on songs such as “Out of the Question” and the single “A Thousand Shadows,” the latter being essentially a trippier version of “Pushin’ Too Hard.” After the intro, the fuzz guitar yields to a clean, reverb-soaked blues lick that repeats every other bar. The versatile Savage even cuts some quick country-style licks on “Pretty Girl.” His fuzzy pentatonic runs and slinky slide lines on the slow blues “Cry Wolf” respond to the vocal in similar fashion to contemporary Robbie Krieger of the Doors. A concept album with a garage rock sound. —Jimmy Leslie

The Piper at the Gates of Dawn

Pink Floyd
September 1967

Opening with radio-like voices reading from Stars and Planets, a pulsing single-note guitar figure, and mock Morse code blips, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn whisks the listener into a fanciful world of inner- and outer-space imagery that was largely the product of bandleader Roger “Syd” Barrett’s super-psychedelic imagination. The same American blues, rock ’n’ roll, and R&B that influenced other British guitarists influenced Barrett—but what he played didn’t sound anything like Clapton, Richards, or Harrison. On “Astronomy Domine,” for example, Barrett’s dual guitars chop away in eccentric rhythmic bursts and cascading arpeggios (including outlining the melody to “River Deep, Mountain High”), and interject pained bends, odd atonal clusters, echoed glissandos, and flashes of feedback. And, while his playing is often melodic in a peculiar way, Barrett never solos in the usual sense.
According to producer Norman Smith, Barrett played several guitars on Piper: The electrics included his Danelectro 3021 and Fender Esquire, and possibly the white Fender Stratocaster that he performed with in late 1967. As for acoustics, several accounts (including David Gilmour’s) have him playing a ’63 Harmony Sovereign and a Yamaha 12-string. His amps likely included a Selmer Truvoice Treble-N-Bass Fifty piggyback and a Watkins Dominator combo.
Barrett’s primary effects device was a Binson Echorec, an Italian echo unit that recorded onto a rotating metal drum instead of tape. On Piper, Barrett uses the Echorec almost constantly, transmuting sounds (such as sliding a Zippo lighter or ball bearing over the strings, or mashing strings onto the pickup pole pieces) into ultra-spacey textures. Richard Wright’s keyboards, Roger Waters’ bass, and even Nick Mason’s drums also get the Binson treatment at various points.
Many of the album’s effects, however, were created after recording was completed. “Most of the effects were done by engineer Pete Brown and myself during mixing,” reveals Smith. Those effects included tape delay created using a reel-to-reel recorder, live echo chamber, heavy-handed panning, and myriad “found sounds” excerpted from EMI’s vast effects library (such as the looped and tape-delayed goose at the end of “Bike”).
Piper was recorded in Studio 3 at EMI Studios (now Abbey Road), while the Beatles were next door in Studio 2 recording Sgt. Pepper. Both albums were recorded on Studer J37 4-tracks running one-inch tape, and a typical Floyd recording would have bass and organ on one track and guitar and drums on another, leaving two free tracks for overdubbing vocals and lead guitar. In the case of “Interstellar Overdrive,” the four tracks were mixed to two tracks on a second 4-track machine, and the entire band recorded a second pass on the two remaining tracks. A considerable amount of time was spent on mono mixes, but the stereo mixes were done in a single day. And, contrary to some accounts, Smith says that Barrett wasn’t involved. “Syd wasn’t keen on recording or devising particular sounds. He liked writing and performing songs, and recording them in one take.” —BC

Easter Everywhere

13th Floor Elevators
September 1967

The 13th Floor Elevators rose out of Texas, made trips to San Francisco, and helped pioneer acid rock along the way. The band’s 1966 debut, The Psychedelic Sounds of the 13th Floor Elevators, introduced a sound loaded with primal energy, righteous reverb, and an overriding blow-your-mind attitude—not to mention Tommy Hall’s freaky electric jug textures. The Elevators’ second stop is a more cohesive manifestation of the band’s trippy vision. Like its predecessor, Easter Everywhere was co-produced by Lelan Rogers (Kenny Rogers’ brother) and 13th Floor guitarist Stacy Sutherland. Sutherland’s droning, driving verse part on “Slip Inside This House” is thick and hypnotic, while “She Lives (In a Time of Her Own)” blends elements of surf music and early rock and roll. “Dust” is an acoustic ballad with a shimmering electric part that alternately follows and answers enigmatic singer Roky Erickson’s vocal. The raucous proto-punk of “Earthquake” features a creepy tremolo drone that underlies everything, and a way-overdriven rhythm rumbling throughout. At one point the tune comes to a complete halt and a lone feedback note swells up into a sticky blues lick before the band kicks back in full throttle. Sutherland rides the crest to the end with a warbly Eastern-influenced lead. Explosive and innovative. —Jimmy Leslie

