Psychedelic rock

Psychedelic rock is a rock music genre that is inspired, influenced, or representative of psychedelic culture, which is centered on perception-altering hallucinogenic drugs. The music incorporated new electronic sound effects and recording techniques, extended instrumental solos, and improvisation. Many psychedelic groups differ in style, and the label is often applied spuriously.

Originating in the mid-1960s among British and American musicians, the sound of psychedelic rock invokes three core effects of LSD: depersonalization, dechronicization, and dynamization, all of which detach the user from everyday reality. Musically, the effects may be represented via novelty studio tricks, electronic or non-Western instrumentation, disjunctive song structures, and extended instrumental segments. Some of the earlier 1960s psychedelic rock musicians were based in folk, jazz, and the blues, while others showcased an explicit Indian classical influence called "raga rock". In the 1960s, there existed two main variants of the genre: the more whimsical, surrealist British psychedelia and the harder American West Coast "acid rock". While "acid rock" is sometimes deployed interchangeably with the term "psychedelic rock", it also refers more specifically to the heavier, harder, and more extreme ends of the genre.

The peak years of psychedelic rock were between 1967 and 1969, with milestone events including the 1967 Summer of Love and the 1969 Woodstock Rock Festival, becoming an international musical movement associated with a widespread counterculture before beginning a decline as changing attitudes, the loss of some key individuals, and a back-to-basics movement led surviving performers to move into new musical areas. The genre bridged the transition from early blues and folk-based rock to progressive rock and hard rock, and as a result contributed to the development of sub-genres such as heavy metal. Since the late 1970s it has been revived in various forms of neo-psychedelia.

## Definition

As a musical style, psychedelic rock incorporated new electronic sound effects and recording effects, extended solos, and improvisation. Features mentioned in relation to the genre include:

- electric guitars, often used with feedback, wah-wah and fuzzbox effects units;
- certain studio effects (principally in British psychedelia), such as backwards tapes, panning, phasing, long delay loops, and extreme reverb;
- elements of Indian music and other Eastern music, including Middle Eastern modalities;
- non-Western instruments (especially in British psychedelia), specifically those originally used in Indian classical music, such as sitar, tambura and tabla;
- elements of free-form jazz;
- a strong keyboard presence, especially electronic organs, harpsichords, or the Mellotron (an early tape-driven sampler);
- extended instrumental segments, especially guitar solos, or jams;
- disjunctive song structures, occasional key and time signature changes, modal melodies and drones;
- droning quality in vocals;
- electronic instruments such as synthesizers and the theremin;
- lyrics that made direct or indirect reference to hallucinogenic drugs;
- surreal, whimsical, esoterically or literary-inspired lyrics with (especially in British psychedelia) references to childhood;
- Victorian-era antiquation (exclusive to British psychedelia), drawing on items such as music boxes, music hall nostalgia and circus sounds.

The term "psychedelic" was coined in 1956 by psychiatrist Humphry Osmond in a letter to LSD exponent Aldous Huxley and used as an alternative descriptor for hallucinogenic drugs in the context of psychedelic psychotherapy. As the countercultural scene developed in San Francisco, the terms acid rock and psychedelic rock were used in 1966 to describe the new drug-influenced music and were being widely used by 1967. The two terms are often used interchangeably, but acid rock may be distinguished as a more extreme variation that was heavier, louder, relied on long jams, focused more directly on LSD, and made greater use of distortion.

## Original psychedelic era

### 1960–65: Precursors and influences

Music critic Richie Unterberger says that attempts to "pin down" the first psychedelic record are "nearly as elusive as trying to name the first rock & roll record". Some of the "far-fetched claims" include the instrumental "Telstar" (produced by Joe Meek for the Tornados in 1962) and the Dave Clark Five's "massively reverb-laden" "Any Way You Want It" (1964). The first mention of LSD on a rock record was the Gamblers' 1960 surf instrumental "LSD 25". A 1962 single by the Ventures, "The 2000 Pound Bee", issued forth the buzz of a distorted, "fuzztone" guitar, and the quest into "the possibilities of heavy, transistorised distortion" and other effects, like improved reverb and echo began in earnest on London's fertile rock 'n' roll scene. By 1964 fuzztone could be heard on singles by P.J. Proby, and the Beatles had employed feedback in "I Feel Fine", their sixth consecutive number 1 hit in the UK.

According to AllMusic, the emergence of psychedelic rock in the mid-1960s resulted from British groups who made up the British Invasion of the US market and folk rock bands seeking to broaden "the sonic possibilities of their music". Writing in his 1969 book The Rock Revolution, Arnold Shaw said the genre in its American form represented generational escapism, which he identified as a development of youth culture's "protest against the sexual taboos, racism, violence, hypocrisy and materialism of adult life".

American folk singer Bob Dylan's influence was central to the creation of the folk rock movement in 1965, and his lyrics remained a touchstone for the psychedelic songwriters of the late 1960s. Virtuoso sitarist Ravi Shankar had begun in 1956 a mission to bring Indian classical music to the West, inspiring jazz, classical and folk musicians. By the mid-1960s, his influence extended to a generation of young rock musicians who soon made raga rock part of the psychedelic rock aesthetic and one of the many intersecting cultural motifs of the era. In the British folk scene, blues, drugs, jazz and Eastern influences blended in the early 1960s work of Davy Graham, who adopted modal guitar tunings to transpose Indian ragas and Celtic reels. Graham was highly influential on Scottish folk virtuoso Bert Jansch and other pioneering guitarists across a spectrum of styles and genres in the mid-1960s. Jazz saxophonist and composer John Coltrane had a similar impact, as the exotic sounds on his albums My Favorite Things (1960) and A Love Supreme (1965), the latter influenced by the ragas of Shankar, were source material for guitar players and others looking to improvise or "jam".

One of the first musical uses of the term "psychedelic" in the folk scene was by the New York-based folk group The Holy Modal Rounders on their version of Lead Belly's 'Hesitation Blues' in 1964. Folk/avant-garde guitarist John Fahey recorded several songs in the early 1960s experimented with unusual recording techniques, including backwards tapes, and novel instrumental accompaniment including flute and sitar. His nineteen-minute "The Great San Bernardino Birthday Party" "anticipated elements of psychedelia with its nervy improvisations and odd guitar tunings". Similarly, folk guitarist Sandy Bull's early work "incorporated elements of folk, jazz, and Indian and Arabic-influenced dronish modes". His 1963 album Fantasias for Guitar and Banjo explores various styles and "could also be accurately described as one of the very first psychedelic records".

### 1965: Formative psychedelic scenes and sounds

Barry Miles, a leading figure in the 1960s UK underground, says that "Hippies didn't just pop up overnight" and that "1965 was the first year in which a discernible youth movement began to emerge [in the US]. Many of the key 'psychedelic' rock bands formed this year." On the US West Coast, underground chemist Augustus Owsley Stanley III and Ken Kesey (along with his followers known as the Merry Pranksters) helped thousands of people take uncontrolled trips at Kesey's Acid Tests and in the new psychedelic dance halls. In Britain, Michael Hollingshead opened the World Psychedelic Centre and Beat Generation poets Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Gregory Corso read at the Royal Albert Hall. Miles adds: "The readings acted as a catalyst for underground activity in London, as people suddenly realized just how many like-minded people there were around. This was also the year that London began to blossom into colour with the opening of the Granny Takes a Trip and Hung On You clothes shops." Thanks to media coverage, use of LSD became widespread.

According to music critic Jim DeRogatis, writing in his book on psychedelic rock, Turn on Your Mind, the Beatles are seen as the "Acid Apostles of the New Age". Producer George Martin, who was initially known as a specialist in comedy and novelty records, responded to the Beatles' requests by providing a range of studio tricks that ensured the group played a leading role in the development of psychedelic effects. Anticipating their overtly psychedelic work, "Ticket to Ride" (April 1965) introduced a subtle, drug-inspired drone suggestive of India, played on rhythm guitar. Musicologist William Echard writes that the Beatles employed several techniques in the years up to 1965 that soon became elements of psychedelic music, an approach he describes as "cognate" and reflective of how they, like the Yardbirds, were early pioneers in psychedelia. As important aspects the group brought to the genre, Echard cites the Beatles' rhythmic originality and unpredictability; "true" tonal ambiguity; leadership in incorporating elements from Indian music and studio techniques such as vari-speed, tape loops and reverse tape sounds; and their embrace of the avant-garde.

In Unterberger's opinion, the Byrds, emerging from the Los Angeles folk rock scene, and the Yardbirds, from England's blues scene, were more responsible than the Beatles for "sounding the psychedelic siren". Drug use and attempts at psychedelic music moved out of acoustic folk-based music towards rock soon after the Byrds, inspired by the Beatles' 1964 film A Hard Day's Night, adopted electric instruments to produce a chart-topping version of Dylan's "Mr. Tambourine Man" in the summer of 1965. On the Yardbirds, Unterberger identifies lead guitarist Jeff Beck as having "laid the blueprint for psychedelic guitar", and says that their "ominous minor key melodies, hyperactive instrumental breaks (called rave-ups), unpredictable tempo changes, and use of Gregorian chants" helped to define the "manic eclecticism" typical of early psychedelic rock. The band's "Heart Full of Soul" (June 1965), which includes a distorted guitar riff that replicates the sound of a sitar, peaked at number 2 in the UK and number 9 in the US. In Echard's description, the song "carried the energy of a new scene" as the guitar-hero phenomenon emerged in rock, and it heralded the arrival of new Eastern sounds. The Kinks provided the first example of sustained Indian-style drone in rock when they used open-tuned guitars to mimic the tambura on "See My Friends" (July 1965), which became a top 10 hit in the UK.

