Blue Cheer was arguably the most-notorious band to emerge from San Francisco’s psychedelic scene in the late ’60s, its decibel-drenched assault steamrolling the “peace and love” stereotype of the hippie movement.
Founded by bassist/vocalist Dickie Peterson in 1966, the band took its name from a batch of LSD made by San Francisco chemist/acid king Owsley Stanley. It went through personnel changes before arriving at the classic lineup that also included Leigh Stephens (guitar) and Paul Whaley (drums). Manager Allan “Gut” Terk was a former Hell’s Angel.
The band quickly became a sonic juggernaut, abetted by a backline of large and new-to-America Marshall amplifiers and speaker cabinets. Some cite Blue Cheer as the first U.S. band to regularly gig with the British-made rigs, and while the phrase “wall of sound” figured into the band’s press push, the concept wasn’t exclusive to Blue Cheer.
“Depends on what you mean by ‘wall of sound,’” said Jorma Kaukonen, lead guitarist for their Bay Area contemporaries in Jefferson Airplane. “I had four Twin Reverbs, (Paul) Kantner had two Dual Showmans, and for a while, (Jack) Casady had amps on both sides of the stage.”
Stephens’ primary guitar with Blue Cheer was an SG Standard, but he also played Stratocasters. Peterson played a sunburst Jazz Bass.
Blue Cheer’s first album, Vincebus Eruptum (Latin for “controlled chaos”), was recorded at Amigo Studios in North Hollywood and released in January of ’68. One piece of publicity that accompanied it was a pull-out magazine poster showing the band sans instruments, surrounded by text in the same psychedelic font that appeared on the front and back of the album (the latter including a free-verse poem by Owsley).
Vincebus Eruptum’s six tracks are 32 minutes and eight seconds of aural ferocity, divided between cover songs and Peterson originals. And “controlled chaos” is an accurate description of Stephens’ guitar style, which sometimes straddled a line between music and extremely loud white noise. His snarling SG purveyed angry tones as he interpolated feedback as part of several arrangements.
The three covers – Eddie Cochran’s “Summertime Blues,” B.B. King’s “Rock Me Baby,” and Mose Allison’s “Parchman Farm” (listed on the album as “Parchment Farm”) – were radically reworked with alternative intros and outros as well as shifting time signatures that featured Whaley’s furious workouts on percussion. The arrangements and sounds weren’t in the same realm as Vanilla Fudge, but the two bands shared a bill at the Fillmore West in September of ’67.
The opening track, “Summertime Blues,” is a definitive transmogrification; the upbeat 1958 hit rearranged to almost unrecognizable except for the lyrics. Its signature C-F-G-C chord riff between the lines of each verse was supplanted by a howling, overdriven lick from Stephens, and while each musician played a brief solo, Peterson’s bass was derided by one critic as a “white boy in suburbia” effort.
Of the original songs, “Doctor Please” is the most noteworthy, lending a frenetic perspective on addiction. Unlike commentaries such as “Heroin” by the Velvet Underground or Hoyt Axton’s “The Pusher” (popularized by Steppenwolf), Blue Cheer’s rendition (which clocks in at 8:50) presents Peterson’s raspy shrieking as a junkie’s desperate supplication to a drug dealer (“Stick it to me, doctor!”).
The reception to Vincebus Eruptum was mixed, but it peaked at #11 on Billboard while “Summertime Blues” hit #14. The band played rock venues and festivals to support it, but not everyone considered their high-volume approach an attribute.
“They were indeed the loudest band I’d ever heard, up to that time,” Kaukonen said. “I don’t mean to be condescending, but (volume) was their most-distinguishing feature.”
Vintage-guitar dealer/repairman and surf guitarist Steve Soest caught a Blue Cheer show at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles in July of ’68.
“It was loud, of course,” he recalled. “But it was out of tune, too. The vocals were undecipherable, possibly because the PA system was severely underpowered. For an 18-year-old kid like me, it was just a head-splitting wall of noise.”
The band recorded a second album, OutsideInside, after which Stephens departed. It also became the first group cited by the Guinness Book of World Records as “world’s loudest rock band,” and other (less-successful) albums that featured Peterson were recorded in the ensuing decades. Another cover of “Summertime Blues” that alluded to the Blue Cheer version appeared on Rush’s 2004 EP, Feedback (their live version is on R30). The late Neil Peart was a Paul Whaley fan.
A respectable live performance by Peterson, Whaley, and guitarist Andrew “Duck” MacDonald is on the CD/DVD Blue Cheer Live at Rockpalast 2008. Peterson died the following year, and Whaley passed away in ’19.
In the pantheon of rock music history, Blue Cheer is hailed as a founder of heavy metal. As a comparison, Black Sabbath’s first album, also considered seminal in the genre, was released more than two years after Vincebus.
If MC5’s Kick Out the Jams was the most-brutal live album ever recorded (VG, May ’19), Vincebus Eruptum just may be the most-brutal studio album.
This article originally appeared in VG’s August 2024 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.
