Psychedelia - Lecture Notes 3

Chapter 7 Psychedelia   The summer of love: june-August 1967 o Several events signaled the breakthrough of psychedelia into mainstream pop culture  Merging hippie culture and flower power in San Fran o The beatles released Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club  The most influential album by that band o Jimi Hendrix performed a virtuosic show at the Monterey Pop festival  Stunning musical performance  Set his guitar on fire at the end of hit set o Origins are in the underground movement centered in both London and San Fran  Only ppl in those areas knew about it  Bands, clubs, shops, newspapers o Psychedelia moved into the mainstream pop culture in mid 1960s  By 1969 pyschedelia had influenced tock music through music of several bands  Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Pink Floyd What is psychedelia o The doors of perception: Aldous Huxley  Use of mescaline (peyote-cactus)  Exploring new ways to experience the world  1960s young adults through the 1950s was too focused on normalcy  they challenged middle-class values w alternative lifestyles o 1960s young adults became suspicious of American institutions  government, schools, churches, big business, military, police  reason for increased suspicion  civil rights movement encouraged this  resistance to Vietnam War  the establishment became the term for authoritative institutions in the 1960s  young ppl began to believe that everything they head from the establishment was a lie o drugs were added into youth culture during the 1960s  they were a means of attaining a new perspective on the world  marijuana, LSD  LSD (Lysergic acid diesthylamide) was developed in 1943  Discovered working on a cure for migraine headaches  CIA mescaline and LSD as a truth serum o Two prominent adult figures advocated the use of LSD as a means of rejecting establishment values  EX-Harvard professor Dr. Timothy Leary  Author Ken Kesey o They proposed that taking hallucinogenic drugs unlocked the “doors of perception”  Leary advised ppl to turn on, tune in, and drop out”  Became the catch phrase of the 1960s  Dropping acid meant taking LSD Chapter 7 Psychedelia  o Two PSYCHEDELIC APPROACHES TO MUSIC  Music in secondary role to drugs  The important thing is the drug experience itself  The music is only a kind of soundtrack to the trip o The grateful dead in the San Fran underground scene o Pink Floyd in the London underground scene  Music itself as a trip  The music is a kind of aesthetic drug  Aural journey that may be enhanced by the use of drugs  Essential in both cases are the trip and quest for higher consciousness  Musicians were more experimental and ambitious about  Writing, performing, recording  Music had to move beyond the two-to-three minute AM radio format to enhance the trip  Music became longer and more esoteric The Beatles after Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart Club Band o The albums that followed Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely hearts Club Band were built around concepts  The 1967 project Magical Mystery Tour was built around a road trip  McCartney’s idea was to rent a tourist bus and travel the English countryside and film it  In 1968 they went to India to study meditation with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi  During that time, an animated feature film was produced w them as the main characters o A surrealistic adventure in Pepperland became Yellow Submarine o In 1969 McCartney suggested a documentary-style film on the beatles in the creative process  Originally called Get Back  Much animosity between band members  George martin walked out  The project was shelved o The band reunited w Martin in mid 1969 to produce their last studio album Abbey Road  The film and music tracks from Get Back were salvaged and reassembled as Let It Be  Martin was not involved as producer so Phil Spector was brought in to finish the project  Paul McCartney was disappointed w Spector’s arrangements of some songs  Spector added orchestral tracks and choir tracks  It was done without the band’s knowledge or approval  That album was recently re-released in its original state as Let It Be Naked o Apple Records  Beatles manager brian Epstein died in the summer of 1967 Chapter 7 Psychedelia Group decided to handle their business affairs themselves by creating a company called Apple  It would promote other artists considered uncommercial o Beatles – The End  The band was ready to break up by late 1969  They made it official in 1970  The band members successfully continued on w solo careers The San Francisco Scene and Haight-Ashbury o The emergence of hippie culture in San Francisco  The psychedelic scene has been developing since mid 1965 in the San Francisco area  A bohemian scene celebrating scene celebrating the poetry of allen Ginsberg and the prose of Jack Kerouac o Ken Kesey and the Acid tests  During the same time period noveslist Ken Kesey was organizing the acid test  Kesey celebrated the liberating effects of LSD  He wanted to share the drug as broadly as he could  Kesey’s first acid test was in Santa Cruz in November 1965; the cost to enter the acid test: one dollar o Concert news, the psychedelic shop, and FM radio  Psychedelic evening of LSD and rock music were a regular feature in the Bay Area  Local bands rented houses in the Haight-Ashbury district dor rehersal spaces  Rolling Stone Magazine published its first issue in Nov 1967 o The Grateful Dead—formerly the Warlocks  House band for the KESEY ACID TESTS, THE BAND CHANGED ITS NAME TO THE Grateful Dead  Jerry Garcia (guitar) o Died of a heart attack in early 90s  As the Warlocks, the band played a lot of Rolling Stones-style American electric