The Beatles' "Norwegian Wood" from the December 1965 album Rubber Soul marked the first released recording on which a member of a Western rock group played the sitar. The song sparked a craze for the sitar and other Indian instrumentation – a trend that fueled the growth of raga rock as the India exotic became part of the essence of psychedelic rock. Music historian George Case recognises Rubber Soul as the first of two Beatles albums that "marked the authentic beginning of the psychedelic era", while music critic Robert Christgau similarly wrote that "Psychedelia starts here". San Francisco historian Charles Perry recalled the album being "the soundtrack of the Haight-Ashbury, Berkeley and the whole circuit", as pre-hippie youths suspected that the songs were inspired by drugs.

Although psychedelia was introduced in Los Angeles through the Byrds, according to Shaw, San Francisco emerged as the movement's capital on the West Coast. Several California-based folk acts followed the Byrds into folk rock, bringing their psychedelic influences with them, to produce the "San Francisco Sound". Music historian Simon Philo writes that although some commentators would state that the centre of influence had moved from London to California by 1967, it was British acts like the Beatles and the Rolling Stones that helped inspire and "nourish" the new American music in the mid-1960s, especially in the formative San Francisco scene. The music scene there developed in the city's Haight-Ashbury neighborhood in 1965 at basement shows organised by Chet Helms of the Family Dog; and as Jefferson Airplane founder Marty Balin and investors opened The Matrix nightclub that summer and began booking his and other local bands such as the Grateful Dead, the Steve Miller Band and Country Joe & the Fish. Helms and San Francisco Mime Troupe manager Bill Graham in the fall of 1965 organised larger scale multi-media community events/benefits featuring the Airplane, the Diggers and Allen Ginsberg. By early 1966 Graham had secured booking at The Fillmore, and Helms at the Avalon Ballroom, where in-house psychedelic-themed light shows replicated the visual effects of the psychedelic experience. Graham became a major figure in the growth of psychedelic rock, attracting most of the major psychedelic rock bands of the day to The Fillmore.

According to author Kevin McEneaney, the Grateful Dead "invented" acid rock in front of a crowd of concertgoers in San Jose, California on 4 December 1965, the date of the second Acid Test held by novelist Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters. Their stage performance involved the use of strobe lights to reproduce LSD's "surrealistic fragmenting" or "vivid isolating of caught moments". The Acid Test experiments subsequently launched the entire psychedelic subculture.

### 1966: Growth and early popularity

Echard writes that in 1966, "the psychedelic implications" advanced by recent rock experiments "became fully explicit and much more widely distributed", and by the end of the year, "most of the key elements of psychedelic topicality had been at least broached." DeRogatis says the start of psychedelic (or acid) rock is "best listed at 1966". Music journalists Pete Prown and Harvey P. Newquist locate the "peak years" of psychedelic rock between 1966 and 1969. In 1966, media coverage of rock music changed considerably as the music became reevaluated as a new form of art in tandem with the growing psychedelic community.

In February and March, two singles were released that later achieved recognition as the first psychedelic hits: the Yardbirds' "Shapes of Things" and the Byrds' "Eight Miles High". The former reached number 3 in the UK and number 11 in the US, and continued the Yardbirds' exploration of guitar effects, Eastern-sounding scales, and shifting rhythms. By overdubbing guitar parts, Beck layered multiple takes for his solo, which included extensive use of fuzz tone and harmonic feedback. The song's lyrics, which Unterberger describes as "stream-of-consciousness", have been interpreted as pro-environmental or anti-war. The Yardbirds became the first British band to have the term "psychedelic" applied to one of its songs. On "Eight Miles High", Roger McGuinn's 12-string Rickenbacker guitar provided a psychedelic interpretation of free jazz and Indian raga, channelling Coltrane and Shankar, respectively. The song's lyrics were widely taken to refer to drug use, although the Byrds denied it at the time. "Eight Miles High" peaked at number 14 in the US and reached the top 30 in the UK.

Contributing to psychedelia's emergence into the pop mainstream was the release of the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds (May 1966) and the Beatles' Revolver (August 1966). Often considered one of the earliest albums in the canon of psychedelic rock, Pet Sounds contained many elements that would be incorporated into psychedelia, with its artful experiments, psychedelic lyrics based on emotional longings and self-doubts, elaborate sound effects and new sounds on both conventional and unconventional instruments. The album track "I Just Wasn't Made for These Times" contained the first use of theremin sounds on a rock record. Scholar Philip Auslander says that even though psychedelic music is not normally associated with the Beach Boys, the "odd directions" and experiments in Pet Sounds "put it all on the map. ... basically that sort of opened the door – not for groups to be formed or to start to make music, but certainly to become as visible as say Jefferson Airplane or somebody like that."

DeRogatis views Revolver as another of "the first psychedelic rock masterpieces", along with Pet Sounds. The Beatles' May 1966 B-side "Rain", recorded during the Revolver sessions, was the first pop recording to contain reversed sounds. Together with further studio tricks such as varispeed, the song includes a droning melody that reflected the band's growing interest in non-Western musical form and lyrics conveying the division between an enlightened psychedelic outlook and conformism. Philo cites "Rain" as "the birth of British psychedelic rock" and describes Revolver as "[the] most sustained deployment of Indian instruments, musical form and even religious philosophy" heard in popular music up to that time. Author Steve Turner recognises the Beatles' success in conveying an LSD-inspired worldview on Revolver, particularly with "Tomorrow Never Knows", as having "opened the doors to psychedelic rock (or acid rock)". In author Shawn Levy's description, it was "the first true drug album, not [just] a pop record with some druggy insinuations", while musicologists Russell Reising and Jim LeBlanc credit the Beatles with "set[ting] the stage for an important subgenre of psychedelic music, that of the messianic pronouncement".

Echard highlights early records by the 13th Floor Elevators and Love among the key psychedelic releases of 1966, along with "Shapes of Things", "Eight Miles High", "Rain" and Revolver. Originating from Austin, Texas, the first of these new bands came to the genre via the garage scene before releasing their debut album, The Psychedelic Sounds of the 13th Floor Elevators in October that year. It was one of the first rock albums to include the adjective in its title, although the LP was released on an independent label and was little noticed at the time. Two other bands also used the word in titles of LPs released in November 1966: The Blues Magoos' Psychedelic Lollipop, and the Deep's Psychedelic Moods. Having formed in late 1965 with the aim of spreading LSD consciousness, the Elevators commissioned business cards containing an image of the third eye and the caption "Psychedelic rock". Rolling Stone highlights the 13th Floor Elevators as arguably "the most important early progenitors of psychedelic garage rock".

Donovan's July 1966 single "Sunshine Superman" became one of the first psychedelic pop/rock singles to top the Billboard charts in the US. Influenced by Aldous Huxley’s The Doors of Perception, and with lyrics referencing LSD, it contributed to bringing psychedelia to the mainstream.

The Beach Boys' October 1966 single "Good Vibrations" was another early pop song to incorporate psychedelic lyrics and sounds. The single's success prompted an unexpected revival in theremins and increased the awareness of analog synthesizers. As psychedelia gained prominence, Beach Boys-style harmonies would be ingrained into the newer psychedelic pop.

### 1967–69: Continued development

#### Peak era

In 1967, psychedelic rock received widespread media attention and a larger audience beyond local psychedelic communities. From 1967 to 1968, it was the prevailing sound of rock music, either in the more whimsical British variant, or the harder American West Coast acid rock. Music historian David Simonelli says the genre's commercial peak lasted "a brief year", with San Francisco and London recognised as the two key cultural centres. Compared with the American form, British psychedelic music was often more arty in its experimentation, and it tended to stick within pop song structures. Music journalist Mark Prendergast writes that it was only in US garage-band psychedelia that the often whimsical traits of UK psychedelic music were found. He says that aside from the work of the Byrds, Love and the Doors, there were three categories of US psychedelia: the "acid jams" of the San Francisco bands, who favoured albums over singles; pop psychedelia typified by groups such as the Beach Boys and Buffalo Springfield; and the "wigged-out" music of bands following in the example of the Beatles and the Yardbirds, such as the Electric Prunes, the Nazz, the Chocolate Watchband and the Seeds.

In February 1967, the Beatles released the double A-side single "Strawberry Fields Forever" / "Penny Lane", which Ian MacDonald says launched both the "English pop-pastoral mood" typified by bands such as Pink Floyd, Family, Traffic and Fairport Convention, and English psychedelia's LSD-inspired preoccupation with "nostalgia for the innocent vision of a child". The Mellotron parts on "Strawberry Fields Forever" remain the most celebrated example of the instrument on a pop or rock recording. According to Simonelli, the two songs heralded the Beatles' brand of Romanticism as a central tenet of psychedelic rock.

Jefferson Airplane's Surrealistic Pillow (February 1967) was one of the first albums to come out of San Francisco that sold well enough to bring national attention to the city's music scene. The LP tracks "White Rabbit" and "Somebody to Love" subsequently became top 10 hits in the US.

The Hollies psychedelic B-side "All the World Is Love" (February 1967) was released as the flipside to the hit single "On a Carousel".

