Industry Insights: Somebody Pass the Shrooms — Psychedelics and Rock and Roll in the 1960s

Electrifying hippie counterculture of peace, love, liberation, and bacchanalian revelries defined the 1960s musical landscape. Behind it all? The overarching influence of psychedelic drugs.

Industry Insights explores the inner workings of the greater music industry, and what they mean for artists and fans alike.

Written by Kaileen Rooks

Photo courtesy of the Daily Telegraph

In June 1967, Jimi Hendrix took to the stage of the Monterey Pop Festival in a drug-fueled haze and gave a performance that would define an entire era of music. Hendrix gyrated across the stage and mimicked coitus with his guitar. He finished his tumultuous performance by setting the guitar on fire, smashing it, and throwing the burnt remains of it into the audience, who howled and writhed as if they were bewitched — in a way, they were. Both Hendrix and his adoring spectators were engrossed in the “spell” of hallucinogenic drugs, which turned the concert into a frenzy of impulsivity and passion. Psychedelic or mind-expanding drugs (as they came to be called) were inextricably linked to both the production of music and its live interpretations in the late ’60s.

Two primary drugs defined this infamous era of music: LSD (“acid”) and psilocybin mushrooms (“magic mushrooms”). It was common for popular musicians of this time to use LSD and mushrooms, both of which were influential in their lyrics, musicality, and performances. Moreover, these two psychedelics created a bridge between the artists and their fans by connecting them through a shared, eye-opening experience.

Live music events became the perfect representation of the collective consciousness for this period of music. Festivals and concerts like Woodstock ‘69 were riddled with burnouts, nymphomaniacs, and general enjoyers of all kinds of debauchery. Acid tablets were sold for one dollar, nudists were ubiquitous, and most everyone was high in some way. It was an incomparable branch of America’s own Bohemian Revolution, engrossed with passion, unity, and unbridled euphoria. Psychedelics brought the issues of the world into sharper focus, kindling the fervent flames of an electrifying, oppositional way of life. The anti-Vietnam war movement reached its height as hippie counterculture took hold, and was greatly inspired by the peaceful, anti-authority rhetoric that characterized the psychedelic Summer of Love. The prim, private, and proper values of the former generation were rejected, and freedom of expression reigned supreme.

The psychedelic movement hit its initial stride on the British music scene. In the first half of the ’60s, The Beatles were wildly popular but their music conformed to dominant culture of the time. Their 1964 album, A Hard Day’s Night, was coated with straight-edged, polite songs embracing monogamous romances. As the ’60s went on their music dramatically shifted, matching the rise of hallucinogens and the hippie movement. The release of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band in 1967 was the materialization of this sudden deviation. Sonic choices became more inventive and loose, which, in tandem with their surreal, fantastical lyrics, were features that would come to exemplify psychedelic music.

For reference, “Can’t Buy Me Love” from A Hard Day’s Night was created using the twelve-bar blues structure, a chord progression with a set composition and lyrical form used frequently in popular music in the 20th century. Parallel to its formulaic production, the lyrics stuck true to the innocuous, romantic musical trends of the time, asserting to an unnamed lover that “I’ll give you all I’ve got to give / If you say you love me too.” The conventional nature of earlier works like this one highlighted the Beatles’ starkness. “Strawberry Fields Forever” is an avant-garde submersion, with John Lennon’s vocals laid over spliced sound bites of assorted instruments from an Indian swarmandal to a brass band that were reverse-recorded instrumentation, creating an atmosphere of utter chaos that mimics a bad trip on LSD. Lyrically, it opens with a warning, asserting that “living is easy with eyes closed” and continuously invites the listener to go down to “strawberry fields'' where “nothing is real,” with psychedelic drugs as the implied gateway to psychological enlightenment — to the strawberry fields.

Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was The Beatles' first complete submergence into art-rock precluded by the experimental album Revolver. The Beatles began to experiment with using the production aspect as an instrument all on its own on this transitionary album, playing with alternative instrumentation — sitars and organs — and experimenting with tape reversals and tone equalizers. This early venture into abnormal production styles not only informed The Beatles’ next musical era; it also inspired the later proponents of British psychedelic rock, most notably, Pink Floyd.

