Chapman — Psychedelia and Other Colours

Author: Rob Chapman
Title: Psychedelia and Other Colours
Year: 2015
Type: Book (Faber & Faber)

Psychedelia and Other Colours is a book by the British music journalist Rob Chapman, published by Faber & Faber in 2015. It is a history of psychedelia from about mid-1965 to late 1969 that treats the American and British scenes separately. In America it begins with LSD and traces the light shows of San Francisco to modernist avant-garde art, and in Chapman’s account the American groups were mainly live acts who brought their concert sound into the studio. In Britain it follows what its publisher calls a “peculiarly British take on flower power,” drawing on fairy tales, fairgrounds and music halls, and a chapter connects music-hall conventions to the Small Faces, the Kinks and David Bowie. The Guardian, Mojo and the Rough Trade shops named it a book of the year, Alexis Petridis and Rob Young praised it, Allan Jones in Uncut gave it 7 out of 10, and John Coulthart wrote that it stops at 1969 without following psychedelia into progressive rock.

Chapman was a music journalist and BBC radio broadcaster whose work appeared in Mojo and other papers, and he had written the Syd Barrett biography A Very Irregular Head (2010).¹ Faber & Faber published Psychedelia and Other Colours in 2015.² The book covers the period from about mid-1965 to late 1969.³ Its early chapters follow LSD from the Sandoz laboratories in Switzerland and American clinics into the press.³ Chapman traces the San Francisco light shows back to modernist avant-garde art, including the work of László Moholy-Nagy, and to the art schools of the 1950s.³ He also brings the composer Steve Reich and Don Buchla, a pioneer of modular synthesis, into the history of American psychedelia.⁴

John Coulthart, reviewing the book, reported Chapman’s observation that the American groups were mainly live acts who brought their concert sound into the recording studio, and he added that British bands could not avoid the influence of The Beatles, whose studio experiments made processed sound the default in Britain.³ The publisher describes the British side as a “peculiarly British take on flower power” that drew on fairy tales, fairgrounds and music halls as readily as on LSD.² A chapter on the music-hall roots of British psychedelia connects music-hall conventions to the Small Faces, the Kinks and David Bowie.⁴ The book also covers the American surf boom, girl groups and garage bands, the jazz of Sun Ra, Albert Ayler and John Coltrane, and psychedelic soul and R&B.^{3, 4}

The Guardian, Mojo and the Rough Trade shops named it a book of the year.² Alexis Petridis of the Guardian called it “a fantastic, exhaustive history of the genre,” Rob Young wrote in the New Statesman that it would take its place as the standard text, and Allan Jones, in Uncut, called it “undeniably admirable and enjoyable” and gave it 7 out of 10.² Emma Warren, reviewing it in Caught by the River, called it “an incredibly detailed read, alternately funny and serious.”⁴ Coulthart called it “a fascinating book by an excellent guide” and wrote that it does not follow psychedelia into progressive rock, which he regarded as its British successor.³

Key contributions

• Two national psychedelias: an American one rooted in LSD culture, the avant-garde and live performance, and a British one rooted in fairy tales, fairgrounds and music hall.
• American psychedelia connected to the avant-garde: light shows traced to modernist art, and composers such as Steve Reich.
• LSD treated as a cultural subject, its history placed at the start of the book.
• British psychedelia traced to music hall, fairgrounds and fairy tales.
• Psychedelia treated as a bounded period, from about mid-1965 to late 1969.

See also

• Sixties Rock — Michael Hicks’s 1999 musical analysis of garage and psychedelic rock
• Turn On Your Mind — Jim DeRogatis’s 2003 history of psychedelic rock from the 1960s to the 2000s