VA - Harpsichord in Rock Music (A Butterboy Compilation) (5 x CDs)

HARPSICHORD ROCK

VA - Harpsichord in Rock Music (A Butterboy Compilation) (5 x CDs)

The harpsichord is probably the last instrument you'd expect to find turning up in rock music.

After all, this is an instrument more closely associated with Bach, powdered wigs and grand European courts than electric guitars, Marshall stacks and teenage rebellion. Yet once rock musicians discovered what a harpsichord could do, they kept coming back to it. Its bright, plucked attack could instantly transform a recording, adding elegance, mystery, tension or pure psychedelia in ways that an ordinary piano simply couldn't match.

That's really what inspired this collection.

I've always loved those moments when a song suddenly reveals a harpsichord lurking in the mix. It immediately changes the atmosphere. Everything becomes a little more cinematic, a little more unusual, a little less predictable. For a few seconds you're no longer standing in a rock club, you're wandering through some strange musical crossroads where pop, folk, classical music and psychedelia all meet.

One of the records that opened that door was The Yardbirds' "For Your Love" in 1965. Brian Auger's harpsichord sits right at the centre of the song, giving it a dramatic, almost baroque flavour that was unlike anything else on the radio at the time. It sounded fresh, sophisticated and slightly exotic, and it helped show just how wide rock's horizons could become.

A year later, The Rolling Stones took a different path with "Lady Jane", where Jack Nitzsche's harpsichord combines beautifully with Brian Jones' dulcimer to create something that feels centuries old and completely modern at the same time. Around the same period, The Kinks, The Left Banke and countless others began exploring similar territory, discovering that the instrument could add genuine emotional depth rather than simply providing decoration.

By 1966 and 1967, the floodgates had opened.

The harpsichord became one of the defining sounds of baroque pop and psychedelic music. Love used it to add colour and delicacy to "She Comes In Colours", Sagittarius wove it through the wonderfully eccentric "My World Fell Down", while The Beatles placed it prominently within the rich textures of "Fixing A Hole". Even Jimi Hendrix found room for the instrument, using its distinctive sound to help create the dreamlike atmosphere of "Burning Of The Midnight Lamp."

What fascinates me is that these artists weren't using the harpsichord as a novelty. They were using it because it served the song. The instrument could make a record feel older, stranger, more theatrical or more intimate. It brought colours that simply weren't available anywhere else.

As rock evolved, the harpsichord travelled with it. Folk-rock artists embraced its crisp attack, progressive rock musicians loved its precision and drama, and adventurous studio experimentalists continued to find new uses for it. Queen's magnificent "The Fairy Feller's Master-Stroke" remains one of the great examples, with Freddie Mercury using harpsichord and piano to build an arrangement overflowing with colour and imagination.

By the mid-1970s its appearances became less frequent, but the instrument never vanished.

That's where the fifth disc comes in.

The Bonus Disc follows the harpsichord beyond its classic 1960s and 1970s heyday and traces the surprising places it resurfaced. The Stranglers turned it into the hypnotic heartbeat of "Golden Brown". Tori Amos brought it into alternative music. Wondermints slipped it effortlessly into modern sunshine pop. Later artists such as Björk, Vampire Weekend and The Black Keys would all discover their own ways of using its unmistakable voice.

What struck me while putting these five discs together is that the harpsichord never became a standard rock instrument, and perhaps that's exactly why it remains so special. Whenever it appears, you notice it. It still sounds distinctive. It still sounds adventurous. It still sounds like a musician has deliberately chosen a different path.

Across these five CDs, that's the story I wanted to tell. From The Yardbirds and The Rolling Stones, through the psychedelic explosion of the late 1960s, into progressive rock, power-pop, alternative and indie music, the harpsichord keeps reappearing whenever artists want to step outside the ordinary and create something memorable.

Ancient yet modern, delicate yet powerful, elegant yet slightly strange, the harpsichord has enjoyed one of the most unlikely journeys in rock history.

And after all these years, it still turns heads the moment you hear it. (B)

