page_title: Acid rock
section_title: Origins and ideology
hierarchical_section_title: Acid rock / Origins and ideology
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Eine Demonstrantin bietet eine Blume der am Pentagon wachhabenden Militärpolizei während einer Anti-Vietnam-Demonstration in Arlington (Virginia, USA) an. English: A female demonstrator offers a flower to military police on guard at the Pentagon during an anti-Vietnam demonstration. Arlington, Virginia, USA Français&#160;: Une manifestante offre une fleur à un policier militaire en faction devant le Pentagone durant une manifestation anti-Vietnam. Arlington, Virginie, Etats-Unis. Italiano: Una manifestante offre un fiore a un militare di guardia davanti al Pentagono durante una manifestazione anti-Vietnam. Arlington, Virginia, Stati Uniti.
context_page_description: Acid rock is a loosely defined type of rock music that evolved out of the mid-1960s garage punk movement and helped launch the psychedelic subculture. The style is generally defined by heavy, distorted guitars, lyrics with drug references, and long improvised jams. Its distinctions from other genres can be tenuous, as much of the style overlaps with '60s punk, proto-metal, and early heavy, blues-based hard rock.
  The term, which derives its name from lysergic acid diethylamide, refers specifically to a more musically intense subgenre or sibling to the psychedelic rock style, featuring a harder, louder, heavier, or rawer sound, and developed mainly from the American West Coast. Such American groups did not focus on the novelty recording effects or whimsy of British psychedelia, and instead emphasized the heavier qualities associated with both the positive and negative extremes of the psychedelic experience.
  As the movement progressed into the late 1960s and 1970s, elements of acid rock split into two directions, with hard rock and heavy metal on one side and progressive rock on the other.
context_section_description: Many bands associated with acid rock aimed to create a youth movement based on love and peace, as an alternative to workaholic capitalist society. David P. Szatmary states, "a legion of rock bands, playing what became known as 'acid rock,' stood in the vanguard of the movement for cultural change." Szatmary also quotes from the San Francisco Oracle, an underground newspaper published between 1966 and 1968, to explain how rock music was perceived at that time and how the acid rock movement emerged: "Rock music is a regenerative and revolutionary art, offering us our first real hope for the future (indeed, for the present)."
  When played live at dance clubs, performances were accompanied by psychedelic-themed light shows in order to replicate the visual effects of the acid experience. According to Kevin T. McEneaney, the Grateful Dead "invented" acid rock in front of a crowd of concertgoers in San Jose, California on December 4, 1965, the date of the second Acid Test held by author Ken Kesey. Their stage performance involved the use of strobe lights to reproduce LSD's "surrealistic fragmenting" or "vivid isolating of caught moments". The Acid Test experiments subsequently launched the psychedelic subculture. Author Steve Turner recognises the Beatles' success in conveying an LSD-inspired worldview on their 1966 album Revolver, especially with the track "Tomorrow Never Knows", as having "opened the doors" to acid rock. Former Atlantic Records executive Phillip Rauls recalls: "I was in the music business at the time, and my very first recognition of acid rock ... was, of all people, the Beach Boys and the song 'Good Vibrations' ... That [song's theremin] sent so many musicians back to the studio to create this music on acid."
  According to Laura Diane Kuhn, the heavier form of psychedelic rock known as acid rock developed from the late 1960s California music scene. The Charlatans were among the first Bay Area acid rock bands, though Jefferson Airplane was the first Bay Area acid rock band to sign a major label and achieve mainstream success. By July 1967, Time magazine wrote, "From jukeboxes and transistors across the nation pulses the turned-on sound of acid-rock groups: the Jefferson Airplane, the Doors, Moby Grape". In 1968, Life magazine referred to the Doors as the "kings of acid rock".
  Other bands credited with creating or laying the foundation for acid rock include garage rock bands such as the 13th Floor Elevators and Count Five. The blues rock group the Paul Butterfield Blues Band are also credited with spawning the harder acid rock sound, and their 1966 instrumental "East-West", with its early use of the extended rock solo, has been described as laying "the roots of psychedelic acid rock" and featuring "much of acid-rock's eventual DNA". The Beatles' June 1967 album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band was a major influence on American acid rock groups.
caption: A group of Flower Power demonstrators, 1967
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