Folk-Rock

When folk-rockers first plugged in, their impulse was to crank up the sirens of protest — that’s why troubadour supreme Bob Dylan looms large here, as he supplies benchmark material for the Byrds and the Turtles, and cranks out “Like a Rolling Stone” recorded in 1965 after his infamous “electric Judas” tour of England. Elsewhere, Simon & Garfunkel go Hollywood with “The Sounds of Silence” — released in 1965 and later used on the soundtrack to The Graduate — Nick Drake charms a magical path through “Pink Moon,” and Crosby, Stills & Nash set wistful affections to a folk-rock beat with “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes.”

Open up your mind some more, with the Next Steps of our Folk-Rock retrospective.

Pictured: Nick Drake, Donovan, Bob Dylan (c. MichaelOchsArchives.com)

In The Basics, we heard a few Dylan-centric sirens of protest. But there was more to folk-rock than shaking an angry daisy chain: a very different type of siren (the kind with downy soft hair and a bewitching gaze) inspired the likes of the Searchers, who covered Jackie DeShannon’s “When You Walk In the Room” in 1964. Fellow English folk-rockers Fairport Convention released “Meet on the Ledge” as their second single (1968) and paired Sandy Denny with Ian Matthews on lead vocals, while Woody Guthrie’s son Arlo added “Coming Into Los Angeles” to his 1969 album, Running Down the Road.

You’ll find more poetry and harmony — dusted with a sprinkling of jangle — in Deep Cuts.

Pictured: Nick Drake, Donovan, Bob Dylan (c. MichaelOchsArchives.com)

Vulnerabilities are laid bare in our final batch of folk-rock classics — befitting an age of uncertainty and self-reflection, the Beau Brummels urged us to wonder “Are You Happy?” in 1968, while the following year, the Strawbs prompted further pondering with “Where Is This Dream of Your Youth.” But don’t think too hard, petal people, because when Tim Buckley’s voice swoops and wheels like an eagle on “Morning Glory,” it’s actually the sound of an invitation being dispatched from the greener pastures just beyond Woodstock, or the far side of a pink moon.

Pictured: Nick Drake, Donovan, Bob Dylan (c. MichaelOchsArchives.com)

Was folk-rock merely Dylan’s songs grafted onto the Beatles’ beat? Yes . . . if you listened to it only during the jingle-jangle morning of the Byrds’ early hits. Organic and endlessly changeable, the basic formula mutated a hundred different ways, with acid-tinted imagery, enraged assaults on the status quo, psychodramas between the sexes, and rose-colored visions of utopia — sometimes all in the same song. Caught between a world they didn’t make and the one they dared to dream, poets like Bob Dylan and Donovan, lovers like Judy Collins and Sonny & Cher, and activists like Phil Ochs spread the one true faith: that their three-minute sermons, delivered from the pulpit of the heart, could transform the future. And they did.

Pictured: Nick Drake, Donovan, Bob Dylan (c. MichaelOchsArchives.com)