1965, The Most Revolutionary Year in Music

By John Ketwig (reviewer)

1965, The Most Revolutionary Year in Music
by Andrew Grant Jackson
(Thomas Dunne Books, an imprint of St. Martin's Press, 2015)

It was a lazy summer afternoon, too hot and humid for working in the yard, so I settled into the recliner, put on a Beatles CD, and opened a new book. I had stumbled across this book by accident, referred by Amazon's "people who bought this also bought ___" service. I graduated from high school in 1965, and popular music played a huge part in my high school social life, so I was immediately attracted to the concept. The cover art resembles a psychedelic poster, the kind of artwork you don't see any more. I was intrigued. There's no table of contents, but the author starts his work with a calendar of 1965, listing the significant musical and historic events month by month, like appetizers, and then an Introduction that offers a little background about 1964, stressing the pop music and definitive social unrest. The Beatles first appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show on February 9th of that year, exactly 79 days after the assassination of President Kennedy.

"The combined forces of TV, the civil rights movement, the anti-war movement, the Pill, psychedelics, and long hair gave people a heightened awareness of the ways they were being repressed and led to a demand for freedom in all spheres of life, from the political to the sexual to the spiritual. Musicians gave voice to those passions with an immediacy unmatched by other artistic forms." Yeah, man! I was immediately drawn into it, recalling those times and passions, and the tunes coming out of the car radio. From the intro you go directly to the Prologue that sets the 1964 music scene, like Dylan riding in a car when he hears "I Want To Hold Your Hand" come across the radio and he gets excited by the chords and harmonies, getting far beyond the bubblegum lyrics to discern that this band was "doing things nobody was doing." Soon after, he bought an electric guitar, then visited the Beatles in a New York hotel, turning them on to smoking pot. Ringo was the first to experiment. The Beatles returned to England and toured with the Kinks and a band called the High Numbers who would become the Who.

The author has researched the history of the music and the regular human beings who made it. From the Beach Boys to Motown, Nashville to Bakersfield, California, and Liverpool to London he rides the waves of the music of 1965 like a championship surfer. The history is fascinating, the writing totally accessible and enjoyable. This is a book that's fun to read, a collection of behind-the-scenes incidents and memorable on-stage events that will make you turn pages far into the night. It's not gossip; it is a history book, a colorful multi-dimensional examination that is as full of energy as any classic rock 'n roll performance back in '65. It is not a thick book, but it encompasses a dazzling wide-angle view of all the bands, the changing tempos of our generation, and the incredible insights of the poets and songwriters who put so much truth into the tunes that were the background of that eventful moment in history.

The first American combat troops arrived in Vietnam in March of 1965, a day after "Bloody Sunday" in Selma, Alabama and a few days before Dylan's "Bringing It All Back Home" was released. Curtis Mayfield's "People Get Ready" hit number 14 on the charts. In April, Eric Clapton left the Yardbirds. They tried to recruit Jimmy Page, he declined, but suggested Jeff Beck. In May, a new band called the Warlocks played at Magoo's Pizza in San Francisco. They would become the Grateful Dead. The Rolling Stones, relaxing around a hotel pool in Clearwater, Florida, wrote "Satisfaction." Producer Berry Gordy spent the night with Diana Ross in Paris, but he was impotent. Later, he would father her child, but he didn't tell her he loved her because it wouldn't be good for business. Diana also went out with Smokey Robinson, and Eddie Kendricks of the Temptations. Bob Dylan called Smokey Robinson "the greatest living poet." Marvin Gaye started as the Miracles' session drummer, and played drums on Martha and the Vandellas' "Dancing in the Streets". He really wanted to be a crooner like Sinatra or Nat King Cole, but he was married to Berry Gordy's sister Anna, and Gordy had given them a house, so he went off to work and made the boss a lot of money.

That's just a taste. If you remember 1965, or if you've ever tapped your foot to the music of that time, you've got to read this book.

John Ketwig is a Life member of VVAW, and the author of "...and a hard rain fell: A G.I.'s True Story of the War in Vietnam" which will mark its 30th anniversary in print this May. John is currently working on a new book which is intended to challenge the government's 50th anniversary commemoration.