Rock Genres – Psychedelia.

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opher-pete-e1400765919348 pink_floyd_band_members-1862 beatles ccc

Psychedelia was the name given to the British music produced in the mid to late sixties influenced by the psychotropic substances such as LSD – Lysergic Acid Diethylamide.

The similar type of music produced on the West Coast of America was called Acid Rock. The two styles fed off each other and were an important element of the sixties counter-culture that is stereotyped as ‘Hippie’.

LSD was legal in the mid-sixties (It was only made illegal in Britain in 1966, in 1966 in California but not until 1968 federally). The interaction of the Rock industry and Youth Culture between the UK and US meant that the two scenes were well integrated.

The drugs of choice of the Rock Bands included marijuana and LSD. At the time these drugs were widely regarded in the Youth Culture of the day as being mind expanding. The generation gap reflected this. The ‘old’ generation with their alcohol and tobacco were seen as unhip while the ‘young’ generation with their dope and Acid were seen as cool.

The Rock musicians in the mid-sixties were indulging in a lot of hallucinogens. The results can be heard in the music of the day. In 1966 a definite Psychedelic tinge was discernible. On the Revolver album the Beatles were producing numbers like ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’. This was a sign of what was to come. Other established bands, such as the Yardbirds (with the immaculate Jeff Beck on guitar), were producing numbers like ‘Over Under Sideways Down’, The Pretty Things were producing the Rock Opera ‘SF Sorrow’ with tracks like £SD. Eric Burdon split the Animals up to create the New Animals. The Who were releasing tracks like ‘I Can See For Miles’ and the Move ‘I Can Hear the Grass Grow’.

The earliest Psychedelic sound was actually an album by Alan Watts called ‘This is It’ and early converts were Donovan with ‘Sunshine Superman’ and Roy Harper released the psychedelic ‘China Girl’ on his first album.

1967 was the year when Psychedelia went interstellar. Pink Floyd led the way with their ground-breaking ‘Piper at the Gates of Dawn’. Syd Barrett was the mastermind of the spacey Sci-fi ‘Interstellar Overdrive’ and the fantasy imagery that was to become part and parcel of Psychedelia. Hendrix was blasting us with ‘Axis Bolder than Love’ with numbers like ‘Spanish Castle Magic’. The Beatles came out with ‘Sgt Peppers’ and the Stones did ‘Their Satanic Majesties Request’. There were a plethora of other bands including Arthur Brown, Family, Traffic, Tomorrow, Spooky Tooth, Edgar Broughton, Soft Machine, Procol Harum, Incredible String Band, Moody Blues and Action. Blues Bands like Cream got in on the scene with their Disreali Gears album and Pete Green’s Fleetwood Mac released ‘Green Manalishi’.

The clubs were full of light shows and happenings.

The charts were full of psuedo-psychedelic Pop such as the Lemon Pipers, Status Quo, the Flower-pot Men and Scott McKenzie.

Out in the streets it was different. There was a social revolution. The British and American counterculture were burgeoning and Acid Rock with Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band, Jefferson Airplane, Grateful Dead, Country Joe & the Fish, Big Brother and the Holding Company, Buffalo Springfield, Doors, Byrds and Quicksilver Messenger Service were setting the pace.

All the clubs were full of Psychedelic sounds and US Acid Rock and there were a plethora of smaller bands like Blossom Toes, Andwella’s Dream, Syn, Idle Race, Misunderstood and Dantalion’s Chariot.

The fashions also reflected this Psychedelia. Paisley and fluorescent colours were in. It was all colourful and voluminous – very trippy.

The repercussions are still audible today!

 

Rock genres – Acid Rock

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acid3 acid7 acid2 Acid acid 4 captain beef

Acid Rock as a genre started in the mid-sixties and flourished in the late sixties.

At that time LSD – lysergic Acid Diethylamine – was legal and thought to be safe. Marijuana was the drug of choice for the burgeoning alternative culture and was extensively used.

A Rock Scene sprang up in the two cities on the West Coast of America which had attracted in large numbers of alternative characters. In Los Angeles the scene was centred around Venice and the Sunset Strip and in San Francisco it was around Haight Asbury.

