Silver Apples might just be the greatest electronic rock band you’ve never heard of. Though, if you’re a fan of tunes that broke genres in the latter half of the 1960s, you might already be familiar with them.
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Still, Silver Apples are massively underrated, in my opinion. Not only was their music genuinely amazing, but they were the first of their kind.
Silver Apples formed in 1967, and their original run only lasted until 1970. The band would later reunite in the 90s, but have since come to an end following the deaths of both core members, Simeon and Danny Taylor, in 2020 and 2005, respectively. Their first run came to a fast end following a pretty scary legal battle involving a cover they used for one of their albums. However, that’s a story for another time, and the album I’m about to talk about isn’t the album with the cover image that got them in trouble. Rather, I’m talking about Silver Apples’ debut self-titled 1968 record.
Silver Apples’ Debut Album Is Something I’ll Never Forget
So, what is it about Silver Apples that makes it a go-to for me, and a record that I’d be content to listen to until the end of time? It’s an innovative, first-of-its-kind work. In fact, it is widely believed that Silver Apples were the very first group to use electronic music techniques in a rock band, or at the very least outside of academia.
Simeon used a primitive version of a synthesizer that he built himself. And this wasn’t some kind of hyper-experimental Kraftwerk introduction to electronic music. Rather, Silver Apples used synths and electronic elements as a complement to their psychedelic rock sound.
Nobody had done it before. And, naturally, Silver Apples were way too ahead of their time. They had a cult following in the underground scene in New York, but they never got the amount of love that I think they deserved.
Their second album, Contact, which boasts the legally dangerous album cover I mentioned earlier, is usually the one that gets all the love from cult underground fans nowadays. However, I adore their first record. Silver Apples was their most successful album as well, reaching No. 193 on the Billboard 200 chart.
“‘Silver Apples’ is a record that reached far ahead of its time,” said Adam Bunch of Crawdaddy! a few years back. “It’s not surprising then, in a year when the airwaves were still dominated by Motown and The Beatles (whose experimentation was tame by comparison), that it failed to garner much of an audience. Even now, nearly forty years later, the record sounds fresh and unconventional.”
When it comes down to it, there are a ton of albums out there that I’d be content to listen to indefinitely. But few transport me to the golden age of musical evolution toward electronica quite like Silver Apples.
There are no additional words I can offer to encourage you to give this album a spin. You just have to listen to it yourself. I recommend starting with “Lovefingers”.
Photo by Gaelle Beri/Redferns via Getty Images
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