Rockpedia
Rock branch Full entry · 1967

Acid rock

Emerged 1967 Origin San Francisco, USA Subgenres — Vocals Sung
Heaviness
5
Speed
5
Melody
6

Sung. Melodic singing throughout.

In short

The heavy end of psychedelia: raw distortion and endless jams. Blue Cheer is often named the first genuinely heavy band.

How it sounds

  • Massive distortion for the era, at the limit of what amplifiers could take.
  • Long solos with wah-wah and controlled feedback.
  • Slow to medium tempos with heavy drums up front.

Hear what that means

Loaded only when you press play — nothing reaches Google before that. 2 of 3 are cued to a second read from the upload's own tracklist.

The specifics

Tempo
90-140 bpm
Song length
5-20 min
Tuning
E standard through fuzz, with the guitar loud enough that feedback is available on demand rather than by accident.
Production
Loud and live, frequently recorded at a concert because the extended improvisation is the music. Studio versions of these songs are usually the lesser document.
Written about
Drugs, directly, Transcendence, Apocalypse, Very little, at length

What each part is doing

  • Guitar Extended improvisation over one or two chords, with feedback held as a sustained note and the wah pedal used as a filter rather than as an effect. Volume is the enabling condition — none of this works quietly.
  • Bass Melodic and roaming rather than anchoring, because the guitar has abandoned the changes and somebody has to imply them.
  • Drums Jazz-schooled and conversational, following the soloist rather than keeping time for them. The long pieces work or fail on this.
  • Organ Frequently the second solo voice, through a rotating speaker, trading with the guitar across passages that can run twenty minutes.

What it isn't

That it is simply psychedelia played louder. The structural difference is where the music happens. Psychedelic records are studio constructions — the Beatles could not perform theirs — and acid rock records are documents of a room, which is why the canonical Grateful Dead album is a live one. Two genres from the same year with opposite ideas about what a recording is for.

Told apart from

  • Psychedelic rock Psychedelia is built in the studio out of songs; acid rock is built on stage out of jams. The tell is whether the record could be reproduced live.
  • Proto-metal Blue Cheer appear on both lists. Acid rock's volume aimed at transcendence becomes proto-metal when it is aimed at heaviness instead.
  • Space rock Space rock takes the same stasis toward electronics and repetition rather than toward blues improvisation.
  • Blues rock The material is largely the same and the intent is not: blues rock solos within a form, acid rock leaves the form behind entirely.

The genres this one is most often mistaken for. Written, not derived.

History

Blue Cheer played so loud in 1968 that engineers refused sessions; their version of Summertime Blues is often named the first genuinely metal recording. Iron Butterfly released a seventeen-minute song that sold millions. Acid rock is the concrete link between psychedelia and heavy metal.

Descended from

Siblings on this branch

Sounds like this, elsewhere in the tree

  • Deathrock 1.4 apart by rating · meets it at Rock
  • Desert rock 1.4 apart by rating · meets it at Rock

Closest by the three ratings, among genres at least 4 steps away in the tree. A rating match is not a musical claim.