The Fever Tree

Emerging from Houston in the late 1960s, Fever Tree ranked as a modestly engaging psychedelic outfit whose reputation rests chiefly on the single "San Francisco Girls," notable for its striking melody, idealistic words, and scorching fuzz guitar. Ironically, the majority of their strongest songs originated with the husband-and-wife production team of Scott and Vivian Holtzman, both over thirty, who had earlier supplied material for Tex Ritter and the Mary Poppins soundtrack. Working with this unlikely pair, the group generated material marked by classical and Baroque influences plus orchestral string arrangements that appeared more frequently than was typical among psychedelic acts. Their attractive, wistful ballads—lifted on the debut album by arranger David Angel, previously involved with Love’s Forever Changes—have aged more gracefully than the gloomy, fuzz-driven grinders that capture the routine side of heavy psychedelia. Across four albums, the third of which, Creation, featured guest guitar from future ZZ Top axeman Billy Gibbons, their releases steadily lost focus and became increasingly diffuse, prompting the band’s breakup in 1970.