The culture was very radical. It became known a the Hippie movement typified by its long hair and bright clothes, liberalised attitudes to drugs and sex and a distrust of the establishment.

The Acid Rock culture had grown out of a coalescing from a number of sources. There was the influence of the British Bands who had inspired a number of musicians to get into bands; the politics and poetry of the Folk movement, exemplified by Bob Dylan, with its radicalising message; the influence of East Coast musicians like the Lovin’ Spoonful and then the seminal band the Byrds with their Folk-Rock and spacey sounds.

In Britain a similar thing was taking place simultaneously. It was based in London where both cannabis and :LSD were circulating and was creating a Psychedelic scene based around clubs like The UFO Club, Middle Earth and the Eel-Pie Island.

The two were to cross-fertilise and interact.

In Los Angeles the leading lights were the Doors, Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band, Buffalo Springfield, The Mothers of Invention (Frank Zappa) and Love. They tended to have a Blues based sound. Frank was a a bit of a one-off and not really what I would call Acid Rock but …….

In San Francisco it was Jefferson Airplane, Country Joe and the Fish, Big Brother & the Holding Company, Quicksilver Messenger Service and Grateful Dead. There was more of a Folk influence here.

The effects of the drugs on the music was very evident. The pieces were drawn out into long jams with the integration of soaring guitars and harmonies. It was intricate and interweaved into complex rhythms and there was the use of different instrumentation, musical forms, electronic sounds. It created a dense sound that was mesmerising and you could get lost in. It was album based, rather than singles, and was focussed on the ideology of the alternative culture with its peace, love and anti-establishment themes. The music was of and for the sixties alternative culture.

When coupled with light shows in small clubs the atmosphere was a total immersive experience that was intended to be consumed while high.

Surprisingly it was instantly commercially successful with bands like the Doors and Jefferson Airplane hitting the singles charts. This threw everyone into a dilemma. The bands were in danger of being called ‘Sell-outs’ and losing their street credibility and the establishment was shocked and did not know how to deal with the drug references and social messages.

Some of these bands went on to become among the biggest in the world – like the Doors. Others developed huge stadia followings like Grateful Dead and others fell by the wayside like Country Joe and the Fish.

My favourite was the incredible Captain Beefheart who produced the greatest body of work, pushed the boundaries, was innovative and extraordinary, was a poet of great originality, and created complex music the like of which has never been bettered. He influenced a thousand other musicians and remains a largely unsung hero.

My book – ‘In Search of Captain Beefheart’ is not actually about the Captain; it is about my quest for the lodestone of Rock Music. It’s a tale of a man’s journey and love of Rock Music.

I have a number of other books concerned with Rock Music you might enjoy – Tributes to the Top Rock acts:

My views on the greatest albums of all time:

Rock lives!!

In credible String Band – Way Back in the 1960s – humorous lyrics with a satirical bite.

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incredible string band

It is strange to find the sixties so far back in time. There was an ethos and energy that went far beyond the stereotype of pot, acid and sex. There was fun, idealism and a reaction against the prudish drab conservatism of that pre-sixties society. Now all we have are the stereotypes, Carnaby Street phoney gloss and stoner numbskulls.

The satirical element concentrates on the inevitable slump into the plastic society we have been busy creating – plastic entertainment, plastic food and plastic people. Then the sell-outs who were in it for the money. The use of Britain as a nuclear aircraft carrier of the USA. The silliness of fashion and phoney language adopted by the young trendies.

It was a great song from a great album.

Back in the 1960’s

I was a young man back in the 1960’s
Yes, you made your own amusements then
For going to the pictures

Well, the travel was hard and I mean
We still used the wheel
But you could sit down at your table
And eat a real food meal

But hey, you young people
Well, I just do not know
And I can’t even understand you
When you try to talk slow

There was one fellow singing in those days
And he was quite good, and I mean to say that
His name was Bob Dylan, and I used to do gigs too
Before I made my first million

That was way, way back before
Before the wild World War Three
When England went missing
And we moved to Paraguayee

But hey, you young people
Well, I just do not know
And I can’t even understand you
When you try to talk slow

Well, I got a secret, and don’t give us away
I got some real food tins for my 91st birthday
And your grandmother bought them
Way down in the new antique food store
And for beans and for bacon, I will open up my door

But hey, you young people
Well, I just do not know
And I can’t even understand you
When you try to talk slow

Well, I was a young man back in the 1960’s

Read more: Incredible String Band – Way Back In The 1960’s Lyrics | MetroLyrics

Roy Harper – Dissident on trial.