Pink Floyd's "Arnold Layne" (March 1967) and "See Emily Play" (June 1967), both written by Syd Barrett, helped set the pattern for pop-psychedelia in the UK. There, "underground" venues like the UFO Club, Middle Earth Club, The Roundhouse, the Country Club and the Art Lab drew capacity audiences with psychedelic rock and ground-breaking liquid light shows. A major figure in the development of British psychedelia was the American promoter and record producer Joe Boyd, who moved to London in 1966. He co-founded venues including the UFO Club, produced Pink Floyd's "Arnold Layne", and went on to manage folk and folk rock acts including Nick Drake, the Incredible String Band and Fairport Convention.

Psychedelic rock's popularity accelerated following the release of the Beatles' album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (May 1967) and the staging of the Monterey Pop Festival in June. Sgt. Pepper was the first commercially successful work that critics recognised as a landmark aspect of psychedelia, and the Beatles' mass appeal meant that the record was played virtually everywhere. The album was highly influential on bands in the US psychedelic rock scene and its elevation of the LP format benefited the San Francisco bands. Among many changes brought about by its success, artists sought to imitate its psychedelic effects and devoted more time to creating their albums; the counterculture was scrutinised by musicians; and acts adopted its non-conformist sentiments.

The 1967 Summer of Love saw a huge number of young people from across America and the world travel to Haight-Ashbury, boosting the area's population from 15,000 to around 100,000. It was prefaced by the Human Be-In event in March and reached its peak at the Monterey Pop Festival in June, the latter helping to make major American stars of Janis Joplin, lead singer of Big Brother and the Holding Company, Jimi Hendrix, and the Who. Several established British acts joined the psychedelic revolution, including Eric Burdon (previously of the Animals) and the Who, whose The Who Sell Out (December 1967) included the psychedelic-influenced "I Can See for Miles" and "Armenia City in the Sky". Other major British Invasion acts who absorbed psychedelia in 1967 include the Hollies with the album Butterfly, and The Rolling Stones album Their Satanic Majesties Request. The Incredible String Band's The 5000 Spirits or the Layers of the Onion (July 1967) developed their folk music into a pastoral form of psychedelia.

Many famous established recording artists from the early rock era also fell under psychedelia and recorded psychedelic-inspired tracks, including Del Shannon's "Color Flashing Hair", Bobby Vee's "I May Be Gone", The Four Seasons' "Watch the Flowers Grow", Roy Orbison's "Southbound Jericho Parkway" and The Everly Brothers' "Mary Jane".

According to author Edward Macan, there ultimately existed three distinct branches of British psychedelic music. The first, dominated by Cream, the Yardbirds and Hendrix, was founded on a heavy, electric adaptation of the blues played by the Rolling Stones, adding elements such as the Who's power chord style and feedback. The second, considerably more complex form drew strongly from jazz sources and was typified by Traffic, Colosseum, If, and Canterbury scene bands such as Soft Machine and Caravan. The third branch, represented by the Moody Blues, Pink Floyd, Procol Harum and the Nice, was influenced by the later music of the Beatles. Several of the post-Sgt. Pepper English psychedelic groups developed the Beatles' classical influences further than either the Beatles or contemporaneous West Coast psychedelic bands. Among such groups, the Pretty Things abandoned their R&B roots to create S.F. Sorrow (December 1968), the first example of a psychedelic rock opera.

#### International variants

The US and UK were the major centres of psychedelic music, but in the late 1960s scenes began to develop across the world, including continental Europe, Australasia, Asia and south and Central America. In the later 1960s psychedelic scenes developed in a large number of countries in continental Europe, including the Netherlands with bands like The Outsiders, Denmark where it was pioneered by Steppeulvene, Yugoslavia, with bands like Kameleoni, Dogovor iz 1804., Pop Mašina and Igra Staklenih Perli, and Germany, where musicians began to fuse music of psychedelia and the electronic avant-garde. 1968 saw the first major German rock festival, the Internationale Essener Songtage [de] in Essen, and the foundation of the Zodiak Free Arts Lab in Berlin by Hans-Joachim Roedelius, and Conrad Schnitzler, which helped bands like Tangerine Dream and Amon Düül achieve cult status.

A thriving psychedelic music scene in Cambodia, influenced by psychedelic rock and soul broadcast by US forces radio in Vietnam, was pioneered by artists such as Sinn Sisamouth and Ros Serey Sothea. In South Korea, Shin Jung-Hyeon, often considered the godfather of Korean rock, played psychedelic-influenced music for the American soldiers stationed in the country. Following Shin Jung-Hyeon, the band San Ul Lim (Mountain Echo) often combined psychedelic rock with a more folk sound. In Turkey, Anatolian rock artist Erkin Koray blended classic Turkish music and Middle Eastern themes into his psychedelic-driven rock, helping to found the Turkish rock scene with artists such as Cem Karaca, Mogollar, Barış Manço and Erkin Koray. In Brazil, the Tropicalia movement merged Brazilian and African rhythms with psychedelic rock. Musicians who were part of the movement include Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, Os Mutantes, Gal Costa, Tom Zé, and the poet/lyricist Torquato Neto, all of whom participated in the 1968 album Tropicália: ou Panis et Circencis, which served as a musical manifesto.

### 1969–71: Decline

By the end of the 1960s, psychedelic rock was in retreat. Psychedelic trends climaxed in the 1969 Woodstock festival, which saw performances by most of the major psychedelic acts, including Jimi Hendrix, Jefferson Airplane, and the Grateful Dead. LSD had been made illegal in the UK in September 1966 and in California in October; by 1967, it was outlawed throughout the United States. In 1969, the murders of Sharon Tate and Leno and Rosemary LaBianca by Charles Manson and his cult of followers, claiming to have been inspired by Beatles' songs such as "Helter Skelter", has been seen as contributing to an anti-hippie backlash. At the end of the same year, the Altamont Free Concert in California, headlined by the Rolling Stones, became notorious for the fatal stabbing of black teenager Meredith Hunter by Hells Angel security guards.

George Clinton's ensembles Funkadelic and Parliament and their various spin-offs took psychedelia and funk to create their own unique style, producing over forty singles, including three in the US top ten, and three platinum albums.

Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys, Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones, Peter Green and Danny Kirwan of Fleetwood Mac and Syd Barrett of Pink Floyd were early "acid casualties", helping to shift the focus of the respective bands of which they had been leading figures. Some groups, such as the Jimi Hendrix Experience and Cream, broke up. Hendrix died in London in September 1970, shortly after recording Band of Gypsys (1970), Janis Joplin died of a heroin overdose in October 1970 and they were closely followed by Jim Morrison of the Doors, who died in Paris in July 1971. By this point, many surviving acts had moved away from psychedelia into either more back-to-basics "roots rock", traditional-based, pastoral or whimsical folk, the wider experimentation of progressive rock, or riff-based heavy rock.

## Revivals and successors

### Psychedelic soul

Following the lead of Hendrix in rock, psychedelia began to influence African American musicians, particularly the stars of the Motown label. This psychedelic soul was influenced by the civil rights movement, giving it a darker and more political edge than much psychedelic rock. Building on the funk sound of James Brown, it was pioneered from about 1968 by Sly and the Family Stone and The Temptations. Acts that followed them into this territory included Edwin Starr and the Undisputed Truth. George Clinton's interdependent Funkadelic and Parliament ensembles and their various spin-offs took the genre to its most extreme lengths making funk almost a religion in the 1970s, producing over forty singles, including three in the US top ten, and three platinum albums.

While psychedelic rock began to waver at the end of the 1960s, psychedelic soul continued into the 1970s, peaking in popularity in the early years of the decade, and only disappearing in the late 1970s as tastes began to change. Songwriter Norman Whitfield wrote psychedelic soul songs for The Temptations and Marvin Gaye.

### Prog, heavy metal, and krautrock

Many of the British musicians and bands that had embraced psychedelia went on to create progressive rock in the 1970s, including Pink Floyd, Soft Machine and members of Yes. The Moody Blues album In Search of the Lost Chord (1968) which is steeped in psychedelia, including prominent use of Indian instruments, is noted as an early predecessor and influence on the emerging progressive movement. King Crimson's album In the Court of the Crimson King (1969) has been seen as an important link between psychedelia and progressive rock. While bands such as Hawkwind maintained an explicitly psychedelic course into the 1970s, most dropped the psychedelic elements in favour of wider experimentation. The incorporation of jazz into the music of bands like Soft Machine and Can also contributed to the development of the jazz rock of bands like Colosseum. As they moved away from their psychedelic roots and placed increasing emphasis on electronic experimentation, German bands like Kraftwerk, Tangerine Dream, Can, Neu! and Faust developed a distinctive brand of electronic rock, known as kosmische musik, or in the British press as "Kraut rock". The adoption of electronic synthesisers, pioneered by Popol Vuh from 1970, together with the work of figures like Brian Eno (for a time the keyboard player with Roxy Music), would be a major influence on subsequent electronic rock.

Psychedelic rock, with its distorted guitar sound, extended solos and adventurous compositions, has been seen as an important bridge between blues-oriented rock and later heavy metal. American bands whose loud, repetitive psychedelic rock emerged as early heavy metal included the Amboy Dukes and Steppenwolf. From England, two former guitarists with the Yardbirds, Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page, moved on to form key acts in the genre, The Jeff Beck Group and Led Zeppelin respectively. Other major pioneers of the genre had begun as blues-based psychedelic bands, including Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, Judas Priest and UFO. Psychedelic music also contributed to the origins of glam rock, with Marc Bolan changing his psychedelic folk duo into rock band T. Rex and becoming the first glam rock star from 1970. From 1971 David Bowie moved on from his early psychedelic work to develop his Ziggy Stardust persona, incorporating elements of professional make up, mime and performance into his act.

