Psychedelic Jukebox: [1967] Baker Knight & The Nightmares - Hallucinations

In the vast labyrinth of 1960s American pop, “Hallucinations” by Baker Knight & The Knightmares stands as a vivid, overlooked artifact—strikingly experimental and commercially obscure. Originally released in 1967 as the B-side to “I Feel Sick About the Whole Thing” on Reprise Records, the track has since gained cult status among collectors of obscure psychedelic pop and garage recordings.

 

Thomas Baker Knight Jr., born in Birmingham, Alabama in 1933, was a versatile and prolific songwriter whose career spanned multiple genres. After serving in the U.S. Air Force, he formed Baker Knight & The Knightmares in the late 1950s and released a string of early rockabilly singles, including the regional hit “Bring My Cadillac Back”, which was banned from national airplay due to its perceived advertising content. Although Knight would go on to achieve considerable commercial success writing songs for stars such as Ricky Nelson, Dean Martin, and Elvis Presley, “Hallucinations” remains one of his most stylistically daring works.

Produced by Jimmy Bowen, a seasoned figure in Los Angeles studio circles, “Hallucinations” compresses an intense burst of sonic experimentation into less than three minutes. The track opens with aggressive fuzz guitar textures, echo-drenched drums, and the unmistakable whirring of an early Moog synthesizer—an unusual instrument for a pop B-side in 1967. This disorienting mix of timbres creates a swirling, unstable soundscape that mirrors the subject matter of the song. Lyrically, the song is cryptic and dreamlike, describing a hallucinatory experience in which a desired figure appears and disappears across shifting mental terrain. The narrator teeters on the edge of psychological unraveling, captured in lines like “Hallucinations, they are driving me insane / Something’s pounding in my brain.” The mood is not celebratory, but rather claustrophobic and emotionally fraught.

At the time of its release, “Hallucinations” passed largely unnoticed. Its A-side was a straightforward dramatic pop ballad that bore no resemblance to the fuzzed-out experimentation hidden on its flip. But beginning in the early 2000s, the song began to reemerge among collectors and genre historians, especially after it was included on Rhino Handmade’s 2004 compilation Hallucinations: Psychedelic Pop Nuggets from the WEA Vaults. Its reappearance on vinyl for Record Store Day in 2016 introduced the song to a new generation of listeners, many of whom were stunned to discover such avant-garde production tucked away in the back catalog of a traditionally middle-of-the-road songwriter. Today, original pressings of the 1967 Reprise single are rare and highly sought after, often fetching hundreds of dollars on collector markets.

While Baker Knight’s broader legacy is largely defined by smooth, carefully crafted ballads and country-pop crossovers, “Hallucinations” offers a brief and vivid glimpse into a different creative mode—one marked by sonic risk-taking and genre fluidity. Though the session musicians are uncredited, the track’s precision and polish suggest the possible involvement of seasoned West Coast players, perhaps even members of the famed Wrecking Crew. This musical sophistication contrasts with the track’s content, which feels unstable and urgent, as though the song might collapse under its own psychedelic weight at any moment.

Sources:

1. https://psychedelicized.com/playlist/k/baker-knight-the-knightmares/
2. https://www.spectropop.com/remembers/BAKobit.htm
3. https://ironleg.wordpress.com/2014/10/19/baker-knight-and-the-knightmares-hallucinations/
4. https://lirik.web.id/b/baker-knight-the-knightmares/lirik-lagu-baker-knight-the-knightmares-hallucinations/
5. https://www.banquetrecords.com/baker-knight-%26-the-knightmares-the-misty-wizards-the-next-exit-..-record-store-day/nuggets-hallucinations---psychedelic-pop-nuggets-from-the-wea-vaults/RSD16NUGGETS