1965: The Most Revolutionary Year in Music

by Andrew Grant Jackson Narrated by Peter Berkrot

Overview

During twelve unforgettable months in the middle of the turbulent Sixties, America saw the rise of innovative new sounds that would change popular music as we knew it. In 1965: The Most Revolutionary Year in Music, music historian Andrew Grant Jackson (Still the Greatest: The Essential Songs of The Beatles' Solo Careers) chronicles a groundbreaking year of creativity fueled by rivalries between musicians and continents, sweeping social changes, and technological breakthroughs.

Jackson weaves fascinating and often surprising stories into a panoramic narrative of the seismic cultural shifts wrought by the Civil Rights Movement, feminism, Youthquake, the miniskirt, the Pill, psychedelics, and Vietnam. 1965 is a fascinating account of a defining year that produced some of the greatest songs, albums, and artists of all time.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

12/08/2014
Five decades ago, the Beatles kicked off the year 1965 in popular music with “I Feel Fine,” which, music writer Jackson notes, was the first intentional use of feedback on a record. According to this uneven narrative, in 1965, the escalation of the Vietnam War, fighting in the streets of L.A. and Detroit, and political strife fueled a revolution in popular music, igniting the Rolling Stones, the Byrds, the Supremes, Otis Redding, and Buck Owens, among many others. Jackson narrates the well-trod evolution of music season by season and month by month, resulting in sometimes repetitive history. He emphasizes the ways that music develops as one artist hears another’s riff or lyric and builds a new sound on it. For example, when Brian Wilson heard the Lovin’ Spoonful’s “You Didn’t Have to Be So Nice,” it inspired him to write “God Only Knows,” the centerpiece of Pet Sounds. Roger McGuinn went out and bought a Rickenbacker electric 12-string guitar after he heard George Harrison playing one, and the jangly sound soon became McGuinn’s trademark with the Byrds. Despite the book’s flaws, Jackson’s rapid-fire jaunt through the musical highlights of 1965—the rise of Motown and Stax Records, the early music of David Bowie, the arrival of the Bakersfield sound—is a helpful survey for readers unfamiliar with the history of popular music. Agent: Charlie Viney, Viney Agency. (Feb.)

From the Publisher

Jackson has a better ear than a lot of music writers, and one of the best parts of this book is his many casual citings of songs that echo others… a lot of the best insights come from writers who show us the familiar through fresh eyes, as Jackson does.” —The Washington Post

“Written for music lovers who were there and for those who wish they were, the book is a well-researched cultural history that leaves no rolling stone unturned as it meanders through 1965, connecting dots to create a vivid picture of the cultural landscape as it looked a half-century ago ... [Jackson] goes beyond pop, rock, and the new "folk rock," showing how R&B, jazz, and country were also undergoing dramatic change in '65, and he foreshadows glam, funk, disco, and hip hop ... The most revolutionary year in music is under the radar no more.” —The Huffington Post

“[Jackson] documents the dazzling, turbulent times in his thoroughly researched new book ... 1965 is an engrossing account of a meeting at the crossroads of American music history and culture. If you were there, it will take you back; if you weren't, it may make you wish you had been.” —Book Reporter

“[Jackson] beautifully illustrates the overwhelming changes that music, counterculture and politics defined in 1965 ... It does well in explaining the end of a cultural innocence through the events surrounding a profound year in pop culture history.” —Salt Lake City Underground

“1965: The Most Revolutionary Year in Music is a work of synthesis and interpretation... [Jackson] uses his sources well, weaving them into a clear and cohesive narrative, and his own assessments are thoughtful and convincing. He brings a fan's enthusiasm and a critic's considered judgment, which makes the book an enjoyable read and a useful reference work.” —PopMatters

“An entertaining exploration of the cultural events and music that defined a decade.” —Washington Independent Review Of Books

“Utilizing myriad sources, memoirs, and articles, Jackson weaves the story of a year... It will appeal to music fans and those interested in the Sixties.” —Library Journal

“Jackson combines personal stories with a panoramic historical narrative of the music and epic social change of 1965, a defining year for Bob Dylan, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, The Who, James Brown, and John Coltrane.” —Publishers Weekly, "The Most Anticipated Books of Spring 2015"

“Andrew Grant Jackson makes a powerful case…This book is a welcome reminder of some truly great music. Recommended.” —National Review Online

“Jackson's rapid-fire jaunt through the musical highlights of 1965—the rise of Motown and Stax Records, the early music of David Bowie, the arrival of the Bakersfield sound—is a helpful survey for readers unfamiliar with the history of popular music.” —Publishers Weekly

“While Jackson wittily and eloquently presents his findings, he lets his readers decide for themselves whether 1965 was indeed the most revolutionary year in music. Either way, he makes a good case.” —L.A. Weekly

“Jackson presents a thoroughly entertaining romp through one mighty year in pop-music history.” —Booklist

