I think rock started growing up lyrically...and in the sense of what themes were expressed in those lyrics...primarily due to the overwhelming influence of Bob Dylan on the entire scene from about 1965 on. The Beatles and the Stones were very much influenced by Bob, and they started writing songs with more serious themes. That was about the time the Beatles began moving away from "silly love songs" and exploring all kinds of other things in their songs.

It was also, perhaps not coincidentally, about the time that the audiences began to shift away from a mob of screaming teenage girls and into the more modern rock audience. The days of the screamers were fast running out by '66.

My old pal Johnny Death told me that he first saw the Stones in '65 at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto. The first song they played was "Lady Jane". He said that the noise all around from screaming girls in the audience was so deafening that he could barely hear the band!

Thank God that period has passed. Modern rock audiences are fairly noisy...but nothing even comparable to the lunatic hysteria that was standard back in '64 when bands like the Beatles or the Stones played a live concert.

When Dylan brought the quiet folk audience and the noisy rock audience together in '65-66, and played songs that made you think, that was when the whole scene started to grow up a bit.