Is 1966 the greatest year in music? The incredible number of classic albums released in 1966 certainly suggests as much. Here are our picks for the best album in a pivotal year for pop.
Best 1966 albums
15. Love Da Capo
The second album from Arthur’s Lee’s LA psych-rockers was a giant leap forward from their self-titled debut, released just months earlier. Opener ‘Stephanie Knows Who’ contains some of Da Capo’s multitudes: the baroque loveliness of its intro; the punk urgency of Lee’s vocals; a half-time diversion into jazz-rock, complete with a sax solo courtesy of Tjay Cantrelli. That bolshy attitude returns on the seismic single ‘7 And 7 Is’, which starts with an explosion and doesn’t let up.
Guitarist Bryan Maclean foreshadows his masterpiece ‘Alone Again Or’ (from the following year’s Forever Changes) with the gorgeous ‘Orange Skies’. ‘She Comes In Colors’ is one of the decade’s great psych-pop moments. The 19-minute bluesy jam ‘Revelation’ plods where it should run free: otherwise this would be higher in our list.
14. The Who A Quick One
Another flawed gem, thanks to Who manager Chris Stamp, who negotiated each band member a publishing deal with the proviso that they would write material for the next album. This meant songs by first-time writers Roger Daltrey (vocals), John Entwistle (bass) and Keith Moon (drums), at the expense of Pete Townshend material.
In the case of Entwistle, this wasn’t a problem – see the deliciously spooky, B-Movie weirdness ‘Boris The Spider’ and the Jekyll & Hyde tale of ‘Whiskey Man’ – but Daltrey and Moon’s material was filler. Still, Townshend’s contributions elevate it, especially the surging melancholy of ‘So Sad About Us’ and the madcap nine-minute suite ‘A Quick One, While He’s Away’ (best heard on The Rolling Stones Rock And Roll Circus). Next time, Townshend was in control for the out-and-out classic The Who Sell Out.
13. The Temptations Gettin’ Ready
Motown’s early years were all about hits, with albums typically comprising of a couple of singles and some hastily thrown together filler. By the mid Sixties, however, the market was fast changing and 1966 saw a bunch of great Motown albums, including Stevie Wonder’s Up-Tight, The Supremes A’ Go-Go, Moods Of Marvin Gaye and Smokey Robinson & The Miracles’ Away We A Go-Go.
Our pick is the fourth album from those temptin’ Temptations – their third in just 18 months – Gettin’ Ready. The stellar hits are here – ‘Get Ready’ and ‘Ain’t Too Proud To Beg’ – but there’s so much more. Opening track ‘Say You’ features a storming David Ruffin vocal; Eddie Kendricks shines sweetly on the joyful ‘Too Busy Thinking About My Baby, years before Marvin made it a hit; and then there’s the glorious, string-soaked Smokey Robinson ballad ‘Fading Away’.
12. Buffalo Springfield Buffalo Springfield
The group that launched the careers of Stephen Stills and Neil Young burned bright and fast. In the roughly two years Buffalo Springfield were together they played some legendary shows, went through drug busts and line-up changes – and still found time to record enough material for three albums. Their self-titled debut is a doozy, with highlights including Young’s hymn of self-doubt ‘Nowadays Clancy Can’t Even Sing’ and the fragile folk-rock of ‘Flying On The Ground Is Wrong’ (both sung by Richie Furay).
Elsewhere, Young takes his first lead vocals on the burnt-out bliss of ‘Out Of My Mind’ and the loose rocker ‘Burned’. Meanwhile, Stills steps up with the psych drone of ‘Everybody’s Wrong’ and the soulful ‘Sit Down I Think I Love You’. In December ’66, Stills’ ‘For What It’s Worth’ was released as a single and captured the mood of a febrile nation – later pressings of Buffalo Springfield added the hit in place of the energetic ‘Leave’.
11. The Rolling Stones Aftermath
Aftermath is the apogee of the Stones’ swinging London dandy phase – and their first truly great album. The Kinks-like ‘Mother’s Little Helper’ is the generation gap in musical form (just check that opening line: “What a drag it is getting old”); ‘Lady Jane’ is a baroque ballad pledging devotion as a means to social mobility (“Life is secure with Lady Jane”) set to harpsichord and dulcimer.