The jam band movement, which began in the late 1980s, was influenced by the Grateful Dead's improvisational and psychedelic musical style. The Vermont band Phish developed a sizable and devoted fan following during the 1990s, and were described as "heirs" to the Grateful Dead after the death of Jerry Garcia in 1995.

Emerging in the 1990s, stoner rock combined elements of psychedelic rock and doom metal. Typically using a slow-to-mid tempo and featuring low-tuned guitars in a bass-heavy sound, with melodic vocals, and 'retro' production, it was pioneered by the Californian bands Kyuss and Sleep. Modern festivals focusing on psychedelic music include Austin Psych Fest in Texas, founded in 2008, Liverpool Psych Fest, and Desert Daze in Southern California.

### Neo-psychedelia

There were occasional mainstream acts that dabbled in neo-psychedelia, a style of music which emerged in late 1970s post-punk circles. Although it has mainly been an influence on alternative and indie rock bands, neo-psychedelia sometimes updated the approach of 1960s psychedelic rock. Neo-psychedelia may include forays into psychedelic pop, jangly guitar rock, heavily distorted free-form jams, or recording experiments. Some of the scene's bands, including the Soft Boys, the Teardrop Explodes, Wah!, Echo & the Bunnymen, became major figures of neo-psychedelia. In the US in the early 1980s it was joined by the Paisley Underground movement, based in Los Angeles and fronted by acts such as Dream Syndicate, the Bangles and Rain Parade.

In the late 80s in the UK the genre of Madchester emerged in the Manchester area, in which artists merged alternative rock with acid house and dance culture as well as other sources, including psychedelic music and 1960s pop. The label was popularised by the British music press in the early 1990s. Erchard talks about it as being part of a "thread of 80s psychedelic rock" and lists as main bands in it the Stone Roses, Happy Mondays and Inspiral Carpets. The rave-influenced scene is widely seen as heavily influenced by drugs, especially ecstasy (MDMA), and it is seen by Erchard as central to a wider phenomenon of what he calls a "rock rave crossover" in the late 80s and early 90s UK indie scene which also included the Screamadelica album by Scottish band Primal Scream.

Later according to Treblezine's Jeff Telrich: "Primal Scream made [neo-psychedelia] dancefloor ready. The Flaming Lips and Spiritualized took it to orchestral realms. And Animal Collective—well, they kinda did their own thing."

## See also

- List of electric blues musicians
- List of psychedelic rock artists

Genre of rock music


Tanks in the Spanish Army

Tanks in the Spanish Army have over 90 years of history, from the French Renault FTs first delivered in 1919 to the Leopard 2 models of the early 21st century. The Spanish FTs took part in combat during the Rif War and participated in the first amphibious landing with tanks in history, at Alhucemas. In 1925, the Spanish Army began to undertake a program to develop and produce a Spanish tank, an upgraded version of the Renault FT, called the Trubia A4. Although the prototype performed well during testing, the tank was never put into mass production. Spain also experimented with the Italian Fiat 3000, acquiring one tank in 1925, and with another indigenous tank program called the Landesa. However, none of these evolved into a major armor program, and as a result the FT remained the most important tank, in numbers, in the Spanish Army until the beginning of the Spanish Civil War.

Between July 1936 and April 1939, during the Spanish Civil War, the two opposing armies received large quantities of tanks from foreign powers. Spain's Second Republic received tanks from the Soviet Union, many of which were captured by the Nationalists and pressed into service against their former masters, while the Nationalists were aided by the Germans and Italians. The Spanish Civil War, although the testing grounds for the nations which would ultimately take part in World War II, proved inconclusive with regard to the proof of mechanized warfare. Despite attempts by Soviet, German and Italian advisers and soldiers to use newly devised mechanized theories, the lack of quality crews and the tanks, and the insufficient number of tanks provided bad impressions on the usefulness of tanks on their own.

The Spanish Army ended the Spanish Civil War with a fleet of light tanks. Looking to field more modern and capable tanks, the Spanish government and army approved a venture to design and manufacture a better light tank, known as the Verdeja. Although the tank proved extremely capable, a lack of raw materials and incentives doomed the program to failure. Furthermore, the army's requirements were temporarily satisfied by the procurement of Panzer IVs in late 1943. However, the failure to acquire more Panzer IVs led Spain to field a largely antiquated collection of light tanks and an insufficient number of medium tanks. In 1953, the United States and Spain signed a military aid program agreement which led to the supply of M47 Patton and M48 Patton tanks. The American decision to not allow Spain to deploy the new equipment during the war with Morocco caused Spain to look elsewhere for a supplement to their fleet of Patton tanks, ending with the procurement of the AMX-30E, based on the French AMX-30.

Almost immediately after, the Spanish Army and the Spanish Ministry of Defense began to look for a future Spanish tank. This turned into the Lince tank program. Despite numerous bids the Lince program failed, both for financial reasons and because of the decision to instead modernize the existing fleet of AMX-30Es, and to procure a large number of American M60 Patton tanks to replace the fleet of older Patton tanks. Over half of the AMX-30Es were upgraded to a standard known as the AMX-30EM2, while the rest suffered a more finite modification known as the AMX-30EM1. However, the M60s and modernized AMX-30Es did not provide Spain with a sufficiently modern tank for the next century. In 1994, the Spanish Ministry of Defense began to negotiate with the German government over the purchase of the Leopard 2. Ultimately, 108 Leopard 2A4s were procured and integrated into the Spanish Army, while 219 Leopard 2Es were built in Spain, based on the German Leopard 2A6. The Leopard 2E and Leopard 2A4 replaced the fleet of M60 Patton tanks. Presently, the Spanish Army possesses 108 Leopard 2A4s and 219 Leopard 2Es.

## Birth of the Spanish tank force: 1919–1926

### Background

Before the First World War, the Spanish Army bought a unarmored Schneider-Brillié truck in 1909 to be used in Melilla, where armed conflict with local tribes was going on. This was a French bus platform that was fitted with an armoured body in Spain, to be used as troop transport. Although the Schneider-Brillié model 1909 was big, slow and its performance was not good, the Spanish Army learned the value of armored vehicles and bought a second one. Spanish Army officers appreciated the advantages of using advanced weapons technology in the Colonial War in Spanish Morocco and followed First World War advances.

### First purchases

The Spanish army's interest in the tank began near the end of World War I, when a formal petition for one Renault FT light tank was made to the French government on 28 October 1918. This purchase, however, was not processed until 15 January 1919. Spain's Comisión de Experiencias, Proyectos y Comprobación del Material de Guerra (Experiences, Projects and Confirmation Commission) issued a formal order for an FT, armed with a 37-millimeter (1.5 in) cannon, and days later extended the order to include another three cannon armed tanks, and another FT armed with a machine gun. On 5 March the order was authorized and then extended further to include two more FTs, armed with the 37-millimeter (1.5 in) cannon. On 20 March the French government declared that they could not process the sale, and on 12 April the process to acquire these vehicles began anew.

In May 1919, the French acceded to the sale of a single FT light tank to the Spanish Army, delivered the next month. This particular FT was armed with an 8-millimeter (0.31 in) Hotchkiss machine gun, and was later re-armed with a Spanish 7-millimeter (0.28 in) machine gun. Upon inspection by the Spanish government, it was decided to procure another ten—including eight armed with machine guns and two armed with cannons. The French government declared that there were no vehicles available for sale, and later added that under no circumstances would they allow Spain to rearm these vehicles with the Spanish 7 millimeters (0.28 in) machine gun, and consequently denied the sale. As a result, Spain began to approach other governments, including Great Britain and the United States, but with no success.

### Rif War

Following Spain's colonial defeat at the Battle of Annual, on 22 July 1921, another military envoy was sent to France to petition for more tanks. This time, the French government consented and agreed to the sale of ten machine gun armed FTs and a single command tank. The command tank was an FT chassis, with the turret replaced by a superstructure, carrying a single communications radio. These were presented to the third section of the Escuela Central de Tiro, or the Central Shooting School, on 12 January 1922, and organized into a company of twelve light tanks. In September 1921, the Spanish government also procured six Schneider CA1 tanks and deployed these to Morocco as early as 28 February 1922. On 13 March 1922, six FTs were unloaded at Melilla, as well.

On 18 March 1922, the company of FT light tanks took part in its first combat operation, during the Rif War. Ordered to operate with the Spanish Legion, the force was to capture the town of Tunguntz, in Northern Morocco. Surprising the defenders with their appearance, the armored company advanced, and the legionnaires behind, and captured the town of Anvar. Advancing towards Tunguntz, the tanks began to come under heavy fire, as their advance had isolated them from the legionnaires due to the speed. As a result, the tanks were forced to withdraw to Anvar to fall back on the protection of the infantry. Two FTs were abandoned by their crew because of mechanical problems and were later destroyed by the Moroccan defenders with dynamite. A post-action analysis of the action decided that the poor performance of the tanks company was a direct result of poor cooperation with the infantry, the lack of reliability of the tanks' machine guns and the lack of prior training before being rushed to the front. Thereafter, Spain's armored company was used almost continuously in small-scale operations between late 1922 and September 1925. On 8 September 1925, Spain's armor would take part in the first amphibious landing with tanks in history.

