With Pete Townshend announcing The Who’s farewell US tour, now seems a good time to remind ourselves of when the band made one of their earliest trips to the continent. You can read all about it in The History Of Rock: 1968, the latest in our series of premium magazines curated from the archives of NME and Melody Maker.
Pete in 1968 is a big fan of America. Amazing microphone systems. Great groups like Moby Grape. Their own bus, “equipped with all modern conveniences like scotch and beer”. Even the fact that they’re staying in poky hotels hasn’t dampened his enthusiasm. As we follow the group deeper into the year we find them developing some challenging new work, the rock opera Tommy, at this stage provisionally entitled “Dead Dumb And Blind Boy”.
Our other favourite groups are changing too. After 1967’s colourful revelations and occasionally grandiose musical experimentation, 1968 has its feet more firmly planted on the ground. The gurus and the hallucinogens of the past twelve months have imparted their knowledge, and The Beatles are for the most part slightly more suspicious of whim and fancy.
No-one precisely says this is their plan (although Paul McCartney has been murmuring about “getting back” for a while), but there is a palpable swing away from the head trips of the studio and towards the heart: to early inspirations, live music. Later in the year, the double album released by the Beatles will contain strong flavours of blues and rock ‘n’ roll, the year’s two principal revivals. Does this now mean the Beatles are taking a step backwards? As Ringo Starr philosophically remarks: “It’s not forwards or backwards. It’s just a step.”
Bob Dylan also sets an anomalous tempo, established early in the year with the bucolic minimalism of John Wesley Harding. Dylan’s continued absence from the promotional scene allows him to move with a freedom not permitted his British contemporaries, and his absence creates a vacuum that myth, and under-the-counter recordings, step in to fill. Elsewhere in the mag you’ll find John Peel, Aretha Franklin, Cream…even George Best!
This is the world of The History Of Rock, a monthly magazine which reaps the benefits of their reporting for the reader decades later, one year at a time. Inside, you will find verbatim articles from frontline staffers, compiled into long and illuminating reads. You can catch up on any you’ve missed here. Enjoy!
