INTRODUCTION
THE STORY SO FAR: DRAMATIS PERSONAE
A guide to the characters in this book who played a role in folk-rock's earlier, mid-1960s evolution, as covered in this book's predecessor, Turn! Turn! Turn!: The '60s Folk-Rock Revolution.
PROLOGUE: FIFTH DIMENSION
The Byrds, folk-rock's greatest group, extend folk-rock's boundaries in 1966 with the "Eight Miles High" single and the Fifth Dimension album. Their integration of Indian, jazz, and country influences into folk-rock on both original material and covers of traditional and contemporary folk-based songs helps set the table for the experimentation and expansion that will typify folk-rock throughout the rest of the 1960s.
CHAPTER 1: FOLK-ROCK TO ACID ROCK: THE SAN FRANCISCO SOUND (click here to read excerpt )
Folk-rock feeds into the psychedelic age with the explosion of acid rock in San Francisco. The San Francisco sound is spearheaded by bands such as Jefferson Airplane, Big Brother & the Holding Company, Country Joe & the Fish, and the Grateful Dead, all of whom boast ex-folkies in their lineups and draw upon folk and folk-rock for much of their inspiration.
CHAPTER 2: FOREVER CHANGES: FOLK-ROCK PSYCHEDELICIZED, FROM SUNSET STRIP TO OUTER SPACE
In Los Angeles, the Byrds, Buffalo Springfield, and Love continue taking folk-rock into unimagined territory with psychedelic experimentation. Cult acts like Skip Spence, Dino Valenti, and the Holy Modal Rounders make warped acid-folk records that wrap roots folk around bizarre, visionary lyrics and odd instrumentation that sets them far apart from traditional folk arrangements.
CHAPTER 3: FOLK-ROCK GROWS UP: THE SINGER-SONGWRITERS (click here to read excerpt )
The birth of the singer-songwriter movement, which takes folk-rock into more laidback, personal, and introspective territory. Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell, Linda Ronstadt, Tim Buckley, and Gordon Lightfoot emerge as important recording artists; Phil Ochs, Tim Hardin, Fred Neil, and other veterans make some of their best work; Judy Collins and Tom Rush continue to expose singer-songwriters to the world as interpreters; and Dion, John Stewart, and Bobby Darin catch up with the changing times.
CHAPTER 4: IN THYME: BRITISH FOLK-ROCK FINDS ITS VOICE (click here to read excerpt )
British folk-rock begins to develop its own identity as the Pentangle takes inspiration from specifically British sources, adding rhythmic arrangements that draw from rock, folk, blues, jazz and pop. Donovan is joined by the Incredible String Band and others in coloring psychedelia with a peculiarly Celtic folk flair. Fairport Convention and the Strawbs put a spin on the genre by merging West Coast-influenced harmonized folk-rock with a more British sensibility.
CHAPTER 5: THE NEW DYLAN AND COUNTRY-ROCK
Bob Dylan emerges from hibernation at the end of 1967 with his plaintive, countrified John Wesley Harding album. Psychedelia gives way to country-rock as Dylan, the Byrds, the Flying Burrito Brothers, Poco, and others strip back to basics and emphasize their country roots. Others follow Dylan to record in Nashville, while Dylan himself goes even further into country on 1969's Nashville Skyline.
CHAPTER 6: FOLK-ROCK SUPERSTARS & SUPERGROUPS
Veterans from Buffalo Springfield and the Byrds form Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, folk-rock's first supergroup. Folk-rock superstars Judy Collins, Joni Mitchell, Simon & Garfunkel, and James Taylor see out the '60s with sounds that continue to stray further from their folk roots. The record business gets slicker and more corporate as the singer-songwriter boom brings in more money, even as the artists continue to balance commercialism with social consciousness and rebellion.
CHAPTER 7: LIEGE & LIEF: A TRULY BRITISH FOLK-ROCK
Enigmatic British singer-songwriters like Nick Drake, Roy Harper, and Al Stewart make their first important recordings, giving a different slant to the American-dominated singer-songwriting movement. Britain hosts the last major, and most traditionally-based, branch of folk-rock to flower in the 1960s as Fairport Convention, Steeleye Span, and others electrify specifically English traditional folk songs.
CHAPTER 8: FOLK-ROCK, FROM NEWPORT TO WOODSTOCK
The audience for folk and rock music merges and changes in the interim between the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, where Bob Dylan was so stormily received, and the end of the 1960s, when massive crowds attended events such as Woodstock, where folk-rock and hard rock performers mixed without incident.
EPILOGUE: FOLK-ROCK'S LEGACY
The influence of 1960s folk-rock, from the 1970s to the early twenty-first century, as the originators matured, died, or survived to preserve the form and help keep the folk-rock wheel turning.
DISCOGRAPHY
BIBLIOGRAPHY
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