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Home , Acid rock, Art music, Art rock, David Bedford, Isao Tomita, John Rockwell

10 The Emergence of (1980)

John Rockwell

Long, flat expanses ofprofessionalism bother me. I'd rather have a that could explode at any time. And I think that's what people like too: soul and expression and realfire and emotion more than peifection. -Neil Young (Kohut and Kohut 1994, 99)

The deluded notion that we're making anything but sugar is nuts. I'm not saying that sugar doesn't taste good, but it burns fast. It's not meant to last. This is not classical . -Gene Simmons of Kiss, 2002 (Rabin 2002, 14)

Rock is like a battery that must always go back to the to get recharged. - (Szatmary 2009, 188)

In "The Emergence of Art Ro~k" John Rockwell documents the history and musical elements of early prog (or progressive, or art) rock, and suggests that if exhibits a life cycle comparable to other arts and artistic movements (youth, maturity, decay), we might broadly characterize its first two decades as follows: the '50s was a period of youthful exuberance, the '60s a time of healthy maturity, and the early '70s an era of decline and decadence. For some, prog rock was thus a terminal "cancer." Inevitably, death is followed by life, in this case the birth in the mid-70s of , which brought back the energy and excitement of the '50s. If we accept Rockwell's three-part scheme, we might then ask: Has rock experienced a similar life cycle (or cycles) since the mid '70s? If so, how might we describe that cycle? Rockwell, who served as both critic and chief critic for , also observes that most of the art rock bands were English, and for a good reason. In England classical music is a part of the culture of all , and rockers there relate to it in ways that Americans do not.Thus, English rockers naturally adopted classical music techniques. Finally, concerning the music itself, Rockwell notes that a characteristic of art rock is abrupt tran­ sitions, from one mood, or style to another.

There is a morphology, an inherent developmental cycle, to artistic movements. They begin with a rude and innocent vigor, pass into a healthy adulthood and finally decline into an overwrought, feeble old age. Something of this process can be observed in the 53 of Art Rock 54 John Rockwell The Emergence 55

