1968

1968 was a year of shocks. The Tet Offensive turned American opinion against the Vietnam War, Martin Luther King Jr. was shot dead in Memphis on 4 April, and student protests in Paris began a chain of events that took France to the brink of revolution. Closer to home, the Commonwealth Immigrants Act tightened entry to Britain, and the last Black Country colliery shut after more than 300 years of mining.

Heavy music was still being assembled, mostly in bedrooms and rehearsal rooms. Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin and Free all formed, as did Earth, who would become Black Sabbath, and a teenage-sounding crowd of future names including Alice Cooper, Nazareth and Rush, the last still calling themselves The Projection. Cream, meanwhile, called it a day. The sound of the moment was heavy psychedelia: Steppenwolf's "Born to Be Wild", Iron Butterfly's "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida", Blue Cheer's "Summertime Blues" and the Beatles' "Helter Skelter". Pink Floyd released A Saucerful of Secrets on 28 June, a stranger, more experimental record than most of what surrounded it, and a clear sign that psychedelia could wander off in a progressive direction.

The Floyd's year was full of upheaval. On 18 February David Gilmour joined to replace Syd Barrett, who had checked himself into a psychiatric hospital, and by 6 April the band announced that Barrett had officially left. Elsewhere, Jimi Hendrix spent a night in a Stockholm jail in January after wrecking a hotel room in a drunken scrap with Noel Redding, and Buffalo Springfield played their last show together on 5 May.