This course, part 1 of a 2-course sequence, examines the history of rock, primarily as it unfolded in the United States, from the days before rock (pre-1955) to the end of the 1960s. This course covers the music of Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, Phil Spector, Bob Dylan, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, Cream, and many more artists, with an emphasis both on cultural context and on the music itself. We will also explore how developments in the music business and in technology helped shape the ways in which styles developed. Rock emerged in the mid 1950s as a blending of mainstream pop, rhythm and blues, and country and western--styles that previously had remained relatively separate. This new style became the music of the emerging youth culture and was often associated with teen rebellion. We will follow the story of how this rowdy first wave of rock and roll (1955-59) was tamed in the early 60s but came roaring back with the Beatles and the Rolling Stones and then went psychedelic by the end of the decade.
Psychedelia in London – Mainstream Stars
Loading...
From the course by 罗彻斯特大学
摇滚史，第一部分
568 ratings
From the lesson
Psychedelia (1966-69)
How can music be psychedelic? Underground psychedelic scenes in San Francisco and London. Psychedelia in LA. The Summer of Love and the rise of hippie culture. The birth of FM rock and rock magazines. Woodstock and Altamont.
Meet the Instructors
John CovachProfessor of Music and Director
Institute for Popular Music
In he last video we talked about the London underground scene and
the groups that were more associated in that underground scene but
didn't have the biggest commercial success.
If they had commercial success it was really only in the UK.
Now, let's turn to some of the mainstream acts were engaging with psychedelia.
We've already talked about the Beatles.
So we've talked about how they, coming out of the UK,
how their career unfolds into the end of the 1960s through the 1969.
Let's talk about The Rolling Stones.
It may be controversial with some of you but I still think that in the 60s,
at least for most of the 60s until the very end 68 or 69,
The Rolling Stones remain the kind of junior partner to the Beatles, it's kind
of the way it started out the Beatles had the first big international success and
The Rolling Stones follow.
The groups were very friendly but
in many ways The Beatles, I wouldn't say the over shadowed The Stones,
because The Stones were really really big and really really successful.
But it's almost like it took the break up of The Beatles for
The Rolling Stones to really find their own voice.
And once they did, they really were unlike any other group in many ways.
And a good example of that is an album they brought out in December of 1967,
actually did pretty well for them, number two in this country,
number three in the UK, called Their Satanic Majesties Request.
This album is often thought to be The Rolling Stones' response to Sgt Pepper.
A lot of critics don't like the album very much.
I'll let you decide what you think about the album.
It had a great cover with a holograph on it.
So it's The Rolling Stones in these sort of like wizard hats.
And this holograph there it looks three dimensional.
Back in those days that was really high tech kind of stuff.
What's interesting is that they even would think they had to respond to Sgt Pepper.
That tells you something about the relationship there.
Well, The Beatles have the flop with Magical Mystery Tour, and so to a certain
extent, that's very freeing to The Rolling Stones, I think, it sort of frees them up.
The album and the recordings around the Beggar's Banquet album from 1968,
I mean, the tracks that are on Beggar's Banquet,
Street Fighting Man, Sympathy for the Devil,
really start to break free of the kind of following The Beatles kind of mold.
This is The Rolling Stones that we really think of as being the group that they
developed into the 1970s.
And done at the same sessions but released as a single was Jumpin' Jack Flash,
number three in this country, number one in the UK in 1968.
I think that's right about there that you really see The Rolling Stones sort of
going off in their own direction that's not really very psychedelic, but
their Satanic Majesties Request and some of the singles that surround that,
She's a Rainbow,
these things really do participate in the psychedelic aesthetic in 1967.
By '68 they're moving away from it as are The Beatles.
Let's talk about Jimi Hendrix and
Eric Clapton, the Jimi Hendrix Experience and Cream.
These two groups basically the same kind of formula, blues meets psychedelia.
The same kind of stylistic approach there.
But what's important about Clapton and Hendrix is that together,
they really develop the idea of virtuosity in rock music.
It is really important, not just how you sing and how good the songs are, but
how well you play.
It can actually be more important to hear the guitar solo,
then to hear the vocal and for the guitar solo to sort of do all kinds of
things that nobody had imagined a rock guitar player being able to do.
This kind of thing is what Clapton and Hendrix are responsible for building up in
the period between 1966 and 1969, the idea of the guitar hero.
Talk for a minute about Jimi Hendrix.
Of course born in Seattle.
So we talked about Hendrix coming out of the London scene, however,
born in Seattle, toured around this country with a lot of groups,
R&B groups playing the circuit.
Playing with people like Little Richard and with the Isley Brothers.
One story that's often told about Jimi's time with Little Richard,
is that he got kicked out of the band because he was taking too much attention
from Little Richard.
And Little Richard told him there can only be one starring act in this show,
buddy and it's me.
And so Hendrix had to go.
But by the time he was playing in the Cafe Wha in New York's Greenwich Village,
he'd already been a pretty experienced performer.
And he was seen playing there by Chas Chandler, who'd been the bass player in
The Animals, but was now thinking he wanted to get into to management and
offered to manage Jimi Hendrix if he would move back to London and
launched his career there, because that's where Chas had all of his connections.
