Poetic beauty of a psychedelic dream
Rock Music Genres – Psychedelia.
Rock Music Genres – Psychedelia.
In the mid-sixties in London LSD was available, the alternative counter-culture was starting up and musicians were at the forefront. The drug of choice was cannabis and the effects of LSD and cannabis was soon evident in the music.
A number of clubs opened up to cater for these bands and their enthusiastic audience. These clubs, like UFO, Middle Earth and the Marquee, all equipped with light shows and advertised with psychedelic posters formed part of Underground Britain.
Jimi Hendrix exploded on the scene, The Yardbirds, Who, Smallfaces and others moved from Blues and Beat to Psychedelia with numbers like ‘Over, Under, Sideways, Down’, ‘Itchycoo Park’ and ‘I can See for Miles’. The Beatles were at the forefront with first Revolver and numbers like ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ and then Sgt Peppers. The Stones produced singles like ‘We Love You’ and the album Their Satanic Majesties Request with numbers like ‘She’s a Rainbow’ and ‘2000 Light Years From Home’.
There was a lot of cross-fertilisation going on with the West Coast Acid Rock scene in America. On both sides of the Atlantic the Sixties Underground was burgeoning.
The band that really sums up the whole Psychedelic sound was Pink Floyd. Their first album – Piper At The Gates Of Dawn – was so innovative that it blew everything else away. It was the brainchild of Syd Barrett who had been consuming LSD prodigiously. That was evident in the songs. They were full of fairy-tale imagery and Sci-Fi spaciness. The music went off into long trippy sequences with strange noises, loops and electronic sounds.
They were the house-band at Middle Earth and led the way. Other new bands came in their wake – Tomorrow, Syn, Mandrake Paddlesteamer, the Move, Arthur Brown, Action and Soft Machine but Pink Floyd were the best.
The Underground was roaring. There were clubs, Underground newspapers, events and a new camaraderie that sounded like it would never end. The tribes met at the Roundhouse for all-nighters and it was all a Purple Haze of wonder.
The psychedelic sounds got mingled up with Progressive Rock from the likes of Cream, the Nice, Traffic and King Crimson and even the Blues Bands like Fleetwood Mac. There were Indian Ragas, Electronic squeals, reversed tapes, loops and weird lyrics. It was a time of experimentation, adventure and great fun. Anything was possible. There were no limits.
Syd was the first casualty. Too much Acid. Then Pete Green flipped, Hendrix died and the whole scene began to turn sour and implode.
What was a wonderful experiment descended into a heap of wreckage, the idealism drained away and the music became drab and clichéd. The sixties was over and the positive vibe went with it.
My book – In Search of Captain Beefheart tells the story:
Photography – London – Hard Rock Café – Who, Hendrix, Doors. Dylan, Bloomfield, Clapton
Photography – London – Hard Rock Café – Who, Hendrix, Doors. Dylan, Bloomfield, Clapton
Rock Routes – the definitive book on Rock Music.
This is the introduction to my book Rock Routes. The cover is a photograph I took in Bill Graham’s auditorium in San Francisco in January 2013. It is the remains of the Grateful Dead – now called Furthur.
We were only in San Francisco for two days and had no idea they were playing. We were staying in a little ‘hotel’ (I use the word tentatively). The ‘landlady’ was clearing stuff away. I asked why. She told me that there was this band playing down the road and all the weirdos would come out of the woodwork.
I got tickets straight away! How lucky was that! They were superb!
Introduction
Rock is dead. That is what Jim Morrison proclaimed in 1970. He was wrong.
Rock is alive and well.
Rock as a universal unifying force for Youth Culture is dead. For most young people it would appear that music is incidental to their life. It has become a consumable product to be bought and discarded. For those to whom it is central it has become an easy recognisable cult with dedicated devotees.
It was not always the case.
In the 1950’s, 60’s and 70’s music was the focus for social change. It was the unifying force for fashion, politics, attitude, morality and social perspective. Rock was the vehicle that youth culture rode on. Its influence was universal. Rock ‘n’ Roll, Beat music, Psychedelia and Punk were world-wide phenomena. It is salutary to look back at the 60’s psychedelic phenomena and see long-hair bands complete with kaftans, bell-bottoms and accoutrements springing up all over the world including Peru, Afghanistan, Australia, Tokyo, Brazil, South Africa, Russia and Saudi Arabia. Everyone wanted to be part of the scene. They all wanted to be the Beatles, Stones, Floyd, Hendrix or Doors.
Everything now is controlled by the ‘Biz’ and run for profit.
I guess it was ever thus. It did not seem like it though. It seemed that the music was a revolution that was changing the world. It was made by us and controlled by us. It was not a product. It was an emotional portrayal of how we felt. It was ours, of us, by us and for us.
But then I’ve always been an idealist.
Well – I lived through it all. I’ve seen most of them and got to meet some of them. I have enjoyed a life-time of Rock Music. It has been central to everything I have done. It has affected my philosophy and impinged on every aspect of my life. I’ve lived it.
I am sitting here in 2013 looking forward over the next few weeks to a programme that includes Nick Harper, Roy Harper, The Magic Band, North Mississippi Allstars and Leonard Cohen. Wow! I’m looking forward to it. I’m 64 and still rockin’.
