1966 Rock Classics: Top 10 You'll Never Forget

About These 1966 Rock Classics

The 1966 rock classics in this countdown came from a year when rock music grew up fast. Bands that had been singing about cars and dances began trying sitars, studio tricks and darker lyrics, and some of the boldest records came from groups that never had another big hit.

This episode counts down ten of them, from #10 to #1. Each story below was checked against chart records and reliable accounts, and several details from the episode were corrected.

The Countdown: Top 10 Rock Classics of 1966

#10: Good Vibrations — The Beach Boys (1966)

Brian Wilson built this song on something his mother once told him: that dogs could sense "vibrations" from people. He recorded it in pieces, with more than 30 session musicians, across about 20 sessions in four Hollywood studios over roughly seven months.

The eerie sliding sound in the chorus is an Electro-Theremin, played by its inventor, Paul Tanner. Cost estimates run from about $10,000 to $50,000, and Wilson later put it closer to $25,000, a huge sum for a single at the time.

Released on October 10, 1966, it sold more than 293,000 copies in its first four days. It reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 on December 10 and also topped the British chart.

#9: Paint It Black — The Rolling Stones (1966)

The song began as a fairly ordinary pop arrangement, and the band nearly gave up on it. Then musician Harihar Rao, who had taught Brian Jones the sitar, walked into the studio carrying one. Jones combined his own sitar melodies with the chords and words Mick Jagger and Keith Richards had written.

The lyrics describe someone stunned by the sudden loss of a partner. The single topped the charts in both America and Britain, the first No. 1 single to feature a sitar.

Only Jagger and Richards received songwriting credit, and Bill Wyman later argued the whole band deserved it. In June 1969 the Stones dismissed Jones. Less than a month later he drowned in his swimming pool at age 27.

#8: 19th Nervous Breakdown — The Rolling Stones (1966)

Jagger came up with the title first and wrote the lyrics around it during the band's long American tour in late 1965. The group recorded it that December in Hollywood.

Keith Richards played the opening guitar figure, while Brian Jones played a bass-note pattern borrowed from Bo Diddley's "Diddley Daddy." The record ends with Bill Wyman's famous "dive-bombing" bass line.

Released in February 1966, it topped the Cash Box chart in America and the NME and Melody Maker charts in Britain. On the Billboard Hot 100, it stopped at No. 2, held off by Staff Sgt. Barry Sadler's "The Ballad of the Green Berets."

#7: Sunny Afternoon — The Kinks (1966)

Ray Davies wrote this song while recovering from an illness. He remembered a house with orange walls and green furniture, a new white upright piano, and his one-year-old daughter crawling on the floor as he found the opening riff.

It sounds lazy and warm, but it is satire. The narrator is a fallen aristocrat moaning that the taxman has taken his fortune. Davies said he made him a scoundrel on purpose, so no one would feel sorry for him.

It reached No. 1 in Britain on July 7, 1966, the same month England won the World Cup. In America it peaked at No. 14.

#6: Summer in the City — The Lovin' Spoonful (1966)

John Sebastian reworked this song from one his younger brother Mark had written at 14, keeping Mark's line about the night being a different world. Bassist Steve Boone added a jazzy bridge that he said sounded a bit like George Gershwin.

The band wanted real city noise, so a radio soundman brought in tapes, and they chose car horns and a pneumatic drill. For a bigger drum sound, engineer Roy Halee placed a microphone on the eighth floor of a metal stairwell with a speaker at the bottom.

Released on July 4, 1966, during a New York heat wave, it reached No. 1 and stayed three weeks, the group's only American chart-topper.

#5: Psychotic Reaction — Count Five (1966)

Count Five was a garage band from San Jose, California, known for wearing Dracula-style capes on stage. For six months they played an instrumental with no words. Then, in early 1966, rhythm guitarist John "Sean" Byrne sat in a health class at San Jose City College while the professor lectured on psychosis.

His friend Ron Lamb leaned over and suggested "Psychotic Reaction" as a song title. Byrne finished the lyrics and brought them to band practice that night.

Released in June 1966, it reached No. 5 that October. The band split in 1969. In 1971, critic Lester Bangs wrote an essay inventing a string of imaginary later Count Five albums, and that essay later gave its name to a 1987 collection of his writing.

#4: Wild Thing — The Troggs (1966)

Songwriter Chip Taylor wrote "Wild Thing" very quickly, and on his demo he banged a tambourine. A New York band called the Wild Ones released it in late 1965, but it did not sell.

In England, manager Larry Page recommended the song to the Troggs. Their singer, Reg Presley, was born Reginald Ball and worked as a bricklayer. The odd little solo is an ocarina, copying the Wild Ones' version, where an engineer had whistled through his hands.

The Troggs' single reached No. 1 in America on July 30, 1966. Because of a distribution dispute, it was out on two labels at once, Fontana and Atco, the only single ever to reach No. 1 for two companies at the same time. Presley quit bricklaying once the song hit the British Top 10. He died in 2013.

#3: Paperback Writer — The Beatles (1966)

Paul McCartney said his Auntie Lil once asked why he always wrote about love. His answer was a song written as a letter from a struggling author to a publisher, with no romance in it at all.

John Lennon had wondered why the bass on a Wilson Pickett record was so much bigger than on Beatles records. Engineer Geoff Emerick had Paul play a Rickenbacker bass and used a loudspeaker as a microphone in front of the amplifier.

Released in America on May 30, 1966, it reached No. 1 in the U.S., Britain and several other countries. On the Billboard chart, Frank Sinatra's "Strangers in the Night" interrupted its run for one week.

#2: Dirty Water — The Standells (1966)

Producer Ed Cobb wrote this mock tribute to Boston, and keyboardist Larry Tamblyn said part of it was inspired by Cobb being mugged there. The song pokes fun at the polluted Charles River, a women's college curfew, and even mentions the Boston Strangler.

The Standells were a Los Angeles band. First issued in late 1965, the single caught on in 1966 and reached No. 11 on the Hot 100 that June.

Its second life came later. The Boston Bruins began playing it in 1995, and the Red Sox followed after home wins starting in 1997.

#1: Eight Miles High — The Byrds (1966)

The Byrds talked about the idea on their flight to London in August 1965, and Gene Clark began writing the lyrics that November on an American tour. Roger McGuinn shaped his twelve-string guitar solo after the saxophone of John Coltrane.

About seven weeks after its March release, a radio trade newsletter, the Gavin Report, suggested the song was about drugs, and stations in several states dropped it. The band denied it then. Years later, Clark and David Crosby admitted it was partly inspired by drug use.

It peaked at No. 14. The ban is usually blamed, though one researcher has argued the song's complexity hurt it more. Many critics now call it the first true psychedelic rock song.

Why These 1966 Rock Classics Still Matter

These ten records show rock music learning new tricks all at once. A sitar landed on a No. 1 hit. A stairwell became an echo chamber. A single took months to finish. A garage band in capes made a record still covered today.

Several of these bands never topped that year again, but their songs kept going.

Which of these 1966 songs takes you right back, and where were you when you first heard it?

Sources and Further Reading

• "Good Vibrations" — Wikipedia
• "Paint It Black" — Wikipedia
• "Wild Thing" (The Troggs song) — Wikipedia
• "Eight Miles High" — Wikipedia
• List of Billboard Hot 100 number ones of 1966 — Wikipedia