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Track lists

CD1

01 Everly Brothers - Nancy's Minuet (#1) (Take 5) 1:54 1963

02 Yardbirds - For Your Love 2:29 1965

03 Rolling Stones - Lady Jane 3:07 1966

04 Left Banke - Walk Away Renee 2:44 1966

05 Kinks - Session Man 2:17 1966

06 Simon & Garfunkel - Leaves That Are Green 2:18 1966

07 Cat Stevens - I'm Gonna Be King 2:29 1966

08 Paul Revere & The Raiders - All about her 3:02 1966

09 Judy Collins - Both Sides Now 3:14 1967

10 Stone Poneys - Different Drum 2:36 1967

11 Mama's & The Papa's - Frustration 2:57 1967

12 Beatles - Fixing a Hole 2:38 1967

13 Zombies - Care of Cell 44 3:54 1967

14 Procol Harum - Magdalene (My Regal Zonophone) 2:54 1967

15 Peter & Gordon - Sunday for Tea 2:19 1967

16 Spanky and Our Gang - Sunday Will Never Be the Same 2:59 1967

17 Association - We Love Us 2:25 1967

18 Lemon Pipers - Rice is Nice 2:11 1968

19 Moody Blues - House of Four Doors 4:13 1968

20 Elton John - I Need You to Turn To 2:33 1970

21 Enchanted Forest - You're Never Gonna Get My Love 3:03 1967

22 Deep Purple - Blind 5:21 1969

CD2

01 Mothers of Invention - Aybe Sea 2:46 1970

02 It's A Beautiful Day - Girl With No Eyes 3:51 1969

03 Love - She Comes in Colors 2:46 1967

04 Donovan - There Was a Time 2:01 1967

05 Doors - Love Me Two Times 3:15 1967

06 Jimi Hendrix Experience - Burning of The Midnight Lamp 3:41 1967

07 Bee Gees - Turn of the Century [Early Version] 2:23 1967

08 Monkees - Star Collector 4:31 1967

09 Traffic - Cryin' to Be Heard 5:32 1967

10 Bonzo Dog Band - Music for Head Ballet 1:45 1967

11 Small Faces - Feeling Lonely 1:31 1967

12 West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band - Transparent Day 2:14 1967

13 Steve Miller Band - Baby's Callin' Me Home 3:24 1968

14 End - Loving, Sacred Loving 3:03 1968

15 Twice as Much - Sittin' on a Fence 3:11 1966

16 Ultimate Spinach - Baroque #1 4:51 1968

17 Hamlet - She Won't See the Light 2:04 1967

18 Pacific Drift - Tomorrow Morning Brings 2:36 1968

19 Strawbs - The Man Who Called Himself Jesus 3:51 1970

20 Nazz - Forget All About It 3:31 1969

21 Grateful Dead - Mountains of the Moon 4:02 1969

22 Vanity Fare - Early in The Morning 2:46 1969

CD3

01 J.K. & Co. - Land of Sensations and Delights 1:49 1968

02 5th Dimension - Dreams - Pax - Nepenthe 3:24 1967

03 Wombles - Tobermory 3:39 1973

04 Margaret Mandolph - If You Ever Need Me 2:30 1967

05 Paul Mauriat & His Orchestra - Love is Blue 2:33 1968

06 Derek & Ray - Interplay 3:01 1967

07 Billy Nicholls - London Social Degree 2:23 1968

08 Cher - I Go to Sleep 2:47 1965

09 James Taylor - Something in The Way She Moves 3:03 1968

10 Nick Drake - Fly 3:00 1970

11 Jim Croce - Time in a Bottle 2:28 1973

12 Carpenters - Druscilla Penny 2:14 1971

13 Ozark Mountain Daredevils - Mr. Powell 3:13 1970

14 Stylistics - Na Na is The Saddest Word 3:03 1975

15 Turtles - It Was A Very Good Year (stereo) 1:58 1967

16 Kate Bush - Oh England My Lionheart 3:13 1978

17 Gracious - Introduction 5:55 1970

18 Queen - The Fairy Feller's Master-Stroke 2:40 1974

19 Jethro Tull - Velvet Green 6:02 1977

20 Rick Wakeman - Catherine Howard 6:37 1973

21 Beach Boys - Wonderful 2:03 1967

22 Trace - Opus 1065 7:46 1975

CD4

01 Beatles - Piggies 2:03 1968

02 Kinks - Too Much on My Mind 2:32 1966

03 Simon and Garfunkel - Scarborough Fair-Canticle 3:14 1966

04 Cher - Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Dow 2:44 1966

05 Nancy Sinatra - Sugar Town 2:23 1966

06 Gladys Knight & The Pips - Take Me in Your Arms and Love Me 2:55 1967

07 P.P. Arnold - The First Cut is The Deepest 3:15 1967

08 Steppenwolf - A Girl I Knew 2:30 1968

09 Moody Blues - Cities 2:24 1968

10 Hollies - After The Fox 2:18 1966

11 Small Faces - Show Me the Way 2:09 1967

12 Procol Harum - In Held ‘twas in I 19:00 1968

13 Rolling Stones - Dandelion 3:31 1967

14 Eric Burdon & The Animals - Orange and Red Beams 3:44 1967

15 Lemon Pipers - Rainbow Tree 2:24 1968

16 Doors - Wintertime Love 1:55 1968

17 Sagittarius - My World Fell Down 3:48 1967

18 Zombies - Imagine The Swan 3:11 1969

19 Twice as Much - True Story 2:42 1966

20 Association - On a Quiet Night 3:22 1967

21 Yes - Siberian Khatru 8:56 1972

22 Wynder K. Frog - Harpsichord Shuffle 3:59 1966

CD5

01 Stranglers - Golden Brown 3:27 1981

02 Tori Amos - Blood Roses 3:56 1996

03 Bat for Lashes - What's A Girl to Do? 2:58 2006

04 Emilie Autumn - Opheliac 5:33 2006

05 Decemberists - The Wanting Comes in Waves, Repaid 6:26 2009

06 Magnetic Fields - In an Operetta 2:02 2004

07 Damned - Grimly Fiendish (12" Spic 'n' Span Mix) 5:23 2007

08 Elvis Costello - You Little Fool 3:12 1982

09 R.E.M. - Half A World Away 3:29 1991

10 Deerhunter - Death in Midsummer 4:22 2019

11 Mercury Rev - Delta Sun Bottleneck Stomp 3:48 1998

12 Belle and Sebastian - I'm Waking Up to Us 3:49 2001

13 Vampire Weekend - M79 4:15 2008

14 Alan Parsons Project - The Turn of A Friendly Card (Part One) 2:47 1980

15 Alan Parsons Project - The Ace of Swords 2:57 1980

16 Wondermints - Cellophane (Remix) 3:45 1995

17 Sufjan Stevens - The Predatory Wasp of the Palisades is Out to Get Us! 5:23 2005

18 Siouxsie and the Banshees - Dear Prudence 3:48 1983

19 Patrick Wolf - The Beast 4:54 2011

20 Joanna Newsom - Peach, Plum, Pear 3:34 2004

21 Black Keys - Too Afraid to Love You 3:24 2010

22 Bjork - Venus as a Boy 4:42 1993

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Music weaves itself into the fabric of our emotions, dances through the corridors of memory, and whispers to the soul of who we are. Sharing these stories deepens the connection, turning the experience into something timeless and profound.

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