This is 80 minutes of music that documents a revolution in English culture that permanently changed the way that England sounded and felt about itself. I say England rather than Britain because all this music was made by Englishmen – notwithstanding Paul McCartney’s Irish ancestors, or anyone else’s. Some might say that the revolution started earlier with the release of The Beatles first record, “Love Me Do”, in October 1962, but I have chosen “She Loves You” as the starting point because it was such a huge hit – the biggest hit that any English group had ever made up to that time. There could be no going back after that.
The Rolling Stones appeared next, first with a tentative and unsuccessful cover of a Chuck Berry song (“Come On”) but then with an all-out primal assault on a Beatles song. Then it was 1964 and the revolution began in earnest: Mary Quant, Carnaby Street, the whole Swinging 60s THING that has been documented to death so many times. Instead of that, what I am trying to do here is to go back to the music itself. What does it say about England and how it changed in such a short space of time? Of course these hits are all well known. But that’s why I felt it would be instructive (and fun) to put them all together, in chronological order of release, in their original mono (the way they were produced to be heard) and listen to them back to back.
Where are the girls you may well ask? Dusty? Sandy? Cilla? Lulu? They were just as important to the revolution of ’64-66 but that is for a different compilation. Restricting ourselves to The Big Four (Beatles, Stones, Kinks, Who) excludes a lot of great music but in almost every case, it is great music that took its cue from one of these groups, from one or more of these records. It’s almost too rich to digest, this script. Over fifty years later its echoes ripple on and on, through every attempt to belittle or over inflate. It was a genuine popular renaissance. There hadn’t really been one before and there hasn’t really been one since – unless you give punk more credit than it deserves. Was it a huge sigh of relief at winning World War Two? “We’re not going back to how it was before.” An economic boom? The result of never having had it so good. The invention of the teenager. All this has been written into the ground. Instead, let’s listen to the music. And let’s listen to the words. What are they saying? How quickly we go from simple romance to lust to…what? To 19 nervous breakdowns, to cries for help, to pleas for universal understanding, to mocking a mannequin? Listen to the tunes. From Brill Building knock offs to blues tributes to…what? Where do these melodies come from? Folksong, Music Hall, India – who are these friends across the river that Ray Davies is so wistfully yearning for? Listen to the way the guitars are being played. The approach to musicianship in general – exclusively and gloriously self-taught, not a trained musician in sight. That in itself would have been unthinkable only a few months before “She Loves You”. Listen to the production, the birth of multitracking in the UK. The idea of the mixing desk as another instrument, pushing the boundaries of what could be achieved with high volume and massive compression. This was entirely new.
Of the four groups, The Beatles were the most polished, the most obviously talented, the ones most attached to the showbiz values that had gone before. But where did that feedback at the beginning of “I Feel Fine” come from? That strange isolated dominant minor 11th chord at the start of “A Hard Day’s Night”? The harmonium on “We Can Work It Out”? As it became clear that whatever they touched would inevitably turn to gold the temptation might have been to become complacent. But instead they upped their game. Blessed with the most brilliant producer in George Martin, their every release had to show an innovation of some kind. The only limit was their imagination. The Rolling Stones, meanwhile, had their noses most firmly pressed up against the window of Black America – and were rewarded with the only blues record to ever make No.1 in the UK (“Little Red Rooster”). Once they had achieved success they quickly moved their recording operations to America, in the hope that the sound of the music they loved would rub off on their own efforts. But paradoxically they became more English with each release, documenting the frustration and boredom of stardom with a curiously detached rage. The Kinks were, in many ways, the most original and still under-appreciated to this day. They invented hard rock, yes, but no sooner had they done so than they abandoned it. Ray Davies’s songwriting could never be constrained by the limits of heavy riffs and pounding drums (although he always retained a fondness for them). There are so many subtleties in the music he wrote for The Kinks, so many reasons why it stands outside time. The Who began by plagiarising them but then set off an explosion all their own. When the smoke cleared there was wit and intelligence there, and an eccentric anti-romanticism that came to brief fruition just after our little window closes. Yes, this collection covers less than three years.
