I'm Simon Tesler, back with you for another hour of great songs honouring musicians who left us over the past three months to join that Great Gig In The Sky. 

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That was the American vocal group The 5th Dimension with their chart-topping medley of two tracks taken from the revolutionary 60s musical Hair, Aquarius and Let The Sunshine In. We're honouring The 5th Dimension's co-founder Lamonte McLemore, who passed away in February. Sometimes described as the black Mamas and Papas, they had a series of huge hits in the 60s, starting with their breakthrough single Up Up & Away in 1967, but none was bigger than this medley from the pioneering rock musical Hair. 

The show, which first opened on Broadway in April 1968 was like no mainstream musical ever seen before. It was the story of a group of loved-up hippies getting on with their lives in New York's East Village while trying to avoid getting drafted for Vietnam, and it tackled all the big counter culture issues like racism, sexism, environmental destruction and of course Vietnam, but with added swearing, nudity and lots of drugs. It caused a sensation of course.

The 5th Dimension got involved because their lead singer Billy Davis Jr left his wallet in a New York cab one day. The guy who found it was one of the producers of Hair and invited the group to come and see the show. They loved it and that same night, they called their producer Bones Howe and said, we've got to record this song Aquarius which opens the show, It's the best thing ever! 

Howe later told the magazine Sound On Sound "I was aware of the album, and I said 'Well, you know, there have been some other people who have cut this song and it hasn't been a hit...' 'Oh no, the way we'll do it, it'll be a hit. It'll be a hit!'" Howe wasn't so sure. 

"There was so much talk about that show," he said, "because people were naked on stage, and Aquarius was just part of the opening routine. It isn't a complete song, it's an introduction. Well, I went to see it, and about four-fifths of the way through there was another song called The Flesh Failures, which was a typical 60s downer — you know, the world is falling apart, we're all killing each other with poison, and so on.... But at the end of the song there were three bars just repeating 'Let the sunshine in, let the sunshine in, the sunshine in,' over and over and over again. It was very rousing and went over huge with the audience, and I turned to my wife and said 'That's it! That's the other song! We can put the two of them together!'"

The resulting single turned out to be a massive hit, topping the charts not just in the US but all over the world and opening the door for productions of Hair to launch not just all across the US -- at one stage there were nine simultaneous productions across North America -- but also around the world, in London, Stockholm, Paris, Munich and then further afield. Within just two years there were 19 different productions running outside North America, and almost 300 recordings of songs from the score, making Hair the most successful musical score in history. And it was the Fifth Dimension's single which had opened the floodgates, named as record of the year in 1970.

OK, we're going to get even funkier now, in honour of Billy 'Bass' Nelson, co-founder and original bass player in George Clinton's Parliament-Funkadelic musical collective. Nelson was there at the beginning and it was he who coined the name Funkadelic to sum up the group's fusion of funk and psychedelic rock. However, he and Clinton fell out over money after the third Funkadelic album, Maggot Brain, and Nelson quit - he was replaced in Funkadelic by Bootsy Collins - but he went on to carve out a significant career as one of the most admired session musicians of the 70s and 80s. Guitar Player once described him as the Wynton Marsalis of funk, equating him with the pioneering jazz trumpeter. Here's an example of Nelson's thundering bass on the track You & Your Folks Me & My Folks from the Maggot Brain album. 

Nelson told Guitar Player "Funk is meant to be played at a very specific tempo," he insists. "A lot of groups play 'funk' licks, and do `funk' things like thumbing the bass and all, but they play it all too fast. If you want to play that raw, serious funk, you have to slow it down."

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Billy 'Bass' Nelson on bass and vocals on Funkadelic's You & Your Folks Me & My Folks from 1971. We're going to stay in a soulful mood for our next two tracks. In a few minutes, Garland Green, who left us in February. He was a soul singer from Mississippi who had a long career between the late 60s and early 2010s but only comparatively modest success. His biggest hit was this, his debut single Jealous Kind Of Fella, released in 1969. 

