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The Psych Ward–The Time Has Come by The Chambers Brothers

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  • Rob Cavenagh
  • September 29, 2023
  • 6:03 am

The Psych Ward–The Time Has Come by The Chambers Brothers

This may sound like sacrilege, but by going electric at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965, did Bob Dylan help to influence psychedelic music? After many years on the Southern gospel circuit, the members of The Chambers Brothers relocated to Los Angeles in the early 1960s. Through various connections made on the West Coast, they found themselves in the lineup for the Newport Folk Festival in 1965 – alongside artists such as the aforementioned Dylan, Joan Baez, Pete Seeger, Lightnin’ Hopkins, and many more. Their song “I Got It” appeared on the Vanguard-issued compilation of the festival performances the same year.

Following their well-received performance at Newport, the brothers played around the country and worked in studio time for a full-length record. The original version of the (nearly) title track “The Time Has Come Today” was not well-received by their label Columbia and the band ended up working on new material. The first track on The Time Has Come is “All Strung Out Over You,” by Rudy Clark. Clark is known as a songwriter and performer who also wrote the hits “Got My Mind Set On You” (recorded in 1987 by George Harrison, “The Shoop Shoop Song” and “Good Lovin’” the massive hit for the Young Rascals. Readers may also know the song as being sampled in the 1990s by Fatboy Slim for his song “Weapon Of Choice.”

While The Time Has Come featured other covers as well – including “People Get Ready,” “In the Midnight Hour” and “What the World Needs Now Is Love,” the balance of the album features Chambers Brothers originals – the most significant being “The Time Has Come Today.” Originally recorded in 1966 as a single, as mentioned previously, Columbia was not happy with the recording and opted for “All Strung Out Over You” as a single. Musically, the 1966 version is similar in structure and progression as compared to the long version that appeared on the album – at least at the beginning.

The “long” version, also known as the “freak out” version, times out at just over eleven minutes in length. This version starts with the tick/tock of two different cowbells and two guitars – one clean and the other with fuzz playing nearly identical lines. Punctuated by a “Hey!” vocal at the end of each phrase in the second verse, this switches to “Time!” throughout the third and fourth verses. The third verse also includes the lyric “…And my soul has been psychedelicized,” an interesting portent of things to come. At the conclusion of the fourth verse, the two cowbells return and the tempo slows dramatically. Reverb and echo are added slowly to the cowbells and the repeated “Time!” lyric, thus creating one of the most dense and trippy recordings of the era.

Produced by David Rubinson, who just finished working with Santana and psychedelic stalwarts Moby Grape, The Time Has Come is mostly soul and what would later be known as garage rock. The eleven minutes of “Time Has Come Today”, including a bit of “The Little Drummer Boy” at 5:40, stand out as one of the psychedelic era masterpieces of studio work. The legacy the song has engendered is no less striking – given it has been featured in dozens of feature films and television shows and covered by artists including Pearl Jam, Joan Jett, and The Smashing Pumpkins.

 

Related: The 100 Best Psychedelic Rock Albums of the Golden Age

The Top 200 Psychedelic Songs of the Original Psychedelic Era

Interview: Willie Chambers of The Chambers Brothers

The Top 100 Psychedelic Rock Artists of All Time

 

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