What's That Sound?: W. W. Norton StudySpace

"Positively 4th Street"

Artist - Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan's influence on rock and roll songwriting is so pervasive that it is hard to conceive of how the genre would sound without it. Through the medium of folk rock, a style largely of his own making, he introduced stream-of-consciousness writing, and elevated poetry, social consciousness, and American roots music to the possibilities of what rock music could be, and what it could be about.

Dylan did not start out as a folk musician. Growing up in Hibbard, Minnesota, he learned to play harmonica and guitar and formed several rock and roll bands; he knew about Woody Guthrie and Hank Williams but didn't try to perform their music until he got to the University of Minnesota. He discovered the blues during his freshman year and decided that he had to learn more about it. He spent part of 1960 in Denver, where he met Jesse Fuller, the "Lone Cat," a one-man blues band who played guitar, harmonica, cymbals, drums, and a homemade bass called a fotdella. Dylan absorbed a great deal of knowledge about the blues and he learned of the harp-rack, a device that held the harmonica in proper playing position to keep the performer's hands free. By January 1961 Dylan was in New York, having bypassed further collegiate study in favor of meeting, and hopefully learning from, Woody Guthrie. Guthrie was by that point hospitalized, dying of Huntington's chorea, but he welcomed Dylan's visit and encouraged him to return and to play for him. Dylan also began playing in the Greenwich Village coffeehouses that were devoted to folk music and was soon discovered by John Hammond, the legendary artists and repertoire man for Columbia Records who had started the careers of Count Basie, Duke Ellington, and Billie Holiday.

Dylan's first album was composed mostly of folk and blues standards; his next, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, was entirely original songs, including the protest masterpieces "Blowin' in the Wind," "Masters of War," and "Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall." "Positively 4th Street," a putdown of false friends and "plastic people," first appeared on his 1967 Greatest Hits album, but is thought to have been written in 1965, shortly after Dylan began experimenting with folk rock.

Also see: Woody Guthrie, Leadbelly, Jesse Fuller, Mance Lipscomb, Pete Seeger, Ramblin' Jack Elliot

Must Haves:

• "Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall"
• "The Times They Are a-Changin"
• "Subterranean Homesick Blues"
• "Like a Rolling Stone"

Performers Influenced By This Artist:

• Every rock songwriter since 1961, but especially Bruce Springsteen
• Lou Reed
• Steely Dan
• John Prine
• Robbie Robertson

"Mr. Tambourine Man"

Artist - The Byrds

Even though the Byrds were together for only a few years, they were one of the most influential groups of the 1960s. They gave the movement to fuse folk music sensibilities with rock and roll some much needed momentum; they revolutionized vocal harmony and combined elements of British Invasion bands and the lyricism of American popular music to create a new hybrid that would eventually become psychedelic rock.

Jim "Roger" McGuinn, David Crosby, and Gene Clark were all folk musicians performing in Los Angeles coffee houses. McGuinn was inspired by the Beatles; he thought he heard within their songs a possibility for combining folk music and rock and roll in an interesting way. He recruited Crosby and Clark for an experimental trio. They released a single on Elektra Records as the Beefeaters, and while it didn't sell well, it convinced the musicians that they were on to something. A few months later, after adding several more members—drummer Michael Clark and bluegrass mandolin/guitar player Chris Hillman—they renamed the band the Byrds. The group had almost no money—Clark was at first playing on cardboard boxes rather than drums—but they managed to scrape together enough money to record a demo, a reworking of a recent Bob Dylan song, "Mr. Tambourine Man." The song went to number one, outselling Dylan's original by a considerable margin.

The album of the same name (1965) is still considered one of the finest debut albums ever. Though it yielded only one hit single, the world was captivated by the beautiful harmony singing and the immediate presence of McGuinn's guitar. The first was entirely the doing of David Crosby; rather than singing a line parallel to the melody, Crosby created a "composite" harmony out of fourths, fifths, and sixths, which created the impression of four part harmony. McGuinn's guitar sound was the result of Hard Day's Night exposure; while viewing the film he was captivated by the sound of George Harrison's guitar. He caught a shot of the guitar in profile, which revealed it to be an electric twelve-string Rickenbaker, at the time so rare that few knew they existed! McGuinn bought one and made the guitar his usual instrument; the jangling quality became a staple of folk- and country rock musicians and repopularized the Rickenbacker brand, which had been losing market share to Fender and Gibson since the advent of rock and roll.

