Music 262: Rock Music, History and Social Analysis, San Francisco Scene
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Music 262: Rock Music, History and Social Analysis, San Francisco Scene [Music Playing on Piano] [Brian Ward]: So there’s another movement in rock n’ roll that happens that’s really related to folk rock and psychedelic rock and it happens in a specific region. This is in San Francisco in the early to later 1960s. This is around a neighborhood built at an intersection in San Francisco, the intersection of Haight and Ashbury. This is a growing sub-culture of young people in the United States commonly known today as hippies. They lived in these communes and a lot of them were starving artists or drop-outs, anti-establishment people. They all congregated in this one city at this one particular time. Along with this we have a large community of folk musicians. We have writers like Ken Kesey that are there. He’s leading these experiments with LSD known as the Acid Tests, also known as Happenings that were happening in San Francisco and all along the west coast. It’s estimated that there were 500 to 1500 bands in San Francisco alone during this period. A big thing about this hippie movement is the philosophy of existentialism. Existentialism is a philosophy that states if a person is totally responsible for their own life and through their experience and their own decision making process are able to come up with their own moral code and way of living. So what this creates is a lot of freedom and a way for them to speak to the older generation in a semi-intelligent way and say, “Look. We want to do what we want to do and we’re not going to believe what you have to say any more about premarital sex, about taking drugs, and abusing alcohol.” and all of these other things that they were experimenting with. This came out of the university system actually. It was a part of a lot of the curriculum at the universities in the 1960s. These existentialists lived their life in the moment. By the 1970s this whole philosophy sort of waned because of the consequences of a lot of these people’s actions. This San Francisco scene developed psychedelic music. It has also its folk elements, a lot of country influence, blues influence, but really what came out of San Francisco is the psychedelic scene and this music that had this flowing quality to it, and the ability to expand the mind, similar to the drug LSD. Also we have an Eastern Indian influence on the music. There was a lot of use of sitar and tablas and instruments that were more exotic in that nature. This is not necessarily a melodic form of rock n’ roll. It’s not really a very rhythmic style of rock n’ roll. It’s just a really floaty free form style of music. It was not really made for radio play. It was not really made for dancing. So the dance clubs that had this music where people would just sort of, called “freak outs”. They would get stoned and they would freak out to the music. That was not really dance in the rhythmic fashion so to say. A lot of the excitement from this music was produced by the ingestion of these drugs. Some of these groups were really looked on as gurus and prophets at the time. So San Francisco became the national capital of “psychedelia”. 1 One of these groups that started this Haight-Ashbury scene as far as rock bands go were The Charlatans. Their contribution was more of a social one. They had a way of dressing like the old west and stuff that was very existential. Their attitudes were really how they influenced everyone. They planted the seeds for this rock counterculture. If you listen to their music it’s like based on this good jugband blues. It’s not really psychedelic freak out music. They were really a big influence on the early Grateful Dead and Country Joe and the Fish. Another band (this was a really good band actually) was Moby Grape that came out of San Francisco, one of the best bands to come out of this scene. They were a very versatile band and they did a great combination of folk, blues, country, and classic rock and roll. They used three guitars and they had these great arrangements with the three guitars. The Canadian Skip Spence played guitar. He was originally the drummer in this band called Airplane. Now early Airplane played a lot of some of Moby Grape’s compositions. Now when you have a scene with so many bands and so many musicians this is what happens, you have musicians going in and out of different bands frequently. So there’s a lot of cross pollination going on. This band really didn’t have a lot of success. They were plagued with personal problems and they only have one successful album in 1967. But this band that was successful kind of came from Moby Grape was Jefferson Airplane. This was the most popular of the San Francisco bands. They were really leaders in the protest movement and the movement for free love. This was a group that when people came from out of town, they wanted to go see Jefferson Airplane. They had a lot of influence from The Beatles, but really the key to Jefferson Airplane was their lead singer, Grace Slick. Now Grace Slick has one of the greatest voices of rock n’ roll, one of the greatest female voices. She really represented this love-hate image that came out of San Francisco in the 1960s. She was a very direct, outspoken person. She was one of the first persons to use cuss words on television. Her voice was driving. It was real edgy. One of her earliest songs was White Rabbit. What this song is talking about, is it’s drawing parallels between psychedelic drugs and the imagery found in fairy tales, especially the book by Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland. This is sort of a response to parents who say taking drugs is bad. The existentialists would say, which drugs? Some drugs are good. Some drugs are bad. We’re experimenting and we’re going to figure out for ourselves, which drugs we want to take. This is a really important song. It’s kind of a different song from any other in rock because it starts out kind of quiet and it eventually builds, and builds, and the climax of the song is at the very, very end. It kind of has this Bolero Latin feel to it. It lends it a very exotic sound. One of the greatest bands to come out of San Francisco, definitely the longest lasting band, and the most beloved band was The Grateful Dead. They are considered to be the ultimate cult band. They never really were part of the mainstream music scene. They didn’t need to be. They became superstars on their own terms. They had their own fans. They were known for these extended free-form jams. In their early years, they were known as The Warlocks. They were the house band for Ken Kesey and his Acid Tests Happenings where people would gather and take 2 LSD together. They occupied an important place in the Haight-Ashbury district. They had a house that was a commune and it was a gathering place for local artists and musicians. Their music is a blend of folk, blues, and rock. They were really more known for their live concerts. They were even more known for their fans who are known as Dead Heads. A lot of these Dead Heads follow them, would follow the band on their entire tours from city to city. They only had one mainstream hit and that was in 1987, the song called Touch of Grey. 3 .