|Part of a series on|
Psychedelic music (sometimes psychedelia) covers a range of popular music styles and genres influenced by the 1960s psychedelic culture, a subculture of people who used psychedelic drugs such as LSD, psilocybin mushrooms, mescaline and DMT to experience visual and auditory hallucinations, synesthesia and altered states of consciousness. Psychedelic music attempted to replicate the hallucinogenic experience of using these drugs or enhance the experience of using them. Psychedelic music emerged during the mid-1960s among folk rock and blues rock bands in the United States and Britain.
Psychedelic bands often drew on non-Western sources such as the ragas, drones and sitars of Indian music and they used electric instruments and electronic effects–notably the lead electric guitar played with heavy distortion–and new, unorthodox recording techniques, such as playing tapes backwards or panning the music from one side to the other. Psychedelic influences spread into folk, rock, and soul, creating the subgenres of psychedelic folk, psychedelic rock, psychedelic pop and psychedelic soul in the late 1960s before declining in the early 1970s. Psychedelic music bands expanded their musical horizons, and went on to create and influence many new musical genres including progressive rock, kosmische musik, electronic rock, jazz rock, heavy metal, glam rock, funk, electro and bubblegum pop. Psychedelic music was revived in a variety of forms of neo-psychedelia from the 1980s, in psychedelic hip hop and re-emerged in electronic music in genres including acid house, trance music and new rave.
A short sample followed by two flanging versions
Unprocessed organ followed by different phasing effects
Notice the bell-like sound
|Problems playing these files? See media help.|
A number of features are often included in psychedelic music. Exotic instrumentation, with a particular fondness for the sitar and tabla are common. Songs often have more complex song structures, key and time signature changes, modal melodies and drones than contemporary pop music. Surreal, whimsical, esoterically or literary-inspired, lyrics are often used. There is often a strong emphasis on extended instrumental solos or jams, typically featuring a heavily distorted electric guitar as the main instrument. Electric guitars are plugged into large, powerful guitar amplifiers and speakers, which are turned up to a high volume and used with distortion to create feedback. Electric guitars are typically played through a wah wah pedal, usually with heavy fuzzbox or distortion effects. There is a strong keyboard presence, in the 1960s this especially using electronic organs, harpsichords, or the Mellotron, an early tape-driven 'sampler' keyboard.
Elaborate studio effects are often used, such as backwards tapes, panning the music from one side to another of the stereo track, using the "swooshing" sound of electronic phasing, long delay loops, and extreme reverb. In the 1960s there was a use of primitive electronic instruments such as early synthesizers and the theremin. Later forms of electronic psychedelia also employed repetitive computer-generated beats.
From the second half of the 1950s, Beat Generation writers like William Burroughs, Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg wrote about and took drugs, including cannabis and Benzedrine, raising awareness and helping to popularise their use. In the early 1960s the use of LSD and other hallucinogens was advocated by new proponents of consciousness expansion such as Timothy Leary, Alan Watts, Aldous Huxley and Arthur Koestler, and, according to L. R. Veysey, they profoundly influenced the thinking of the new generation of youth.
The psychedelic life style had already developed in California, particularly in San Francisco, by the mid-1960s, with the first major underground LSD factory established by Owsley Stanley. From 1964 the Merry Pranksters, a loose group that developed around novelist Ken Kesey, sponsored the Acid Tests, a series of events involving the taking of LSD (supplied by Stanley), accompanied by light shows, film projection and discordant, improvised music known as the psychedelic symphony. The Pranksters helped popularise LSD use, through their road trips across America in a psychedelically-decorated converted school bus, which involved distributing the drug and meeting with major figures of the beat movement, and through publications about their activities such as Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1968).
San Francisco also had an emerging music scene of folk clubs, coffee houses and independent radio stations that catered to the population of students at nearby Berkeley and the free thinkers that had gravitated to the city. There was already a culture of drug use among jazz and blues musicians, and in the early 1960s use of drugs including cannabis, peyote, mescaline and LSD began to grow among folk and rock musicians. Soon musicians began to refer (at first indirectly, and later explicitly) to the drug and attempted to recreate or reflect the experience of taking LSD in their music, just as it was reflected in psychedelic art, literature and film.
One of the first musical uses of the term "psychedelic" in the folk scene was by the New York-based folk group The Holy Modal Rounders on their version of Lead Belly's 'Hesitation Blues' in 1964. Folk/avant-garde guitarist John Fahey recorded several songs in the early 1960s experimented with unusual recording techniques, including backwards tapes, and novel instrumental accompaniment including flute and sitar. His nineteen-minute "The Great San Bernardino Birthday Party" "anticipated elements of psychedelia with its nervy improvisations and odd guitar tunings". Similarly, folk guitarist Sandy Bull's early work "incorporated elements of folk, jazz, and Indian and Arabic-influenced dronish modes". His 1963 album Fantasias for Guitar and Banjo explores various styles and "could also be accurately described as one of the very first psychedelic records".