blues  When playing at the acid tests, they began developing an improvisational style  Some songs were extremely long and could last over an hour  Released an album of short songs  “Dark Star” exemplifies the band’s extended improvised instrumental solos o about 25 minutes long  more chill nature to it  Late albums –  Shorter songs  More country and folk-oriented tracks  The Grateful Dead were one of the most successful live American bands in the 1970s and 1980s   Chapter 7 Psychedelia  In the Dark (1987) “Touch of Gray” Regularly played different things during live shows  Groupies were dead heads o Jefferson Airplane  One of the first psychedelic bands in the San Francisco area  Influences are from folk music and blues  Occasional elements of Indian music  Also references to modal jazz  Formed by singer Marty Balin and guitarist Paul Kantner in mid 1965  Their first album on RCA, Jefferson Airplane Takes Off, only reached 128 on the charts in 1966  They changed singers: Anderson left and was replaced by Great Society singer Grace Slick  The next album, Surrealistic Pillow, 1967, included two Grace Slick songs  Somebody to Love, 1967  White Rabbit, 1967 o NO CHORUS o First two verses are followed by a bridge and then an expanded verse o The lyrics refer to Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland stories o Clear reference in lines like “feed your head” refer to use of psychedelic drugs  TALKING ABOUT taking acid o Music is based on Spanish bolero—particularly in the guitar solo introduction  Jefferson Airplane released several hit albums during the late 1960s  Ppl in the group changed constantly  Changed named to Jefferson Starship then became Starship o Janis Joplin  Big brother and the holding company and Janis JOPLIN  Big brother and the Holding company was inspired by classical music o They performed a piece by Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg o “In the Hall of the Mountain King” o “Bacon”  they embraced blues as a basis for improvisation  they were interested in introducing a new style of music called “Blues in Technicolor”  came from Port Arthur, Texas  heavily inspired by female blues singers  Bessie Smith  Big Mama Thorton  Joined Big Brother and the Holding Company in 1968  Chapter 7 Psychedelia Their second album Cheap Thrills, 1968, proved that Joplin helped launch their success  They had a hit single “Piece of my Heart”  Joplin went solo in 1969  The album I Got Dem Ol’ Kozmic Blues Again Mama! Reached number five  She recorded a second solo album in 1970: Pearl  A single from that album that also went to number one “Me and Bobbie McGee”  Joplin didn’t live to see it. She died of a drug overdose on October 4, 1970 The London Psychedelic Scene o The rise of the British Underground  In June 1965 beat poet Allen Ginsberg went to London to organize a poetry event  Held in Albert Hall  Called “Poets of the World/Poets of Our Time”  Over 5,000 ppl attended  Many were under the influence of marijuana or LSD o Drugs has been introduced in England for a while  Bob Dylan introduced the Beatles to marijuana at the end of their first US tour in 1964  Harrison and Lennon had experience LSD in 1965 when a friend slipped it into their coffee  In England a subculture similar to that of San Francisco was forming around similar events  Drugs, eastern philosophy, radical politics, experimental music o By October 1966 THE ufo Club had been established  More of an organization than a place  Originally met in a bar  When meeting in a bar became a problem the UFO relocated  Became center of the psychedelic scene in London o Pink Floyd  Named after two American blues musicians, Pink Anderson and Floyd Council  Regulars at Spontaneous Underground events and the UFO Club  Popular only on the underground circuit  Their music was derived from avant-garde concepts  Their albums were hits only in the England during the late 1960s  Their concepts in England featured elaborate light shows  Tampered with surround sound in the 1960s o Paul McCartney suggested an album about an imaginary band  The imaginary band could write omaginary songs about imaginary people and situations  Only three songs stay w this concept  The first (title song)   Chapter 7 Psychedelia The second song featuring Ringo Starr as imaginary singer “Billy Shears”  The reprise of the title song before the last song  The rest of the songs were united by their introducations of a wide variety of styles o Classical assrangements o Being for the benefit of mr. kite randomly splaced sections of tapes organ sounds o Avant garde techniques—particularly the aleatoric orchestral section of the last song o A day in the life utilizes an orchestral buildup of randomly executed pitches from low to high  Album cover design serves as a unifying feature o The cover featured all of the song lyrics—a first for commercial music o No singles were released from the album o This placed emphasis on the album as the sales unit rather than the single song format  After this pop music split into two categories  Single-oriented teen pop would be the focus of AM radio  Adult and college-age oriented music would be the focus of FM The big names go psychedelic, and fail! o The Rolling Stones made a foray into psychedelic after the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper  By late 1966, Jagger-Richards songwriting dominated the band’s music  Their Satanic Majesties Request was released in December 1967  Obvious attempt to follow the Beatles’ psychedelic lead  The album cover was a holographic image of the band dressed in wizard outfits  Occult wizards conveyed the Stones more negative bad boy image o Brian Wilson’s Smile and Smiley Smile  The 1967 follow-up to Pet Sounds was Wilson’s