Happy Anniversary: The Rascals, Once Upon a Dream

48 years ago today, The Rascals released their fourth full-length studio album, an endeavor which found the New Jersey band following in the footsteps of just about every other band of their era and seeing if they could successfully steer their sound into a more psychedelic direction.

Make no mistake, though: Once Upon a Dream wasn’t just a case of the Rascals trying something new sonically. It was also a case of the band expanding their horizons creatively by creating an album as an album, and not just as a couple of hit singles surrounded whatever additional material it took to fill up the remaining space on the LP.

Produced by Arif Mardin and the band, Once Upon a Dream presented a definite change in the band’s sound, one which had already been teased by frontman Felix Cavaliere in a 1967 Melody Maker interview when he said, “Our new album, and I say this in a humble way, will be Sgt. Pepper-ish.” It was a point of reference that was popping up in a lot of artists’ descriptions of their upcoming material right around that time, but it’s one that the Rascals’ album lived up to. Indeed, when AllMusic.com reevaluated the album in 2011, not only did he echo the Sgt. Pepper suggestion, he also threw Pet Sounds into the mix as a point of comparison, writing that “its sophisticated orchestral and vocal arrangements are remarkable even in the 21st century” and calling the album “an under-celebrated masterpiece of the psychedelic era.”

Unfortunately, “under-celebrated” is definitely an apropos choice of adjective: while Once Upon a Dream did deliver a top-20 hit with its lone single, “It’s Wonderful,” and provided The Rascals with their second top-10 album, it also proved to be the start of a downhill slide on the charts for the band. Still, not every band that flirted with psychedelia was nearly as successful with their attempts, so give The Rascals their due and give Once Upon a Dream a spin.