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harper01a

I’ve just come back from giving a character reference at the Crown Court in Worcester for Roy Harper.

I can’t help thinking that all this historical sex scandal business has got completely out of hand. Nobody is condoning sexual impropriety or paedophilia. If there was abuse of young girls the perpetrators should have been brought to justice.Why wait forty years?

I can’t help thinking that all of this is one horrible fabrication.

I have looked at the case against Roy and it looks flaky and spurious. I cannot see Roy as the raper of a young girl. It does not ring true.

There are times when you look at the legal system and think it has gone mad. we are not talking about justice or fairness; the law is a game. The solicitors pocket the money and a game is played out. It has nothing to do with justice.

Roy was having a late flourish. His album was gaining awards and selling. He was selling out the Festival Hall, writing a new album and being feted by a host of stars.

It all came to an abrupt end. Nobody will touch him with a barge-pole. The album is no longer selling. He has sunk all his savings into his defence. His reputation is destroyed. harper01aThere is no touring; no follow-up album and Roy and Tracy have had two and a half years of hell that have taken their toll.

The accuser is anonymous. Roy’s life is shattered.

Roy is no Jimmy Saville serial predatory paedophile. What on earth is going on?

One of Britain’s greatest dissidents, musician, poet and outspoken critic of the establishment is being hounded and destroyed. Something is wrong. Surely there needs to be a statute of limitations of twenty years on these sort of things? Surely there needs to be dual anonymity? Surely there has to be stringent Crown Prosecution assessment of whether a crime has been committed? You can’t just destroy someone’s life like this!

The Incredible String Band – Opher’s World pays tribute to genius.

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incredible string band

It doesn’t get more incongruous than this. How did a traditional folk trio from Edinburgh become the toast of London psychedelia? The answer lies not so much in the soil as in the lands, instruments and times. They might have started off as a trio playing traditional songs but they always had a love of strange and varied instruments and a desire to visit exotic places. It doesn’t get more exotic than psychotropia. The first album was Folk with a few different instruments. After that it got far less traditional.

They split up in the mid sixties with two of them going off to follow the Hippie trail to Afghanistan and India. When they met up again as a duo they had a whole slew of new instruments and head’s full of other cultures, ideas and possibilities. When it came to recording they found that these ideas opened up further dimensions, the recording studios enabled enhancement and the Indian sound was flavour of the month. This was the age of mind expansion. All things were possible. They took full advantage. Once the genie was out of the bottle it was not going back. Of course I am also sure there were some psychotropic chemicals that were probably more potent that a pint of heavy.

The songs had progressed from the standard three minute ditties to long epic numbers with tales of fantasy, spiritual quest and mythology. Joe Boyd’s production added the psychedelic ingredient to multilayer the sound. The Arabian and Indian instruments created an esoteric feel. The cover and title of first ‘5000 spirits of the layers of the onion’ and then ‘The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter’ were suitably colourful and doused with LSD. They were a Psychedelic Folk Band and found themselves playing the Underground venues and festivals and not the Folk Clubs.

That’s where I first caught them. They fitted in well and were wonderful. They exuded a positive vibe and exuberance that shone. They interchanged instruments from a seemingly endless store and had a great time. The music was complex and sophisticated. The songs were all spiritually uplifting and fitted right into the sixties quest for meaning and purpose. My long lost friend Gary Turp, who was heavily into Buddhist Meditation worshipped them. They were the epitome of Hippie optimism.

The double album – ‘Wee Tam and the Big Huge’ confirmed their excellence. Nobody sounded like the Incredibles. They had different themes, styles, voices and sound to everyone else.