of the Fifties thro~gh the here from the Seventies are acts like · Emerson passage of rock & roll from the three-chord prim~ti~sm The principal examples the hollow emptmess of ; Renaissance; Yes; ' and Rick burgeoning vitality and experimentation of the SIXties to Lake and Palmer; ; . artists did was just souped-up, oversynthesized, much of the so-called progressive, or "art," rock of the Seventies. Wakeman. Much of what these rock m te~ms interest or pretensions. But at one time or whole notion of art rock triggers hostility from those who define vaguely "progressive" rock of no particular The Wakeman, classically its development. Rock was born as a street rebellion all o~ th~m dealt in some form of classical pastiche. of the early-middle stages of an?ther ser­ ~in Pan Alley pop ~nd Royal Academy, is as good an example as any. After against pretensions and hypocrisy-of Fifties society, Fifties tramed as a piamst at the idea ?fart ro~k .s:ri.kes for the likes of and Cat Stevens, he joined high art in general ("Roll Over Beethoven''). Thus the very ving tim~ as a session pianist revers10n to primitivism into a convoluted pop mysticism. He eventually left some as a cancer to be battled without quarter, and the punk Yes, .helpmg to lead the group rock. !he troubl: is, on~e a solo career devoted to such elaborate, portentously titled was in part a reject~on of the. fanci~r forms of progre~s!v~ Yes m 1974 to pursue to obliterate it to the Centre of the Earth and The Myths and Legends consciousness has mtruded itself mto the process, its impossible orch~stral narratives as ]o~rney so even primitivism, self­ Round Table. These ice-skating epic~ had their (except maybe with , and then only temporarily). And of Ktng Arthur and the Knights of the art rock.. But his classical excursions were dispatched with consciously assumed, became one of the principal vehicles o~ elements of elephantine humor. often cited as the ?ro­ cynicism as to be genuinely appalling. ' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967) is such a brutal .that dr~ma~ized busily ripping off Grieg their music was oper­ genitor of self-conscious experimentation in rock. It was the . Even whe? such groups weren't had prev10usly dismissed through their ponderous appeal to a middle-class rock's claim to artistic seriousness to an adult world that atically arty m the bad sense, aspired to someth~ng on electronically updated nineteenth-century the whole as blathering teen entertainment. !he Be~tles sensibi~ity and the.ir lame reliance clever (harmomes, these pastiches were further burdened by the really daring and new-an unabashedly eclectic, musically vaud~ville ~tag~ t~icks. Too often only have been created in certain sorts of loud, arty British bands had rhythms and, above all, ) melange that could seemmgly irresistible weakness . . "poetry." Yes's album covers make the point as well as the modern recording studio. for sc~ence-fiction art and rock, anticipated by for the teenyboppers­ One inevitable implication of the whole notion of art anything, but such puerile mythologizing-Tolkien forms of"higher," m.ore and lapsed over with insufferable affecta­ Sgt. Pepper, is that it parallels, imitates or is inspired by other pervaded much of British pop poetry to emulate classical electric folk-rock camp, too; think only of Jethro "serious" music. On the whole, imitative art rock has tended tion into much of the British orchestral sorts. The Tull and Cat Stevens. music, primarily the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century album Days of Future Past to be limited simply to quotations, however, nor pioneers in this enterprise were , whose Classical borrowings don't have Moody Blues devo­ The whole craze for "rock operas" of ­ paired the group with the London Festival . Although do they have to be bad by definition. than mere rock, they work. Similarly, some of the fairly straight­ tees seemed to think they were getting something higher toned Who variety produced some fascinating music, pure and regr~t­ colored their music with the judicious application were kidding themselves: Moody Blues records were mood forward heavy-metal groups have except for the mis- (the use of Eastern modes and instrumental tably not so simple. There's nothing wrong with that, of course, of nonrock styles, to telling effect in 's "Kashmir," for example). categorization into something more profound. . . . . accents music come from styles and formal ideas blends impercep­ The vast majority of the bands that pillage traditional classical . Su~h use of classical and other nonrock classics, .however ton~e­ eclecticism-the free and often febrile switching Britain. Why British bands feel compelled to quote t~e tibly mto all-purpose stylistic analysis. In .comparison the same piece. Eclecticism, by now a talisman of the in-cheek, leads into the murky waters of class and nat10n among different styles within Most American rockers in all the arts, was more prominent in the with the British Americans tend to be happy cavepeople. entire post-Modernist movement by one in the middle anywhere else, and, at its best, it stops being wouldn't know ; Beethoven symphony if they were run down Seventi.es .Po~ world in London than art (music, paintin~, imitative and enters the realm of creativity. of a freeway. One result of such ignorance is that Americ.an lamely of a. c~tured sensi­ the Seventies fell into the eclectic art-rock camp: poetry, films, etc.) can develop untroubled by lame affectations Numerous British bands of class d1Vls10ns and the Orchestra, Qyeen, , Sparks, lOcc, bility. In Britain the lower classes enjoy no such isolation. The Genesis, ~ng Crimson, Electric Light Rockers see~ far There were Continental bands like Focus and crushing weight of flourish essentially untrammeled. Gentle Giant and Be-Bop Deluxe. upper-class approbation, Styx and Boston that fit here also. Cer;ainly more eager to "dignify'' their work, to make it acceptable for even Ameri~an groups like Kansas, they are. ~ar n:o;e these groups, large differences, and there were many by freighting it with trappings of classical music. C?r, co~versely, there were differences between by ~astardlZl~g it m But they all shared a commitment to unprepared, intent upon making classical music accessible to their au~iences more groups. ~hat could be listed. to the pomt ofludicrous­ to another. Sometimes the shifts were between the rock context. Or, maybe, they feel to parody it abrupt transit10ns from one mood intensity that American of volume, sometimes between whole styles of ness. In all cases, they relate to it with a persistence and tem?os, sometimes between levels disruptive and nervously tense, and as such groups rarely match. music. The effect in any case was violent, 56 John Rockwell The Emergence of Art Rock 57