Back in the 1980s I ran an adult education on the history of Rock Music. I had great fun even though it cost me a fortune. My vinyl collection grew exponentially.
This book is an extension of that course. I first wrote a four volume book totalling 1500 pages entitled Rock Strata. It told the whole story of Rock Music through from the early 1900s to 1982. A publisher loved it. He loved my charts. He just thought it was a little too long. He wanted me to cut it down to 200 pages.
This is the rewrite of that attempt!
This book is the history of Rock Music up until 1982. I stopped there. I could have continued but it all rather broke up into fragments. There have been a number of those fragments that I continue to love but others I get frustrated by. I hate overproduced muzac for the hard of thinking. I hate product.
I love good, live, raw, loud, exciting music. I want my stuff straight from the heart, head and gut – not the bank.
This book shows how the different aspects of Rock Music developed and evolved. Nothing is ever new. True innovators are extremely rare. I’ve heard a few. Everything comes out of what has come before. You can always see where it has come from.
One of my Rock students started my course hating Country & Western. By the end of the course he had an extensive collection of 1930s/40s Country. He had ‘discovered’ it by looking at the influences acting on the music he enjoyed. He found it was stuff he’d never heard or listened to. He loved it.
This book tries to show you the things that influenced the music you love. Perhaps you will find other artists or genres you didn’t know about? Perhaps it will captivate you the way it has me?
It doesn’t matter what you love as long as you love something. It doesn’t matter if we love the same things. Half the fun is arguing the toss over songs, bands and genres.
The lists I have drawn up are not definitive; cannot be definitive. They are my view of what is the very best. I’m sorry if I’ve missed a few out. That’s bound to be the case. But I bet I’ve put a few in that you wouldn’t have thought of. Enjoy mulling them over and drop me a comment on my Opher’s World blog if you like it or if you don’t. I’m always keen to hear from you!
This is Rock Music – not Pop. This is my kind of stuff. I grew up with it. It changed me. I love it!
If you want to purchase it here’s the link:
Rock Music – What makes a great song, band or performer?
What is quite clear is that it is not all about talent or ability. Some of the best Rock songs have been very basic, not requiring any great virtuosity, such as ‘Louie Louie’ by the Kingsmen.
Some artists, like Joe Satriani, are so incredibly talented and so technically proficient on the guitar that you can marvel at their skill in much the same way as you would any classical musician yet I find them uninspiring.
The best Rock guitarist I have ever seen (and I’ve had the pleasure of seeing Jimmy Page, Peter Green, Keith Cross, Pete Townsend, Eric Clapton, Rory Gallagher, Paul Kossof, Dave Gilmour and Jack White up close) without a doubt is Jimi Hendrix. Nobody come close. The sounds and melody that Jimi could squeeze out of a guitar were extraordinary. He could make it talk with his elbow better than most good guitarists could with their hands. Jimi would weave in feedback, distortion and effects to create new complex melody that was never boring.
Jimi was the consummate Rock guitarist. His limitations were the extent of his imagination. He could conjure up any sound, feeling or rhythm.
An important element of Rock music is the showmanship and ability to create excitement through the power of performance. When a band like Cream, Free, early Pink Floyd, Stiff Little Fingers, Hendrix, Lee Scratch Perry, The Who, Elvis Costello, Led Zeppelin or White Stripes let rip there was a pulse of energy that surged through the audience and created a synergy of excitement.
Some bands did not rely so much on power as the creation of a mesmerising sound that melted you away to get lost in its complexity and melody such as Traffic, Neil Young and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young.
Sometimes that power of performance is melded with complexity to create something powerful and mesmeric. The best gigs I have ever experienced were Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band and Jimi Hendrix. Both of them merged the power and drive with complexity and skill into an unbeatable magic.
For me the words have always been an important element. When a truly gifted poet, such as Roy Harper, Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan, entwine their poetry to music it creates something far greater than the parts. It provides another dimension that engages the intellect as well. That propels the music to greater heights that stimulates the cerebral cortex in a more consuming, and satisfying manner.
I like my Rock having content that makes me think, a social or political thread, a spiritual element, a comment or purpose.
The best acoustic guitarist I have ever seen, from a large field including Davey Graham, Leo Kottke, Bert Jansch, John Fahey, Stefan Grossman and John Renbourn, is undoubtedly Nick Harper. He crafts his incredible guitar skills to varied brilliant songs full of imagery, meaning and love.
Then there are the giants like the Beatles, Rolling Stones and Love who were simply majestic. Or the sheer exuberance of the early Blues of Robert Johnson, Son House, Elmore James, Howlin’ Wolf and Muddy Waters and Rock ‘n’ Rollers such as Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Elvis Presley, Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis.
I can take my Rock basic and raw or intellectual and profound, depending on my mood, but I like it real, not over-sanitised by the record labels, not reduced to satisfy the lowest common denominator, not processed for mass public consumption, not devoid of content for fear of offending. I want my Rock to challenge. It is not the music of the establishment. It is always the stuff of rebellion. As soon as it is adopted, clichéd or restricted it is dead!
Find out what I think the most essential 537 albums are in my book available on Amazon:
Or read about the story of my life in music:
Or the times when Rock was at its peak in the counter-culture of the sixties:
Rock music has been the backdrop to my life. It has informed my views and philosophy. I am who I am because of it!