Song of Innocence

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.

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.

Background

In the 1960s, Axelrod worked as a producer and A&R executive for Capitol Records in Los Angeles. During this time, he began to conceive his own musical ideas, involving a fusion of baroque classical sounds, R&B rhythms, and spiritual themes. Challenged by what he described as a "new breed of record buyer ... more sophisticated in his thinking", he was one of several Los Angeles-based musical eccentrics during the late 1960s who wanted to expand on the mid-1960s studio experiments of Brian Wilson and George Martin. His first attempt at this creative vision was composing a religious-themed, psychedelic opera for the Electric Prunes, a local garage rock group. When the band found it too challenging to finish the recording, Axelrod enlisted studio musicians from the Wrecking Crew to complete the album, released as Mass in F Minor in 1968. The recording attracted both controversy and national fame for the producer.

After the success of Mass in F Minor, Axelrod was asked by Capitol to record a similar album. 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. Blake musical settings were at the height of their popularity among musicians and composers. 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. 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. 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. 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".

Recording

Axelrod composed Song of Innocence in one week and began recording in mid-1968. 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. He had worked with them before when producing sessions for Capitol recording artists.