Then there’s the muscular R&B put-down ‘Out Of Time’ (easy with the marimba, Brian!). Some of it might not truly fly – had they recording ‘Going Home’ a few years later, it would’ve been loaded with the raunch and sass it’s missing – but it’s a vital document of an underappreciated time in the Stones’ career.
10. John Mayall & The Bluesbreakers Blues Breakers With Eric Clapton
In March 1965, blues-infatuated guitarist Eric Clapton left The Yardbirds after becoming increasingly peeved with their move towards what he deemed too ‘pop’ a sound. About a month later, after bonding over Chicago blues musicians such as Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf, Clapton hooked up with John Mayall & The Bluesbreakers.
After a false start – Clapton left in August to tour Greece with The Glands – the guitarist joined in earnest in November and, after bedding in on the blues-rock circuit, they entered Decca Studios to record Blues Breakers With Eric Clapton in March. The album became the catalyst for the UK blues-rock explosion: a collection of explosive takes on blues classics (Otis Rush’s ‘All Your Love’, Ray Charles’ ‘What I’d Say’, Robert Johnson’s ‘Ramblin’ On My Mind’) and Mayall originals that still excites today.
9. The Byrds Fifth Dimension
The times they were a-changin’… fast, for The Byrds. Frontman and principal songwriter Gene Clark departed in early 1966, giving guitarist David Crosby a chance to step up and make his becloaked presence fully felt. Clark’s parting gift was the extraordinary ‘Eight Miles High’, a Clark, Crosby and Roger McGuinn co-write that took inspiration from raga master Ravi Shankar and the jazz explorations of saxophonist John Coltrane.
Elsewhere, the hugely popular folk-rock of their first two albums was given a psychedelic twist, with swirling guitars, stoned backing vocals and trippy sound effects. The following year, Younger Than Yesterday would be another landmark.
8. The Mothers Of Invention Freak Out!
This was also the year that one of music’s most idiosyncratic talents – composer, guitar genius, bandleader and pioneer Frank Zappa – arrived on the scene. Zappa and his group, The Mothers Of Invention, wasted little time in setting out their stall. Their debut album was a double-LP’s worth of psych-rock nuggets, skewed doo wop, tough blues/R&B and sound collages that were loaded with razor-sharp wit, surrealism and subversive swipes at the establishment and rock music itself.
7. Otis Redding Complete & Unbelievable: The Otis Redding Dictionary Of Soul
In 1966, soul titan Otis Redding was unstoppable. In April he released The Soul Album, packed with classics from the yearning ‘Just One More Day’ to his heartfelt take on ‘Nobody Loves You (When You’re Down And Out)’. Months later came the classic Complete & Unbelievable: The Otis Redding Dictionary Of Soul, a masterpiece featuring Redding at his pinnacle on the raw, deep soul ballad ‘Try A Little Tenderness’, the hip-shaking ‘Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa (Sad Song)’, his raucous take on the Beatles’ ‘Day Tripper’ and the hard groove of the Redding original ‘I’m Sick Y’All’.
Backed as usual by the impeccable Booker T & The MG’s and aided and abetted this time by the Memphis Horns, it’s a triumph tinged by the tragedy of it being the final solo album released during his lifetime.
6. Simon & Garfunkel Sounds Of Silence
In spring 1965, a curious thing happened – seemingly from nowhere, a Boston radio station began playing ‘The Sound of Silence’, a philosophical minor-key folk song from Simon & Garfunkel’s flop debut album from the year before. When the duo’s producer, Tom Wilson, heard about this, he hired four session players and recorded a new backing track.
Songwriter Paul Simon was playing the folk circuit in England at the time and the new arrangement took him and musical partner Art Garfunkel by surprise, even more so when it hit No. 1 in the US. Revived by the success, Simon & Garfunkel returned to the studio in December 1965 to record a bunch of Simon compositions, including the timeless ‘Kathy’s Song’ and ‘I Am A Rock’. They never looked back.
