issuevoter wrote on Oct 20^th, 2017 at 9:48am:


Indeed.

Chalk and cheese.

Give me Surrealistic Pillow any day, rather than the tripe released by Elvis.

"King of rock 'n' Roll"   

If we look at these specific four years in published recording and performance, it really is only three years, when you subtract the detritous of 1964 and the fact the Beatles stomped on everyone with Sgt. Pepper in  May of 1967. A lot of people confuse electrically amplified music, especially guitar based music, with Rock and Roll. It may have been once, but it certainly was not after Sgt. P.

There's an old joke that if you can remember the 60s, you were not there. Its a stupid joke that implies everyone under 30 was getting high and doing silly things. Most people were not. Although drugs were becoming more common outside of the bohemian underground.

However, the great players on the records I have listed were almost all taking drugs of one kind or another. In practical terms, this had two effects. I am talking about musicians here, not the canarys out front. While musicians might think they were playing great stuff, it could often be somewhat self indulgent, but on the other hand, certain drug influenced frames of mind allowed the dedicated to overcome much of the repertative bordom which is a fact of mastering music and an instrument. The effect of benzadrine and amphetimines is almost palpable in the playing Be Bop musicians like Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, and the all night playing of 1960s Rock luminaries is legendary.

I would not recommend that expediant to any young aspiring musician, because it will kill half of them in the process, like Hendix. But those who survived were able to draw on an intense imersion that can not be replicated without a youthful constitution and a lot of luck, and even so, it did not always go to plan.

Take three of the up and coming guitar players of 1966. Mike Bloomfield, Eric Clapton, and Keith Richards. Bloomfield died of a heroin overdose, while Clapton and Richards probably came close to the same end. However, they both went on to greater success as guitarists. They were pretty much of the same stripe in 1966, but Clapton became a master of the improvised blues solo and Acid Rock. Unfortunately, Richards became one of the “walking wounded.” His creativity as a guitar player suffered all through the 70s and 80s. It was years before he improved beyond the solo on Its All Over Now. That is not to say he didn't write a lot of good songs. Clapton, the guitarist, capitalised on his drug experience, and Richards did in other ways. Drug-taking is a crap-shoot; call it the tumbling dice.