This trend ran in parallel in both America and Britain and as part of the inter-related folk, folk rock and rock scenes. Blues, drugs, jazz and eastern influences had featured since 1964 in the work of Davy Graham and Bert Jansch. Folk artists who were particularly significant in the psychedelic movement included the Scottish performers Donovan, who combined influences of American artists like Bob Dylan with references to flower power, and the Incredible String Band, who from 1967 incorporated a range of influences into their acoustic instrument-based music, including medieval and eastern instruments.
Rock and pop
The innovations and experimentation brought on by the Beatles and the Beach Boys were the most significant in psychedelic music. The Beatles introduced many of the major elements of the psychedelic sound to mainstream audiences in the mid-1960s, for example with "I Feel Fine" (1964), which used guitar feedback; the Rubber Soul album had George Harrison introduce the sitar on "Norwegian Wood"; they employed backmasking on their 1966 single B-side "Rain" and other tracks that appeared on their Revolver album later that year. Drug references began to appear in their songs, in "Day Tripper" (1965), and more explicitly in "Tomorrow Never Knows" (1966). The Beach Boys' Brian Wilson attempted to translate the effects of LSD into music for the group's album Pet Sounds (1966), which significantly heightened the visibility of psychedelic rock.
The first use of the term "psychedelic rock" is generally attributed to Austin, Texas band The 13th Floor Elevators, whose early tours would inspire San Francisco's still-incubating psychedelic scene. The Byrds rapidly progressed away from purely folk rock in 1966 with their single "Eight Miles High", widely taken to be a reference to drug use. AllMusic names British group The Yardbirds as "arguably" one of the most influential bands in the psychedelic music genre, who, with Jeff Beck as their guitarist, increasingly moved into psychedelic territory, adding up-tempo improvised "rave ups", Gregorian chant and world music influences to songs including "Still I'm Sad" (1965), "Shapes of Things" (1966), and "Over Under Sideways Down" (1966). From 1966 the UK underground scene based in North London supported new acts with psychedelic influences, including Pink Floyd, Traffic and Soft Machine. The same year saw the début albums of rock bands Cream and The Jimi Hendrix Experience which featured extended solo improvisation sections using heavily distorted and sound-processed electric guitar, which went on to become a key feature of psychedelic music.
As psychedelia emerged as a mainstream and commercial force, particularly through the work of the Beatles and the Beach Boys, it began to influence pop music, which incorporated the sounds of sitars, fuzz guitars, and tape effects. The Beach Boys were a distinctive influence for their vocal harmonies. Their 1966 single "Good Vibrations" was one of the first pop songs to incorporate psychedelic lyrics and sounds, making use of a Electro-Theremin (an easier to manipulate version of a Theremin). American pop-oriented bands that followed in this vein included Electric Prunes, Strawberry Alarm Clock and Blues Magoos. Psychedelic sounds were also incorporated into the output of early bubblegum pop acts like The Monkees and The Lemon Pipers. Scottish folk singer Donovan's transformation to 'electric' music gave him a 1966 pop hit with "Sunshine Superman", one of the earliest overtly psychedelic pop records. Pink Floyd's "Arnold Layne" and "See Emily Play", both written by Syd Barrett, helped set the pattern for psychedelic pop in Britain.
Psychedelic rock reached its peak in the last years of the decade. In 1967, the Beatles released Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, including the track "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" and the Rolling Stones responded later that year with their only psychedelic album Their Satanic Majesties Request. Pink Floyd produced The Piper at the Gates of Dawn. In America the Summer of Love was prefaced by the Human Be-In event and reached its peak at the Monterey Pop Festival, the latter helping to make major American stars of Hendrix and The Who, whose single "I Can See for Miles" delved into psychedelic territory. Key recordings included Jefferson Airplane's Surrealistic Pillow and The Doors' Strange Days. These trends climaxed in the 1969 Woodstock festival, which saw performances by most of the major psychedelic acts, including Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Santana.
More pop-oriented psychedelia was popular among the emerging bands in Australia and New Zealand, including The Easybeats, which formed in Sydney but who recorded their international hit "Friday on My Mind" (1966) in London and remained there for their forays into psychedelic-tinged pop until they disbanded in 1970. A similar path was pursued by the Bee Gees, formed in Brisbane, but whose first album Bee Gees 1st (1967), recorded in London, gave them three major hit singles and contained folk, rock and psychedelic elements, heavy influenced by the Beatles. The Twilights, formed in Adelaide, also made a trip to London, recording a series of minor hits, absorbing the psychedelic scene, to return home to produce covers of Beatles' songs, complete with sitar, and the concept album Once upon a Twilight (1968). The most successful New Zealand band, The La De Das, produced the psychedelic pop concept album The Happy Prince (1968), based on the Oscar Wilde children's classic, but failed to break through in Britain and the wider world.