Before that, Groovin', originally recorded by the blue-eyed soul group The Young Rascals in 1967, and later covered many times by other artists including War. Lead singer in the Rascals was Eddie Brigati, but his older brother David - the so-called fifth Rascal - was also a regular contributor to sessions as well as a singer in his own right. David Brigati passed away last month, but in 1991 former Steely Dan frontman Donald Fagen brought together both brothers, as well as a starry line-up of other singers and musicians, to take part in his New York Rock & Soul Revue, performing a broad selection of soul classics. The concert was recorded for a great live album -- definitely worth checking out. So here are the Brigati brothers David and Eddie from that show performing their classic hit from the 60s: Groovin'

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Groovin' from David and Eddie Brigati, followed by Garland Green with Jealous Kind Of Fella.

We're staying in the 1960s for our next two tracks. Neil Sedaka, who died last month, was one of the old school giants of the music industry, a successful singer in his own right, but also a hugely prolific songwriter, who penned more than 1,000 compositions in his long career. He started as a writer for hire in New York's legendary song factory the Brill Building, but always yearned to be a performer himself, and enjoyed his first big success in 1961 with Oh! Carol, dedicated to his high school girlfriend Carole King -- later to become a hugely successful performer in her own right with her album Tapestry. Other pop hits followed, including Calendar Girl, Happy Birthday Sweet Sixteen, and the track I'm going to play, Breaking Up Is Hard To Do. 

Here's a bizarre music biz factoid. What is the connection between Neil Sedaka, 10cc and Joy Division? Well the bright and breezy pop of Sedaka and indeed 10cc couldn't be more different from Joy Division's angst-ridden post-punk but they share an odd bond. The arrival of the Beatles in America, followed by the Stones and then a harder style of rock music, caused Sedaka's US music career to dry up and he eventually moved to pop-friendly Britain in the early 70s, developing strong ties with another pair of budding songwriters in Stockport, near Manchester. This was Graham Gouldman and Eric Stewart, soon to become 10cc with Lol Creme and Kevin Godley. They owned the Strawberry Studios recording studio in Stockport, where Sedaka relaunched his career with a series of new albums, initially with the then unknown 10cc as his backing band. 

One of the songs Sedaka recorded at Strawberry Studios was Love Will Keep Us Together, which later became a huge hit for American pop duo Captain & Tennille in 1975. A few years later, Joy Division's Ian Curtis sat down to write what was to become Joy Division's final single, a tortured analysis of his own troubled relationship with his wife Deborah. Its title Love Will Tear Us Apart was conceived as an ironic response to Sedaka's song. Weirder still, it was in the very same place, Strawberry studios in Stockport, that Joy Division recorded the song.

After Neil Sedaka I'm going to play another timeless breakup track, The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore from the Walker Brothers. Gary, the last survivor of the three "brothers" passed away on the same day as Neil Sedaka last month. More about them later. This is Neil Sedaka and Breaking Up Is Hard To Do.

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Breaking Up Is Hard To Do from Neil Sedaka followed by The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore by the Walker Brothers, who were of course no such thing. Scott Engel, John Maus and Gary Leeds were un-related but when they got together in Los Angeles in 1964 they adopted the name the Walker Brothers because it sounded more showbiz. They did OK in the US, but like Neil Sedaka they very quickly realised that, in the age of The Beatles and the Stones, Britain was where things were happening in pop music. Gary had toured England as the drummer for PJ Proby, another American singer who'd decamped to Blighty, and he was full of stories about the place. So in 1965 the "brothers" transplanted themselves to London, where tall, handsome and mysterious main singer Scott Walker immediately caused a sensation in the hearts of millions of teenagers. Adding to his lustre was that unique, emotive baritone voice. The journalist Paul du Noyer said Scott Walker sang like "a man with a very deep voice on his way to the scaffold". 

The Walker Brothers scored their first #1 with Take It Easy On Yourself, and a succession of chart-topping singles followed. A few weeks after their third consecutive #1, The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine, the Walker Brothers' fan club overtook that of The Beatles to become the biggest in Britain by members. But the reclusive and enigmatic Scott Walker was beginning to find the hysterical adulation of hordes of screaming girls impossible to deal with, and he suffered the first of several nervous breakdowns in 1967. There was also an unsuccessful attempt at suicide and the brothers broke up soon afterwards. John and Gary tried to go it alone but with little success and there was a short-lived reunion in the early 70s for a new album, and two further reunion performances in 1982 and 1991. Scott, however, did have a successful solo career up until his death in 2019. John died in 2011 and Gary at the beginning of March this year.