The general consensus is that the music went off following their dalliance with scientology following ‘Wee Tam and the Big Huge’ but I never felt that. The addition of the girls worked well. They’d always really been part of the group anyway and then the dance/mime troupe added another dimension. I saw their supposedly disastrous production of ‘U’ at the roundhouse and it was brilliant. I wanted to go back and see it again. It suited the optimistic idealist I was back then. I am a little more of a world-weary optimistic idealist now. Back then I thought we could change the world and make everything perfect overnight; now I think it might take a week or two!

The band split up with acrimony. Seemingly the gaiety and exuberance always masked a lack of friendship between Robin and Mike. They never got on, but that never got in the way of the music or vibe on stage.

I saw their great reunion at the Bloomsbury theatre in 1997 and then the original three in Beverley a few years later and thought they were great.

What the world needs now is a good dose of Robin and Mike’s positivity and optimism. They helped produced that incredible zeitgeist that was the sixties ‘can do’ culture. They made everything possible. They weren’t a good time band they exuded a spiritual vibe that was so incredibly uplifting …. And I’m an atheist! What I’d give for a slab of that vibe right now. We could transform the world.

The Incredibles lived up to their name and it is no wonder that they are spoken of with such great affection by all who saw them, heard them and loved them.

Traffic – Opher’s World pays tribute to genius.

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Traffic

Stevie Winwood was still a young kid when he quit the Spencer Davies group to form his own band. He had been heralded as having the best Blues voice in Britain and had powered through a number of great singles and a few albums with Spencer and Co. By the end part of the sixties with the advent of the Jimi Hendrix Experience, Cream, Pink Floyd and a host of others, the British Underground was getting into full swing, Youth culture was taking off and Spencer Davies did not seem quite so cool. Stevie wanted a band with better Underground Freak credentials; he wanted in on the action.

He gathered together a bunch of top musicians and headed off to an isolated farm-house to rehearse as was the wont. Those musicians were the cream of the bunch with Jim Capaldi on drums, Chris Wood on flute and saxophone, and Dave Mason on guitar. Steve was looking for something Psychedelic and different and achieved it. With some great songs from Mason the band took off!

There seemed to be some weird schizophrenia going on. The singles seemed commercial and the albums aimed at the Underground. They didn’t seem quite sure what scene they wanted to be in. Doing both was not an option. The charts were looked down on by the Underground Freaks. Being a bread-head and opting in to the establishment was definitely not the way to go for Freaks. While ‘Hole in my shoe’ and ‘Here we go round the Mulbery Bush’ were most definitely psychedelic they were a bit too Poppy for Underground tastes. Perhaps that was why Dave Mason left? Fortunately the albums were of sufficient quality that Traffic were able to retain their alternative culture credentials. They got away with it.

There was no denying that tracks like ‘Dear Mr Fantasy’ and ‘Feelin’ Alright’ were not Pop trivia. Traffic were a serious band and fully accepted on the Underground circuit. Live they would extend tracks like these into twenty minute epics that got into a groove and were hypnotic. The band were so tight that the music was divine. There were Jazz influences, Indian and Rock. The lyrics were good, arrangements superb and no other band sounded quite like them. Stevie had developed his voice into an incredible range and depth. They were even better live than they were on record. It was magic.

After two brilliant albums and a final album ‘Last Exit’ the band was disbanded by Stevie. He went on to form Blind Faith, reformed Traffic a couple of times and pursued a solo career. Nothing ever came close to those first two Traffic albums though.

 

Pink Floyd – Opher’s World pays tribute to genius.