In the late 1960s, psychedelic music began to have an impact on African American musicians, particularly the stars of the Motown label. Influenced by the civil rights movement, psychedelic soul had a darker and more political edge than much acid rock. Building on the funk sound of James Brown, it was pioneered by Sly and the Family Stone with songs like "Dance to the Music" (1968), "Everyday People" (1968) and "I Want to Take You Higher" (1969) and The Temptations with "Cloud Nine" (1968), "Runaway Child, Running Wild" (1969) and "Psychedelic Shack" (1969). Others soon followed like the Supremes with "Love Child" (1968) and "Stoned Love" (1970), The Chambers Brothers with "Time has come today" (1966, but charting in 1968), The 5th Dimension with a cover of Laura Nyro's "Stoned Soul Picnic" (1968), Edwin Starr's "War" (1970) and the Undisputed Truth's "Smiling Faces Sometimes" (1971). George Clinton's interdependent Funkadelic and Parliament ensembles and their various spin-offs, took the genre to its most extreme lengths making funk almost a religion in the 1970s, producing over forty singles, including three in the US top ten, and three platinum albums.
Late 1960s: Decline
By the end of the 1960s, the trend of exploring psychedelia in music was largely in retreat. LSD was declared illegal in the US and UK in 1966. The linking of the murders of Sharon Tate and Leno and Rosemary LaBianca by The Manson Family to Beatles songs such as "Helter Skelter" contributed to an anti-hippie backlash. The Altamont Free Concert in California, headlined by The Rolling Stones on December 6, 1969, did not turn out to be a positive milestone in the psychedelic music scene, as was anticipated; instead, it became notorious for the fatal stabbing of a black teenager Meredith Hunter by Hells Angel security guards.
Early "acid casualties" in the music scene, including Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys, Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones, Peter Green of Fleetwood Mac and Syd Barrett of Pink Floyd, helped to shift the focus of the respective bands of which they had been leading figures away from psychedelia. Some bands which had earlier led the psychedelic rock trends, such as the Jimi Hendrix Experience and Cream, broke up. Jimi Hendrix died in London in September 1970, shortly after recording Band of Gypsies (1970), Janis Joplin died of a heroin overdose in October 1970. Jim Morrison of the Doors died in Paris in July 1971. Many surviving acts moved away from psychedelia into either more back-to-basics "roots rock"; into traditional-based, pastoral or whimsical folk; the wider experimentation of progressive rock; or into riff-laden heavy rock. By the early 1970s psychedelic-soul influenced records were losing their grip on the charts and most of the major artists began to look for inspiration elsewhere.
After the death of Brian Epstein and the unpopular surreal television film, Magical Mystery Tour (1967), the Beatles returned to a raw style with The Beatles (1968) and Let It Be (1970), before their eventual break-up. The "back to basics" trend was also evident in the Rolling Stones' subsequent albums, from Beggar's Banquet (1968) to Exile on Main St. (1972). English folk rock outfit Fairport Convention released Liege and Lief in 1969, turning away from American-influenced folk rock toward a sound based on traditional British music and founding the subgenre of electric folk, to be followed by bands like Steeleye Span and Fotheringay. The psychedelic-influenced and whimsical strand of British folk continued into the 1970s with acts including Comus, Mellow Candle, Nick Drake, The Incredible String Band, Forest and Trees, Kevin Ayers of Soft Machine and with Syd Barrett's two solo albums.
1970s–present: Influence and revival
Many of the British musicians and bands that had embraced psychedelia moved into creating the progressive rock genre in the 1970s, including Pink Floyd, Soft Machine and members of Yes. King Crimson's album In the Court of the Crimson King (1969), has been seen as an important link between psychedelia and progressive rock. While some bands such as Hawkwind maintained an explicitly psychedelic course into the 1970s, most bands dropped the psychedelic elements in favour of embarking on wider experimentation. As German bands from the psychedelic movement moved away from their psychedelic roots and placed increasing emphasis on electronic instrumentation, these groups, including Kraftwerk, Tangerine Dream, Can and Faust, developed a distinctive brand of electronic rock, known as kosmische musik, or in the British press as "Krautrock". Their adoption of electronic synthesisers, along with the musical styles explored by Brian Eno in his keyboard playing with Roxy Music, had a major influence on subsequent development of electronic rock. The incorporation of jazz styles into the music of bands like Soft Machine and Can, also contributed to the development of the emerging jazz rock sound of bands such as Colosseum.