“Lively… Jackson does a solid job covering the hit-makers.” —Kirkus Reviews

“Overall, I liked the book, including the sections on the scandal Bob Dylan caused by going electric; the Beatles going from "She loves you, yea, yea, yea" to "In My Life"; and their direction-changing album Rubber Soul. The author covered a lot more than many of the other books on music history I have read.” —The VVA Veteran

“From the Beatles to the Byrds, from Dylan to the Stones, from the Beach Boys to Motown, author Andrew G. Jackson brilliantly details how the year 1965 was essentially rock and roll's coming-out party. 1965: The Most Revolutionary Year in Music is filled with interesting insight and analysis into how a unique confluence of cultural events helped spur many of popular music's all-time greats to reach their artistic apex, all within one, short, action-packed twelve-month period. If you weren't there the first time around — or even if you were — sit back and prepare yourself for one heck of a ‘ticket to ride.'” —Kent Hartman, author of the Los Angeles Times bestseller The Wrecking Crew: The Inside Story of Rock and Roll's Best-Kept Secret, winner of the Oregon Book Award and the Audie Award

“1965 is a year that pop fans... revere [for] the sheer volume of innovative music and cultural transformation. A half-century on, it all remains astonishing but Jackson takes us through these 365 earth-changing days with steady hands and an addictive style. I started making a playlist almost immediately.” —Marc Spitz, author of We Got the Neutron Bomb and Twee

“The Beatles, Stones, Dylan, Coltrane, The Dead, Velvet Underground, Motown … what wasn't happening in 1965? Andrew Grant Jackson painstakingly chronicles this pivotal year in music with an eye for detail and the big picture – an exciting ride with a timeless soundtrack.” —Joel Selvin, author of Summer of Love

“In 1965: The Most Revolutionary Year in Music, Jackson lays folk, rock, funk, Motown and country music alongside tumultuous social and political events to offer strong, and highly entertaining, support for his argument.” —Arrive Magazine

“Jackson states a compelling case for 1965 as a key turning point in American music and society... [his] eye for eye-opening detail and telling anecdotes makes for entertaining and addictive history, especially for those who can hear the soundtrack of 1965 playing in their head as they read” —BigThink.com
Attachments area

Library Journal

02/15/2015
Author and journalist Jackson (Still the Greatest: The Essential Songs of the Beatles' Solo Careers) makes the case that 1965 was an exceptionally pivotal year in popular music in this entertaining synthesis of cultural and social history. The titans of 1960s rock (Bob Dylan, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones) released some of their most historic recordings during 1965, which are examined closely, as are debuts from the Byrds and the Who and exciting new music from the Beach Boys and the Supremes. Jackson also surveys a wide swath of music encompassing Motown, R&B, pop, folk rock, country, jazz, easy listening, ska, and garage rock, illuminating dozens of songs, albums, and movements that would influence both the present and the future of music. Moving chronologically the author explores the key releases and figures in all these genres and intersperses background sketches on some of the major historical events of this iconic year from civil rights to Vietnam and from the miniskirt to pop art. VERDICT Utilizing myriad sources, memoirs, and articles, Jackson weaves the story of a year in which a combination of forces that included a sense of experimentation and revolution and the thriving of a competitive spirit among musicians combined with rapidly moving social changes to forever shape American musical culture. It will appeal to music fans and those interested in the Sixties.—James Collins, Morristown-Morris Twp. P.L., NJ

Kirkus Reviews

2014-11-20
Lively though superficial survey of the annus mirabilis that brought us "Eve of Destruction," "Like a Rolling Stone" and "Help!"Journalist/filmmaker Jackson doesn't serve up much of a thesis beyond the rather vaporous observation that the year 1965 "is the moment in rock history when the Technicolor butterfly burst out of its black-and-white cocoon." Put another way, enough musicians had dropped acid by then to alter the course of pop music, which had been spinning through cycles of folk, R&B, jazz and rock and was now making a mélange of all of them, courtesy of inchoate groups as far afield from each other as the Mothers of Invention, the Doors and the Velvet Underground—and atop the stack, as ever, the indomitable Beatles. There's not much new in the individual bits of data assembled here, though Jackson's gleanings are sometimes pleasing. High points include the makings of the Beatles' song that would become "Drive My Car," a recording which John Lennon sagely said, "It needs cowbell," and of the anthemic "Eve of Destruction," which the Byrds and their lesser peers the Turtles (then the Tyrtles) rejected—and wisely, for, as the latter's Howard Kaylan said, "whoever recorded this song was doomed to have only one record in their/his career." The year was light on hard-charting women, though Jackson does a solid job covering the hit-makers, including a very young Cher and an ever-so-earnest Mary Travers. The author occasionally stretches a little too far: If a cigar is sometimes just a cigar, then the white shirt of "Satisfaction" might just be a shirt and not an occult commentary on racism, and it's downright silly to claim that Dylan's "From a Buick Six" is "a psychic flash of the motorcycle accident that will take Dylan off the road a year later." Good enough as far as it goes, but Peter Guralnick and Greil Marcus can rest easy, unthreatened by competition here.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940171100131
Publisher:	Tantor Audio
Publication date:	03/13/2018
Edition description:	Unabridged

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