No Way Out

The Chocolate Watchband
September 1967

Probably the toughest sounding Bay Area band from the Summer of Love, the Chocolate Watchband were stone cold purveyors of Brit attitude, à la early Rolling Stones. Although No Way Out shows this side of the group with a hot-rodded version of Chuck Berry’s “Come On” and the punky classic “Let’s Talk About Girls,” the band was also adept at mixing in the occasional sitar without letting it affect their sneering attitude. Guitarists Mark Loomis and Sean Tolby employed, among other things, a Rickenbacker 12-string, Fender Telecasters, and a Gibson Flying V through Vox Super Beatles and homemade fuzztones, as well as a Sola Sound Tone Bender—allegedly given to them by Jimmy Page! Despite the fact that Loomis and Tolby were more than able to handle all of the band’s 6-string needs, No Way Out’s producers brought in studio players for various psychedelic musings on the record. Still, the power of No Way Out is not diminished one iota. —DF

Safe as Milk

Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band
September 1967

In the ’60s, Southern California was a breeding ground for eccentric, blues-based outfits, and Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band were front and center. The group’s two guitarists at the time they tracked Safe as Milk, their debut, were Ry Cooder and Alex St. Clair (who passed away in January of 2006), two players who adeptly handled Beefheart’s propensity for pushing the boundaries of blues and rock into some rather heady waters. From deft Delta slide playing to carefully orchestrated, weaving dual-guitar parts, it’s tough to tell who’s playing what (although it’s known that Russ Titelman was at the sessions, and played guitar on “Where There’s Woman” and “Autumn’s Child.”)
The album’s sonics, however, leave a bit to be desired. The album’s co-producer, Richard Perry, was reportedly uncomfortable with the new-fangled 8-track recordings the Magic Band made at Sunset Sound Studios in Hollywood, so he took the band down the street to the 4-track equipped RCA Studios, where the basics were bounced down to two tracks, leaving two more tracks for vocals and assorted overdubs. D’oh! —DF

Something Else by the Kinks

The Kinks
September 1967

Something Else by the Kinks is not only one of 1967’s most timeless albums, it’s quite possibly the best record the Kinks ever made. Kicking off with the stomper “David Watts,” Kinks’ guitarist Dave Davies—who was wielding a Gibson Flying V, a Fender Telecaster, and a Vox 12-string acoustic, among others—adds to his vast riff resume with a catchy, galloping figure that is pure Brit-pop perfection. Something Else also highlights brother Dave’s legendary tonal rudeness, as well as some of his best tunes. “Love Me Till the Sun Shines” finds him at his filthy best, with one of the heaviest intros ever recorded, thanks to a putrid, gurgling distortion, while “Death of a Clown” sports propulsive 12-string acoustic work and cracked vocal delivery. But without a doubt, the album’s centerpiece is Ray Davies’ achingly beautiful “Waterloo Sunset,” a classic that hangs with any Lennon/McCartney composition. This track offers the perfect yin/yang of heavy-yet-zingy 12-string acoustics and Dave Davies’ buzzsaw roar during the epic chorus. Tracked at Pye Studios in London and produced by Ray Davies (with American Shel Talmy producing two tracks), Something Else by the Kinks is the sound of a group hitting its creative stride, big time. —DF

