A lot of things were going on in the US in 1965 as Civil unrest marred most of the year. Vietnam was at its height as the US started regularly deploying troops and began heavy bombings. The Watts riots burned down large parts of the city, Martin Luther King Jr. leads a peace march from Selma to Montgomery in Alabama, and troops violently attacked protesters in Alabama. But 1965 saw many major accomplishments. The Voting Rights Act finally passes, NASA’s Gemini Space program sends the largest crewed flight into orbit of earth, and St. Louis’ Gateway Arch is finished. Oh, and bouncy balls and skate boards were introduced to children all across America. When musicians can harness the the spirit of the people, and the times in which they’re living, often what results are some of the most meaningful and influential songs of all time. That’s exactly what happened in 1965. Check out our top 10 essential albums of 1965.
Highway 61 Revisited – Bob Dylan
Highway 61 Revisited is Bob Dylan’s sixth studio album. The title stems from the road that connects Dylan’s home in Duluth, Minnesota to the famed southern music cities, St. Louis, Memphis, Mississippi, and New Orleans. 5 month’s earlier, Dylan had stunned the world with his album Bringing It All Back Home. It had marked the first time Dylan used electronic instruments and was met with resistance from fans. On Highway 61 Revisited, Dylan stuck with the electric guitar, but returned with more refined, poetic language that his fans were used to. ” Dylan had not only changed his sound, but his persona, trading the folk troubadour for a streetwise, cynical hipster. Throughout the album, he embraces druggy, surreal imagery, which can either have a sense of menace or beauty, and the music reflects that, jumping between soothing melodies to hard, bluesy rock.” (Erlewine, AllMusic) Rolling Stone Magazine calls it “The most compassionate album [Dylan] ever made, because it’s the album where he finds every American he meets hilarious. There isn’t any moral condemnation, which must be unique for a Sixties Dylan album — even his enemies, the lepers and crooks promoting our next world war, crack him up.” This compassion is most noticeable in the title track, “Like a Rolling Stone“. The song began as a 20 page “vomit” of words after Dylan had returned from his tour of England dissatisfied with his material. The 20 pages were condensed into a 6 minute long song, a song that his record company had low hopes for. “Like a Rolling Stone” has been credited by many as one of the best song ever written, and Highway 61 Revisited has gone on the inspire generations of musicians.
A Love Supreme – John Coltrane
A Love Supreme is a studio album from John Coltrane and his quartet composed of himself, Jimmy Garrison, Elvin Jones, and McCoy Tyner. It is widely considered as one of the greatest Jazz albums of all time, and in 2016 it was added to the Library of Congress’ National Recording Registry for its spiritual, historical, and artistic significance. In 1957, John Coltrane had the job of his life, touring and playing with Miles Davis. But Coltrane, who had been struggling with heroin and alcohol addiction had become strung out and unreliable, and Davis was forced to fire him. Coltrane decided to straighten himself up, kicked his addictions, and surrendered himself to his talents. A Love Supreme is Coltrane’s redemption, and a reaffirmation of his faith. Reverend Franzo Wayne King, a pastor at the Saint John Coltrane African Orthodox Church remembers the album, “When you look at the composition of titles and the sequence in which John has them laid out, we say that there’s formula in that album. When he says, ‘Acknowledgements, Resolutions and Pursuance,’ it’s like saying, ‘Father, Son and Holy Ghost.’ It’s like saying, ‘Melody, harmony and rhythm.’ In other words, you have to acknowledge and then you resolve and then you pursue, and the manifestation of it is a love supreme.” The album is a masterpiece, but little else is definitively known about the album’s personal significance to Coltrane. He only performed it once live, never spoke about it in interviews, and actually never talked about it with his band-mates, they simply followed Coltrane’s lead and created greatness.
