Song of Innocence is the debut album by American composer and producer David Axelrod. It was released in October 1968 by Capitol Records. In an effort to capitalize on the experimental climate of popular music at the time, Axelrod composed the album as a suite-like tone poem interpreting Songs of Innocence, a 1789 illustrated collection of poems by William Blake. Recording took place at Capitol Studios in Los Angeles with an orchestra and studio musicians from the Wrecking Crew collective, including keyboardist and conductor Don Randi, guitarist Al Casey, bassist Carol Kaye, and drummer Earl Palmer.

An instrumental jazz fusion record, Song of Innocence incorporates elements of classical, rock, funk, pop, and theatre music. Axelrod arranged the music for bass, drums, and string instruments, composing in a rock idiom with tempos centered on such rhythms played by Palmer. He used contrast in his orchestral compositions, interspersing their euphoric psychedelic R&B structures with dramatic, harrowing arrangements to reflect the supernatural themes found in Blake's poems. The resulting music's reverent, psychedelic overtones have been interpreted as evoking the poet's themes of innocence and spirituality.

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While innovative for its application of rock and jazz techniques, Song of Innocence was not commercially successful and confounded contemporary critics, who viewed it as an ambitious but foolish curiosity piece. In the 1990s, critics reassessed the album as a classic, while leading disc jockeys in hip hop and electronica rediscovered and sampled its songs. "Holy Thursday", the record's best-known track, was frequently sampled by hip hop producers. The renewed interest in Axelrod's work prompted Stateside Records to reissue Song of Innocence in 2000.

After the success of Mass in F Minor, Axelrod was asked by Capitol to record a similar album.[4] He wanted to further capitalize on the experimental climate of popular music and chose to adapt works by English poet William Blake on an album.[3] Blake musical settings were at the height of their popularity among musicians and composers.[5] Numerous serious music composers had set his poems to music since the 1870s, and the practice was eventually adapted in other musical fields during the 20th century, including popular music, musical theatre, and the 1960s folk idiom.[6] Axelrod, a self-professed "Blake freak", had been fascinated by Blake's painting and poetry since his late teens and frequently read the poems as an adult.[7] He conceived Song of Innocence after he had bought an edition of Blake's complete poetry while working in Capitol's art department and considered the concept for a few years before Mass in F Minor.[8] Axelrod was not sociable with colleagues, such as record executives who could have helped him professionally, and felt that he could identify with Blake; he considered the poet "very bad at making new friends".[9]

Axelrod composed Song of Innocence in one week and began recording in mid-1968.[10] He recorded the album at Capitol Studios in Los Angeles with his close-knit group of veteran studio musicians from the Wrecking Crew, including keyboardist and conductor Don Randi, guitarist Al Casey, bassist Carol Kaye, and drummer Earl Palmer.[11] He had worked with them before when producing sessions for Capitol recording artists.[3]

Axelrod did not play any instruments on Song of Innocence; he instead wrote arrangements for his orchestra and utilized 33 players to perform his notated charts.[12] He had learned how to read and orchestrate complex music charts from jazz musicians during the 1950s.[13] Randi conducted the orchestra and played both piano and organ on the record.[3] Axelrod preferred listening to a session from a recording booth like his contemporary Igor Stravinsky. "That way the sounds don't seem to go all over the place", he later said. "Music seems so small in a studio."[14] Axelrod originally wanted some of the album's compositions to feature a large-scale choir but was uncertain if he could find the appropriate ensemble, so he recorded an entirely instrumental album and included one Blake setting for each section of the score.[15]

A jazz fusion album, Song of Innocence combines jazz elements with impressionistic musical figures and hard rock guitar solos.[16] Its music also incorporates funk, rock, theatre, and pop styles.[17] Music journalists categorized the record as jazz-rock, baroque pop, and psychedelic R&B.[18] John Murph of JazzTimes magazine said the music could be better characterized as art pop than jazz.[9] Axelrod, who had produced bebop albums before working for Capitol, asserted that jazz played a crucial role in the music: "For years, all I did was jazz. When I first got in the record business, I was so into jazz that I had never heard Elvis Presley. I still probably listen to jazz more than anything else."[9]

Axelrod composed the album as a tone poem suite based on Blake's illustrated 1789 collection of poems Songs of Innocence.[20] His compositions borrowed titles from Blake's poems, which dealt with themes such as visions, religious iniquity, rite of passage, and life experience after a person's birth and innocence.[21] Mary Campbell of The Baltimore Sun said the classical and Christian church music elements made the record sound "reverent, as if describing a biblical story".[22] Les Inrockuptibles described it as a "psyche-liturgical" work dedicated to Blake.[23] According to AllMusic's Thom Jurek, psychedelia was implicit in the record's musical form and feeling, which impelled Axelrod to "celebrate the wildness and folly of youth with celebration and verve".[24]

