Larry Taylor (born June 26, 1942) is an American bass guitarist, best known for his work as a member of Canned Heat from 1967. Before joining Canned Heat he had been a session bassist for The Monkees and Jerry Lee Lewis. He is the younger brother of Mel Taylor, long-time drummer for The Ventures. (More from Wikipedia)
“LSD-25” by the Gamblers is one of several surf instrumentals toward the end of the Pebbles, Volume 4 CD. This track dates from 1961; the allstar line-up includes Bruce Johnston, Larry Taylor (later in Canned Heat), Elliot Ingber (Fraternity of Man, Captain Beefheart, Little Feat, etc.), and famed drummer Sandy Nelson. According to the CD’s liner notes (by Nigel Strange): “Actually, surfers were the first subculture to embrace LSD, at a time when it was almost exclusively the plaything of the academics. With their footloose existence, and a sometimes mystical rapport with the ocean, the early surfers (we’re talking years before the craze, of course) were in many ways the true inheritors of the beatniks’ existential tradition, standing outside normal society and contemplating the void. In any event, this must surely be the first acid reference to appear on a record by several years.”
(December 2014)