Psychedelic rock, with its distorted guitar sound, extended solos, and adventurous compositions, was an important bridge between blues-oriented rock and the later emergence of the heavy metal genre. Two former guitarists with the Yardbirds, Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page, moved on to form key acts in the new blues rock-heavy metal genre, The Jeff Beck Group and Led Zeppelin, respectively. Other major pioneers of the heavy metal genre had begun as blues-based psychedelic bands, including Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, Judas Priest and UFO.
Psychedelic music also contributed to the origins of glam rock. In 1970, when Marc Bolan moved away from his psychedelic folk style and formed the rock band T. Rex, he became the first "glam" rock star. From 1971, David Bowie moved on from his early psychedelic explorations to develop his Ziggy Stardust persona, which incorporated elements of professional make-up, mime and performance into his act. Psychedelic influences lasted a little longer in pop music, stretching into the early 1970s and playing a major part in the creation of Bubblegum pop. Similarly, psychedelic soul continued into the early 1970s, and its sounds were incorporated into funk music and eventually became part of the disco music style.
Psychedelic rock began to be revived in the later 1970s by bands of the post-punk scene, including Siouxsie and the Banshees, the Teardrop Explodes, Echo and the Bunnymen, The Church, and the Soft Boys. In the US in the early 1980s, these bands were joined by the Paisley Underground movement, based in Los Angeles, with acts like Dream Syndicate, The Bangles and Rain Parade. There were occasional mainstream acts that dabbled in neo-psychedelia, including Prince's mid-1980s work and some of Lenny Kravitz's 1990s output, but it has mainly been an influence on alternative and indie-rock bands. After the breakup of the Teardrop Explodes Julian Cope continued an esoteric psychedelic course in his solo career.
In the 1990s the Elephant 6 collective, including acts like The Apples in Stereo, The Olivia Tremor Control, Neutral Milk Hotel, Elf Power and Of Montreal, produced eclectic psychedelic rock and folk. Other alternative rock acts that delved into psychedelic territory included Australian bands The Church, Tyrnaround, and The Moffs; Nick Saloman's Bevis Frond, the space rock of Spacemen 3 and diverse acts like Mercury Rev, the Flaming Lips and Super Furry Animals. In the early 1990s, stoner rock emerged, combining elements of psychedelic rock, blues-rock and doom metal. Typically using slow-to-mid tempo and featuring low-tuned guitars in a bass-heavy sound, with melodic vocals, and 'retro' production, it was pioneered by the Californian bands Kyuss and Sleep. In the UK The Stone Roses debut single in 1988 set out a catchy neo-psychedelic guitar pop, helping to create the Madchester scene, and influencing the early sound of 1990s Britpop bands like Blur, and Oasis, who drew on 1960s psychedelic pop and rock, particularly on the album Standing on the Shoulder of Giants. In the immediate post-Britpop era Kula Shaker incorporated swirling, guitar-heavy sounds of late-1960s psychedelia and with Indian mysticism and spirituality. In the new millennium neo-psychedelia was continued by bands directly emulating the sounds of the 1960s like Tame Impala and The Essex Green, while bands like Animal Collective applied an experimental approach that combined genres from the 1960s and the present.
Psychedelic hip hop emerged at the end of the 1980s as rappers began to sample mellower grooves, with De La Soul's debut album 3 Feet High and Rising (1989). White rappers Beastie Boys double album Paul's Boutique (1989) moved towards a more sophisticated sound that incorporated diverse influences, including Curtis Mayfield and Pink Floyd. In the 1990s there was considerable experimentation and cross-fertilisation between psychedelia and rap. The Jungle Brothers merged hip hop and acid house on "I'll House You" (1990) and A Tribe Called Quest used samples of jazz and Lou Reed on "I Left My Wallet in El Segundo" (1990). Digital Underground incorporated elements of sex, science fiction and druggy in-jokes of P-Funk into their stage shows, while Arrested Development were influenced by Sly and the Family Stone. Other acts influenced by psychedelia included Digable Planets, Divine Styler and Cypress Hill. P.M. Dawn, an ensemble formed by brothers Attrell and Jarrett Cordes drew on diverse samples of modern pop music from the Beatles, through Sly and the Family Stone to Spandau Ballet. Their Of the Heart, of the Soul and of the Cross: The Utopian Experience (1991) and The Bliss Album...? (Vibrations of Love and Anger and the Ponderance of Life and Existence) (1993) were hits in the US and UK and crossed over into the rave scene. From the late 1990s other artists working in this area included RZA, The Roots, D'Angelo and Erykah Badu.