After being refitted with brand new FTs to replace losses incurred during the three years of operations in Morocco, the tank company was transferred to Ceuta to prepare for the amphibious operations planned to place in and around Al Hoceima Bay. In the days previous to the Alhucemas landing, the armored company took part in a number of training exercises, with four K-type landing craft, specially modified to allow them to carry three tanks each. However, on the day of the landings the landing craft hit a shoal 50 meters (55 yd) from the beach; as a result, the armored company was not able to land until the next day, on 9 September 1925. Upon landing, the vehicles were used to support the left flank of the Spanish attack and aided in the capture of the heights surrounding the beaches and controlling the exit points towards the inland.

The Rif War came to an end in May 1926, and the armored company was relocated to the Spanish mainland in July of that year.

## Early indigenous tank development programs: 1925–1935

With their experiences in Morocco, the Spanish Army decided to fund a development program for a new Spanish light tank. The new vehicle was to be based on the Renault FT, which was the most numerous armored vehicle in service with the Spanish Army at the time and one of the most widely used by foreign armies. The program was spearheaded by Captain of the Artillery Carlos Ruiz de Toledo, who had first commanded the battery of Schneider CA1 assault tanks in Morocco; Toledo felt that the tank would become an extremely important asset in future conflicts and felt that the Spanish Army required a Spanish-built model. As a result, he toured a number of European states in an effort to collect information on new trends in tank design and attempt to integrate these into the Spanish tank program. The resulting tank was known as the Carro de Combate Trubia serie A, or the "Series A Trubia Tank".

### Trubia light tank

The first prototype development began in 1925. Produced in the Trubia Artillery Factory (Fábrica de Artillería Trubia), in Asturias, the tank was powered by a four-cylinder Hispano-Suiza 40/50 engine, the same engine the Spanish Army's military trucks had been equipped with since 1915. Given the Spanish Army's opinion that the FT was limited in firepower, the Trubia tank featured a special turret. The turret was designed in two articulated halves, which could traverse independently, each armed with a machine gun. Theoretically, if one of the machine guns jammed, the tank would still have another one to defend itself with. Furthermore, the vehicle's hull was provided with firing ports, to allow the crew to fire small arms from within the tank. This prototype was put through a series of tests, and its success brought about the decision to continue development on a Spanish tank, leading to an improved Trubia tank design, known as the Modelo Trubia 75HP, tipo rápido, serie A (Model Trubia 75 hp, fast tank, series A).

While touring Europe for a second time, in an attempt to integrate foreign design trends into the new Trubia, Captain Ruiz de Toledo found a new type of track system in Germany. Designed to avoid having problems with the tracks coming off the vehicle, the new design substituted the traditional tracks with a system which was held together by a lateral metal wall, with the roadwheels suspended from the chassis. The track system was the most innovative and unique part of the new Trubia light tank. Apart from the new tracks, the Trubia was to have a greater velocity (at least 30 kilometers per hour (19 mph)) and greater road range than the FT. While a new machine gun was installed on the glacis plate, the tank's crew was increased from two to three, which caused the hull to be enlarged; this also allowed the engine to be maintained from inside the vehicle, allowing the crew to fix small breakdowns in the field. To refrigerate the engine and the crew, a compressed air dispenser was installed inside the chassis. This solved problems dealing with the crew's claustrophobia and the intake of gasses originating from the engine found in the FT, and made crewing the tank much more ergonomic. The original 50 horsepower (37 kW) was replaced with a more powerful 75 horsepower (56 kW) Daimler four cylinder engine. The transmission had four forward gears and four reverse gears. The new tank proved satisfactory—and even bettered the FT in some aspects—and the Spanish Army ordered the construction of four prototypes.

The first prototype was manufactured in 1926. A total of four prototypes were ordered, but production was slow and by 1928 only one of the tanks had been completed, while the other three prototypes were not armed. The completed vehicle, called the Trubia A4, was sent to the Firing School where it was put through a series of tests. In 1931, a second prototype was completed, while the final two were completed in 1934. The original prototype was returned to the factory in 1935, to integrate a number of modernizations and to repair any damage which was done to the vehicle during the testing process. The other three tanks were issued to the Milan Infantry Regiment, in Oviedo, where they continued testing.

### Other tank programs

While the Trubia was being developed, the Spanish Army acquired an Italian Fiat 3000A. Ordered in October 1924, it was received in January 1925, and assigned to the Central Firing School. There, it went through a series of experiments and tests. The tank was originally developed as a near copy of the Renault FT, of which Italy had previously attempted to procure one hundred units. It had a smaller chassis and was powered through a 50 horsepower (37 kW) engine. The FIAT 3000A had a turret with two 6.5-millimeter (0.26 in) machine guns; this was later improved with a 37-millimeter (1.5 in) cannon and designated the FIAT 3000B.

In 1928, the Trubia Factory, under Major of the Artillery Victor Landesa Domenech, designed and began production of a prototype of a new armored tractor; these were named after him, as the Landesa. The unarmed tractor finished production in 1930 and went through a series of tests. Between 1931 and 1932 the vehicle went through a series of upgrades in the factory and was later sent to Madrid for further testing, where it passed satisfactorily in April 1932. Landesa, who had at this time been promoted to Lieutenant Colonel, began a preseries of three vehicles, motored by the L-2000 55 horsepower (41 kW) engine, designed by Daimler-Benz. Ultimately, two were produced and set for testing with the Spanish Republican Army, and another nine were ordered with the idea of using them to tow Škoda 76.5-millimeter (3.01 in) anti-aircraft cannons. All the while, the Trubia Factory began to plan an armored and armed version of the vehicle for the Spanish Army. Two were produced by 1934, although the Trubia Factory experienced troubles in producing the L-2000 engines; as a result, they were not powered by the beginning of the Spanish Civil War in 1936. They were armed with a single 7-millimeter (0.28 in) machine gun.

## Tanks during the Spanish Civil War: 1936–1939

At the start of the Spanish Civil War, the Spanish Army counted on a total of ten Renault FTs in working condition distributed equally amongst two light tank regiments; one in Madrid and the other in Sevilla. The former (1st Light Tank Regiment) fell under the control of the Second Spanish Republic's army, while the 2nd Light Tank Regiment (in Zaragoza) was integrated into the Nationalist army. The lone Fiat 3000A is thought to have been in service at this time, but was cannibalized for parts. Spain's six Schneider CA1 assault tanks were put into service with the Republican Army, and saw combat around Madrid before and during the siege of Madrid, and during the siege of the Alcázar in Toledo. They were destroyed during the siege of Madrid. The three Trubia A4 prototypes issued to the Milan Infantry Regiment at Oviedo were turned over to the Nationalist uprising, while the fourth prototype located in the Trubia Factory was taken by the factory's workers and quickly repaired so that it could be pressed into service in the Republican Army. A Landesa armored tractor in Trubia was also modified by the Republicans to carry on machine guns and converted into a light tank.

### Armor of the Popular Front (Spanish Republic Government)

Spain's Republican Forces fabricated a number of different armored vehicles throughout the war. Although serving little military purpose, due to the poor quality of their design and construction, they were important factors in lifting the Popular Front's military's morale. Factories in the northern areas of Spain produced a fair number of armored tractors and trucks; for example, sixteen armored vehicles, denominated Naval-Somua, were manufactured based on the chassis of the French Somua bus. The Trubia Factory, at this time working for the Republic, manufactured between 15 and 20 light tanks known as the Trubia-Naval, which were heavily influenced by the Landesa and the Trubia A4. However, most construction revolved around the armoring of trucks, known as Tiznaos for the grey color of their steel armor. Due to the weight of the armor and the low power output of their engines, many were not able to move more than 20 meters (22 yd) without breaking down. These were mostly constructed in the heavily industrialized regions in northern Spain and in Catalonia. The factories of Levante, under Soviet guidance, built what was considered to be one of the best armored trucks of the war—the UNL-35. These vehicles were based on the Soviet ZiS-5 truck, and were fabricated between early 1937 and March 1939 at a rate of no more than five per month. Also, based on other chassis, such as Ford's model 817T, around 120 UNL-35s were manufactured.

On 15 October 1936, the first shipment of 50 Soviet T-26 light tanks arrived at Cartagena. These were put into combat as early as 26 October, under the leadership of Soviet Lieutenant Colonel Semyon Krivoshein, south of Madrid. The first combat operation in Spain for the T-26 was near the town of Seseña, when a Republican tank company counterattacked against the spearhead of the Nationalist's drive towards Madrid. The counterattack, although partially successful, did not hinder the Nationalist advance. By the beginning of the operation, the tanks had separated themselves from the infantry, following them. However, the Republican armor successfully surprised a company of Nationalist infantrymen, who had mistaken them for Italian allies, and routed them. The tank company then continued towards the town of Esquivias, to the West, where they were counterattacked by cavalry from the Moroccan Legion and finally forced to withdraw. Lacking infantry support, a number of T-26s were knocked out by Nationalist infantrymen using wine bottles as bomblets. The tank company returned through Seseña, which had been reoccupied by Nationalist infantry, and came under heavy fire. Despite the withdrawal, the counterattack was heavily publicized in Madrid, by the Republic, as a victory. The lack of success is attributed to the lack of coordination between Republican tanks, infantry and artillery. Although it is commonly mentioned that Spain received 312 T-26s, this number includes 16 FTs, delivered by Poland, and 15 T-26s which never actually made it to Spain. Ultimately, 281 T-26s were delivered to Spain during the Spanish Civil War.