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I can’t really imagine Pink Floyd as an R&B outfit. Even listening to the early couple of R&B tracks that have been released doesn’t help. They still sound like Pink Floyd. But an R&B band they were until Syd Barrett discovered LSD and it opened up worlds of possibility for his mind to invent sounds that had never previously existed. He investigated the guitar for noises and bleeps that nobody else had discovered before. He utilised feed-back, distortion and weirdness to harness it into strange new songs.
This was the mid-sixties age of experimentation. Nobody took it further than Syd and Jimi. Pink Floyd were all turned on by it and excavated a seam of music that had never been explored. They invented a psychedelic world inhabited by fantasy gnomes and Sci-fi excursions through the wonders of the galaxy.
On the West Coast of America Acid Rock was rampaging out of control as the Alternative Hippie culture invaded the citadels of mainstream America and took over the radio station, TV and bemused Music Industry. In London the alternative Underground was just as pervasive and giving rise to a cacophony of explorations with Indian Ragas, Jazz improvisation, Progressive Rock, Raw Chicago Blues and Electronic surrealism. British Beat groups had evolved to investigate every available avenue of possibility. It was adapt or die; the survival of the weirdest. This was the arena into which the Pink Floyd emerged.
They soon established themselves as the darlings of the new psychedelic dungeons of London. Their light shows, stolen from the West Coast scene, and hypnotic sounds were legendary from the beginning and formed the backdrop to the all-night events and happenings such as the infamous ‘Games for May’.
The first couple of singles flopped. The rest of the country weren’t ready for them. But then they had a couple of hits that brought them to the attention of everybody else other than the small London cognisee. The release of their first album signalled their arrival and established them as a major force. It was as much an event of the year as Sgt Peppers.
Their songs were just as importantly accompanied by wacky videos that served to accentuate the weird and wonderful dadaesque world of Pink Floyd. The new spacey sound was a million miles away from the Blues of Pink Anderson and Floyd Council from whom their name had been plucked.
The Underground scene took off like Apollo 12 and was augmented by a host of benefits, free concerts and festivals that were expressions of the new alternative culture. This was no longer all about making money. It was about sharing and community. Pink Floyd were there at the forefront. They were the mainstays of the scene, the premier psychedelic band. They started recording their second album and disaster struck.
Syd had been imbibing large quantities of LSD and had begun acting strange. He had always been eccentric but this was becoming more pronounced. It became harder to communicate with him and he became increasingly erratic. At some shows he would stand there and not play anything. In the end they brought in Dave Gilmour to cover for him.
Management were torn. They saw Syd as the creative force. They went with him and imagined the band would simply fall apart. Unfortunately it was Syd who fell apart while the band went from strength to strength. They consolidated the psychedelic spaceyness of the first album and came up with a successful second while Syd’s career stuttered and fizzled out.
Pink Floyd continued their psychedelic journey into the seventies with numerous experimental albums and maintained their status as the leading light in the Underground.
In the mid-seventies, when other Prog Rock bands like Yes, Emmerson Lake & Palmer and King Crimson had descended into tedious self-indulgence, Floyd produced the most amazing album of their career – and that’s saying something! Dark Side of the Moon catapulted them to a new level of brilliance.
It was a new type of experimental music based on what had gone before. Pink Floyd had become masters of the recording studio with their tape loops and quirky sounds.
The sound was to continue through the equally brilliant Wish you were Here, Animals and The Wall. They were the biggest band in the world.
Coupled with the music were extraordinary live stadium shows with huge inflatables and lavish stage sets. They were the masters of putting on an extravaganza. Their shows were the best.
Even when Roger Waters left they continued as a trio and carried on producing excellent albums and shows. They remained one of the best bands on the planet and a immensely creative force both visually and audibly. All that artistic ability had not gone to waste.
I still miss Syd and those early psychedelic times though. Those were the days. That was the place to be.

In the UK:

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Opher’s World Tributes to Rock Geniuses :

 

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Woody Guthrie – Opher’s World pays tribute to a genius!

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Woody Guthrie was the first singer/songwriter to use music as a vehicle for his social and political stances. He set out to use his music to bring about progressive change and in so doing inspired generations of other singers.

Woody opened up a world of possibility, a lodestone of gems to be mined by all who came after.

Whenever there were singers harnessing poetic honesty with heartfelt convictions one could follow a line that harked back to Woody.

Woody stood for equality and justice and put his body where his mouth was. He lived the life, made the friends, stood on the picket lines and fought for what he believed. He put his heart and soul into supporting the unions, racial harmony and social justice. In so doing he set himself against the capitalist system that produce the small number of winners and large bulk of losers. He was for the oppressed, downtrodden, destitute and disenfranchised.

Woody Guthrie

The hundreds of songs that Woody wrote in the 1940s and 1950s still echo down the decades with undiminished power to inspire.

Without Woody there would have been no Dylan and my mind would have been all the poorer.

Where are the people of Woody’s stature, passion and talent to stand up against the monolithic establishment that is presently destroying the planet?