Rave music may either refer to the late 1980s/early 1990s genres of house, acid house and techno, the first genres of music in the world to be played at raves, or any other genre of electronic dance music that may be played at a rave. The genre "rave", also known as "hardcore" by early ravers, first appeared amongst the UK acid movement during the late 1980s at warehouse parties and other underground venues, as well as on UK pirate radio stations. The genre would develop into oldschool hardcore, which lead onto newer forms of rave music such as drum and bass and 2-step, as well as other hardcore techno genres, such as gabber, hardstyle and happy hardcore. In the late 1980s, rave culture began to filter through from English expatriates and disc jockeys who would visit Continental Europe. American raves began in the 1990s in New York City.
Acid house originated in the mid-1980s in the house music style of Chicago DJs like DJ Pierre, Adonis, Farley Jackmaster Funk and Phuture, the last of which coined the term on his "Acid Trax" (1987). It mixed elements of house with the "squelchy" sounds and deep basslines produced by the Roland TB-303 synthesizer. As singles began to reach the UK the sound was re-created, beginning in small warehouse parties held in London in 1986–87. During 1988 in the Second Summer of Love it hit the mainstream as thousands of clubgoers travelled to mass raves. The genre then began to penetrate the British pop charts with hits for M/A/R/R/S, S'Express, and Technotronic by the early 1990s, before giving way to the popularity of trance music.
Trance music originated in the German techno and hardcore scenes of the early 1990s. It emphasized brief and repeated synthesizer lines with minimal rhythmic changes and occasional synthesizer atmospherics, with the aim of putting listeners into a trance-like state. Derived from acid house and techno music, it developed in Germany and the Netherlands with singles including "Energy Flash" by Joey Beltram and "The Ravesignal" by CJ Bolland. This was followed by releases by Robert Leiner, Sun Electric, Aphex Twin and most influentially the techno-trance released by the Harthouse label, including the much emulated "Acperience 1" (1992) by duo Hardfloor. Having gained some popularity in the UK in the early 1990s it was eclipsed by the appearance of new genres of electronic music such as trip hop and jungle, before taking off again towards the end of the decade and beginning to dominate the clubs, with DJs including Paul Oakenfold, Pete Tong, Tony De Vit, Danny Rampling, Sasha, Judge Jules and in the US Christopher Lawrence and Kimball Collins. It soon began to fragment into a number of subgenres, including progressive trance, acid trance, goa trance, psychedelic trance, hard trance and uplifting trance.
In Britain in the 2000s (decade), the combination of indie rock with dance-punk was dubbed "new rave" in publicity for The Klaxons, and the term was picked up and applied by the NME to a number of bands, including Trash Fashion, New Young Pony Club, Hadouken!, Late of the Pier, Test Icicles, and Shitdisco. It formed a scene with a similar visual aesthetic to earlier rave music, emphasizing visual effects: glowsticks, neon and other lights were common, and followers of the scene often dressed in extremely bright and fluorescent coloured clothing.
- C. Heylin, The Act You've Known For All These Years: the Life, and Afterlife, of Sgt. Pepper (London: Canongate Books, 2007), ISBN 1-84195-955-3, p. 85.
- R. Rubin and J. P. Melnick, Immigration and American Popular Culture: an Introduction (New York, NY: New York University Press, 2007), ISBN 0-8147-7552-7, pp. 162–4.
- M. Hicks, Sixties Rock: Garage, Psychedelic, and Other Satisfactions Music in American Life (Chicago, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2000), ISBN 0-252-06915-3, pp. 64–6.
- G. Thompson, Please Please Me: Sixties British Pop, Inside Out (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), ISBN 0-19-533318-7, p. 197.
- V. Bogdanov, C. Woodstra and S. T. Erlewine, All Music Guide to Rock: the Definitive Guide to Rock, Pop, and Soul (Milwaukee, WI: Backbeat Books, 3rd edn., 2002), ISBN 0-87930-653-X, pp. 1322–3.
- P. Prown, H. P. Newquist and J. F. Eiche, Legends of Rock Guitar: the Essential Reference of Rock's Greatest Guitarists (London: Hal Leonard Corporation, 1997), ISBN 0-7935-4042-9, p. 48.
- D. W. Marshall, Mass Market Medieval: Essays on the Middle Ages in Popular Culture (Jefferson NC: McFarland, 2007), ISBN 0-7864-2922-4, p. 32.
- S. Borthwick and R. Moy, Popular Music Genres: an Introduction (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2004), ISBN 0-7486-1745-0, pp. 52–4.
- J. DeRogatis, Turn On Your Mind: Four Decades of Great Psychedelic Rock (Milwaukie, Michigan: Hal Leonard, 2003), ISBN 0-634-05548-8, p. 230.
- Richie Unterberger, Samb Hicks, Jennifer Dempsey, "Music USA: the rough guide" (Rough Guides, 1999), ISBN 1-85828-421-X, p. 391.