The success of the album made them national stars who were hailed as the great American "hope" of competing with the Beatles and the Stones, whom they would precede into psychedelic rock and explorations of the musical past that would lead to country rock.

Also see: Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, the Beatles

Must Haves:

• "Turn, Turn, Turn"
• "Eight Miles High"
• "So You Want to Be a Rock and Roll Star"
• "Mr. Spaceman"

Performers Influenced By This Artist:

• Crosby, Stills, and Nash
• New Riders of the Purple Sage
• Flying Burrito Brothers
• Poco
• Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers

"California Girls"

Artist - The Beach Boys

The Beach Boys' style began to change in 1965. At the end of the previous year Brian Wilson had had a nervous breakdown, brought on by pressure to produce hits and the demands on his time as the band's producer, primary songwriter, and arranger. Wilson never again toured with the Beach Boys; while he remained a vital part of the band and performed on the group's albums, on stage he was replaced first by Glen Campbell (then a studio guitarist who had played on several Beach Boys albums), and then by Bruce Johnson, of the vocal harmony group the Ripchords.

Freed from demands of touring, Wilson began focusing more of his attention on the production end of the business. He was influenced by the pop rock hits coming out of Motown, particularly from the production team of Holland-Dozier-Holland, and the girl-group records produced by the eccentric prodigy Phil Spector. Spector's new sound, known as the "Wall of Sound," The correction leads to the impression that Spector created this style and that it is exclusively associated with him; neither is correct. Please return to the original wording, or "This new 'wall of sound' … added orchestral instruments to the standard rock ensemble to thicken the texture and to create a sense of gathering momentum. While Wilson didn't, at this stage, try to duplicate Spector's sound, might this read "try to duplicate the "wall of sound" ? he fully grasped its possibilities. He began employing a wide variety of tone colors, many from unorthodox instruments, to differentiate the formal sections of each song, and subtle end-weighting usually marked the trajectory of the verse leading into the chorus. The songs of this period are also distinguished by increasingly sophisticated vocal harmonies that Wilson composed by singing individual parts into a tape recorder, and then assembling the lines in various combinations until he liked the results. The hits of this middle period also featured adventurous chromatic, jazz-inspired harmonies.

By 1965 the kind of sun, fun, and surf lyrics that had been the stock in trade of the Beach Boys began to seem frivolous in comparison to the subject matter explored by folk rockers like Bob Dylan and the Byrds, not to mention the social commentary emerging in the songs of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. After the album Today (1965) Wilson abandoned the California life lyrics in favor of more introspective material.

Also see: Phil Spector, Burt Bacharach, the Beatles

Must Haves:

• "Help Me, Rhonda"
• "In My Room"
• "Dance, Dance, Dance"
• "When I Grow Up (to Be a Man)"

Performers Influenced By This Artist:

• The Zombies
• the Turtles
• the Hollies
• Fleetwood Mac (after 1971)

"Louie, Louie"

Artist - The Kingsmen

"Louie, Louie" may be the most recorded song in history. In 1983 KFJC, a radio station in Los Altos Hills, California, played "Louie, Louie" for sixty-three hours without repeating any version. At present there are more than 1,600 known versions, all based on the same arresting riff.

"Louie, Louie" has a longer history than one might expect. In the 1950s, Cuban bandleader Rosendo Ruiz Quevedo wrote a song about a current dance craze entitled "Cha-Cha-Cha Loco" (Crazy for the Cha-Cha-Cha). When René Touzet, a Cuban bandleader working in Los Angeles, created an arrangement for his orchestra, he added a "crazy" riff for the claves, bass, and keyboard that replaced the standard cha-cha rhythm—1 and 2 and 3 and 4—with its near rhythmic inversion: 1 and 2 and 3 and 4. Singer/songwriter Richard Berry, best known for his backing vocals on R&B hits like "Riot in Cell Block 9" and "Roll with Me Henry," heard the Touzet arrangement and thought the riff was catchy enough to use in a song. He fused the riff with lyrics based on a current Chuck Berry hit, "Havana Moon," and doo-wop vocal accompaniment. The song was a hit on the West Coast and became a permanent fixture among amateur groups in the Pacific Northwest; by 1960 dozens of groups had versions of "Louie, Louie" on their playlists. Rockin' Robin Roberts and the Wailers recorded the song in 1961; their version introduced several elements that have become standard: the surf rock–inspired guitar solo, introduced by the spoken or shouted phrase, "let's give it to ‘em, right now!", and the loping baión rhythm (1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and) heard under the verse.

