Psychedelics and Their Correlation to Rock & Roll

What Is Psychdelic Rock?

This subgenre of rock music originated in the late 1960s and was unsurprisingly inspired by a class of drugs called hallucinogens which are considered “mind-expanding” drugs. Drugs like LSD or marijuana were considered to be a part of the class of hallucinogens and were consumed by users to create a new style of music that “recreated” the effects of the drugs through sound.

Origins of The Genre

Lysergic acid diethylamide or more commonly known as “LSD” originated in the 1930s and was first synthesized by a chemist named Albert Hofmann. It was discovered that a dose of little as 25 micrograms was capable of producing vivid hallucinations. At first, Hofmann originally created the drug for medical purposes but after accidentally ingesting it and experiencing a “trip”, it was deemed a drug that provided no medical purposes at all. Although, the drug didn’t become illegal until 1968 and it was used recreationally throughout the US and especially in California, right around the start of the Hippie Movement.

It was mostly popular among college campuses where the majority of users were students who believed that LSD spreaded peace and love, hence the stigma behind it. As numbers of users grew, it created a culture where users would use LSD and listen to music to enhance their trip. It caused bands to come forth with new styles of music to try to induce trips of their own to users without the use of LSD. More and more bands became more influential and started treating their music as an art form to create more deeper music with more serious lyrics. As a result of this, a new genre formed where these tranced like songs would have prolonged, melodic sounds that would put users into a “trip”.

Acid & Rock

LSD and the use of the drug obviously inspired the now well-known genre called acid rock or also known as psychedelic rock. It heavily promoted musicians and bands to become more artistic with their music and it was also theorized that LSD was used as a possible truth serum that caused users to be introduced to a “higher consciousness”. As a result of this, it caused users to agree to an idea of a counterculture against authorities such as the government, parents or any other authoritarian figure. Ideas like this were already introduced by bands such as Pink Floyd, Grateful Dead or The Byrds and since then, the use of LSD and its effects were used in the production of a new subgenre. This culture was especially popular during the hippie movement because it expressed the free will of music with the aid of mind expanding drugs. Bands that were popular during the times easily adopted and implemented the “sensations” and “expressions” into a new style of sound.

Famouse Psychedelic Rock Bands

Pink Floyd

Pink Floyd played a huge part in the psychedelic rock scene and has remained well-known even today. Their songs were a balance of complexity and simplicity that had simple lyrics with abstract production. Their songs were more complicated in terms of harmony and structurality than usual rock songs but they focused more on production and sound which makes them still popular today.

Grateful Dead

The Grateful Dead were another staple of Psychedelic rock that introduced the most complex and elusive songs to have ever emerged in the sixties. Like Pink Floyd, they played their songs with complex harmony and were structured so differently from other bands that it made them unique. What Grateful Dead had that other bands didn’t was that they focused heavily on their live performances rather than their recordings. They were known for their improvised concert sets and were pioneers for concert sound.