Rubber Soul – The Beatles
Rubber Soul is the sixth studio album from The Beatles. It is the second of their albums to be composed entirely of original material, and first to have been recorded during a single continuous period of time. In the United States alone, Rubber Soul had sold over 1.2 million copies in just nine days. This album strayed from the fairy tale love songs of their previous albums, and contained more complex and bitter portrayals of romance. Paul McCartney notes that, “Things were changing. The direction was moving away from the poppy stuff like “Thank You Girl”, “From Me To You” and “She Loves You”. The early material was directly relating to our fans, saying, ‘Please buy this record,’ but now we’d come to a point where we thought, ‘We’ve done that. Now we can branch out into songs that are more surreal, a little more entertaining.’ And other people were starting to arrive on the scene who were influential. Dylan was influencing us quite heavily at that point.” The Beatles had gotten Dylan to start experimenting with electronic guitar, but as the story goes, Dylan was the one who first introduced The Beatles to weed. Scott Plagenhoef of Pitchfork writes “Marijuana’s effect on the group is most heavily audible on Rubber Soul. (By the time of their next album, Revolver, three-fourths of the group had been turned on to LSD, and their music was headed somewhere else entirely.) With its patient pace and languid tones,Rubber Soul is an altogether much more mellow record than anything the Beatles had done before, or would do again. If nothing else, it’s the record on which their desire for artistic rather than commercial ambition took center stage– a radical idea at a time when the success of popular music was measured in sales and quantity rather than quality.” Arguably what is most impressive about the album is not the songs, but the fact that they had recorded it against a tight deadline. Over the course of just 4 weeks, they had completed recording and began the final mix down, which was completed just in time for the Christmas season. Notable hits from the album include: “In My Life“, “Norwegian Wood“, “Nowhere Man“, “Girl“, and “I’m Looking Through You“.
Bringing It All Back Home – Bob Dylan
Bringing It All Back Home is Dylan’s fifth studio album. The record was split into two sides, an acoustic side, and an electric side. Electric? Bob Dylan? Yes, his first record using an electronic guitar caught many off guard and even offended some fans. Rolling Stone called it “The cultural equivalent of a nuclear bomb.” When fans laid the needle to this record, they felt betrayed. When Dylan played his acoustic guitar, the twanging of the strings and poetic cadences of his lyrics moved people in ways that no musician has been able to replicate. So when the sound of an electric guitar came out of fan’s speakers, they were somewhat horrified; The world they knew had been turned upside down. However, the second, acoustic side contained some of the best Dylan songs ever written. “Mr. Tambourine Man” is arguable Dylan at his best, combined with “Gates of Eden“, “It’s Alright Ma“, and “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue“, and Dylan had done more than enough to please his fans. Stephen Erlewine calls Bringing It All Back Home, “The point where Dylan eclipses any conventional sense of folk and rewrites the rules of rock, making it safe for personal expression and poetry, not only making words mean as much as the music, but making the music an extension of the words. A truly remarkable album.”
Otis Blue / Otis Redding Sings Soul – Otis Redding
Otis Blue/Otis Redding Sings Soul (a.k.a. Otis Blue) is Otis Reddings third studio album, and one of the most essential soul albums you can own. The record has it’s fair share of cover songs, as did most soul records at the time, but Otis’ flourishing confidence allowed him to really own the covers. The album contained 4 original tracks. “The mournfully harried “Ole Man Trouble” and the Jerry Butler-co-written “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long” with its priceless ending crescendo of desperation– are evidence enough that he wasn’t just a flashy interpreter. Another is “I’m Depending on You“, the B-side to “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long”, and it’s a simple, perfectly fine vehicle for him to turn unremarkable lyrics into remarkable vocalizations. The other one, of course, is “Respect“– the song that Redding liked to joke was “stolen” from him by Aretha Franklin.” (Pitchfork) Two songs on the album are written by Redding’s idol, Sam Cooke, who died a few months before the release of the album. “”A Change Is Gonna Come” and “Shake,” are every bit as essential as any soul recordings ever made, and while they (and much of this album) have reappeared on several anthologies, it’s useful to hear the songs from those sessions juxtaposed with each other, and with “Wonderful World,” which is seldom compiled elsewhere” (AllMusic)
Help! – The Beatles
Help! is the fifth studio album from The Beatles, and the soundtrack to their movie Help! It was released just 4 months before Rubber Soul, went 3 x Platinum, and peaked at #1 on the charts in the US, UK, Germany, and Australia. One half of the album contained songs directly from the movie while the other half was composed of 7 other original songs, including on of the most Beatles songs of all time, “Yesterday“, “Ticket to Ride” and title-track “Help!“. “Help!” was actually written by Lennon as an actual call for help, “It was just me singing ‘Help’ and I meant it.” Perhaps a call for help in regards to the commercial pressure the band was facing from their record company. ” ‘Yesterday‘ is a simple, beautiful ballad whose arrangement — an acoustic guitar supported by a string quartet — and composition suggested much more sophisticated and adventurous musical territory.” (AllMusic) “Yesterday” sparked the band’s answer to Lennon’s call for “Help!”, leading them on a curious journey that brought them to their slowed down, weed influenced, Rubber Soul.
