page_title: Song of Innocence
section_title: Background
hierarchical_section_title: Song of Innocence / Background
caption_attribution_description: English: William Blake Songs of Innocence - King's College, Cambridge, 1825. Copy W, Plate 3
context_page_description: Song of Innocence is the debut album by American composer and producer David Axelrod. It was released in October 1968 by Capitol Records.
  Axelrod sought to capitalize on the experimental climate of popular music and composed the album as a suite-like tone poem interpreting Songs of Innocence, a 1789 illustrated collection of poems by William Blake. He recorded the album at Capitol Studios in Los Angeles with an orchestra and studio musicians from the Wrecking Crew collective, including keyboardist and conductor Don Randi, guitarist Al Casey, bassist Carol Kaye, and drummer Earl Palmer.
  Song of Innocence is an instrumental jazz fusion record that incorporates elements of classical, rock, funk, pop, and theatre music. It is arranged for bass, drums, and string instruments, written in the rock idiom with tempos centered on rock-based patterns by Palmer. Axelrod used contrast in his orchestral compositions, interspersing their euphoric psychedelic R&B structures with dramatic, harrowing arrangements to reflect the supernatural themes found in Blake's poems. The music's reverent, psychedelic overtones evoke the poet's themes of innocence and spirituality.
context_section_description: In the 1960s, Axelrod worked as a producer and A&R executive for Capitol Records in Los Angeles. During this time, he began to conceive his own musical ideas, involving a fusion of baroque classical sounds, R&B rhythms, and spiritual themes. Challenged by what he described as a "new breed of record buyer ... more sophisticated in his thinking", he was one of several Los Angeles-based musical eccentrics during the late 1960s who wanted to expand on the mid-1960s studio experiments of Brian Wilson and George Martin. His first attempt at this creative vision was composing a religious-themed, psychedelic opera for the Electric Prunes, a local garage rock group. When the band found it too challenging to finish the recording, Axelrod enlisted studio musicians from the Wrecking Crew to complete the album, released as Mass in F Minor in 1968. The recording attracted both controversy and national fame for the producer.
  After the success of Mass in F Minor, Axelrod was asked by Capitol to record a similar album. He wanted to further capitalize on the experimental climate of popular music and chose to adapt works by English poet William Blake on an album. Blake musical settings were at the height of their popularity among musicians and composers. Numerous serious music composers had set his poems to music since the 1870s, and the practice was eventually adapted in other musical fields during the 20th century, including popular music, musical theatre, and the 1960s folk idiom. Axelrod, a self-professed "Blake freak", had been fascinated by Blake's painting and poetry since his late teens and frequently read the poems as an adult. He conceived Song of Innocence after he had bought an edition of Blake's complete poetry while working in Capitol's art department and considered the concept for a few years before Mass in F Minor. Axelrod was not sociable with colleagues, such as record executives who could have helped him professionally, and felt that he could identify with Blake; he considered the poet "very bad at making new friends".
caption: Title plate for William Blake's Songs of Innocence
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