5. Nina Simone Wild Is The Wind
While Nina Simone’s previous five albums had established her as one of the greatest song interpreters of her time, Wild Is The Wind included her most significant original song to date, the plain-speaking and furious ‘Four Women’. Incensed by the bombing of 16th Street Baptist Church, Birmingham, Alabama, by the white supremacist group, the Klu Klux Klan, Simone wrote from the perspective of each of the four women killed in the attack.
The women list their physical attributes, share memories of cruelty and tell us what ‘they’ call them while Simone’s bluesy piano simmers with rage. Incredibly, it was banned by jazz station WLIB at the time thanks to concern over the lyrics. Elsewhere, Wild Is The Wind is a tour de force, featuring definitive versions of the title track, ‘Lilac Wine’ and ‘Black Is The Colour Of My True Love’s Hair’.
4. The Kinks Face To Face
This was the year that chief Kink Ray Davies began to truly find his voice, as his songs became slices of life that documented the times in a way no other songwriter of his time managed. In February, standalone single ‘Dedicated Follower of Fashion’ took swipes at the fashion industry while borrowing from The Scarlet Pimpernel and music hall.
In October, Face To Face picked up where ‘Fashion’ left off, with ‘Dandy’, ‘Session Man’ and ‘Sunny Afternoon’ giving a witty perspective on the times. But it was when Davies looked inwards, as on the beautiful and bruised ‘Too Much On My Mind’, that the extent of his songwriting talent really revealed itself.
3. Bob Dylan Blonde On Blonde
When NYC sessions with his crackerjack backing band, The Hawks, didn’t quite work out, Bob Dylan relocated to Nashville to try again with the cream of the country music capital’s session musicians (plus Hawks guitarist, Robbie Robertson). The results were spectacular.
Blonde On Blonde was Dylan’s most wide-ranging album to date, from the Salvation Army band nonsense of ‘Rainy Day Women #12 & 35’ to the 11-minute country-soul epic ‘Sad Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands’. In between were some of Dylan’s greatest songs – the visionary ‘Visions Of Johanna’, the surreal shaggy-dog tale ‘Stuck Inside Of Mobile…’, the tender torch song ‘Just Like A Woman’.
Dylan later said that this album came the closest he ever got to the sound in his head – ‘that thin, wild mercury sound’. Anybody who’s ever loved this album knows what he was getting at.
2. The Beatles Revolver
Luckily for those of us who have never known the excitement of being one of the Fab Four in 1966, the Beatles made Revolver to give us a rough idea. ‘She Said She Said’, ‘Good Day Sunshine’, ‘Got To Get You Into My Life’ – these are songs bursting with energy, purpose and confidence. Elsewhere, ‘Here, There And Everywhere’ and ‘For No One’ capture the endless potential of young love with grace and poise, with melodies that never wear out.
And, as they always would, the Beatles here wore cutting-edge experimentation with ease, whether that be ‘Eleanor Rigby’s string arrangement, the embrace of Indian music on ‘Love You To’ or the mind-expanding loops, samples and tape-manipulation of ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’. The world’s still catching up.
1. The Beach Boys Pet Sounds
The evening that Brian Wilson completed Pet Sounds, he took an acetate home for his then-wife, Marilyn, to hear. The two of them lay all night listening to the new LP. ‘We went in the bedroom, we had a stereo in the bedroom, and he goes, “OK, are you ready?”’ she told Rolling Stone in 1976. ‘But he was really serious – this was his soul in there, you know? And we just lay there alone all night on the bed and just cried and cried and did a whole thing. It was really, really heavy.”
They wouldn’t be the last to have that reaction to Pet Sounds. After quitting touring, Wilson devoted himself to the studio, creating work of ever-growing sophistication. In ad man Tony Asher, he had a lyricist who could bring out the vulnerability and hurt under the surface of music. And in the Beach Boys, he had harmony singers who could send these pop symphonies skyward.
‘God Only Knows’, ‘Wouldn’t It Be Nice’, I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times’ – these are timeless and exquisite reflections on growing up and trying to understand the adult world. ‘Listen, listen, listen,’ he sings on ‘Don’t Talk (Put Your Head On My Shoulder)’. We’re still listening.
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