The Soviet Union also supplied Spain with 50 BT-5 tanks. Although slightly heavier than the T-26, the BT-5 was faster; it was capable of reaching velocities of 65 kilometers per hour (40 mph) with tracks, on road, and 90 kilometers per hour (56 mph) with wheels. However, given the non-ideal nature of Spanish terrain, the BT-5 was rarely capable of taking advantage of its speed. The loss of many of the Republic's BT-5s during the Battle of the Ebro caused them to retire the tank to their reserves. The BT-5 was a product improvement of J. Walter Christie's fast tank concept, using Christie suspension, and was armed with a 45-millimeter (1.8 in) tank gun.

### Organization of Popular Front armored forces

The first 50 T-26 tanks which arrived in Spain, under the command of Krivoshein, were crewed by Soviet personnel. Nevertheless, the Soviet lieutenant colonel opened a training school in the town of Archena, near Cartagena, recruiting mainly truck and bus drivers from cities such as Madrid and Barcelona. The next month, he opened a second school in Alcalá de Henares, north of Madrid. However, only Communist soldiers were allowed to crew Soviet tanks, and as a result the pool of soldiers to recruit from was narrow and often less adept drivers were picked over better ones, due to their political ideologies. For example, in one instance a tank commander broke contact with the enemy because he had not learned how to fire his main gun. Furthermore, at first, the Soviet trainers did not have interpreters to communicate with their Spanish students.

With training underway, and the tanks quickly put into combat, the first 50 vehicles were organized into the Popular Army's first tank battalion. The battalion was equipped with three tank companies (each company containing ten tanks) and a headquarters company; each company had three platoons, with three tanks a piece, and a command tank. By mid-November a second battalion was organized. Later that month, Krivoshein and his deputy (Major Greisser) were recalled to the Soviet Union and replaced by General Dmitry Pavlov. In December 1936, General Pavlov organized new Soviet armored vehicles into an armored brigade, made up of four tank battalions and a reconnaissance company. This brigade, known as Brigada de Carros de Combate (Tank Brigade), was composed of 56 tanks and 68 other armored vehicles, and immediately saw combat around Madrid, including in the battles of Jarama and Guadalajara. However, the brigade was used to support Republican infantry forces and not as a mobile armored group, and as a result its strategic role during the war was limited by its misuse. In July 1937, the brigade took part in the Battle of Brunete, the largest tank battle to that date in the war, with some 150 Republican tanks taking part. The battle was also one of the few examples during the Spanish Civil War of the use of tanks to exploit a penetration along the front. However, the battle cost the Popular Army around 159 armored fighting vehicles.

After the Battle of Brunete, the brigade was reorganized into a new Spanish division, known as the División de Ingenios Blindados (Armored Vehicles Division). This was composed of a tank brigade and an armored brigade; the latter was made up of lighter armored fighting vehicles, such as the BA-6. It was put under the command of Spanish Colonel Sánchez Paredes. By this time, most of the Soviet tankers had returned to the Soviet Union to provide information on mechanized warfare in Spain. The only Soviet unit left was the heavy tank regiment, armed with brand new BT-5s which had not been used in combat yet. This regiment was crewed by both Soviet and veteran Spanish tankers, and was put under the command of Soviet Colonel Kondriatev. Finally, the division also disposed of an infantry brigade and an anti-tank artillery company. However, by this time the Republican military command had relegated the tank to the role of merely infantry support, dissuaded by the poor performance of Republican armor to that date. The last major battle Republican armor would take part in was the Battle of the Ebro, in 1938.

The Soviets deduced that although tank formations in Spain were not large enough to perform an ideal mechanized penetration of an enemy's lines, too large tank formations were also not ideal due to uneven terrain preventing their use en masse. As a result, armored commanders like Pavlov considered the tank's best role to be infantry support. The Republican use of armor during the Spanish Civil War was not a good demonstration of deep mechanized battle.

### Armor of the Nationalists (Spanish Rebel Army)

During the Spanish Civil War, the Nationalist Army only developed a single tank, the Carro de Infanteria modelo 1937 (Infantry Tank model 1937). Taking advantage of the capture of the Trubia Factory in the north, in 1937, the Nationalists-based it on the Republican Trubia-Naval, the German Panzer I, the T-26 and the Italian CV-33. It was designed to unite the best of all three major light tanks used by the Nationalist Army during the war. However, it did not perform as well as expected, and it was not put into mass production. The Nationalist Army did manufacture a small number of armored trucks and tractors, as well as beginning the development of the Verdeja light tank, but none of these contributed with distinction to the Nationalist effort against the Popular Army.

The first foreign tanks to enter service with the Nationalists were five Italian CV-33s, which arrived at the city of Vigo on 26 August 1936. These arrived with ten crewman, who would serve as instructors. The tanks were armed with two 8-millimeter (0.31 in) machine guns and had a maximum of 15 millimeters (0.59 in) of steel armor. On 10 December 1936, Italian dictator Benito Mussolini decided to send combat troops to Spain, in a bid to end the war as early as possible. These men were organized into the Corpo Truppe Volontarie (CTV; Volunteer Corps), and by the end of the year their ranks had swelled to an estimated 47,000 men; 20,000 of which came from the Italian Army, and 27,000 of which originated from the Blackshirts. The corps was put under the command of Italian General Mario Roatta. The first major battle for the CTV came in March 1938, when it decided to engage Republican forces during the Battle of Guadalajara. A force of some 35,000 men, including 81 tanks, attacked on 8 March 1937. Failing to take into account the meteorological conditions of the battlefield, by the following day the Italian troops found themselves attacking over ground that had turned into mud due to the heavy rains. The slow speed of the advance allowed the Republican Air Force to persistently raid advancing Italian forces, dispersing entire columns off the main roads and forcing them to stall in the mud. A Republican counterattack on 18 March, led by Pavlov's armored brigade, forced the Italians to withdraw. Nationalist air support failed to provide close air support for Italian troops because runways had become water-logged, while Italian armor proved no match against the heavier and faster T-26 and BT-5 tanks. Officially, the Italians lost an estimated 2,700 soldiers during the campaigning around Guadalajara; the Republican Army lost an estimated 4,000. According to other sources, the CTV lost an estimated 5,000 casualties during the battle. However, armor losses were relatively low, as the Republicans lost 7 T-26s and the Italians lost 19 CV-33s. Despite this initial setback, the Italian government continued the supply of personnel and equipment to the CTV in Spain, and by late 1938 the Italian volunteer's corps was equipped with three tank battalions. By the end of the war, a total of 155 CV-33s were delivered to Spain.

The Germans delivered a total of 122 Panzer I light tanks to the Spanish Army over the course of the war. The first shipment arrived in October 1936, consisting of 41 tanks. These tanks would see combat as early as 30 October, around Madrid, when they engaged a column of Republican armored cars, which were able to knock out the German tanks at ranges of 500 meters (550 yd), with their larger guns. Although the use of armor penetrating ammunition fired from the Panzer I's 7.92-millimeter (0.312 in) machine guns could penetrate the armor of the T-26 at ranges of up to 150 meters (160 yd), Republican tankers simply began to engage from ranges of up to 1,000 meters (1,100 yd), using their heavier 45-millimeter (1.8 in) tank guns. Furthermore, the sights on the T-26 were calibrated for ranges far longer than those calibrated on German equipment. This disadvantage in firepower led the Nationalist Army to experiment with the adoption of the Italian 20-millimeter (0.79 in) Breda anti-aircraft gun for its fleet of Panzer Is. Firing a 140-gram (4.9 oz) perforating projectile, this cannon could penetrate up to 40 millimeters (1.6 in) of steel armor at a range of 250 meters (270 yd). The installation of the gun required the top of the tank's turret to be cut off and extended upwards, increasing the vehicle's profile and decreasing the visibility of the crew. Furthermore, the new gun's sights were located within an open crease to the front of the new turret extension, forcing the gunner to aim and fire from a relatively unsafe position. Although originally the Nationalists were aiming to equip at least one Panzer I in each platoon of each battalion with the larger gun, only four prototypes were completed. The capture of Republican T-26s and their return to service with the Nationalist Army made the modification of the Panzer I unnecessary, while later attempts to up-gun the German light tank failed because of the lack of available 20-millimeter (0.79 in) Breda guns. There were also attempts to mount a 37-millimeter (1.5 in) anti-tank gun and a 45-millimeter (1.8 in) tank gun, taken from a captured Soviet vehicle, but these failed before any prototypes were completed.

The Nationalist's tank disparity with Republican forces caused Nationalist commanders to offer Spanish soldiers up to 500 pesetas for each captured T-26. Due to the number of T-26s captured and put back into service against their previous masters, the Soviet Union also inadvertently became the largest provider of armored fighting vehicles of the Nationalist Army. An estimated total of 178 T-26s were captured during the Spanish Civil War, including 98 put back into service, 30 irreparable vehicles used for spare parts, and 50 T-26s not pressed into service with the Nationalist Army. In May 1939, France turned over 10 T-26s, which had been interned after they had retreated across the border, to Nationalist Spain. The number of captured BT-5s amounted to much less. By May 1938, the Nationalist tank force had only put into service 4 BT-5s, as opposed to 39 T-26s. The first Nationalist tank company outfitted with T-26s entered combat during the Battle of Brunete, between 18–23 July 1937. Ultimately, the amount of captured equipment caused the Nationalists to organize a recuperation unit, designed to recuperate Soviet armor off the field and repair them so that they could return to combat.

