1965’s Top Electrifying Moments in Music Included The Beatles, Motown & A Girl From Ipanema

1965 Music collage

60 years ago, the Beatles, the Who, the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan and the Beach Boys were just some of the many movers and shakers who changed music forever as part of the ’60s music scene. The music that dominated 1965, when seen now through the perspective of time, reflected a culture in the midst of a sea change, linking the paranoia and fear of the late 1950s and early ’60s with the anger, action, and powerful inspiration of the rest of the decade. Also, a lot of it really, really rocked. Here are 10 of the year’s most reflective releases in a musical timeline.

February

The Ring’s the Thing

Britain’s New Musical Express got the facts wrong when they reported, on Feb. 12, that the Beatles were set to star in a film about a 1,400-mile horse race in the Old West. They did, however, get it right that the Fab Four were beginning work on their follow-up to the innocent fun of A Hard Day’s Night. This movie would be just as madcap but would have a sense of suspicion in the plot, as if all the chasing by fans in the first film wasn’t so funny anymore. Based around the John Lennon-penned paean to paranoia, Help! would concern a strange government trying to remove a giant stone ring from Ringo’s hand, by any means necessary. The film would come out Aug. 11 in New York, at the height of summer.

March 6

Motor City Mavens

Motown held sway over the Billboard charts for a considerable part of the year, beginning on March 6 with the inevitable climb of “My Girl” to No. 1. The ballad, performed by the Temptations, was cowritten by Miracles singer Smokey Robinson (and his vocal group cohort Ronald White), which said a lot about the all-for-one philosophy of Berry Gordy’s music company. “My Girl” would start a parade of other top-ranked hits throughout 1965, including three by the Supremes: “Stop! In the Name of Love” (which hit No. 1 on March 21), “Back in My Arms Again” (on June 6) and “I Hear a Symphony,” their sixth No. 1 single, which reigned starting on Nov. 14.

March 8

Off the Beach

For years, the Beach Boys’ songs had been about fun in the sun. With their March 8 release, The Beach Boys Today!, the California combo began to embrace more mature themes. That came courtesy of bandleader Brian Wilson, whose nervous breakdown on a flight the previous December led him to give up touring — and the surfing themes of the songs — and concentrate on evolving his songwriting, arranging and orchestration. This record, led by the hit “Help Me, Rhonda,” featured the famed Wrecking Crew, a Los Angeles-based group of studio musicians who would continue to play on Beach Boys records through the group’s magnum opus, Pet Sounds.

April

And the Grammys Went To …

… a fascinating array of musicians that April, indicating changes in popular music. The big winners were Stan Getz and João Gilberto, who scored — with an assist from the lilting, haunting voice of Gilberto’s wife, Astrud — major awards with one of the most recorded pop songs in history: “The Girl From Ipanema.” It was proof positive that bossa nova’s captivating and calm rhythms and samba groove had brought a Brazilian calm to bedroom communities. Song of the Year? “Hello, Dolly!” from Louis Armstrong. Best New Artist? The Beatles. An eclectic mix signaling times of change.

June 4

They Tried, and They Tried …

Keith Richards fell asleep one night, guitar in hand, and when he woke up and pushed play on the cassette recorder to see what he’d played the night before, he discovered that he’d invented the greatest rock guitar riff ever — the opening notes to the Rolling Stones’ “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction.” The band’s signature song of sweaty sexual frustration came out June 4, a few months after Mick Jagger, Brian Jones and Bill Wyman had been fined for peeing on the wall of a London gas station.

May 6

A Whole New World … In Song

On May 6, 1965, Carnegie Hall played host to something that may now seem obvious but was then astonishing — the first ever racially integrated orchestra in the U.S. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 had inspired founding conductor Benjamin Steinberg and other players to gather together, race notwithstanding, and begin what came to be called the Symphony of the New World, tabbed at the time as a “historic event in the music life of our time.” The effort, which debuted with 36 Black and 52 white musicians, would last several years.

June

Turning Up the Volume on “Silence”

Pop duo Simon and Garfunkel, comprising (L-R) singer, Art Garfunkel and singer-songwriter, Paul Simon, performing on ITV's 'Ready, Steady, Go!', July 8, 1966

Hulton Archive/Getty Images

Few record producers ever had the chops of Tom Wilson. By June of 1965, he’d already coaxed sounds out of Sun Ra, Bob Dylan and the Clancy Brothers, and was also working with the angelic-voiced New York City duo of Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel. Sometime that month, without the boys’ knowledge, he recorded a rock band with a seemingly appropriate rhythm track and melded it onto the duo’s latest acoustic number, “The Sound of Silence,” and Columbia put it out as a single. Imagine the first time Simon and Garfunkel heard it … then imagine their amazement when it eventually hit No. 1 on New Year’s Day 1966.

July 25

Dylan Gets Amped

It was an outrage! A betrayal! Bob Dylan, the embraced saint of the nylon-stringed guitar protest movement, arrived at the Newport Folk Festival on July 25 … with an electric guitar strapped across his shoulder and the Paul Butterfield Blues Band trading licks for one set. The result was shocking. The finger-snapping faithful turned on him for upping the volume on a career that would soon lead to many top hits, including “Like a Rolling Stone.” In time, he’d tour with his band — who’d come to be known as the Band — and endure shouts of “Judas!” from the audience. Bob’s response? He turned to lead guitarist Robbie Robertson and declared, “Play f—king loud!”

November 5

The Song Never Died Before They Got Old

The stories about it are numerous. Songwriter Pete Townshend was angry at the Queen Mother for having his car towed and he turned that fury into song. Or Townshend wanted to write a song to express how difficult it was for youths to fit into society. Maybe Roger Daltrey stuttered through the lyrics because he couldn’t hear himself singing them in the studio. Or that he’d been inspired by John Lee Hooker’s “Stuttering Blues.” In any case, when the Who’s “My Generation” came out on Nov. 5, it put the band on the map, created a pathway that would lead to punk and introduced a sentence of rebellion that sticks with us today. Townshend did later admit that when he wrote, “I hope I die before I get old,” the “old” meant in his mind “very rich.” Sorry, Pete.

December 3

Beatles, Heart and “Soul”

The year ended the way it began, with another happily embraced release from the Fab Four. But Rubber Soul — released Dec. 3 — was different, yet another indication that music was moving to a less frothy, more introspective place that it would never really return from again. It was an album album, not a collection of singles, a “departure” as Ringo Starr called it, influenced by the drugs they were taking and the sounds they were hearing. George Harrison started playing sitar, John Lennon’s maturing songwriting was evident with “Girl,” Paul McCartney had written “Yesterday” a few months earlier, and suddenly, the studio, not the stage, was the band’s place of growth and experimentation, an example of what you can accomplish with a little help from your friends.

 

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