Procol Harum

Procol Harum
September 1967

Procol Harum launched Robin Trower’s career, and the band’s debut album was an influential prog-rock building block. The instant success of “A Whiter Shade of Pale” allowed Harum to make its live debut opening for Jimi Hendrix, and the tune’s influence can be heard in melancholy English psychedelia from Pink Floyd to Radiohead. Trower doesn’t play on “Pale” though—that’s Ray Royer. The single was released in Britain before the rest of the album was recorded, which is when Trower was brought in. His Procol playing is understandably more restricted than on his solo albums to come, but he wrenches fuzzy blues bends into a nasty vibrato on “Cerdes (Outside the Gates Of).” “Conquistador,” with its chromatic riffs, and the plodding instrumental “Repent Walpurgis” are pure proto-prog, and Trower sounds downright David Gilmour-like soaring on the latter’s solo. In 1980, Trower told GP how he got the Procol tone. “I played a [Gretsch] Chet Atkins solidbody through a Selmer Little Giant,” he said. “I ran a jack lead off the points of its tiny speaker into a small Fender. That way, I got some hardness from the Fender, and all my smooth distortion from overdriving the Selmer.”—Jimmy Leslie

Ten Years After

Ten Years After
October 1967

Ten Years After introduced a rapid-fire gunsli

nger from Nottingham named Alvin Lee. Fluent in a variety of American roots styles and technically gifted enough to play them fast and furious, Lee is one of the original shredders. “I’m not conscious of the speed,” he told GP in 1971. “It’s a feeling, an emotion. I can get fast, but my motive is displaying a voice through the fingerboard.” His compositions aren’t particularly noteworthy on Ten Years After, but the guitar playing is incomparable. “Love Until I Die” is essentially “Crossroads” with new lyrics, and Lee nails the riff with roadhouse energy. “Adventures of a Yound Organ” is basically a Grant Green soul/jazz workout, but Lee’s solo performance and tone is stunningly authentic. “Feel It for Me” is a standard rhythm and blues number, and Lee tears it to tomorrow. His tone stings, his bends pack soulful power, and his phrases are full of finesse. On the cover version of Willie Dixon’s classic “Spoonful,” the note Lee sustains near the solo’s end is one of the best examples of controlled feedback from the era. Few rockers on the planet could keep pace with Lee at the time. —Jimmy Leslie

Live at the Fillmore Auditorium

Chuck Berry with Steve Miller
October 1967

In 1967, a still feisty Chuck Berry wasn’t about to go into that good night of nostalgia. So he strapped on his formidable blues roots, partnered with fellow blues lover Steve Miller, and showed the hippie throng at the Fillmore what the blues was all about. The result was a thrilling and electrifying series of concerts that endeared the ’50s icon to the San Francisco ballroom set and allowed the two blues rockers to do what they loved most. –MM

Disraeli Gears

Cream
November 1967

When it came to pre-Jimi guitar heroes, Clapton was, well, God. Hell, when Chas Chandler told Hendrix he wanted to take him back to the U.K. and record him, the first thing Hendrix asked was, “Can you introduce me to Eric Clapton?” But by the time Clapton and Cream were to record their highly anticipated second album, Disraeli Gears, Hendrix had changed the playing field immensely—so E.C. needed to bring it. With engineer Tom Dowd (Aretha Franklin, Otis Redding) and producer Felix Pappalardi at the mixing desk, Cream were enjoying an embarrassment of riches for an English rock group—they got to go to America and record on an 8-track machine. Cream also brought their amps across the pond–big, bad 100-watt JTM Marshalls—although photos from the sessions suggest there were some small Fender combos used as well. Upon arriving in New York, the band holed up in Atlantic Studios and began recording a new tune of Clapton’s (with lyrics by Australian artist Martin Sharp), “Tales of Brave Ulysses.” During a break from tracking, Clapton hit Manny’s on 48th Street and purchased a Vox wah-wah. The rest, as they say, is history, as “Tales” is the tune that placed the wah in the collective brain of guitarists everywhere—especially Hendrix, who says that tune was the first time he heard the effect.
Without a doubt, the tune (and rite of passage for any budding blues/rock guitarist) “Sunshine of Your Love” is the track Disraeli Gears is best known for, with a riff that’s as classic as “Smoke on the Water,” and a solo that is as lyrically keen as anything Clapton has ever committed to tape. And for a guy who already set the world on fire with his supercharged tones on the Bluesbreakers’ “Beano” album nearly two years earlier, Clapton did it again on Disraeli Gears, flaunting his vaunted “woman tone,” which he achieved with various combinations of rolling down his guitar’s tone controls, and/or notching his Vox wah. Prime examples of this trademark howl can be found on “Swlabr,” “Outside Woman Blues” (a tune written by Louisiana bluesman Blind Joe Reynolds), “Blue Condition,” and “We’re Going Wrong.”
Clapton used two guitars for the sessions (save for Clapton’s first—and last—electric 12-string excursion courtesy of a Fender XII on “Dance the Night Away”): a black three-pickup Les Paul Custom, and one of his most famous guitars, the ’64 Gibson SG painted by the Dutch artists known as The Fool. —DF