In April 1963 in Portland, Oregon, two groups recorded "Louie, Louie" at the same recording studio. Paul Revere and the Raiders was an established local group with significant experience. The Kingsmen, by comparison, were neophytes; their largest gig to that date was at a teen-only night club. They piled into the studio the morning after an experimental (or inspired) ninety-minute set consisting of one long rendition of "Louie, Louie," to capture the song for posterity. The version by Paul Revere and the Raiders was good enough to make their record a regional hit and to get the group signed by Columbia Records. However, the Kingmen's "Louie, Louie," become the definitive version, even though technically the recording is deeply flawed: the vocal track is too far back in the mix, the instruments (save for the keyboard) sound muffled and hollow, several vocal entries are late, and the lyrics are famously garbled. The last was the result of lead singer Jack Ely, who had never been in a recording studio before, singing into the wrong end of the boom microphone. However, the track captures the elemental energy of a live performance and vitality of amateur rock and roll. Their recording became nationally popular after a Boston disc jockey featured it prominently on his show as the "worst record of the week"; the next morning the station was inundated with calls from listeners who wanted to buy the record. The song gained in popularity quickly, in part because many listeners imagined the incomprehensible lyrics were obscene. The FCC began receiving complaints and spent thirty-one months trying to determine if Jack Ely sang the lyrics supplied by Richard Berry or some alternate, pornographic version. Ultimately, the FCC gave up, having determined that the lyrics were "unintelligible at any speed."

Also seeRockin' Robin Roberts and the Wailers, the Sonics, the Ventures, Elvis Presley

Must Haves:

• "Money (That's What I Want)"
• "Jolly Green Giant"
• "Death of an Angel"

Performers Influenced By This Artist:

• The Count Five
• the Seeds
• ? and the Mysterians
• Shadows of Knight
• the Leaves

"Last Train to Clarksville"

Artist - The Monkees

In September 1966 NBC premiered a situation comedy about a rock and roll band called the Monkees. The inspiration for the series was the zany fast-paced Beatles film A Hard Day's Night. As the Beatles were naturally unavailable, NBC instead held open auditions to locate four young men who could look, act, and sing convincingly enough to pass for a real pop group. It is rumored that the five hundred plus hopefuls who came to the audition included Steven Stills and Harry Nilsson. However, the parts went to Davy Jones, an English actor and apprentice jockey who created the role of the Artful Dodger in the musical Oliver!; Peter Tork, a folk musician working in Greenwich Village; Michael Nesmith, a folk and country singer from Texas who was a budding songwriter; and Micky Dolenz, a former child TV star who had played in a few garage bands in his native California.

The quartet was musically groomed by a team of pop music professionals led by Don Kirshner, the head of Alden Music Publishing (the Brill Building). He brought in the best songwriters from that company—Neil Diamond, Gerry Goffin and Carole King, Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil, Harry Nilsson, and others—to write bright, up-tempo pop tunes with catchy hooks for the group. The Monkees didn't initially play their instruments (to be fair, neither did most vocal groups of the era), but they functioned well as a group. Their self-titled first album was released prior to the television debut; one of the tracks, "Last Train to Clarksville," became a top ten hit. Its success created a demand for a tour, so the group learned to play their instruments proficiently and started performing live. After the show's first year the actors were beginning to have their own musical ideas; led by Nesmith, who by this time had emerged as the bandleader (in real life if not on the show), the Monkees demanded complete control over their music. To perhaps everyone's surprise, they got it. Though derogatorily called the "Pre-fab Four" (after the Beatles, known as the Fab Four), the Monkees enjoyed popular success as a group even after the television show was canceled in March 1968.

Also see: Brill Building, the Beatles, the Hollies, the Dave Clark Five

Must Haves:

• "I'm a Believer"
• "Pleasant Valley Sunday"
• "I'm Not Your Stepping Stone"
• "Catch a Wave"
• "Tomorrow's Gonna Be Another Day"

Performers Influenced By This Artist:

• The Turtles
• the Beau Brummels
• Paul Revere and the Raiders
• the Grass Roots