The album's music was written in the rock idiom and arranged for bass, drums, and strings.[20] As a composer, Axelrod abandoned the conventional unison approach to orchestral writing in favor of more contrasts while centering his tempos around rock-based drum patterns played mostly in common time by Palmer.[25] He utilized his instrumental ensemble as a rock orchestra, playing melodramatic strings and pronounced, echo-laden breakbeats.[26] The music was also embellished with electric piano, intricate basslines, Echoplex effects, and elements of suspense Axelrod used to reflect the supernatural themes found in Blake's poems.[27] According to David N. Howard, the album's "euphorically" upbeat psychedelic R&B form was interspersed by "dramatically sparse" and "harrowing" arrangements.[15]

Axelrod and his musicians used key musical phrases that are expanded upon throughout Song of Innocence.[28] He was interested in Gyrgy Ligeti's 1961 piece Atmosphres and Lukas Foss' idea of starting a piece with a sustained chord, having musicians improvise over 100 bars, and ending with another chord as they finish.[14] "Urizen" opened with long sustained chords, sound effects, reverbed guitar stabs, and a supple bassline.[29] On "Holy Thursday", the rhythm section played a slow, jazzed-out groove and bluesy bop piano lines, as a big band vamp was played by a large-scale string section. In response to their swing style, the brass section and guitarists played dramatic, high-pitched overtones built around a complex melody.[24] The middle of the album featured more traditional jazz passages and the presence of a psychedelic harpsichord.[28] "The Smile" was recorded with a rhythmic drum beat, offbeat bass, and a progressive string part.[30] For the songs near the end, the musicians steadily transitioned to heady psychedelia featuring gritty guitars and disorienting organ licks.[28] On "The Mental Traveler", Axelrod said he tried to experiment with atonality but "chickened out".[14]

Song of Innocence was released in October 1968 by Capitol Records and attracted considerable interest from critics.[31] Writing for Gramophone in 1969, Nigel Hunter found the songs to be "of absorbing power and depth", but complained of the electric guitar parts.[32] Alasdair Clayre, in the same magazine, questioned whether the "occasional guitar gobbling" reflected Axelrod's genuine ideas or "an obligatory concession to contemporary sound", but he ultimately regarded Song of Innocence as a compelling record. In his opinion, the producer's impressions of Blake "reveal a depth of imagination and skill warranting attention beyond the confines of pop music", proving he could compose innovative pieces for a large orchestra, which Clayre felt comprised the best of California's studio musicians on the album.[33] Billboard magazine called it "an aesthetic mix of music and philosophy ... chock full of mysticism, creativity, and change", believing that Axelrod's idyllic music would be interesting enough to impact the record charts.[34]

Others were more critical, finding the music foolish.[35] Stereo Review magazine's Paul Kresh appraised the album negatively, calling it pretentious, inadequate, and dependent on movie music tricks and outdated techniques such as forced climaxes and gaudy orchestration. He said it falls severely short of the concept Axelrod aspired to and that "only the most uneducated will be taken in by the mountains of misterioso claptrap that surround these squeaking musical mice".[20] Nat Freedland from Entertainment World accused Axelrod of "indulging himself here to little avail".[36]

Song of Innocence received radio exposure on both AM and FM stations with songs such as the title track and "Holy Thursday", which became the album's best-known recording.[37] The album was not a commercial success, however, and only sold 75,000 copies by October 1969.[38]

Song of Innocence made critics turn their heads in its day, regarding it as a visionary curiosity piece; today it's simply a great, timeless work of pop art that continues to inspire over three decades after its initial release.

Song of Innocence was one of many concept albums recorded as rock music was developing in various directions during the late 1960s, following in the wake of the Beatles' 1967 album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.[39] It was innovative for its original application of both rock and jazz techniques.[40] According to music journalist Zaid Mudhaffer, the term "jazz fusion" was coined in a review of the record when it was released.[41] Axelrod followed the album in 1969 with the similarly Blake-inspired Songs of Experience, which adapted Gunther Schuller's third stream concept to baroque orchestrations and rock, pop, and R&B rhythms and melodies.[9] Both albums established Axelrod as an unpredictable, challenging conceptual artist.[15] His instrumental interpretations of Blake were the first in jazz, followed in 1971 by Rafa Augustyn's Niewinno and Adrian Mitchell's musical Tyger: A Celebration of William Blake with composer Mike Westbrook; Westbrook later composed more Blake-inspired works, including The Westbrook Blake: "Bright as Fire" (1980).[42] 18c6514909

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