The Time Has Come

The Chambers Brothers
November 1967

The fact that four brothers growing up singing gospel and folk could produce one of psychedelia’s most recognized songs—a tune that seems to show up in just about every film and television show even remotely dealing with Vietnam or the Summer of Love—is a strange one. But the echoing cowbell, soaring vocals, and twisted guitar riff of “Time Has Come Today” beautifully evoke the vibe and freakiness of the hippie movement. This was a one-hit wonder for the band, but what a hit it was. —MM

Magical Mystery Tour

The Beatles
November 1967

Although Sgt. Pepper gets more love, it was a session for a tune that would end up on Magical Mystery Tour that truly got the Beatles started on their road to studio experimentation. The first song the Lads worked on with their new mindset was Lennon’s “Strawberry Fields Forever,” and they literally threw the rulebook away once they departed from his acoustic-driven demo. Much has been written about producer George Martin’s editing wizardry on “Strawberry Fields,” blending takes that were recorded at different tempos and in different keys. The flip side of the “Strawberry Fields” single, the spectacular “Penny Lane,” would also see the guitars occupying a lesser role, although the piano and harmonium were both played through Vox guitar amps and miked.
The guitar highlights on MMT include “Hello Goodbye” with its sparkling diatonic runs, “I Am the Walrus,” which features Harrison chording on his elaborately painted Fender Strat, and the title track’s backbeat electric guitar stabs.
For Lennon’s “All You Need Is Love,” not even a massive orchestra, a star-studded collection of backup singers, and a live worldwide broadcast could take away from Harrison’s pointed, crying solo. He used his psychedelic Strat and a cream Fender Bassman to cut the part.
The Beatles’ subsequent releases would once again be full of beautiful, timeless guitar parts. What they accomplished with their two 1967 releases, however, was arguably more important. In a time that was all about freedom, no one was freer musically than these four guys. —MB

Forever Changes

Love
November 1967

Love’s third album is a psychedelic folk fusion with a flowing, symphonic magnificence. Producer Bruce Botnik, who helped engineer the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds, masterfully captured Love’s raw sound and tastefully augmented it with string and horn embellishments arranged by David Angel. The band was in a state of drugged-out disarray, so Botnik began using hired guns to back singer/guitarist Arthur Lee on his compositions, and guitarist/vocalist Bryan MacLean on his. After two tracks were cut, the rest of the group shaped up to contribute. Johnny Echols’ bluesy/jazzy electric guitar contrasted with MacLean’s flamenco-flavored acoustic playing to create a diverse yet cohesive tapestry of textures. Forever Changes opens with the rollicking acoustic intro to “Alone Again Or.” The tune was written and sung by MacLean, who had worked as a roadie for the Byrds before joining Love. He also cowrote the Byrds-ish “Andmoreagain” with Lee. “Live and Let Live” features the kind of fuzzy blues leads that would come to define West Coast psychedelia. Forever Changes wasn’t a pop hit, but it heavily impacted the influential Los Angeles scene, outside of which the original band refused to tour. Jimi Hendrix loved Lee enough to play on his sessions before and after the original incarnation of Love. —Jimmy Leslie

