'60s Rock

The beauty of '60s rock lies in the fact that it was all over the map, an aural magic carpet ride emanating from transistor radios all over the world. Emerging from the rock 'n' roll era that had given us teen idols like Eddie Cochrane and Cliff Richard, a more dangerous breed of rocker began to flourish, and experimentalism was rife, so that folk rock ("Eight Miles High") coexisted with heavy slabs of psych ("Purple Haze", "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida") and generational anthems ("Like a Rolling Stone"). From sex to drugs to revolution, these songs mark a moment when music was both medium and message.

The dreamers wake up, in our '60s rock Next Steps.

Rock 'n' roll defined the tumultuous '60s like no other music could — Buffalo Springfield's "For What It's Worth" (1967) was conceived by Stephen Stills as a direct reaction to tension between teenagers and the police, after the Pandora's Box club on L.A.'s Sunset Strip was shut down. "Cold Turkey" (1969), John Lennon's second solo single followed a bout of heroin withdrawal and reflected the acknowledgment of hard reality that rounded off a decade of free-spirited idealism. And the MC5's "Kick Out the Jams", also released in '69, would become, over time, a proto-punk landmark.

In Deep Cuts, we showcase the tracks that defined '60s rock innovation.

Our Deep Cuts selection offers up the kind of rock that set out to expand the mind and open up the world to fresh musical possibilities. The extended instrumental jam, "East West", was considered groundbreaking when it was first released by the Paul Butterfield Blues Band in 1966 — from that moment on, the gates of fusion and blues-rock improvisation were well and truly open. Three years later Genesis (fronted by Peter Gabriel) would make its debut with From Genesis to Revelation featuring "In the Beginning", while the British folk rock of Pentangle — "Waltz" appeared on debut LP The Pentangle — interwove elements of jazz and blues like no band before or since.

These songs form a dot-to-dot picture that charts pop music's mutation into rock. Dylan's epic "Like a Rolling Stone" broke through radio's standard three-minute barrier, while the unexpurgated version of the Doors' "Light My Fire" helped pave the way for politically outspoken acts like Jimi Hendrix and Crosby, Stills & Nash, in the process taking us from an age of fun, innocence, and idealism to the darker era of "The Weight", "Bad Moon Rising", and "Sympathy for the Devil". The world went through incredible upheaval during the '60s, and the music of the time captured every tremor of those seismic shifts.