Favorite Songs of 1965

For Christmas in 1964, my sister and I received matching transistor radios. It was one of my most remembered presents, for I was heavily into popular music at the time and with this device (I-Pod's spiritual ancestor), I could carry my music around with me, scratchy-sounding and all!. The big radio station in South Florida at the time was Miami’s 560-WQAM “Tiger Radio”. I remembered DJs Rick Shaw and Jim Dunlop, but had forgotten the others. Imagine my pleasant surprise to discover that there is a tribute website to this great station of the 60’s called 560.c0m.

Television also presented a forum in 1965 through which different acts could gain publicity and popularity: CBS's Ed Sullivan Show, ABC's Shindig, and NBC's Hullabaloo.

Everyone in my family was an ardent Beatles fan, and my parents were buying up Beatles albums as soon as they came out. 1965 saw Beatles VI, Help!, and Rubber Soul (Beatles ’65 actually came out in late 1964). My list of favorites of theirs would be so long that just looking at a listing of their album tracks would suffice! So I’ll just mention the best of the best: Words of Love, What You’re Doing, Every Little Thing, The Night Before, You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away, Ticket to Ride, I’ve Just Seen a Face, and Michelle.

There were other artists on the planet besides the Beatles in 1965, and they produced plenty of quality songs. The Kinks, the true progenitors of hard rock (at least the first time I heard it was from them), dazzled listeners with their brash, frenzied guitar playing on songs like You Really Got Me and All Day and All of the Night. My favorite of theirs, though, was the more subdued Tired of Waiting. I’ve always been a lukewarm fan of the Beach Boys, but they made a more sophisticated turn in their music with their riveting Help Me Rhonda. Concrete and Clay, by Unit 4 + 2, would have been a great dance song (if I danced, that is). Barry McGuire warned of impending doom in his angry and moralistic Eve of Destruction; with the Vietnam War kicking in on all cylinders this year, that forecast was literally true for hundreds of thousands of young Americans, who would be sent into the jungles of southeast Asia in the ensuing years to draw enemy fire and somehow try to survive. Another consciousness-raising song, Jackie DeShannon’s What the World Needs Now (Is Love Sweet Love) helped to set the stage for the counterculture movement of the late sixties. One of my favorite sixties groups, the Animals, had a string of hits this year, highlighted by two songs that have grown on me through the years: It’s My Life and the often-applicable We Gotta Get Out of This Place. The McCoys had a fun, catchy tune in Hang On Sloopy. Dobie Gray reveled at being in The In-Crowd, while the Beau Brummels reveled at having the Last Laugh. The Byrds burst into the big time with their folk-to-rock adaptations of Mr. Tambourine Man and Turn Turn Turn. Bob Dylan also got into the rock picture and reinvented himself in the process with Like a Rolling Stone. In the “silliest song” category, Shirley Ellis wins hands-down for her unfathomable Name Game. Horst Jankowsky played a mean piano with his beautiful instrumental A Walk in the Black Forest. The New York-based band the Knickerbockers sounded just like the Beatles with their one hit Lies. For a little while in ’65, I was fanatical about Gary and the Mindbenders’ Game of Love. And then I got tired of it and still am, 43 years later. The Wee Five charmed me with their sweet, romantic exercise in harmony: You Were On My Mind. Look Though Any Window, by the British band the Hollies, was their first American singles hit. The energetic Dave Clark Five continued to entertain with their “happy-go-loud” sound, “rat-a-tat” drumming, and two hits: Catch Us If You Can and Over and Over Again. Ferry Cross the Mersey, by Gerry and the Pacemakers was my favorite from this band: it was an imaginative, vivid picture of one’s wistful nostalgia for his youth and childhood home.

Simon and Garfunkel, another great “harmony” act, had my #3 favorite song of 1965: their debut oxymoronic masterpiece Sounds of Silence. For #2, I go back to the Beatles and their stunning hit Ticket to Ride. My top favorite tune of 1965 (as I lived through it) was head and shoulders above all the others. When I first heard I Can’t Explain on the radio, I thought that the Beatles had released their greatest song ever. Man, I thought, George Harrison has got to be the best guitar player of all time! Then I discovered that it wasn’t them, but rather a new British band called The Who! Actually a rather short song, I Can’t Explain is self-defining: “I can’t explain” why this song didn’t even penetrate the top-40 nationwide while a (to me) substandard song like the Rolling Stones’ Satisfaction became the most popular song of the year. There’s no accounting for taste, I suppose. To each his own!