1966 in Music

A twenty-year-old breaks every rule in the building Geoff Emerick is appointed chief engineer at EMI Studios at the age of twenty, replacing the man who held the job before him. On his first day with the Beatles, he close-mikes the drums, something explicitly forbidden by EMI's engineering handbook. He stuffs clothing inside the bass drum to dampen it, places the microphone three inches from the drumhead, and compresses the signal through a limiter until the kit sounds like nothing anyone has heard on a pop record. He runs the bass guitar through a loudspeaker wired backwards to work as a microphone. Every session produces a new trick. The resulting album sounds like the future.

Sixteen tape loops and a thousand monks John Lennon tells his producer the song should sound like a thousand Tibetan monks chanting on a mountaintop. Each band member brings tape loops made on home reel-to-reel machines. Out of thirty loops, sixteen make the final recording. Five are placed onto separate mono tape machines simultaneously, with studio staff holding pencils to keep the tape taut. The loops are mixed live, everyone manning faders at random: the result can never be reproduced. Lennon's vocal runs through a rotating speaker cabinet normally reserved for organs. The song closes the album, and it sounds like nothing that came before it.

A theremin, a bicycle bell, and God only knows what else Brian Wilson spends $70,000 and twenty-seven sessions building an album in response to what he heard from England. He works out every instrumental part with session musicians while his bandmates are on tour. The instrument list reads like an inventory of a music shop and a garage sale combined: French horn, bass harmonica, bicycle bells, timpani, tack piano, ukulele, Coca-Cola cans, harpsichord, dog whistles, and an electronic instrument played by its inventor. The band returns to layer vocal harmonies on top. The result barely cracks the Top 10 in America but rewrites what a pop album can be.

Four in the morning, Nashville, first take Bob Dylan books sessions in Nashville after months of failed New York recordings produce only one usable track. The Nashville musicians, accustomed to three-hour country sessions, find themselves waiting eight hours while Dylan writes a song in the studio. At four in the morning he starts playing. Nobody has rehearsed it. Nobody knows when it will end. The band follows him through eleven minutes, and he keeps the first take. The song fills the entire fourth side of a double album, the first by a major rock artist.

$22,000 and a number eighty-eight Phil Spector spends a then-unheard-of $22,000 producing a single with twenty-one session musicians at Gold Star Studios. He makes Tina Turner sing the song over and over for hours until he gets the vocal take he wants. The record peaks at number eighty-eight in America. In England it reaches number three. Spector is so devastated by the American failure that he shelves the planned album, withdraws from the music industry for two years, and begins a long personal decline. Brian Wilson reportedly pulls his car over and weeps upon hearing it.

The last song at Candlestick On August 29, the Beatles play Candlestick Park in San Francisco to 25,000 people, with 7,000 seats empty. The noise is so loud they cannot hear themselves. Each band member brings a camera, knowing it will be the last time. The press officer records rough audio from the field. The setlist ends with Long Tall Sally. There will be no more concerts. The band that started in nightclubs in Hamburg chooses the studio permanently.

A cafe, a fashion model, a plane ticket Jimi Hendrix is playing Greenwich Village clubs under the name Jimmy James when a fashion model drags the Animals' bassist to see him. The bassist watches Hendrix open with Hey Joe and decides on the spot to bring him to London. By September, Hendrix lands in England. A guitarist who failed an audition for another band agrees to switch to bass. A drummer is found through a mutual friend. Their first single enters the UK charts by December. Within six months, every guitarist in London will be trying to figure out what he is doing.

Hold on, I'm in the bathroom Isaac Hayes is trying to get David Porter out of the restroom at Stax Studios. Porter yells back: hold on, man, I'm comin'. They write the song in ten minutes. Sam and Dave record it backed by the house band, and it goes to number one R&B. Some radio stations object to the title's suggestiveness and insist on changing it. The flip side of Memphis soul is that one studio, one set of musicians, and a handful of songwriters are producing an entire genre. The sound is unmistakable: horns, organ, a rhythm section that breathes together.

Three men who had already been famous Eric Clapton leaves one band. Jack Bruce leaves another. Ginger Baker, who played in the same group as Bruce, suggests they form a trio. They call themselves Cream because they believe they are the best musicians on the scene. The debut happens at a jazz festival. The concept of a supergroup, famous players assembling a new band, begins here. So does the power trio: guitar, bass, drums, no safety net, extended improvisation replacing pop song structure.

Psychedelic gets a name A band from Austin, Texas, prints the word psychedelic on their business card in January 1966. Their debut album is the first to use the word in its title. The electric jug player provides the signature sound: a gurgling, alien texture underneath garage rock guitars and a vocalist whose singing has been described as a banshee wail. Meanwhile, the Byrds release a single built on drones borrowed from Indian classical music and jazz saxophone phrasing. A broadcasting trade journal bans it for alleged drug content. A journalist coins the term raga rock in her review. The sound has a vocabulary now.

Strangers at the top Frank Sinatra hates Strangers in the Night from the first time he sees the sheet music. He records it anyway. It knocks the Beatles off number one. It wins four Grammys. Sinatra is fifty years old, competing directly with bands half his age for the same chart positions, and winning. He follows it with That's Life, another Top 5 hit. The oldest and newest schools of popular music are selling to the same audience at the same time.