'65 IN 45s! R•P•M
THE TRIPPING POINT
SIXTY YEARS AGO, A SONIC REVOLUTION WAS AFOOT, PALPABLE IN STRANGE NEW RECORDS ON BOTH SIDES OF THE ATLANTIC, THE BEATLES AND THE WHO JOINED BY THE SYNDICATS AND THE SILKIE AS GUITAR FEEDBACK, DRUGGY FOLK AND SURGING SOUL BATTLED KEN DOO0 AND THE SEENERS FOR CULTURAL ASCENDANCY, ENJOY IT ALL IN MOJO'S LIST OF 20 SUBVERSIVE SINGLES FROM 1965. "WELCOME TO THE YEAR POP GOT WEIRD," SAYS JON SAVAGE.
IN THE ISSUE OF RECORD MIRROR dated April 3, 1965, an airbrushed Elvis Presley is on the cover, pegged to the partial success of Do The Clam (at Number 22 in the UK charts after four weeks). The letters page on page 2 leads with a picture of Buddy Holly (“influence still going strong”). Yet on page 3 is the evidence of something stirring beyond ’50s necrophilia: a half-page advert for The Rolling Stones’ The Last Time – the five pictured with long, windblown hair – followed a few pages later by a news report on “The Beatles’ new disc”, Ticket To Ride, which has a “bluesy, almost R and B feel”.
In the centre pages is an article about “the group that slaughters their amplifiers”, The Who. After a lead review for Jim Reeves’ latest album and various singles reviews comes the Top 50: interspersed between various balladeers and the omnipresent Seekers, the Stones are at Number 1, with The Yardbirds and Donovan also in the Top 10, and The Who, Them and Bob Dylan in the Top 20. The Supremes’ Stop! In The Name Of Love is one of the highest risers, with Martha And The Vandellas’ Nowhere To Run the highest new entry.
Clearly, 1965 is not 1958 nor 1963, not even 1964. With all the money and attention focused on this generation and its youth culture, something unforeseen in the world of pop is occurring: musicians are considering what they do not merely as fulfilling commercial imperatives, but in terms of self-expression and artistic ambition. Starting in 1965, pop culture offered, as the pioneering critic Paul Williams observed, “a huge new playground to create and communicate and be perverse in”.
In the UK, two groups led the pack – The Beatles and The Rolling Stones – and both released strange new singles in that March/April period: the moment the year really got going. The Last Time and Ticket To Ride were both based around thick, droning guitar figures and injected a darker approach to the traditional themes of love and romance. This was not just teen pop but indicators of a new attitude: lyrics could be more complex, arrangements more inventive and attitudes more confrontational.
Even though Ken Dodd and The Seekers had the two bestselling singles of the year, 1965 was different because it was not just the same old, and the selections below are designed to reflect a year when there were massive innovations in lyrics, arrangements and technology, when Motown and Stax made inroads into the UK chart – especially after the UK Motown tour of March 1965 – and there was the first hint of psychoactive drugs, particularly cannabis, influencing pop culture.