## Post-war era: 1939–1953

At the end of the Spanish Civil War, the Spanish Army could count on 144 Panzer Is and CV-33s, and 139 T-26s. Panzer Is and CV-33s were organized as "light tanks", denominated Type Is, while the T-26s were considered "medium" tanks and categorized as Type IIs. These were organized into four armored regiments, including the 1st Tank Regiment (based in Madrid), the 2nd Tank Regiment (in Sevilla) and the 3rd and 4th Tank Regiments. The 3rd's organization was based upon that used by Nationalist forces during the Spanish Civil War, while the 4th's was based on that used by the Italian CTV. In 1941, a fifth regiment was created in North Africa.

### Verdeja tank program

Between late 1937 and 1938, Captain Félix Verdeja Bardales began to privately develop the concept for a new light tank. The new tank would take into consideration all the qualities and problems with existing tanks in service with the Nationalist Army, including the Panzer I and T-26, and combine a number of characteristics which would make it the best light tank in service at the time. His ideal light tank included a 45-millimeter (1.8 in) tank gun, with 360-degree traverse and an elevation of 72 degrees. At the same time, the vehicle was to have the lowest possible silhouette, and no less than 15 millimeters (0.59 in) of all-around armor, and 30 millimeters (1.2 in) on the front. Furthermore, the armor was to be sloped to maximize its efficiency and chance of an incoming projectile ricocheting. With a maximum velocity of 70 kilometers per hour (43 mph), the light tank was to be powered by a 120 horsepower (89 kW) engine. Furthermore, the vehicle's mechanical reliability was to improve upon that of the existing tanks in service with the Nationalist Army. Despite initial obstacles, including opposition to an indigenous Spanish tank program from German General Wilhelm Ritter von Thoma, the first prototype was delivered in late 1938; this prototype was built from spare parts taken from a number of different tanks. The prototype performed well in testing and a new prototype was ordered.

The new prototype was much closer to what Captain Verdeja had originally planned. The chassis was enlarged, and the engine was moved to the left side of the front compartment of the hull. The volume of the fuel tanks and the thickness of the armor was also increased, while the height of the turret was decreased by sloping the turret's sides. One of the most unusual—at the time—developments for the tank were the tracks, designed to eliminate the possibility of having them slide off when the tank was moving. The tank had a sprocket to the front of the hull, on each side, and a tensioner to the rear. The tracks were guided by four return rollers and four roadwheels. The tracks had previously been tested on the original prototype; they were designed to fit around the roadwheel, and consequently lock themselves into place, avoiding the possibility of slipping off. The construction of the prototype was postponed until May 1940, due to a shortage of funds, and the tank was finally delivered to the proving grounds of Carabanchel for testing. The prototype was denominated the Verdeja 1, and competed against a T-26B in a number of different tests. Ultimately, the Verdeja scored a total of 243 points, as compared to 205 scored by the T-26. The testing resulted in a number of modifications, including higher suspension to allow climbing over taller obstacles, the increase in armor thickness, increase of the body width and the creation of an empty space at the rear, to allow for the future installation of a communications radio. After two months work, the Verdeja 1 was returned for testing and this time scored a total of 261.98 points. Although the success of this prototype persuaded the Spanish government to issue an order for the construction of 1,000 tanks, ultimately lack of incentives to develop the relevant industrial infrastructure; the poor economic situation after the Spanish Civil War and absence of foreign clients, soon caused the production program to collapse.

As the Verdeja 1 program dissolved, Captain Verdeja began to design a successor, taking into consideration the lessons learned during the opening campaigns of the Second World War. The new design featured a reorganized engine bay at the rear of the chassis, which meant moving the drive sprocket to the rear as well. The movement of the engine's location allowed for better cooling of the vehicle's motor and the fighting compartment, as well as allowing the turret to be moved forward. The vehicle's armor was also increased substantially. This new tank was not approved for production or further development, due to continued postponement of the production of the Verdeja 1 for reasons which included offers by the German government to supply the Panzer IV's engine for the Verdeja 1. Although production of the new vehicle finally began in 1942, it was not until August 1944 that the Verdeja 2 prototype was delivered. The decision to purchase a number of German armored vehicles delayed the decision to begin production of the Verdeja 2; ultimately the vehicle was left untouched until 1950, when there was a failed attempt to mount a new engine.

Beginning in 1945, the now-Major Verdeja was ordered to begin designing an artillery piece using a rapid-firing 75 millimeter L/40 howitzer designed by Sociedad Española de Construcción Naval, based on the Verdeja 1 chassis. The chassis' roof and rear wall were eliminated, and instead a gun shield placed over the front. A mechanical brake was installed next to the idler wheel, stopping rearwards movement of the artillery piece during the firing process. The availability of the required parts and the lack of complicated changes meant that the vehicle was quickly prepared and tested extensively. The fate of the self-propelled piece was much the same as that of the Verdeja 2, and the vehicle was left untouched at the proving grounds in Carabanchel until 1973, when it was moved to the Spanish base Alfonso XIII, housing the then Mechanized Infantry Regiment Wad Rass no 55. It was soon moved to another base, and finally delivered to the base of El Goloso, outside of Madrid, as a part of an armored vehicles museum.

### German armor in service with the Spanish Army

In 1943, the Spanish Army and government decided to replace much of its armor, after studying war in Europe and North Africa. Tanks such as the Panzer I and T-26 were obsolete, as compared to newer tanks such as the Soviet T-34 and German Panther tank. As a result, on 15 March 1943 Spain began to negotiate with the Wehrmacht over the acquisition of modern materiel. The petition asked for 250 Panzer IIIs and 100 Panzer IVs. In return, the Germans instead offered a sale of 20 Panzer IVs and 10 Sturmgeschütz IIIs. On 29 April, Spain accepted Germany's offer. The Panzer IVs sold were of the Ausf. H variant, and arrived in Spain on 6 December 1943. The Panzer IV Ausf. H included the longer 75-millimeter (3.0 in) tank gun, and the homogeneous 80-millimeter (3.1 in) steel plate on the glacis.

As early as January 1944, Spain again began to negotiate with Germany for more equipment. The new program revolved around the sale of 33 Panzer IVs, three of which would be of the command variant. Another offer was made for 67 more Panzer IVs at a later date; a result, the two programs together summed up to a potential procurement of 100 Panzer IVs. Spain also suggested the purchase of a number of Tiger tanks, although this offer never amounted to anything serious. Regardless, the program to acquire another 100 Panzer IVs never materialized. The 20 Panzer IVs received in late 1943 were organized into two companies, distributed among two battalions in the armored regiment of the Armoured Division No. 1 "Brunete".

At the end of World War II, the Spanish Army counted on a tank force composed of 20 Panzer IVs, 10 StuG IIIs, 116 T-26s, 93 Panzer Is (including command vehicles), 60 CV-33s and 80 armored cars. In 1949 the armored regiment was reorganized into two battalions of 60 T-26s, with two command Panzer Is, six combat versions of the Panzer I and two CV-33, which were used for reconnaissance, each. A third battalion was composed of the 20 Panzer IVs, plus six Panzer Is. The regiment numbered an estimated 1,500 personnel and 100 tanks.

## American military aid: 1954–1970

By the mid-1950s, the state of the Spanish Army's tanks was deteriorating. Spain's armored force composition remained the same until February 1954, when the United States delivered the first twelve M47 Patton tanks to the Spanish Army. These were a product of a military aid program the United States had signed with Spain in 1953. By 1957, the Spanish Army had received a total of 29 M47 tanks. Over the course of the 1950s, Spain received a total of 389 M47 Patton tanks. Throughout the 1960s, Spain received 65 M48 Patton tanks and 66 M48A1s. The M47 and M48 tanks were an important modernization of Spain's armored firepower. For example, while the T-26 was armed with a 45-millimeter (1.8 in) cannon, the American tanks were armed with the much more powerful 90-millimeter (3.5 in) tank gun.

While a Panzer IV's (Ausf. G) 75-millimeter (3 in) L/43 tank gun could penetrate 77 millimeters (3 in) of steel armor at 1,800 meters (2,000 yd) (using the Panzergranate 39), the M47 (using the M348 high-explosive anti-tank (HEAT) warhead) could penetrate 190 millimeters (7.5 in) from its 90-millimeter (3.5 in) tank gun. Further, the M47's armor was 110 millimeters (4.3 in) thick on the glacis plate, and 178 millimeters (7 in) thick on the turret front. Spain also received a number of M41 Walker Bulldog light tanks. These were organized into the Villaviciosa Light Armored Cavalry Regiment, while four were also organized into the Alcázar de Toledo Armored Infantry Regiment as reconnaissance tanks.

Between 1953 and 1968, the Spanish Army received a total of 446 medium battle tanks (M47s and M48s), 123 light tanks (M24s and M41s), as well as 30 armored recovery vehicles (the M74). In 1970, the United States agreed to extend the military aid program by another five years, giving Spain another 66 M48A2 tanks and 17 M41A3s.

