What was the first-ever psychedelic rock track?
The Beatles’ era-defining performance on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1964 marked the dawn of a new age. The Fab Four led the charge, eventually ditching bubblegum pop for a more reflective brand of songwriting before moving into far more experimental territory during the psychedelic era. The Beatles are frequently cited as the primary drivers behind the popularisation of psychedelic music, but it was the band who followed the group on that iconic episode of The Ed Sullivan Show which helped give birth to the genre. I am, of course, talking about The Dave Clark 5.
Formed in 1958, the members of the Dave Clark 5 were originally the backing musicians for London singer Stan Saxon. Eventually, drummer and backing vocalist Dave Clark decided to split off and form his own group, taking other members of Saxon’s band with him. By 1962, the DC5 were regarded as spearheading the “Tottenham Sound”, London’s answer to Mersey Beat, defined by a propulsive production style and hard-hitting drums. Clark had unprecedented control over the group’s output, having already struck a deal with the group’s label that allowed him to produce their songs and gave him control of their master recordings.
By cutting out the middlemen, Dave Clark put the DC5 in a unique position, allowing the band to pursue a sound few of their contemporaries had the freedom to explore. Starting around 1964, the band released a string of hits. Tracks like ‘Over and Over’ soared to the top of the charts, establishing the band as one of Britain’s most important musical exports.
The Dave Clark 5 appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show no less than 18 times between 1964 and 1967, more than any other British Invasion group. And yet, Britain’s busiest band still found the time to explore. In October 1964, several months after their post-Beatles Ed Sullivan Performance, the Dave Clark 5 released ‘Any Way You Want It’, which was featured on the band’s fourth studio album Coast To Coast. The track has been described as one of the first examples of psychedelic rock, arriving two years before The Byrds released ‘Eight Miles High’ in 1966.
Before we dive into it, it’s worth establishing what exactly makes a track psychedelic. The ’60s psychedelic bands made clever use of imaginative, cutting-edge stereo effects such as panning, sampling, voice-filtering and other mind-bending effects. The innovative use of studio technology remains one of the most important aspects of psychedelic music. Many people regard My Bloody Valentine’s 1991 album Loveless as the last truly psychedelic album because, through the band’s pioneering use of studio technology, they created something otherworldly, something that helped shift the boundaries of guitar music.
In 1964, ‘Any Way You Want It’ was about as otherworldly as it got. Written by Dave Clark, the track marks the dividing line between the early ’60s beat music and psychedelia, thanks to the band’s heavy use of Echoplex reverb and delay units, which were used to give the track a distinctly space-age sound. At its core, the track is a run-of-the-mill British pop track featuring tight harmonies and inflexions of brass.
The vocals make all the difference, which Clark fed through the echoplex, soaking them in the long-tailed delay later used by the dub producers of the 1970s. On release, ‘Any Way You Want It’ hit number 25 in the UK singles chart. It was even more popular in the US, where it rose to number 14. Of course, because of all those cutting-edge production techniques, the band were forced to lip-sync the track during television performances.
You can revisit ‘Any Way You Want It’, one of the first truly psychedelic songs, below.
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