- G. St. John, Rave Culture and Religion (Abingdon: Routledge, 2004), ISBN 0-415-31449-6, p. 52.
- J. Campbell, This is the Beat Generation: New York, San Francisco, Paris (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2001), ISBN 0-520-23033-7.
- R. Worth, Illegal Drugs: Condone Or Incarcerate? (Marshall Cavendish, 2009), ISBN 0-7614-4234-0, p. 30.
- Anne Applebaum, "Did The Death Of Communism Take Koestler And Other Literary Figures With It?", The Huffington Post, 26 January 2010.
- "Out-Of-Sight! SMiLE Timeline". Archived from the original on 1 February 2010. Retrieved 30 October 2011.
- L. R. Veysey, The Communal Experience: Anarchist and Mystical Communities in Twentieth-Century America (Chicago IL, University of Chicago Press, 1978), ISBN 0-226-85458-2, p. 437.
- J. DeRogatis, Turn On Your Mind: Four Decades of Great Psychedelic Rock (Milwaukie, Michigan: Hal Leonard, 2003), ISBN 0-634-05548-8, pp. 8–9.
- Gilliland, John (1969). "Show 41 – The Acid Test: Psychedelics and a sub-culture emerge in San Francisco. [Part 1] : UNT Digital Library" (audio). Pop Chronicles. Digital.library.unt.edu. Retrieved 6 May 2011.
- M. Hicks, Sixties Rock: Garage, Psychedelic, and Other Satisfactions Music in American Life (Chicago, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2000), ISBN 0-252-06915-3, p. 60.
- J. Mann, Turn on and Tune in: Psychedelics, Narcotics and Euphoriants (Royal Society of Chemistry, 2009), ISBN 1-84755-909-3, p. 87.
- R. Unterberger, Eight Miles High: Folk-Rock's Flight from Haight-Ashbury to Woodstock (London: Backbeat Books, 2003), ISBN 0-87930-743-9, pp. 11–13.
- T. Albright, Art in the San Francisco Bay area, 1945–1980: an Illustrated History (University of California Press, 1985), ISBN 0-520-05193-9, p. 166–9.
- J. Shepherd, Continuum Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World: Media, Industry and Society (New York, NY: Continuum, 2003), ISBN 0-8264-6321-5, p. 211.
- M. Campbell, Popular Music in America: And the Beat Goes on (Boston, MA: Cengage Learning, 3rd edn., 2008), ISBN 0-495-50530-7, pp. 212–3.
- M. Hicks, Sixties Rock: Garage, Psychedelic, and Other Satisfactions (University of Illinois Press, 2000), ISBN 978-0-252-06915-4, pp 59–60.
- Unterberger, Richie. "The Great San Bernardino Birthday Party & Other Excursions — Album Review". Allmusic. Rovi Corp. Retrieved 25 July 2013.
- Unterberger, Richie. "Sandy Bull — Biography". Allmusic. Rovi Corp. Retrieved July 16, 2013.
- Greenwald, Matthew. "Fantasias for Guitar & Banjo — Album Review". Allmusic. Rovi Corp. Retrieved July 16, 2013.
- C. Grunenberg and J. Harris, Summer of Love: Psychedelic Art, Social Crisis and Counterculture in the 1960s (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2005), ISBN 0-85323-919-3, p. 137.
- J. DeRogatis, Turn On Your Mind: Four Decades of Great Psychedelic Rock (Milwaukee, WI: Hal Leonard, 2003), ISBN 978-0-634-05548-5, pp. 120.
- Longman, Molly (May 20, 2016). "Had LSD Never Been Discovered Over 75 Years Ago, Music History Would Be Entirely Different". Music.mic.
- "Though Lennon had yet to launch himself into his fullscale LSD period, he evidently felt sufficiently versed in the "counterculture" associated with the drug to poke fun at those who took it without changing their outlook. The lyric of Day Tripper, he later explained, was an attack on "weekend hippies" – those who donned floral shirts and headbands to listen to "acid rock" between 9-to-5 office-jobs", in I. MacDonald, Revolution in the Head: The Beatles' Records and the Sixties (London: Vintage, 3rd edn., 2008), ISBN 978-0-09-952679-7, pp. 167–8.
- P. Buckley, The Rough Guide to Rock (London: Rough Guides, 2003), ISBN 1-84353-105-4, p. 1144.
- E. Macan, Rocking the Classics: English Progressive Rock and the Counterculture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), ISBN 0-19-509887-0, p. 20.
- "Psychedelic pop", Allmusic, retrieved 27 June 2010.
- T. Holmes, Electronic and Experimental Music: Technology, Music, and Culture (London: Taylor & Francis, 3rd edn., 2008), ISBN 0-415-95781-8.