I have timed it to fit onto one CD but “Paint It, Black” seems an appropriate place to stop. The Rolling Stones had gone from apeing Bo Diddley to Moroccan furnishings and sitars. From speed and alcohol to marijuana and LSD – yes, the drugs are a whole other story that provides probably the most reliable account of what actually happened in this time. From tough, world weary songs about women (that they didn’t write) to adolescent nihilism; “Paint It, Black” (what is the significance of the comma?!) has proven itself to be remarkably durable. Teaching guitar to teenage boys in the 21st century I have found it is by far the most popularly requested Rolling Stones song. But there was more than adolescent angst going on in these songs, these songs written and played by young men in some cases still in their teens (Dave Davies and Keith Moon). This was the soundtrack to a bloodless coup. That the spoils were wasted and squandered in self-indulgence is a shame. A terrible lost opportunity but perhaps it was inevitable. This will be argued over long after all the fighters in this revolution are dead – and they are inevitably dying off now. But that there were spoils is not in doubt. In amongst the London buses painted like liquorice allsorts, outside a commercial building painted with day-glo murals there was a genuine questioning of the Victorian work ethic, of the value of the Industrial-Military Complex. People trained to rule simply saying: “No”. Once upon a time, these things happened. Of course it couldn’t last. Utopia eventually gets boring and besides, look at all those poor people over there…
But there was a moment there – somewhere between August 1963 and May 1966 – when England really seemed to rule the world, before sinking inexorably into the Atlantic. This music was its soundtrack.
1. She Loves You – THE BEATLES (23.8.63 – 1)
2. I Wanna Be Your Man – THE ROLLING STONES (1.11.63 – 12)
3. I Want To Hold Your Hand – THE BEATLES (29.11.63 – 1)
4. Not Fade Away – THE ROLLING STONES (21.2.64 – 3)
5. Can’t Buy Me Love – THE BEATLES (20.3.64 – 1)
6. It’s All Over Now – THE ROLLING STONES (23.6.64 – 1)
7. A Hard Day’s Night – THE BEATLES (10.7.64 – 1)
8. You Really Got Me – THE KINKS (7.8.64 – 1)
9. All Day And All Of The Night – THE KINKS (23.10.64 – 2)
10.Little Red Rooster – THE ROLLING STONES (13.11.64 – 1)
11.I Feel Fine -THE BEATLES (27.11.64 – 1)
12.I Can’t Explain – THE WHO (15.1.65 –
13.Tired Of Waiting For You – THE KINKS (15.1.65 – 1)
14.The Last Time – THE ROLLING STONES (26.2.65 – 1)
15. Everybody’s Gonna Be Happy – THE KINKS (19.3.65 – 17)
16.Ticket To Ride – THE BEATLES (9.4.65 – 1)
17. Anyway Anyhow Anywhere – THE WHO (21.5.65 – 10)
18.Set Me Free – THE KINKS (21.5.65 – 9)
19.Help! – THE BEATLES (23.7.65 – 1)
20.See My Friend – THE KINKS (30.7.65 – 10)
21.(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction – THE ROLLING STONES (20.8.65 – 1)
22.Get Off Of My Cloud – THE ROLLING STONES (22.10.65 – 1)
23. My Generation – THE WHO (29.10.65 – 2)
24.Till The End Of The Day – THE KINKS (19.11.65 –
25.Day Tripper – THE BEATLES (3.12.65 – 1)
26.We Can Work It Out – THE BEATLES (3.12.65 – 1)
27.19th Nervous Breakdown – THE ROLLING STONES (4.2.66 – 2)
28.Dedicated Follower Of Fashion – THE KINKS (25.2.66 – 4)
29.Substitute – THE WHO (4.3.66 – 5)
30.Paint It, Black – THE ROLLING STONES (1.5.66 – 1)
All titles taken from original mono 45s. The figures in brackets after the artist name are the record’s original release date and its highest chart position.