Revisiting 3 Albums That Made 1967 Rock n’ Roll

A Look Back At One Of The Best Years in Rock

In 1967, we experienced the Summer of Love and witnessed historic performances from burgeoning rock acts at the Monterey Pop Festival. The Doors, the Velvet Underground, Grateful Dead, Pink Floyd, The Jimi Hendrix Experience, and Janis Joplin all made their debuts.

The year also spawned a plethora of hits that still hold well over fifty years later. The songs and albums didn’t just become instant classics but they served as a template and benchmark to several others that followed. The following LPs are deemed influential, groundbreaking and innovative. They remain unrivaled today.

3. Cream – Disraeli Gears

https://youtu.be/QbRLuR8_HDg

It’s an epic masterpiece. Cream steered towards psychedelia and it was a brilliant move because the album helped establish the supergroup as rock titans. The LP itself was a monumental achievement and while Eric Clapton often gets the praises, both Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker delivered the goods. Surprisingly, they finished recording in just five days! Bruce revealed, “We worked very fast. We didn’t know that you were meant to take months and years to make an album. A lot of the tracks were first and second takes.”

The songs were otherworldly and heavy-hitting. The performances clearly showed three virtuoso musicians doing what they do best.

2. The Jimi Hendrix Experience – Are You Experienced

It’s widely regarded as one of the most stunning debuts in rock history. And an essential psychedelic record at that. Hendrix arrived at the music scene with a bang and from the get-go, there was no denying his genius. More than that, bassist Noel Redding and drummer Mitch Mitchell brought so much to the table that the whole LP is peppered with sparks of brilliance. Hendrix unleashed his talents through classics like Purple Haze, Hey Joe, The Wind Cries Mary, Foxey Lady, and Fire.

1. The Beatles – Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band

It’s the culmination of The Fab Four’s songwriting talents and musicianship. They explored a new sonic front with Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and while most would shy away from the amount of risk they took, The Beatles met those challenges head-on. It’s flawless from start to finish. It also serves as proof that there are no rules in rock, the sky’s the limit when it comes to experimenting.

This was their answer when critics were starting to think they were creatively spent. Paul McCartney revealed, “Music papers started to slag us off … because [Sgt. Pepper] took five months to record, and I remember the great glee seeing in one of the papers how the Beatles have dried up … and I was sitting rubbing my hands, saying “You just wait.””