The vehicles received were organized based on a reorganization of the Brunete Armored Division in 1965. This included the General Staff, based at El Pardo, and the Nucleo de Tropas Divisionario (Divisionary Troop Nucleus). The latter was formed by the Villaviciosa Light Armored Cavalry Regiment, the Campaign Artillery Regiment, the 1st Anti-Air Artillery Group, the 1st Engineering Regiment and the Divisionary Logistics Group. Also in the division was the XI Mechanized Infantry Brigade, which included the 6th Saboya Motorized Infantry Regiment, the 55th Uad Ras Mechanized Infantry Regiment, the XI Self-Propelled Artillery Group, the XI Engineering Battalion and the XI Logistics Group. Finally, the division also made use of the XII Armored Brigade, which was formed by the 61st Alcázar de Toledo Armored Infantry Regiment, the 31st Asturias Mechanized Infantry Regiment, the XII Self-Propelled Artillery Group, the XII Engineering Battalion and the XII Logistics Group. The majority of the division's armor was located in the Alcázar de Toledo Armored Infantry Regiment, which contained two regiments of 48 M48s and 54 M47s, respectively.

## Late Cold War: 1970–1991

### Western Sahara crisis and Purchase of French tanks

The United States' ban on the usage of American ordnance supplied as military aid to Spain during the 1957–58 Ifni War pushed Spain to look for alternative equipment which could be freely employed in the Spanish Sahara. Throughout the 1960s, the Spanish government had approached the governments of France and West Germany, hoping to procure either the AMX-30 or the Leopard 1, respectively. Ultimately, the Germans were unable to sell the Leopard tank on account of the gun system being British; at the time, the British Labour Party had decided not to sell to the government of Francisco Franco in Spain. As a result, in May 1970 Spain and France agreed to the sale of 19 AMX-30 main battle tanks. The first six AMX-30s were delivered in November 1970, and these were immediately issued to a new armoured company of the Spanish Legion, stationed in Spanish Sahara. All 19 AMX-30s purchased from France in 1970 were delivered to the Spanish Legion, in the Spanish Sahara. Beginning in 1974, Spain began to manufacture the AMX-30 (now denominated the AMX-30E), with production of the first batch of 180 tanks ending on 25 June 1979. The second batch, this time of 100 AMX-30Es, were produced between 1979 and 1983. This gave the Spanish Army a total of 299 AMX-30Es.

The AMX-30E was armed with the 105-millimeter (4.1 in) modele F1 tank gun, and was powered by the HS-110 680 horsepower (510 kW) diesel engine. With a fuel tank of 970 liters (210 imp gal), the tank had a road range of 600 kilometers (370 mi) and the fuel was, on average, sufficient for 18 hours of travel. The tracks had a life of at least 5,000 kilometers (3,100 mi). However, Spain's new tanks began to suffer a number of mechanical problems, dealing with the reliability of the original engine and transmission. Therefore, the Spanish Army and Santa Bárbara Sistemas (the vehicle's manufacturer in Spain) began to look into a series of modifications to improve the AMX-30. By this time, the Spanish Army had already begun upgrading its M47 and M48 Patton tanks to the M47E and M48E models, which made them equivalent to the M60 Patton tank in capabilities.

From the late 1970s Spain had upgraded 330 M47 tanks to the M47E and E1 standard with AVDS-1790-2A diesel engines and CD-850-6A transmissions like those in the M60A1 and elimination of the bow gunners position. Another 46 were further upgraded to the M47E2 standard with a German Rheinmetall Rh-105-30 105 mm gun. Eighteen of the Spanish M48's were locally upgraded to the M48A5E standard, essentially matching the American M48A3 configuration for the Marines. Fifty four M48A2 tanks (1 battalion) acquired from Germany were locally upgraded to the M48A5E1 standard which was equivalent to the American M48A5, followed by and 108 from the United States upgraded to the M48A5E1 which provided a passive M35 periscope for the gunner, AM/VVS-2 passive periscope for the driver and the TEESS engine smoke laying system. From 1983 a further 54 tanks were upgraded to the M48A5E2 standard with a Hughes Mk 7 fire control system similar to that of the M60A3 featuring a passive night vision sight for the gunner, laser rangefinder, and analog electronic ballistic computer. A further 110 were upgraded in 1984. A further upgrade of these to the M48A5E3 standard from 1991 featuring a gun stabilization system and thermal gunners sight was cancelled with the availability of surplus American M60A3 TTS tanks retired under CFE.

### Lince Programme (Lynx)

While the army was studying a possible modernisation of its brand-new AMX-30E fleet, the Spanish Ministry of Defense had set aside 120 billion pesetas (1.1 billion dollars) for a future tank programme and attracted interest from five foreign companies. A bid by Krauss-Maffei's, known as the Lince, provided the clearest technical designs. The tank would be 49 metric tons (54 short tons) and equipped with a 120-millimeter main gun. It could fire this gun on the move and aim at targets with effectiveness in day and night operations. Fitted with a 1,200 horsepower (894.84 kW) engine, the Lince could travel as fast as 70 kilometers per hour (43.50 mph) on the roads. Although heavily based on the Leopard 2A4, the Lince was smaller and lighter, trading protection for mobility. Specifically, the Lince prioritised enhanced mobility over the irregular Spanish terrain. Furthermore, size restrictions were imposed due to the existing capabilities of Spain's railroad and highway network. Although the reduced armor conflicted with the problems that the Spanish had with AMX-30E's thin armour, the Lince used a multi-layer armor similar to that of the German Leopard 2A4, providing greater protection than standard armour for a similar weight. The protection was further enhanced by the low profile turret, again similar to that of the Leopard 2A4. Despite the offer and ongoing collaboration with the Italians, Spanish investment in the German-Spanish Lince programme grew up to 200 billion pesetas (1.8 billion dollars). However, the Spanish government did not announce any winner for the contract. This indecision led Krauss-Maffei to freeze their bid for the Lince. Krauss-Maffei also cited the loss of millions of dollars due to failures on part of Santa Bárbara Sistemas, who would manufacture the Lince. In 1987, the Lince program was pushed aside and postponed by the Spanish Ministry of Defense's decision to instead go on with the modernisation of the Spanish Army's AMX-30E fleet. Ultimately, the purchase of a number of M60 Patton tanks, the modernisation of the AMX-30E and the continued fiscal problems finally caused the Spanish Ministry of Defense to cancel the Lince programme in 1989.

### 1990s modernization

Between 1989 and 1993, 150 AMX-30Es were modernised to what would become known as the AMX-30EM2. The modernisation entailed the introduction of a new armour piercing discarding sabot round, the modification of the turret hatch to allow the installation of a larger anti-aircraft machine gun, and a brand new fire control system. Besides these modernisations of the tank's firepower, the mobility of the tank was improved through the exchange of the old engine and transmission for the more reliable MTU 833 Ka-501 diesel engine, producing 850 horsepower (630 kW), coupled with the German ZF LSG-3000. A new smoke machine, linked to the tank's new engine, was also installed. The other 149 AMX-30Es went through a less expensive and extensive modification, known as the AMX-30EM1. These received the American Allison CD-850-6A three speed transmission (two forward and one reverse); however, the new transmission caused extensive overheating in the engine compartment. These 149 AMX-30EM1s would eventually be replaced by US surplus M60A3 Patton tanks, purchased from the United States, in the early 1990s.

## Modern Spanish armor: 1992–present

In the early 1990s, due large numbers of tanks were being withdrawn from Central Europe in compliance with the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe the Spanish Army received 244 M60 tanks to replace its aging fleet of M47Es and M48Es, and its troublesome AMX-30EM1s. However, these did not represent a great improvement over the existing fleet, and as a result as early as 1994 the Spanish government had already begun to negotiate for a future Spanish tank, which would replace the M60. Although the Germans offered Spain surplus Leopard 1 tanks and Soviet equipment incorporated into the German Army after the reunification of Germany, the Spanish government declined these offers and pressed for the Leopard 2.

In March 1994, the Spanish Ministry of Defense created Programa Coraza 2000 (Programme Armour 2000), which focused on the procurement and integration of new armament for the Spanish Army's modernisation. The program included the procurement and integration of a Spanish derivative of the German Leopard 2, known as the Leopard 2E into the Spanish Army. The programme's scope extended to the integration of 108 Leopard 2A4s, which were leased to Spain in late 1995. Apart from procurement, Programa Coraza was meant to prepare the Spanish Army logistically for the introduction of new matériel.

A memorandum of understanding was signed on 9 June 1995 between the German and Spanish governments, setting the foundations for an acquisition of up to 308 brand-new Leopard 2Es. These were to be assembled in Spain by Santa Bárbara Sistemas, with 60–70 percent of the components manufactured by Spanish companies, and production taking place between 1998 and 2003. Furthermore, the German government agreed to lend the Spanish Army 108 Leopard 2A4s for training purposes for a period of five years. These vehicles were delivered between November 1995 and June 1996. In 1998, Spain agreed to procure the ceded Leopard 2A4s and reduce production of the brand-new Leopard 2E to 219 vehicles. In 2005 it was declared that the 108 Leopard 2A4s were to cost Spain 16.9 million euros, to be paid by 2016. The Leopard 2Es, based on the German Leopard 2A6, were produced between 2002 and 2008. The M60s were replaced by the Leopard 2s.

## See also

- History of the tank
- List of interwar armoured fighting vehicles
- Tanks in World War II
- Comparison of early World War II tanks
- Tank classification
- List of military vehicles
- List of armoured fighting vehicles by country

History of tanks in the Spanish Army