- J. DeRogatis, Turn On Your Mind: Four Decades of Great Psychedelic Rock (Milwaukie, MI: Hal Leonard, 2003), ISBN 0-634-05548-8, pp. 35–9.
- V. Bogdanov, C. Woodstra and S. T. Erlewine, All Music Guide to Rock: the Definitive Guide to Rock, Pop, and Soul (Milwaukee, WI: Backbeat Books, 3rd edn., 2002), ISBN 0-87930-653-X, pp. 646 and 754-5.
- J. Kitts and B. Tolinski, eds, Guitar World Presents Pink Floyd (Milwaukee, WI: Hal Leonard, 2002), ISBN 0-634-03286-0, p. 6.
- N. Schaffner, Saucerful of Secrets: the Pink Floyd Odyssey (London: Dell, 1992), ISBN 0-385-30684-9, p. 65.
- W. E. Studwell and D. F. Lonergan, The Classic Rock and Roll Reader: Rock Music from its Beginnings to the mid-1970s (Abingdon: Routledge, 1999), ISBN 0-7890-0151-9, p. 223.
- J. E. Perone, Music of the Counterculture Era American History Through Music (Westwood, CT: Greenwood, 2004), ISBN 0-313-32689-4, p. 24.
- A. Bennett, Remembering Woodstock (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), ISBN 0-7546-0714-3.
- V. Bogdanov, C. Woodstra and S. T. Erlewine, All Music Guide to Rock: the Definitive Guide to Rock, Pop, and Soul (Milwaukee, WI: Backbeat Books, 3rd edn., 2002), ISBN 0-87930-653-X, pp. 349–50.
- V. Bogdanov, C. Woodstra and S. T. Erlewine, All Music Guide to Rock: the Definitive Guide to Rock, Pop, and Soul (Milwaukee, WI: Backbeat Books, 3rd edn., 2002), ISBN 0-87930-653-X, pp. 85–6.
- T. Rawlings, Then, Now and Rare British Beat 1960–1969 (London: Omnibus Press, 2002), ISBN 0-7119-9094-8, p. 191.
- V. Bogdanov, C. Woodstra and S. T. Erlewine, All Music Guide to Rock: the Definitive Guide to Rock, Pop, and Soul (Milwaukee, WI: Backbeat Books, 3rd edn., 2002), ISBN 0-87930-653-X, pp. 635–6.
- "Psychedelic soul", Allmusic, retrieved 27 June 2010.
- G. Case, Out of Our Heads: Rock 'n' Roll Before the Drugs Wore Off (Milwaukie, MI: Hal Leonard Corporation, 2010), ISBN 0-87930-967-9, pp. 70–1.
- J. S. Harrington, Sonic Cool: the Life & Death of Rock 'n' Roll (Milwaukie, MI: Hal Leonard Corporation, 2002), ISBN 0-634-02861-8, pp. 249–50.
- V. Bogdanov, C. Woodstra and S. T. Erlewine, All Music Guide to Rock: the Definitive Guide to Rock, Pop, and Soul (Milwaukee, WI: Backbeat Books, 3rd edn., 2002), ISBN 0-87930-653-X, p. 226.
- I. Inglis, The Beatles, Popular Music and Society: a Thousand Voices (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000), ISBN 0-312-22236-X, p. 46.
- D. A. Nielsen, Horrible Workers: Max Stirner, Arthur Rimbaud, Robert Johnson, and the Charles Manson Circle: Studies in Moral Experience and Cultural Expression (Lanham MD: Lexington Books, 2005), ISBN 0-7391-1200-7, p. 84.
- J. Wiener, Come Together: John Lennon in his Time (Chicago IL: University of Illinois Press, 1991), ISBN 0-252-06131-4, pp. 124–6.
- "Garage rock", Billboard, Jul 29, 2006, 118 (30), p. 11.
- D. Gomery, Media in America: the Wilson Quarterly Reader, (Washington DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2nd edn., 1998), ISBN 0-943875-87-0, pp. 181–2.
- S. Whiteley, Too Much Too Young: Popular Music, Age and Gender (London: Routledge, 2005), ISBN 0-415-31029-6, p. 147.
- B. Sweers, Electric Folk: The Changing Face of English Traditional Music (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), ISBN 0-19-515878-4, pp. 45–9.
- K. Kallioniemi, "Peter Gabriel and the question of being eccentric", in M. Drewett, S. Hill, K. Kärki, eds, Peter Gabriel, from Genesis to Growing Up (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2010), ISBN 0-7546-6521-6, p. 35.
- J. DeRogatis, Turn on Your Mind: Four Decades of Great Psychedelic Rock (Milwaukie MI, Hal Leonard, 2003), ISBN 0-634-05548-8, p. 120.
