NINETEEN SIXTY-FIVE was the year rock and roll grew a pair. After its raucous birth in the 1950s and early demise following Buddy Holly’s death, Chuck Berry’s imprisonment, Elvis Presley’s Army enlistment and Little Richard’s spiritual rebirth, rock and roll shriveled up. The epicene years from 1960 to 1964 had been a formative but difficult period in which garage rock bands claimed back a piece of the teen pop charts before the British Invasion groups led the way to a rock and roll victory.
Those spirited rebels were anything but monolithic. Many brought together influences of early rock, folk, blues, soul, trad jazz and more. It’s hardly surprising that the old formulas for songwriting and music production were inadequate to the aims of these young and ambitious performers. Something had to change, and in 1965, it did, largely due to the work of