It is not beyond the wit of man to create a fair system whereby we do not have the terrible deprivation in the third world, the poverty, disease and pollution. We have the Technology, Science and Economic power to create a world of greater equality without such overpopulation, environmental destruction and ravaging of wild-life.

If Woody was alive today his songs would be full of the greed and selfishness that is leading to our demise. He would not have sat quietly by while the bankers, businessmen and politicians sell our future for a quick buck. He would have been singing it from the rooftops!

Help produce a positive zeitgeist! Build on Woody’s legacy and let’s start putting it right!

Bob Dylan – Opher’s World plays tribute to a genius

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There has to be more to Rock Music than trite Pop anthems about teenage love. There is. It is because Bob Dylan single-handedly propelled Rock towards a mature phase with intellectual integrity.

In the early years of Rock ‘n’ Roll in the fifties we had a visceral rebellion driven by the raucous swaggering performances of such as Little Richard, Bo Diddley, the Elvis of Sun Records and Chuck Berry. It was fast loud and explosive. It was the sound of a new post-war generation who wanted something different to the bland lives of their parents. Those early Rock ‘n’ Rollers belted out their brash new philosophy to blow the cobwebs out of the establishment.

A knife came down and cut off the connection. A whole generation was adrift from its roots with a new home-grown philosophy summed up by the Lee Marvin line in response to the question:
‘What are you rebelling against?’
‘What you got?’
That post-war generation wanted excitement, fun and adventure. The idea of following their parents into the blandness of suburbia with its neatly trimmed lawns and the American Dream was death by boredom. They wanted life in the fast lane with all its sex, fast cars and violence. The risk gave it an alluring edge. The colours were brighter; the feelings stronger and the pace full of adrenaline.

It was a revolution for a new age and though short-lived provided the basis for the Beatles and Stones to carry it forward.

There it would probably have been incorporated into the capitalist ethos of the Music Industry and decayed into Pop trivia if Bob Dylan hadn’t crashed into the scene with the force of an H-Bomb. The debris was flung into the air to be imbued with his poetic imagery, social and political content and a world of possibility. Bob had taken the song structure by the scruff and shaken it to pieces. The two and a half minute Rock song, with it’s theme of love and standard middle eight, was blown to bits. Anything was possible. You could tell stories. It could be twenty minutes long. You could have real meaning, real passion and something beyond mere teenage love and angst. It could deal with real issues.

Bob Dylan revived and transformed the rebellious impetus of the youth rebellion and provided it with substance.

Rock Music gained complexity, scope and social importance. It was no longer confined to teenage angst and sexuality. Bob had married its energy to a cerebral dimension that was allied to social and political sensibilities. Grown-up issues such as Civil Rights and the anti-war movement were central to the themes of Rock Music. The words were now of greater importance and value. There was a poetic eloquence that demanded to be taken seriously.

The awareness and sensibilities of an entire generation were stimulated and that led to the birth of an idealistic counter-culture that was to dominate the latter part of the sixties and give rise to a wealth of liberalising elements in the Women’s Movement, Peace groups, Environmental groups and Civil Rights Movements.

The establishment called him ‘The Voice of a Generation’. It was a label and pressure that Bob despised. He was not the voice of a generation. He was much more than that. He did not mirror the thoughts and ideals of sixties youth so much as awaken them and propagate their growth. He planted the seeds into the grey fertile soil of the cortex and fed them with the nutrients of wisdom so that they exploded to illuminate the skulls of a receptive generation. He gave them all freedom beyond his own dreams.

A million minds were awakened and imbued with the freedom of all possibility.

I wonder where the world would now be without him? Would we have had those years of protest through which so many of our civil liberties and liberalised society were wrested from the establishment’s reactionary grasp? For Bob not only reinvigorated Rock Music and propelled it to new dimensions he also fundamentally changed the society we all live in.

Thanks Bob – you were always so much more than a ‘Song and Dance’ man. You opened my mind and horizons.

If you enjoyed reading this why not purchase my books on Rock Music – you might enjoy them.

Or check out all my other books on Amazon

Rock Music – What makes a great song, band or performer?

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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!