Psychedelic Rock

Psychedelic rock stretched the pop single until it became a room. The changes were musical and technological: tape loops, backwards sounds, drones, modal vamps, fuzz guitar, feedback, long forms, lyrics that moved from teenage address to dream, myth and altered perception. San Francisco’s ballroom scene and London’s studio culture arrived at the same question from different directions: how far can rock expand before it stops being rock?

The Beatles made the studio itself part of the genre’s language, especially on Revolver and Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Hendrix brought blues, feedback and science-fiction guitar together. The Who, Pink Floyd, the Byrds, the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane each pushed a different edge of the same envelope.

This node sits between British Invasion pop, blues-rock improvisation and the later heavy family. Its influence is less a single rhythm than a permission structure: rock could be atmospheric, conceptual, extended and strange.