Cultural upheaval occurred in both hemispheres, yet decisive differences emerged between the British and American psychedelic movements. This difference in cultural change is evident through the Byrds, another early ‘60s group that gained traction over the course of the decade through psychedelic culture. The Byrds began their career as a folk-rock band, but the 1965 release of “Eight Miles High” declared their adaptation to the rising culture of hallucinogenic rock. Jim McGuinn’s twelve-string guitar solo ripples throughout the song, underscored by the eerie, drug-alluding harmonies of the band members, molding a blurry, yet delectably strange ambience of doped-up absurdity. Competitors at the height of their fame, The Beatles and the Byrds represented the transformation of the entire music industry to acclimate to this overwhelming counter cultural movement, while also striking meaningful oppositions to each others’ own musical adaptation to this social change.

Image courtesy of Reality Sandwich

While San Francisco was the heart of the American hippie movement, the first band to coin the term “psychedelic rock” was from here in Austin, Texas. The 13th Floor Elevators, who first used the term on their business cards, exemplifies the distinctiveness of the American branch of the counterculture movement compared to all others — especially the British psychedelic scene.  While the Brits generally had a method to their madness, the American psychedelic movement was rooted in a kaleidoscopic celebration of pure, unadulterated chaos. The Beatles, the figurehead of British psychedelia, generally focused their music around their own pedagogy that touted drug use as the ultimate method to elucidate one’s life and the world around them. Pure amusement and debauchery were still a focus, but the British sobered the movement with frequent declarations of philosophical and cultural principles. On the other side of the ocean, Hendrix, Janis Joplin, the Grateful Dead, and Jefferson Airplane were the luminaries of the newfound American obsession with phantasmagoric musicality. In essence, they were the four horsemen of the American psychedelic apocalypse.

Though both the British and American movements shared abstract lyrics and unusual musical choices, the American differentiation was best understood by the performances artists put on. Many musicians performed for several hours at shows and festivals. Jimi Hendrix’s iconic rendition of the Star-Spangled Banner was a part of his two-hour long show at Woodstock ‘69. The Grateful Dead frequently performed lengthy concerts, with their longest recorded capped at just below five hours. Live improvisation was also a cornerstone that marked the undisciplined, impulsive nature of American psychedelia. Jimi Hendrix peppered most of his shows with long, complicated guitar interludes that showcased his unparalleled skill for the instrument. Stars like these pushed America into a full-fledged nosedive into counterculture. The U.S. had put its homegrown spin on the psychedelic movement, one that surpassed all in its enjoyment of animalistic revelry.

However, the intense U.S. spin on psychedelia had a somber underbelly. There was perhaps no one who better represented the dark side of American psychedelia than Janis Joplin, who reached stardom through her breathtaking voice and sound drawn heavily from traditional early 20th century blues and soul music. She epitomized the rough-and-tumble, rock and roll Texas girl, from her time at the University of Texas at Austin (where she did not graduate but launched her music career) to her brief time in the limelight. Unfortunately, her gritty, passionate, spirited talent was darkened by her rough lifestyle. Joplin, like many American psychedelic greats, led a life of debauchery and hedonism that matched her music. Her struggle with drugs and alcohol ultimately killed her in 1970 and admitted her into the infamous “27 Club” that claimed many superstars in this era, including Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison of The Doors, Ronald “Pigpen” McKernan of the Grateful Dead, and more. However, their brief but monumental careers struck a resounding note in this pivotal moment in American culture and history, one that continues to reverberate throughout generations.

Although this era of music is often associated solely with the tragedies, there’s a reason it  enthralls people decades later. The music of this time was an outlet for centuries of built-up aching for authenticity and fearless expression that unfolded in an amorous movement. Psychedelic rock, from its production to its performances, elucidated the inner workings of an entire generation — one that spoke to the profound, boundless wonderment of the human spirit. It was an era of wild, vulgar, and shameless indulgence, and such is why it remains so vibrant in the timeline of American history.