My Generation –The Who
My Generation is the debut album from The Who. Quickly after the release of their single “My Generation“, The Who released their album which many critics thought was rushed and sloppy, but The Who insists that they were under no such pressure. My Generation ranks 9th on NME’s list of Top 100 Greatest British albums of all times and 237 on Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. The 2 most famous singles from the album are “The Kid’s Are Alright” which is listed as Pitchfork’s 34th best song of the 1960’s, and “My Generation” which Rolling Stone ranks as the 11th Greatest Song Ever Written. While the US version of the album was heavily edited, with a song or two even having to be removed, overall sales were strong and My Generation peaked at the 5 spot on UK’s music Billboards. In The Rolling Stones Album Guide, Mark Kemp wrote, “With its ferocious blend of grungy distortion, rumbling bass and percussion, and brutish vocals, The Who Sings My Generation became the blueprint for much of the subsequent garage rock, heavy metal, and punk. In contrast to debut albums from the Stones (whose take on Southern American rock & soul was fairly earnest) and Beatles(who spread the word of rock & roll through sweet harmonies and easily digestible melodies), My Generation positively shoved at the boundaries of popular music. Townshend’s fiercely original guitar experiments here predate the innovations of his later American rival Jimi Hendrix”
Jackson C. Frank – Jackson C. Frank
Jackson C. Frank is the self-titled debut album from Jackson C. Frank. Odds are, you’ve never heard of Jackson C. Frank. If you do, good on you, if you don’t, don’t worry because it’s not really your fault. Jackson C. Frank is an American folk singer from Massachusetts and only released one album during his career. Paul Simon worked with Frank, bringing him to Britain so that he could produce his debut album. Frank was a shy man. So shy that when he went to record, he asked for a shield to be put up in the studio so that Paul Simon, Art Garfunkel, and Al Stewart couldn’t see him. His shyness didn’t stop him from making great music though. “Frank could be topical and timely, as on the Dylan social nod “Don’t Look Back“, or he could web simple phrases and patterns into enigmatic, illusory anthems, as he did for “My Name Is Carnival“. He made existential unease charming on “Just Like Anything“, and he updated Bascom Lamar Lunsford’s ancient American banjo trot, “I Wish I Was a Mole in the Ground“, for a new generation of post-beatnik vagabonds. Frank got to all of those feelings at once during “Blues Run the Game“, reportedly the first song he ever finished and, for most, the sole perfect number that forms his entire legacy.” (Currin, Pitchfork) After the release of his album, Frank returned to the US where his career quickly deteriorated. Frank married and had two children, but after the death of their son, the marriage ended in divorce and Frank fell into a deep depression. After stints in mental institutions, Frank had set out for New York in search of Paul Simon whom he thought owned the publishing rights to his music. Frank never found him. Jim Abbott a fan of Frank, stumbled upon Frank in New York, and got him back into the studio. They recorded a couple of tracks and in 2014 a set of demo tracks was released as Forest of Eden. Frank died in 1999 but he lives on as one of the greatest folk musicians of all time.
Pastel Blues – Nina Simone
Pastel Blues is Nina Simone’s eighth studio album. “If this is blues, it’s blues in the Billie Holiday sense, not the Muddy Waters one. This is one of Nina Simone’s more subdued mid-’60s LPs, putting the emphasis on her piano rather than band arrangements. It’s rather slanted toward torch-blues ballads like “Strange Fruit,” “Trouble in Mind,” Billie Holiday’s own composition “Tell Me More and More and Then Some,” and “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out.”” (AllMusic) Nina Simone pulls elements from jazz, soul, gospel, and classical music, fusing them with the blues to create an incredibly accessible album for all listeners. You don’t have to know how to appreciate any one of the genres to appreciate Pastel Blues. It’s crazy to think that the same year that Nina Simone released Pastel Blues, she also released I Put A Spell On You, which I would put on the short list of Nina Simone career highlights. Notable releases from the album include “Strange Fruit“, “Tell Me More and More and then Some“, and the 10 minute long “Sinnerman“.
Today! – The Beach Boys
Today! is the eighth album for the Beach Boys, and the first of three releases in 1965. In 1964, while on a flight from Houston to LA, Brian Wilson suffered a major panic attack. Wilson decided to retire from performing and focus his efforts solely on songwriting an production. “I was run down mentally and emotionally because I was running around, jumping on jets from one city to another on one-night stands, also producing, writing, arranging, singing, planning, teaching – to the point where I had no peace of mind and no chance to actually sit down and think or even rest” Wilson was also introduced to marijuana as a stress reliever at this time, which he credits as changing the way he perceived music. Wilson’s new focus on production paid off. Today! peaked at #6 on Britain’s charts and #4 in the US during a 50 week stay. Critics often cite Today! as the precursor to The Beach Boys most famous release Pet Sounds. Notable hits from Today! include “Do You Wanna Dance“, “When I Grow Up“, “Dance, Dance, Dance“.