The Amboy Dukes

The Amboy Dukes
November 1967

Although they’re better known for their 1968 psychedelic standby “Journey to the Center of the Mind,” the Amboy Dukes’ eponymous debut is just as notable, as it introduced the world to one terrible Ted Nugent and his not-so-subtle brand of 6-string strangulation. The Amboy Dukes, which Nugent has claimed was recorded in one evening, shows the then 19-year old Motor City Madman eliciting the sounds of large primates mating/dying (foreshadowing Adrian Belew’s sonic shtick by a decade) by pulling the strings behind the bridge on his Gibson Byrdland. He created copious amounts of feedback by plugging into, more than likely, a cranked Fender Bassman head. The album starts off with the barnburner garage band staple “Baby, Please Don’t Go,” where Nuge goes hog wild and references Hendrix’s “Third Stone from the Sun” amidst flurries of pentatonics and the aforementioned animal suffering. And while the track “Let’s Go Get Stoned” may contradict his legendary anti-drug grandstanding, it does flaunt Sweaty Teddy’s R&B chops, with slick ’n’ tasty double-stop fills. “Gimme Love” and “Colors” are infused with proto-metal riffery that is right in line with the Amboys’ Detroit brethren, the MC5. The Amboy Dukes is obviously Nugent’s vehicle, as his guitar is always front and center, leaving almost zero space for any hippy affectations. Good news for those who like their rock raw and urgent and with a slight dose of Motown soul. —DF

Axis: Bold as Love

The Jimi Hendrix Experience
December 1967

Less than seven lunar orbits after crashing into the collective American conscious via his earth-shattering debut album, Jimi Hendrix returned with another godly offering. Like its predecessor, Axis: Bold as Love was recorded on a 4-track tape machine with producer/manager Chas Chandler and engineer Eddie Kramer. Ultimately, Axis is a more sophisticated batch of galactic tracks with concise arrangements and a greater emphasis on finesse.
“EXP” is a bizarre fictional radio broadcast about UFOs that gives way to a whirlwind of fuzz and whammied feedback cries. Splashes of sonic color ripple and fade unexpectedly into the jazzy wah-wah swing of “Up from the Skies.” This was America’s first exposure to a Hendrix wah sound, and Hendrix’s first use of a wah pedal on record. Hendrix’s Stratocaster tones on Axis were captured in stereo through two 100-watt Marshall stacks. A Hagstrom 8-string bass adds extra rumble to the pentatonic riff on “Spanish Castle Magic,” although reports conflict about whether Noel Redding played it or if Hendrix layered the bass himself. Jimi’s R&B background shines on “Wait Until Tomorrow,” which is notable for its complete lack of lead guitar. “Little Wing” is one of the most precious jewels in the guitar song crown. Everyone from SRV to Pearl Jam has aped the intro figure’s chordal trills. A Leslie rotary speaker facilitated the dreamy, watery tone, and it sounds particularly dripping over the add9 chords of the turnaround. “Castles Made of Sand” is the upbeat cousin of “Little Wing,” and it’s laced throughout with a backwards guitar track that is brought to the fore to create a bittersweet solo. The wah guitar rhythm to “Little Miss Lover” is Hendrix at his sexed-up, funky best. “Bold as Love” is a grand ending statement, and the lead tone is especially creamy. Effects guru Roger Mayer told GP in 1976, “The fuzz box used for ‘Bold as Love’ was unique because it had a very smooth sound and incredibly long sustain. It was never used again.”
Hendrix lost the master mix of side A just before the album was to be pressed, and it had to be redone in a single marathon session. Even so, the Experience’s middle child is Jimi’s perfect 6-string storm. Somewhere between the immediacy of Are You Experienced and the studio wonder of Electric Ladyland lays Axis: Bold as Love. It will resonate as majestically in another 40 years. —Jimmy Leslie

Their Satanic Majesties Request

The Rolling Stones
December 1967

Even though the Stones have always denied a musical rivalry with the Beatles, it’s pretty clear that they were trying to get in on some of that Sgt. Pepper magic with Majesties, easily the most disputed album in the Rolling Stones’ career. Tracked at London’s Olympic Sound Studios and engineered by Glyn Johns, Majesties was created during a tumultuous time for the Stones, with Brian Jones slipping further away and becoming musically insignificant (although his Mellotron and saxophone contributions to Majesties shouldn’t be understated), and “The Man” hassling Mick and Keith about their rock and roll ways. But they persevered, and although Majesties isn’t all gold, there are some jewels. The opening track, “Sing This All Together” (as well as it’s goofy reprise), sports some bluesy bursts from Richards over a groove of nattering, exotic percussion, and “The Lantern” sports some sinewy, bare-knuckled lead lines. “Citadel” offers classic Richards’ attitude, with a bizarre tremoloed tone that defies explanation—let’s just say it’s bad-ass, and he’s never gotten close to recreating it. —DF

