If you were going to use one artist as an example of the shifting musical and cultural tides of the 1960s and '70s,
Merrell Fankhauser wouldn't be a bad choice. In 1964, when America was just inching into the mindset of the 1960s as the '50s well and truly ended,
Fankhauser was playing sharp surf music with
the Impacts, and moved on to a strong pop/rock band called
Merrell & the Exiles, whose music was just a bit too polished to truly qualify as garage rock. As rock was getting more sophisticated and youth culture embracing a new sense of cool, he formed
Fapardokly in 1966, whose cleverly crafted folk-rock reflected a more ambitious outlook. A couple years later, America was turning on, tuning in, and dropping out, and in 1968 he was exploring psychedelia with a pop chaser in
Merrell Fankhauser & H.M.S. Bounty. Once the bloom was off the rose of the counterculture,
Fankhauser had retreated to Hawaii, and in 1971 he was exploring new levels of consciousness with
Mu, a band devoted to the myth of a lost continent with a sideline obsession with UFOs. By the end of the 1970s, he'd thrown off many of the trappings of hippie outlook, and as a solo artist he was making sophisticated soft rock with a slightly mournful, introspective overtone. While this might make it sound like
Fankhauser was a man who devoted his career to chasing trends, his music doesn't sound that way; he wasn't an opportunist so much as a sincere man of his times, whose changes were in sync with the larger culture. Throughout it all, he's shown an innate melodic intelligence, a sure hand at guitar playing that doesn't sink into flash for its own sake, and a habit of surrounding himself with talented and simpatico accompanists.
The long, occasionally strange trip of
Fankhauser's career in the 1960s and '70s gets a thorough overview in
Goin' Round in My Mind: The Merrell Fankhauser Anthology 1964-1979, a six-disc box set that gathers a very healthy majority of his major recordings from that period, and given that much of his catalog has a habit of dropping in and out of print without warning, having so much of his work in one place makes this a boon for fans. While the styles shift from disc to disc, the level of quality is admirably consistent, through the highlights are
Fapardokly's well-crafted folk-rock and the imaginative weirdness of
Mu's two albums, the first built on a foundation of slightly twisted blues and the second a journey into prog rock and the mysteries of flying saucers.
David Wells' extensive liner notes offer an excellent history of
Fankhauser's life in music, with plenty of quotes from the man himself, and the remastering is clear and pleasing. If you have any interest in this elusive hero of 1960s rock,
Goin' Round in My Mind is as good a one-stop shopping place as you could ask for. ~ Mark Deming
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