Classic Tracks: The United States Of America ‘The Garden Of Earthly Delights’

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The United States Of America released a single album of uniquely experimental music in 1968. Decades later the rest of the world began to catch up to what was almost a lost classic of the psychedelic era.

Virtually ignored upon its release in 1968, the self‑titled album by Los Angeles band the United States Of America is now regarded as an underground classic, particularly due to its standout psychedelic pop track, ‘The Garden Of Earthly Delights’. Characterised by its driving, frenetic beats, reverb‑heavy electric harpsichord riff, proto synth effects fed through swathes of echo, and singer Dorothy Moskowitz’s haunting vocal, its influence was later to be heard, in the ’90s and beyond, in the music of Stereolab, Portishead and Broadcast.

Moskowitz, now 85, tells SOS that she was unaware for many years that the band had made any impact whatsoever. “I had no idea,” she laughs. Only, she says, with the 2004 reissue of The United States Of America by US label Sundazed did she first begin to learn that she had made such an impression on a younger generation of singers.

“I became aware of the late Trish Keenan’s interest,” she says of the Broadcast singer who passed away aged 42 in 2011. “I knew about Beth Gibbons. I learned about Laetitia Sadier, but this was much, much later.”

The USA’s unique blend of rock, jazz, tape collage and eerie sonics was a product of the fact that they were formed outside of any traditional music scene. The group originally evolved from UCLA student Joseph Byrd’s New Music Workshop, a loose gathering of progressive musicians influenced by African and Indian styles and the minimalist compositions of Terry Riley and La Monte Young.

“Sound was the main thing,” says Moskowitz. “Trying to change the sound of things. Believe it or not, we didn’t know the word ‘psychedelic’ when this recording was done. That was applied to us by the media. We called ourselves ‘experimental’ or ‘sound musicians’.”

Early Music

Dorothy Moskowitz today.

Going back further, Dorothy Moskowitz’s first experience of recording her voice didn’t involve a studio. Sometime in 1947, as a seven‑year‑old at Playland, an amusement park in her native New York, she and her elder sister were given 35 cents by their mother to record themselves singing, direct to disc, in a Voice‑O‑Graph booth.

“You could get a minute of recording time,” she remembers. “We sang this song, ‘Goodnight, Sweet Dreams, Goodnight’. My memory was that the clock was running down, and so somewhere around the halfway mark, we started accelerating the tempo.”

Her interest sparked, she chose to further pursue music as she grew older. In the late 1950s, at Barnard, a women’s art college affiliated with Columbia University, Moskowitz studied under Otto Luening, an early pioneer of artful tape manipulation and electronic sounds.

“Being around him, I developed a curiosity about electronic music very early on,” she explains. “What Luening did for me personally, he taught me about modal writing, and he encouraged me to follow my heart, to follow my ear, and not get too wound up with the technicalities of it.”

After graduating, Moskowitz ended up working in the admin department of RCA Victor’s Red Seal classical label. A perk of the job was access to free concert tickets, leading Moskowitz to Carnegie Hall one evening to a performance by lute player Julian Bream, where she had a chance meeting with Joseph Byrd, soon to become her boyfriend and bandmate in the United States Of America.

Byrd was at the time working as a staff arranger at Capitol Records, and Moskowitz soon joined him at the company where together they worked on a series of idiosyncratic projects including a compilation of Christmas music for Life magazine. “I assisted him,” Moskowitz says of Byrd. “I did a couple of arrangements and a lot of research for the liner notes.”

In 1963, the couple moved across country to California, where both studied music at UCLA. Among the notable characters that Moskowitz encountered there were jazz trumpeter/composer Don Ellis, and future synth designer Tom Oberheim, who would later help out the USA on the technical side.

“There were times at the end of the day where Joseph and I wanted to hang out with Tom, but he was off to the university organ room to practice,” Moskowitz laughs.

Experiments & Exploration

But a line‑up of the United States Of America featuring Dorothy Moskowitz almost didn’t happen. In 1966, she’d moved back to New York, when Joseph Byrd asked her to return to California to be part of a group he was forming with organist Michael Agnello. Their idea was to mix electronics and sonic experiments with rock band instrumentation.

When Moskowitz arrived back in Los Angeles, Byrd and Agnello were already developing a song they’d given the working title of ‘Mouse’ — soon to become ‘The Garden Of Earthly Delights’. Byrd asked her to complete its lyrics. “I remember Byrd and Michael practising that complex opening riff,” she says. “Joseph had a few lines written.

“He let me change the title... he was flexible in the early days,” she adds, hinting at the future creative difficulties between the pair. “I mean, he was really flexible about having me finish off the second and third verses.”

Having recorded a demo tape that included an early version of ‘The Garden Of Earthly Delights’ led by Michael Agnello’s organ and featuring disorientating tape echo on Moskowitz’s voice in its choruses, the USA bagged a deal with Columbia...