The Who Sell Out

The Who
December 1967

Pete Townshend’s artsy self-consciousness, fertile imagination, and joy of sonic exploration are beautifully showcased on this brilliant and sprawling concept album. For the poppers, there’s the hit “I Can See for Miles” (which further explores the blending of acoustic and distorted electrics—a Townshend trademark), and, for the freaks, the psychedelic washes of “Armenia City in the Sky.” Townshend also includes some very funny fake jingles (a jab at radio stations), and moves closer to the band’s 1969 masterwork Tommy with a mini-opera entitled “Rael.” It’s a lot to take in, but The Who Sell Out works on so many levels that it’s a blissful journey. —MM

Mr. Fantasy

Traffic
December 1967

Mr. Fantasy was Traffic’s debut album, but Traffic member and Spencer Davis Group alumnus Steve Winwood was already a star. Because the keyboard prodigy hadn’t yet fully developed his guitar skills, the versatile Dave Mason played guitar and a variety of stringed instruments in the new band. Mason’s rhythm tone is dynamic, and his trebly lead rips through the heart of the simple “Dear Mr. Fantasy” for a minute-and-a-half. In his October ’75 GP cover story, Mason detailed his early Traffic tools. “I mostly played a Stratocaster because I liked the tone and the responsive tremolo arm,” he said. “I used to play with a thumbpick in Traffic, and I used a Marshall amp in the beginning.” In GP’s April ’78 issue, Winwood explained Traffic’s early direction. “We wanted to blend music from all over the world,” he said. “We were trying to update traditional music and write what would become folk songs.” Over the years, Mr. Fantasy has been released and re-released with different songs and even different titles. In retrospect, “Dear Mr. Fantasy” is the album’s most enduring track and has indeed become a modern folk song. —Jimmy Leslie

Incense and Peppermints

Strawberry Alarm Clock
December 1967

With its sinewy fuzz riffs and blaring Farfisa organ, the title track (and number one hit) to this classic record has become synonymous with the sound of ’67. The man responsible for the groovy, intricate guitar work is Ed King, who later went on to become a member of Lynyrd Skynyrd. (It’s King’s voice that you hear counting off “Sweet Home Alabama.”) “On Incense I used a ’66 Fender Telecaster with a maple fretboard and a Maestro FZ-1A Fuzz-Tone,” says King. “My amp was a Vox AC30 that I picked up in a pawn shop. I loved that amp because it made me sound like Jeff Beck! But soon after the recording, I blew it up and I couldn’t find anyone who could fix it, if you can believe that.” King cowrote the album’s title track with SAC organist Mark Weitz, and the two never received any royalties for their handiwork. “Our manager took the tune to a music publisher, and weeks later, when the sheet music came back, our names weren’t on it,” explains King. “We were told we had to surrender authorship to break into the ‘biz.’ I’ve since gotten over it. I cowrote ‘Sweet Home Alabama,’ so I’ve been well compensated!” —DF

The Thoughts of Emerlist Davjack

The Nice
December 1967

This extremely quirky debut from the Nice, featuring Keith Emerson on keyboards, drummer Brian Davison, bassist Lee Jackson, and guitarist Davy O’List (the title is an amalgam of their names) mashed up psychedelic pop and bits of bubble gum, classical, and modern jazz—effectively helping set the stage for the emergence of progressive rock. The classically trained O’List whips up frenzied Hendrix-inspired fuzz and feedback flourishes (the Nice toured with the Experience), eccentric Syd Barrett-like stabs and colorations (O’List filled in for Barrett once during a Pink Floyd show), super-distorted proto-metal riffs, and violin-like sustained lines vaguely foreshadowing those of Robert Fripp, Steve Hackett, and other seminal prog guitarists.
Despite lackluster initial sales, the album was very influential musically at the time, particularly in England. O’List left the Nice after this release, and the group continued as a trio for several years. When Emerson later formed Emerson, Lake, and Palmer, it was rumored that Hendrix considered joining the lineup, and had that happened, the music might well have sounded like a much more sophisticated and mature version of the music on The Thoughts of Emerlist Davjack. —BC