Rock Comes of Age

1. Rock Comes of Age

2. The Concept Album • Concept albums were intended as thematically and aesthetically unified works, not simply collections of unrelated cuts: • The Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds (1966) • The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967) • The Who’s “rock opera” Tommy (1969) • By the early 1970s, the twelve-inch high-fidelity LP had become the primary medium for rock music.

3. Rock Comes of Age • Many progressive rock musicians viewed themselves as artists, and their recordings as works of art. • The promise of rock music as a zone of interracial interaction seemed to have largely vanished by the early 1970s. • Early rock festivals (Monterey in 1967 and Woodstock in 1969), regarded as the climax of the 1960s counterculture, had become highly profitable mass-audience concerts by the mid-1970s. • A series of bands that sprang up during the early 1970s tailored their performances to the concert context. • Toured the country with elaborate light shows, spectacular sets, and powerful amplification systems.

4. Studio Technology • New recording techniques and experimentation • High-fidelity stereo sound • Sixteen, twenty-four, and thirty-two-track recording consoles • enabled complex aural textures, • could construct any given track on an LP over time, and • could add or subtract individual instruments or voices. • Recordings took much longer to create and became very expensive. • A few multitalented musicians could play all of the instruments on a given track.

5. David Bowie, Glam Rock, and Ziggy Stardust • David Bowie created the character of Ziggy Stardust, an alien who visits Earth and becomes a rock superstar. • The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (1972) • Concept album centered on Ziggy Stardust • The Ziggy Stardust concert tour was an elaborate theatrical presentation with special lighting effects and spectacular costumes.

6. David Bowie • Bowie’s ability to create quasi-fictional stage personae with every new album was a precedent for the image manipulation of 1980s stars like Madonna, Michael Jackson, and Prince. • David Bowie was a pioneer of “glam rock” • Emphasized elaborate, showy appearance and costuming

7. Joni Mitchell and Blue (1971) • Consists of a cycle of songs about the complexities of love • The album is carefully designed to create a strong emotional focus. • The sound of the LP is spare and beautiful, focusing on Mitchell’s voice and acoustic guitar. • “All I Want” • “My Old Man” • “Carey” • “Little Green” • “The Last Time I Saw Richard”

8. Pink Floyd and Dark Side of the Moon (1973) • The album is based on the theme of madness and the things that drive us to it: time, work, money, war, and death. • The LP starts with the sounds of a beating heart, a ticking clock, a type writer, a cash register, gunfire and the voices of the band discussing their own experiences with insanity • The album’s feeling of unity has something to do with its languid, carefully measured pace, as well as texture and mood. • The sound of the record is complex but clear. • Interesting sound effects: • During the song” Money,” sounds of clinking coins and cash registers are used as rhythmic accompaniment. • The album stayed on the Billboard Top LPs charts for over fourteen years.

9. Marvin Gaye and What’s Going On? (1971) • “Theme album” that fused soul music and gospel influence with the political impetus of progressive rock • The basic unifying theme of the album is social justice. • The title track was inspired by the return of Gaye’s brother from Vietnam and is a plea for nonviolence. • Other songs focus on ecology, the welfare of children, and the suffering of the poor in Americas urban centers.

10. Emerson, Lake, and Palmer and Pictures at an Exhibition (1971) • Live album that borrowed its structural elements from a suite of piano pieces by the Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky (1839– 81) • Mussorgsky’s composition was inspired by a walk through an art gallery. • Consists of a sequence of accessible, reasonably short, easily digestible “paintings” • The album concludes with “Nutrocker,” a rock ’n’ roll version of Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite.

11. The Rolling Stones and Exile on Main Street (1972) • Often cited as the best album recorded by the Rolling Stones • The double album is held together by its texture, its rough unpolished studio sound, and its bad attitude • Consists mainly of blues-based rock tunes, material from the Rolling Stones’ roots • Recorded in the basement of Keith Richard’s home in France, where they were living in tax exile at the time • Overall impression is one of bleakness and desolation • Demonstrates influences that formed their style: urban blues, soul, and country music

12. Led Zeppelin and “Stairway to Heaven” from Led Zeppelin IV • Led Zeppelin formed in 1968 in London. • Jimmie Page, guitar • John Bonham, drums • John Paul Jones, electric bass and organ • Robert Plant, vocals • Guitarist Jimmy Page and vocalist Robert Plant were fascinated by mythology, Middle Earth fantasy, and the occult. • They became one of the most enduring bands in rock history, selling over 50 million records. • Influences drew from various sources: urban blues, San Francisco psychedelia, the virtuoso guitar playing of Jimi Hendrix

13. “Stairway to Heaven” • Anthem of heavy metal music • Thunderous volume • The eight-minute track was never released as a single. You had to purchase the album to own a copy of the song. • The album cover did not bear the name of the album, band, or record company. • Led Zeppelin IV eventually sold fourteen million copies and reached Number Two on the Billboard Top 10 LP charts; it stayed on the charts for five years.

14. “Stairway to Heaven” • Text composed by Robert Plant • References to mythological beings • The May Queen and the Piper • Rural images • Paths and roads, rings of smoke through the forest, a songbird by a brook, the whispering wind • Helped create a cumulative mood of mystery and enchantment • Structure of the song • Basic building blocks are straightforward four- and eight-measure phrases • Three main sections • The arrangement is constructed to create continual escalation in density, volume, and speed.

15. Carlos Santana (b. 1947) • Born in Mexico, began his musical career playing in the nightspots of Tijuana • At fifteen, moved to San Francisco, where he was exposed to many musical influences: • Jazz, particularly Miles Davis and John Coltrane • Salsa, a New York–based style of Latin dance music • Late 1960s San Francisco rock, including artists such as Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, and Sly and the Family Stone • Formed his own band in 1968 from middle- and working-class Latino, black, and white musicians from various cultural backgrounds

16. Carlos Santana • Their first album, Santana, was released in 1969 and reached Number Four on the Top LPs chart. • Santana’s success is due in large part to their performance at Woodstock and their appearance on the film and soundtrack.

17. Abraxas (1970) • Abraxas was released by Columbia Records in 1970. • It held the Number One position on the LP charts for six weeks, spent a total of eighty-eight weeks on the charts, and sold over four million copies in the United States alone. • The album produced two Top 40 singles: “Black Magic Woman” and “Oye Como Va” • The singles were shorter versions of the tracks on the LP.

18. “Oye Como Va” • Number Thirteen pop, Number Thirty-two R&B in 1971 • Composed by the New York Latin percussionist and dance music king Tito Puente • Instrumentation—guitar, electric bass, keyboards, drums plus Latin percussion • Recording “mix”—tone quality, balancing, and positioning of sounds recorded on various tracks in studio • The band’s sound was centered on the fluid lead guitar style of Carlos Santana and the churning grooves by the rhythm section. • The rhythmic complexity of “Oye Como Va” required a clean stereo image so that the various interlocking parts could be clearly heard.

19. “Oye Como Va” • The arrangement is 136 measures long. • Only 16 measures are devoted to singing. • Song lyrics are less important than the musical groove and texture. • Nearly half of the recording is devoted to improvised solos by the guitar and organ. • The solos were cut when the track was edited for radio airplay.

20. “Oye Como Va” • Carlos Santana’s solos provide a good example of a talented rock improviser. • Santana uses the electric guitar to sustain notes, creating long, flowing melodic lines that gradually rise in intensity, lifting the whole band with him.