no doubt answered the needs of the age as well as anything. At their best (or at their Electronic Sound, 1969) and John Lennon (whose Two Virgins with Yoko Ono was most commercially successful), these groups never lost sight of older rock basics, as another particularly appealing early art-rock entry in 1969). with Qyeen's best work. Still, what was left in the forefront of experimentation was interesting enough. In a sense, might be considered the leader of this particular pack, The mere fact that Eno had to leave Roxy Music (quite apart from the question of especially between 1971 and 1973, when :-vas. a member. of the band. clashing egos with Ferry) indicates the difficulty of pursuing experimentation and But even from the first, and despite the strong contributions of commercial success at the same time. The London avant-garde scene, insofar as any and , this was always 's band, as proven by the continu­ outsider can tell, is marked still by a fascinating if rather private and sporadic inter­ ity in his subsequent solo . Ferry's artsiness e~pressed itself s.o much as change between the classical and pop worlds. In the Seventies the pop stars (Eno, style over substance that style itself became substan,tive. ~s the ultm~ate self­ guitarist Phil Manzanera of Roxy, Fripp) did rather more interesting work than professed lounge lizard, he managed to take pop-rocks hoariest co~vent~ons .( t~e those who wandered over from a classical background (David Bedford, Stomu love , even actual oldies on his solo albums) and coat them with wit~ mtl­ Yamash'ta, the Japanese percussionist-turned-rocker). Michael Oldfield fits here to mations of unspeakable decadence. But the real art rocker in Roxy Music was a certain extent, although his work-particularly after his best-selling Eno. Aside from the quality of his music, which is considerable and which he sus­ (1973), which did admittedly have a bland appeal as a reduction of com­ tained into the Nineties, he is interesting from two points of view: his command poser 's ideas-was lame beyond recall. of the and his relation to others on the London and New York exper- Much of this work, from Oldfield to Eno and even Riley, is head music, and imental scenes. relates :o a rather interesting form of avant-garde , which brings us to The synthesizer is a much-abused, much-misunderstood instrument. When the subject of drugs. The avant-gardism in rock of the Sixties and Seventies, for all played like a souped-up by people like , ~of its ultimate debts to and other vanguard movements from earlier in the Deep Purple) or , it can sound simply ~ashy and cheap. If t~e. oblig­ century, owed its primary fealty to the proliferation of drugs in the Sixties. It would atory drum solo used to be the bane of any self-respecting rock ~oer s life, the be misleading to overstress this, but just as false to repress it. Marijuana, LSD and obligatory synthesizer solo, preferably with smoke bomb and laser obbligato, was the other psychedelics, and methedrine, or speed, all had a profound effect on how music curse of the Seventies. If weren't regarded as newfangled organs, they in general, and art rock in particular, was made and perceived. This is not to say that were taken literally, as something that "synthesizes," and we were subjected to Wendy you had to be stoned to play or enjoy this music. But it does mean that the climate Carlos's and 's synthesized versions of the classics. and sty~istic preoccupations of many varieties of present-day art are built in part on The synthesizer is an instrument with its own characteristics, and those char- percepnons analogous to the experience. Sometimes it takes only one trip as acteristics are just beginning to be explored by rock musicians. When ?layed w~th with acid, to give you a whole other fix on the world. ' the subtlety and discretion of a or a Garth Hudson, it can rein­ The kind of quiescent, dappled textural shiffings that mark much of American force conventional textures superbly. And when somebody like Eno or Edgar 's music (Eno was strongly influenced by Young; and Froese of Tangerine Dream gets hold of it, the synthesizer can create a whole , formerly of , worked closely with him) owe world of its own. Eno's Discreet Music (1975), with its title-track first side full of something to grass, at least originally: Maybe Young has never smoked in his life but soothing, hypnotic woodwindish sounds, or No Pussyfao!ing (1.975) and. E~ening his art could have germinated only in a subculture primed for it by marijuana. And Star (1976), two collaborations with , ex- gmtans:, or the same is true for the whole acid-rock phenomenon. Music far Airports (1978), were masterly examples of genuine rock avant-gardism. :he pure acid-rockers of the Sixties-from to the -­ Of course, they weren't really "rock'' in any but the loosest sense: There was no don t really co~cern us here. But , originally Britain's premier acid-rockers, reference back to a blues base, even in attenuated form. But they still counted as do. After cutting a couple of British hit singles in 1967, the group concentrated on music produced by a rock sensibility aimed at a rock audience. extended compositions, often with spacey lyrical motifs. The Dark Side ofthe Moon Eno's position within the London avant-garde, and the natu~e. of that avant­ (1973) became one of the most successful albums of the decade, a best-seller in garde, are both of interest, too. London, like New York, ~as a thriving avant-g~rde Europe and America as well as England. Floyd turned out some of the most consis­ musical community that doesn't place much of a premium tently interesting "head music" of the late Sixties and Seventies and managed in its on formally acquired . h , ' technique, thus remaining open to fresh infusions of energy from os~e?sible "a~a­ various s ards after its breakup, at least to re-create some of that work arrestingly teurs." In London the experimentation in rock was fostered by British taxati?n, thereafter. The group had a sense for line and continuity and ritualistic repetition which forced most of the successful commercial rockers out of the country, leavmg that was quite special, and to dismiss it simply as technically limited is philistine. the rest to experiment relatively free from Top Forty pressures. This robbed the In Los Angeles the drug scene helped spawn the of Invention, one of London scene of some potential big-name experimenters like George Harrison (see the first rock groups to emphasize mixed-media presentations, dubbed "freak-outs" The Emergence of Art Rock 59 58 John Rockwell

