Background
Psychedelic Shack was one of the last albums completed before the third incarnation of The Temptations (Dennis Edwards, Paul Williams, Eddie Kendricks, Melvin Franklin, and Otis Williams) broke apart. During the recording of the album, Paul Williams, already possessing a fragile condition because of sickle-cell disease, was now also fighting complications from five years of heavy alcoholism. Williams would frequently be unable to record or perform, and the Temptations had to resort to hiring Richard Street, an old friend of Otis WIlliams' and lead singer of minor Motown act The Monitors, as a stand-in for Paul Williams. At the same time, Eddie Kendricks' growing animosity towards Otis Williams and Melvin Franklin, and the group's general frustration over their lack of creative control and their treatment at the hands of Motown, resulted in an increased amount of infighting and set the stage for Kendricks' imminent departure in early 1971.
Like most Temptations albums from the group's "psychedelic period", producer Norman Whitfield held full creative control over Psychedelic Shack. The only freedom afforded the Temptations themselves for this album was the occasional opportunity for Kendricks to arrange the vocal harmonies. The album cover, a collage/illustration by Hermon Weems, places photographs of the Temptations in a depiction of a psychedelic shack: an establishment in urban neighborhoods where people could go to "enhance their minds" through art, music, and mind-altering drugs.
Read more about this topic: Psychedelic Shack (album)
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