most ambitious project yet, titled Smile  It was never released o Portions of it were released as Smiley Smile  In 2005 the album was re-recorded and released by Wilson  Brian Wilson and Mike Love butted heads on what music to do  The beach boys reacted against Wilson’s new songs  They argued that it wouldn’t be popular with their fans  During their subsequent years they worked at simplifying their sound  Overall, the psychedelic era had a negative effect on the beach Boys’ career o Jimi Hendrix  A blend of psychedelic blues and the avant-garde  Hendrix is one of the most influential guitarists in the history of rock music   Chapter 7 Psychedelia Played w various bands during the early 1960s as a sideman Little RICHARD o Isley Brothers o Curtis Knight Discovered by Animals bassist Chas Chandler  Chandler offered to manage him  Brought him to London in September 1966  Chandler helped Hendrix form the Jimi Hendrix Experience The first two singles were hits in England in 1967  First Single “Hey Joe” went to number 6 on the UK charts  Purple Haze in May  The band’s first album, Are You Experienced, was a tremendous success in the UK  Was only kept from number 1 by Sgt. Pepper Hendrix was an American but he arose out of the London psychedelic scene  Didn’t become known in American until he played in the Monterey Pop Festival in June 1967  Are you Experienced wasn’t released in the states until August of 1967 His singles didn’t do as well as his albums  This is a post-agt. Pepper trend  Purple haze only reached 65 on the US pop charts Hendrix’s albums were hugely successful throughout the rest of the 1960s The Experience broke up in the summer of 1969  Hendrix formed a new band and played the Woodstock festival in August 1969  Hendrix died of a drug overdose on Sept. 18 1970        o Cream  The first rock “supergroup” formed in 1966  Eric Clapton, guitarist from Yardbirds  Jack Bruce, bass  Ginger Baker, drums o Became drug lord in Africa  Former players in British blues bands w several notable blues band leaders  Purpose was to play traditional blues  Clapton had developed the instrumental “rave-up” sections in Yardbirds’ shows o Cream ESTABLISHED the idea od virtuosity in rock music  “Sunshine of Your Love” o Built around a central guitar/bass figure (called “riff” or a lick) o Important bands in Los Angeles  The Doors  Formed in 1965 by singer/lyricist Jim Morrison Chapter 7 Psychedelia Music and lyrics explored the dark side of emotions and drug use Morrison’s determination to explore forbidden topics o The first song on the album “Break on Through” mentions “bad trip experience  Through all their albums, lyrics focus on negative issues o Morrison developed an on-stage person to convey these concepts: the “Lizard King”  The additional aspect of an alter ego inspired many rock artists who came later o Alice cooper, David Bowie, Peter Gabriel, Kiss, Madonna  The Doors had several hit singles during the late 1960s as they refined their musical style o “Hello I Love You” o “Touch Me” o “Love Her Madly”  Morrison died in mysterious circumstances in 1971 o Drowned and OD; wasn’t sure if OD caused drowning or if gf did  Iron Butterfly  Formed in San Diego in 1966  Second album became a rock classic: in-a-gadda-da-vida (1968) o Title track is seventeen minutes long o Menacing organ intro o Much of the song is instrumental soloing o An edited single version reached number thirty on US charts in 1968 The Monterey Pop Festival o First pop festival was in Monterey, California, in June 1967  Organized by John Phillips from the Mamas and the Papas producer Lou Adler  Modeled after the Monterey Jazz Festival o Many other similar concerts took place in the next two years:  Newport (1968 and 1969)  Miami (1968)  Toronto (1969)  Atlanta (1969)  Denver (1969)  Filmed by D.A. Pennebaker: Monterey Pop o 55,000 to 90,000 hippies attended Woodstock o The Woodstock Festival  Culmination of the rock festival era  Held on a large farm in Bethel, New York, on August 15-17 1969  Tremendously successful o There were problems that were overcome (or simply put up with)     Chapter 7 Psychedelia Overwhelming attendance  Expected 200,000 but 400,000 showed up  Roadways were closed in upstate New York  Fans turned up without tickets and got in for free  Rain created a huge muddy mess  Security forces were too small o Everything went well in the communal hippie spirit of fellowship o American and British Bands were featured  Grateful Dead, Jimi Hendrix, Jefferson Airplane, Janis Joplin, Who, Santana, Crosby Stills and Nash, Joe Cocker, Sly and the Family Stone The Altamont rock festival: the violent end of the peace-love movement o Altamont Speedway in Livermore, California, held Dec., 6, 1969 o Rolling Stones planned a few show in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park  For the faithful hippie subculture  The stones considered it a thank you to their loyal fans o Poor planning caused problems  Fan Francisco city officials canceled it  Relocated to Altamont Speeday  Hells Angels motorcycle gang was hired as security  The leaders of the gang weren’t there to maintain control  Fans were beaten if they got too close to the stage  Even musicians were beaten up (Jefferson Airplane’s Marty Balin was knocked out) o The Stones were shooting a documentary film and waited till nightfall to play Gimme Shelter  A long period of time elapsed w no music; fans became unruly  When the Stones did play, the crow and Hells Angels went out of control  A young black fan, Meredith Hunter, was stabbed to death by a Hells Angel Rock Festivals in England o Similar to San Francisco events that gradually expanded into large-scale festivals like Monterey o Most notable festivals occurred in England   