89 Essential Songs from The Summer of Love: A 50th Anniversary Playlist

Image by Bryan Costales, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

The Sum­mer of Love was not just a sea­son of great music and the zenith of the flower child, but the cul­mi­na­tion of a move­ment that start­ed back on a chill­i­er Bay Area day, on Jan­u­ary 14, 1967. That was the month of the Human Be-In, and what must have looked like a full on inva­sion of the coun­ter­cul­ture into Gold­en Gate Park. The back­drop of this out­pour­ing of good vibra­tions was any­thing but lov­ing: Viet­nam, inner city riots, Civ­il Rights, and a huge gen­er­a­tion gap. The crowd size was esti­mat­ed at 100,000, and every­body there sud­den­ly real­ized they weren’t alone. They were a force.

Joel Selvin, inter­viewed by Michael Kras­ny for this KQED seg­ment on the Sum­mer of Love (lis­ten here), says that the real Sum­mer of Love for San Fran­cis­cans at least, hap­pened in 1966, when it was a local secret. One year lat­er, the hip­pie move­ment had become main­stream. And that’s when every band on both sides of the Atlantic had turned on to the zeit­geist, and the gates of psy­che­del­ic music opened up.

Today, we have a playlist of 89 songs to com­mem­o­rate the 50th anniver­sary of that his­toric sum­mer. (Down­load Spo­ti­fy’s free soft­ware here, if you need it.) If you are com­ing to this as a music fan, but not some­body who lived through that era, you might think you know all the songs from that peri­od, hav­ing had them ham­mered into your brain over the years from the ubiq­ui­tous hits of clas­sic rock radio, and nos­tal­gic movies.

There are of course the stone cold clas­sics from 1967, with not one but two Bea­t­les releas­es, includ­ing the icon­ic Sgt. Pep­per album; the best two songs from Jef­fer­son Air­plane; Pro­col Harum’s “A Whiter Shade of Pale”; the Who’s best psy­che­del­ic song “I Can See for Miles”; Jimi Hendrix’s “Are You Expe­ri­enced?” and “Hey Joe”; the Rolling Stones’ move into cham­ber pop with “Ruby Tues­day” and their own trip­py “She’s a Rain­bow” and “We Love You”—the last time they ever felt lovey dovey about any­thing; and the first releas­es by the Doors.

Soul and R’n’B was also at the height of its mid-60s pow­er, with Aretha Franklin’s “Respect,” James Brown’s “Cold Sweat,” Mar­vin Gaye and Tam­mi Terrell’s “Ain’t No Moun­tain High Enough”, and Sam and Dave’s “Soul Man” infect­ing the charts.

“We were rid­ing the crest of a high and beau­ti­ful wave,” is how Hunter S. Thomp­son famous­ly put it in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and this playlist might just con­vince you of that con­sid­er­ing how music seemed to frac­ture so soon after—even the Bea­t­les would be deliv­er­ing that strange and some­times fright­en­ing trip of a White Album a year lat­er. Viet­nam would con­tin­ue to drag on, and the decade’s metaphor­i­cal end at Alta­mont was loom­ing on the hori­zon, not that many could see it. (By the way, Joel Selvin just wrote a very good book on that dark, decade-end­ing con­cert.)

Enjoy the playlist and argue over what’s miss­ing in the com­ments. (No “Water­loo Sun­set”? “I Sec­ond That Emo­tion”? “Glo­ria”? Hmmph!)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Rare Footage of the “Human Be-In,” the Land­mark Counter-Cul­ture Event Held in Gold­en Gate Park, 1967

Jimi Hen­drix Opens for The Mon­kees on a 1967 Tour; Then After 8 Shows, Flips Off the Crowd and Quits

Paul McCart­ney Admits to Drop­ping Acid in a Scrap­py Inter­view with a Pry­ing Reporter (June, 1967)

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.