doesn't have to be clever complex­ teetotaler, was forced after the first ~elf-conscious primitives are right: Maybe art rock by leader . Zappa, a self-professed answers the needs of these affairs-naturally to all. Maybe real art is that which most clearly and directly few L.A. freakouts in 1967 to disavow the use of drugs at ity at classical in turn, means that we can prize pure rock and pure pop, from Mothers combined social satire, parody of rock & roll oldies, its audiences. Which, no avail. The inferior to that which may entail a more highly homage to Edgard Varese-and a growing taste on, as "art" in no way references-Zappa regularly paid of a far larger process in been an influential collage of formalized technique for its execution. Rock may be part for vaguely avant-garde improvisation. It has by jazz vio­ its gestures to encompass an audience made more numerous the work of such diverse musicians as Jean-Luc Ponty, the which art broadens styles, affecting into strata heretofore ignored. once cited the Mothers' first album, Freak Out, as a the permeation of social equality down linist, and Paul McCartney,' who and pop artists were . There is another, more philosophical side to it. What Warhol key inspiration for Sgt. Pepper. been telling us all along--is that Sixties, kindled by (among others) Pink trying to tell us-and what composer has The psychedelic enthusiasms of the late removed and in London, a product crafted painstakingly by some mysterious, and and centered in art isn't necessarily Floyd the perceiver, choose to perceive artistically. A Brillo resonance in the Seventies in West Germany. artist-deity, but is whatever you found their most sustained bunch of them into a museum. United States, thanks to the surprising box isn't suddenly art because Warhol put a stacked had the biggest commercial impact in the the super­ Dream and its them there he encouraged you to make your every trip to in 1975 of Autobahn. Rather more interesting was Tangerine But by putting success in so doing he exalted your life. Everybody's an artist group's records and Froese's solo albums were impression­ . market an artistic adventure, and leader, Edgar Froese. The notion than encouraging of electronic color. There is a parallel to who wants to. be, which is really a more radically populist istic extravaganzas, full of gentle washes room for us. and more overtly rock studies of the blues. Roll over Beethoven, indeed, and make Eno's work here. But Eno is a more diverse artist than Froese, scholarly Music he shows an oriented, and in such purely experimental pieces as Discreet like Young, Riley indebtedness to the structuralist principles of classical of the Bay Area in the (himself an offshoot of the psychedelic/meditative climate hand, owes his classical Sixties), and Philip Glass. Froese, on the other Gyorgy Ligeti and inspirations to such orchestral colorists as Hungarian composer Xenakis. Froese's work the of and Iannis his choice of inspirations seems less interesting than that of his models, but at least betrayed a certain sophistication. Eno twice collab­ More directly related to Eno was the band Cluster, with which "factory" cannot be orated. And the artier implications of Giorgio Morodet's of the best trance records ignored here. His "I Feel Love" for Donna Summer is one in New York by of the Seventies, among other things-as a version performed upon his disco formula, Blondie and Fripp reaffirmed so well. And before he hit disc, influenced by the Moroder had made an overt art-rock synthesizer collage the time nobody could be German psychedelic groups but better than his models. At too busy to bother. interested in releasing it, and since then Moroder has been Seventies, and its sub­ The evolution of the New York art-rock scene in the late States, was such an sequent spread to Los Angeles and other byways of the United the pattern suggested by eruption of energies that it merits separate treatment. But a rejection of overcom­ London was brought to triumphant fruition in this country: a direct merger with plexity, the development of new artistic primitivism and finally Eno and Fripp, both of other forms of avant-gardism, both classical and jazz-with whom moved to New York, as catalysts. self-consciousness, and This disquisition began with talk about morphologies and scene of the past decade in some ways the aesthetic behind the New York art-rock brings us full circle. seriously question both Looking at rock from a populist standpoint, one can high art itsel£ Maybe the its aspirations to high art and the very hegemony of