OK, time to rock things up a bit. A couple of heavier tracks now from Germany and then Australia. Internationally, Scorpions are the biggest and best-known heavy metal band ever to emerge from Germany, with combined album sales well in excess of 100 million copies. Also the longest-running -- they were founded in 1965 by guitarist Rudolf Schenker and are still going strong under his leadership today. Francis Buchholz was Scorpions bassplayer for almost 20 years from 1973 to 1992, their golden period, before joining the rival band launched by another hard rock hero, Rudof Schenker's younger brother Michael.

I'm going to play one of their best-known tracks, Rock You Like A Hurricane, from their international breakthrough album Love At First Sting, released in 1984. The song was co-written by Rudolf Schenker with drummer Herman Rarebell and singer Klaus Meine.

"Klaus and Herman wrote the lyrics together," said Schenker. "It was Klaus's very romantic, harmonic mind and Herman's very dirty mind." "I thought we needed a rock song with lyrics that should be forbidden," said Rarebell, who was renowned for living the sex drugs and rock n roll lifestyle to the limit and beyond. "The original title," he said, "was F--- You Like A Hurricane. The record company looked at me and said: 'You're completely out of your mind!' Which I was."

After that, Australian band Midnight Oil with Power & The Passion. More about that in a few minutes. But first Scorpions and Rock You Like A Hurricane.

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Midnight Oil aren't as well known internationally as other Australian bands like AC/DC or INXS but back home they've been absolutely massive for more than 50 years. Drummer Rob Hirst, who left us in January, was one of the band's founders, as well as co-composer of many of its best-known songs, including Power & The Passion. 

In 2001 the Australian Performing Rights Association asked 100 local writers, musicians, critics and broadcasters each to select the 10 best or most significant Australian songs of all time. A final list of 30 was compiled from those votes and Midnight Oil was the only act to be listed twice: Power & The Passion and Beds Are Burning.

Heading into the last part of the show now, and we'll backtrack to the 1970s and some traditional American rock. We started the hour with the sound of 60s and 70s counter-culture with Aquarius and Let The Sunshine In, but that was a slightly more sanitised version of what was really happening in the protest movement. Here's a little bit of the real thing, two bands who were each in their own way down there on the barricades for the 60s revolution: Country Joe Macdonald & The Fish, and then the Grateful Dead.

Country Joe Macdonald, who passed away last month, teamed up with Barry Melton, whose nickname was 'The Fish', in 1965 to form an acoustic folk duo in the style of Woody Guthrie. They were quick to follow the example of Bob Dylan by going electric, and were later among the most outspoken critics of the Vietnam war and American politicians in general, as well as advocates of recreational drug use, "Hey partner won't you pass that reefer around" sang Country Joe in the song Bass Strings, and Superbird, which I'm going to play in a minute, was a blistering attack on US President Lyndon B Johnson, advising him to retire to his Texas ranch, eat flowers and drop some acid.

After Country Joe we'll have a track from The Grateful Dead, whose rhythm guitarist and co-songwriter Bob Weir left us in January. Though their albums rarely troubled the charts to a great extent, The Grateful Dead were among the most influential American bands of the period from the 60s to the 90s. Consummate musicians, they were renowned for their improvisational live shows which blended virtually every form of musical form. I'm going to play one of their most famous tracks, Truckin', from the album American Beauty, sung and co-written by Joe Weir. It tells the story of a drugs raid on the band's hotel rooms in New Orleans while they were on a tour earlier that year. If you've ever wondered where the pop culture saying 'What a long strange trip it's been' comes from, wonder no more. It's Truckin'. But first Country Joe Macdonald & The Fish and Superbird.

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Just time for one more track to close the show, and we're going to go out where we came in two hours ago, with DJ Simon Harris and singer Lonnie Gordon. This is I've Got Your Pleasure Control.