The story is that Jimi was very interested in the idea and
said to Chas Chandler I'll do it if you can introduce me to Eric Clapton.
Now, who knows whether that's a story that comes up later or
whatever, but that's the way the story's often told.
I tell it now to give us some indication that there was a mutuall respect
between Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton.
They liked each other very much, they admired each others playing.
And so it was this kind of friendly competition that really continually sort
of raised the bar and we'll talk about that in just a minute, how that happens.
If we're looking for the Jimi Hendrix Experience,
the group that they put together, Mitch Mitchell on drums,
Noel Redding on bass though he'd never been a bass player before.
He'd mostly been a folk singer playing acoustic guitar.
If you think about that three piece group, Jimi, Mitch, and Noel, their blues and
pop numbers are probably best exemplified by tracks like Purple Haze or Foxy Lady.
Some of the more experimental, kind of trippy numbers would
be things like If 6 Was 9 or 1983 (A Merman I Should Turn To Be).
As you look through the three albums they did together, you'll find both kind of
blues, traditional blues kinds of things, poppy kind of radio single kinds of things
and then experimental stuff that sort of really engages in the psychedelic use of
the recording studio as a kind of instrument in and of itself.
Now we turn to Cream and Eric Clapton.
Bringing Eric Clapton who already had a reputation for
being one of England's best guitarists together with bassist and
singer Jack Bruce and drummer Ginger Baker in July of 1966.
Kind of thought of initially as a kind of super group.
Although probably Clapton was, at that time,
probably more super than the other two.
They used Traditional Blues a lot.
In fact, Eric Clapton was a great advocate of traditional blues playing.
In many ways revived the careers and
the reputations of a lot of musicians who were in danger of being forgotten.
They did tracks by Robert Johnson, Cross Roads Blues.
Muddy Waters' Rollin' and Tumblin'.
Lot of times these tunes would feature really extended solos where Eric would
go on and on.
This comes out of a tradition they used to have with the Yardbirds when he played in
that band where they would sort of go into these long solos at the end,
they would call them rave ups.
A good example of that is their live version of Spoonful, a Willie Dixon tune.
A pop element there as well, mostly via Jack Bruce,
pop singles like I Feel Fine and Strange Brew.
Now if you take the six albums released by Cream and Hendrix Experience together,
I guess we'll be putting these probably up behind me on the board as this goes by.
It'll make it easier for you to see.
They're actually interleaved in terms of release, with the Cream albums coming
first and the Jimi Hendrix Experience albums coming after that.
And as you see that, as they come in pairs, you'll see and
you listen to his records and if you would listen to them in sequence,
what you would hear is that they continually raise the bar for ambition,
experimenting in the studio and general sort of level of virtuosity.
We start out with Fresh Cream, December of 1966 answered with Are You Experienced?,
in May of 1967.
We get Disraeli Gears in November of 1967,
which is answered by Hendrix's Axis: Bold As Love in December of 1967.
We get from Cream, Wheels of Fire in July of 1968,
followed by Hendrix's Electric Ladyland in October of 1968.
It's a very neat little package.
And by the time you get to the sixth one of those albums sort of going back and
forth between the two groups, you've got the guitar hero the way it continues to
be, the tradition that continues to be honored within the 70s, 80s,
and into the present day.
So these two guys together really made that happen.
Again, mainstream artists, this all happened very much in public view.
Although, in many ways, it took Hendrix playing the Monterey Festival,
and touring over in this country, to reintroduce himself to American audiences.
He was initially much more successful in the UK, then he was in America.
Other British acts that we should think about in the British
mainstream that engaged psychedelia, a Traffic,
the group that Stevie Winwood got into after he left The Spencer Davis Group.
Had a number five hit with Paper Sun,
which is a beautiful piece of pop psychedelia.
Van Morrison, first with his group Them recorded the classic track Gloria.
But as a solo artist, Brown Eyed Girl, not very psychedelic that one.
But the 1968 album Astral Weeks is usually thought of as Classic Van Morrison.
And a very important album, especially by Van Morrison fans from this period.
Donovan?
Kind of England's, initially in the mid- 60s, England's answer to Bob Dylan,
had some great, sort of whimsical pop hits.
In 1966, Sunshine Superman was number one in this country.
Mellow Yellow was number two in this country.
But probably the most sort of psychedelic folk tune, the one that sort
of most embraces this idea of what psychedelia was, that comes from Donovan.
It's a track from 1969 called Atlantis.
Was a number seven hit here and tells the whole story about the lost city of
Atlantis, with narration, and it's very psychedelic.
Another interesting thing about those Donovan tracks is, in the years before,
Jimmy Paige and John Paul Jones played together in Led Zeppelin.
Jimmy and John Paul Jones both were on Donovan sessions.
And I think there's one Donovan track where, most of Led Zeppelin,
aside from Robert Plant, is there.
So three of the four of them are there together.
Well, that gives us some idea of what was happening in the London scene during this
period.
But London and San Francisco were not the only scenes that we need to think
about when we think about psychedelia, so in the next video we're going to talk
about what was happening in Los Angeles and elsewhere.
[BLANK
AUDIO]
Coursera provides universal access to the world’s best education,
partnering with top universities and organizations to offer courses online.
© 2018 Coursera Inc. All rights reserved.