- J. DeRogatis, Turn on Your Mind: Four Decades of Great Psychedelic Rock (Milwaukie, MI: Hal Leonard, 2003), ISBN 0-634-05548-8, p. 169.
- V. Bogdanov, C. Woodstra and S. T. Erlewine, All Music Guide to Rock: the Definitive Guide to Rock, Pop, and Soul (Milwaukee, WI: Backbeat Books, 3rd edn., 2002), ISBN 0-87930-653-X, p. 515.
- P. Bussy, Kraftwerk: Man, Machine and Music (London: SAF, 3rd end., 2004), ISBN 0-946719-70-5, pp. 15–17.
- V. Bogdanov, C. Woodstra and S. T. Erlewine, All Music Guide to Rock: the Definitive Guide to Rock, Pop, and Soul (Milwaukee, WI: Backbeat Books, 3rd edn., 2002), ISBN 0-87930-653-X, pp. 1330–1.
- A. Blake, The Land Without Music: Music, Culture and Society in Twentieth-Century Britain (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997), ISBN 0-7190-4299-2, pp. 154–5.
- B. A. Cook, Europe Since 1945: an Encyclopedia, Volume 2 (London: Taylor & Francis, 2001), ISBN 0-8153-1336-5, p. 1324.
- J. DeRogatis, Turn on Your Mind: Four Decades of Great Psychedelic Rock (Milwaukie, MI: Hal Leonard, 2003), ISBN 0-634-05548-8, p. 212.
- P. Auslander, Performing Glam Rock: Gender and Theatricality in Popular Music (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2006), ISBN 0-472-06868-7, p. 196.
- P. Auslander, "Watch that man David Bowie: Hammersmith Odeon, London, July 3, 1973" in I. Inglis, ed., Performance and Popular Music: History, Place and Time (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), ISBN 0-7546-4057-4, p. 72.
- J. Marszalek, Siouxsie & the Banshees reissues. Thequietus.com. retrieved 19 July 2011
- "Neo-psychedelia", Allmusic, retrieved 2 July 2010.
- R. Unterberger, S. Hicks and J. Dempsey, Music USA: the Rough Guide (London: Rough Guides, 1999), ISBN 1-85828-421-X, p. 401.
- P. du Noyer, "Subversive dreamers: Liverpool songwriting from the Beatles to the Zutons", in M. Murphy and D. Rees-Jones, Writing Liverpool: Essays and Interviews (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2007), ISBN 1-84631-073-3, p. 245.
- D. Walk, "The Apples in Stereo: Smiley Smile", CMJ New Music, Sep 1995 (25), p. 10.
- G. Sharpe-Young, "Kyuss biography", MusicMight, retrieved 10 December 2007.
- "Stoner Metal", Allmusic, retrieved 22 May 2009.
- E. Rivadavia "Kyuss", Allmusic, retrieved 10 December 2007.
- E. Rivadavia, "Sleep", Allmusic, retrieved 22 May 2009.
- S. Erlewine, "The Stone Roses" Allmusic, retrieved 6 July 2011.
- S. Erlewine, "Blur" Allmusic, retrieved 6 July 2011.
- S. T. Erlewine, Standing on the Shoulder of Giants, Allmusic, retrieved 7 July 2010.
- S. Erlewine, "Kula Shaker" Allmusic, retrieved 06 July 2011.
- J. Macgregor, "Tame Impala", Allmusic, retrieved 26 January 2011.
- J. Ankeny, "The Green Essex", Allmusic, retrieved 26 January 2011.
- J. C. Monger, "Animal Collective: biography", retrieved 13 March 2012.
- J. DeRogatis, Turn On Your Mind: Four Decades of Great Psychedelic Rock (Milwaukie, Michigan: Hal Leonard, 2003), ISBN 0-634-05548-8, pp. 409–15.
- J. DeRogatis, Turn On Your Mind: Four Decades of Great Psychedelic Rock (Milwaukie, Michigan: Hal Leonard, 2003), ISBN 0-634-05548-8, pp. 421.
- "Acid house", Allmusic, retrieved 27 June 2010.
- "Trance", Allmusic, retrieved 27 June 2010.
- K. Empire, "Rousing rave from the grave" The Observer, 5 October 2006, retrieved 9 January 2008.
- P. Flynn, "Here We Glo Again", Times Online, 12 November 2006, retrieved 13 February 2009.
- J. Harris, "New Rave? Old Rubbish", The Guardian, 13 October 2006, retrieved 31 March 2007.
- O. Adams, "Music: Rave On, Just Don't Call It 'New Rave'", The Guardian, 5 January 2007, retrieved 2 September 2008.
- The Guardian, 3 February 2007. "The Future's Bright ...", retrieved 31 March 2007.