Unit 4.1 DB: Robert Plant - Singer-Songwriter

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Unit 4

Readings and Resources

Readings and Resources

Textbook or eBook:

Campbell, M. (2019).  Popular music in America. 5th ed. Cengage Learning.

In this unit, you will be learning and the changing scene in the business of rock music and the new ways that artists had to promote themselves as musicians as music became an industry. We begin to see musicians carving out unique identities for themselves as singer-songwriters and personalities begin to come through in their costuming, spectacular performances and the expansion of the rock and R&B styles of the 1960s. 

· Chapter 13: Rock and R&B after 1970 (pgs. 234-250)

Articles, Websites, and Videos:

Led Zeppelin has its own band website, and this is an excellent resource for you to explore the music of this band, as well as its history. On this site you can locate photos, a “discography” of all of the albums Led Zeppelin recorded as well as the venues in which living members of this band are still performing in.

· Led zeppelin . (2019).  Warner Music UK Limited.

The SONY Walkman was one of the most influential portable music gadgets in music history. Read about the history of the Walkman on this site.

· Haire, M. (2009, Jul 1).  The walkman Time USA, LLC

Ch. 54

Commerce and Technology in 1970s Rock

Commerce and Technology in 1970s Rock

54-1 The Business of Rock

In the seventies, rock traded tie-dyed T-shirts for three-piece suits. In so doing, it turned its core values upside down. From the beginning, rock had portrayed itself as the music of rebellion. But as the market share of rock and R&B grew, so did the financial stake. It cost more to create and promote a record, put on a concert, and operate a venue. There was more money to be made but also more to be lost. Not surprisingly, a corporate mentality took over the business side of rock. It was evident to some extent in the music itself, in that some artists seemed to make commercial success their highest priority and let that shape their music: Elton John, the best-selling rock star of the seventies, was the poster boy for this path. However, the impact of profit-oriented thinking was far more telling behind the scenes. It determined to a great extent which music would get promoted and how. Its impact was most evident in the media and in the use of new market strategies designed to maximize sales.

54-1aCross-Marketing

A major business innovation of the seventies was  cross-marketing . In pursuit of greater financial rewards, record companies used tours to help promote record sales. The stadium or large-arena concert became commonplace. More ritual than musical event, these concerts usually confirmed what the audience already knew about the music of a particular act. As a rule there was little, if any, spontaneity in performance, as acts drew their set list from current or recent albums.

Often the performances were more about show than sound, although there were plenty of both. Flamboyance had been part of rock from the start, and by the early seventies, spectacle had become part of the business. Lights, fog, costumes, makeup, pyrotechnics, and the like, were now the norm at rock concerts. Such productions were almost a necessity because performers had to seem larger than life in such huge venues. At its most extreme, outrageous dress, makeup, and stage deportment replaced musical substance as the primary source of interest. Acts like Kiss epitomized this theatrical aspect of seventies rock.

By the early 1970s, spectacle had become part of the business of rock.

54-1bRock as Big Business

The seventies proved that there was money to be made in rock and R&B on a scale that was hard to imagine even a decade before. Record sales had increased enough that the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) created a new category in 1976, the platinum record, which signified the sale of one million units. (The gold record represented sales of 500,000 units.) Moreover, the album had replaced the single as the primary unit, so revenues were even higher.

The increased sales, which occurred during a long economic recession, certainly reflected the deeper bond between music and listener, the “rock as a way of life” state of mind. But there were other causes. The ever-growing diversity of the musical landscape meant that there was music for almost every taste. Technology reinforced the personalization of musical taste: the development of cassettes meant that one’s music became increasingly portable and customizable.

54-1cTape Players

In the sixties, two important tape-based consumer formats emerged. One was the four- or eight-track tape. These tape players began to appear in cars (and Lear jets—Bill Lear had the technology developed for his line of corporate jets) in 1965 and remained popular through the seventies. The other, more enduring playback device was the audiocassette. A number of manufacturers, most notably Philips, Sony, and Grundig, worked to develop cassettes and cassette players and to come up with an industry standard. By the seventies, this new technology had caught on: cassette sales grew much faster than LPs (vinyl) and by 1982 exceeded them.

This new format had many advantages. The units were smaller, and so were the playback devices. Some were portable; others went into car consoles. By the mid-seventies, boom boxes had appeared, offering a portable and low-priced alternative to the home stereo. The first Walkman came from the Sony factory in 1979; other companies quickly followed suit. All of these devices made listeners’ personal recordings as accessible as the radio.

Moreover, cassette players also made it possible for consumers to assemble their own playlists, using blank tapes. With improvements in recording quality, most notably Dolby noise reduction technology, there was less loss in fidelity during copying. People could now take their music with them wherever they went.

54-1dMedia and Money

However, no medium showed the impact of the big-business mindset more than radio. In the early years of rock, radio had been an important part of the music’s outsider image—Alan Freed in the fifties and “underground” FM stations in the sixties. In the seventies, however, the most significant new trend was  AOR (album-oriented radio) . In this format, disc jockeys could no longer choose the songs they played. Instead, program directors selected a limited number of songs designed to attract a broad audience while offending as few as possible. Often stations bought syndicated packages, further homogenizing radio content. Free-form radio all but disappeared, and so did the adventurous spirit that it symbolized. As a result, distortion was out; tunefulness was in. Acts like Barry Manilow, the Carpenters, Stevie Wonder, Chicago, the Eagles, Fleetwood Mac, Paul McCartney and Wings, and, above all, Elton John got a lot of airplay and topped the charts.

54-2 The New Mainstream

Rock not only reshaped the mainstream, it reshaped the idea of a mainstream. The term implies a single dominant trend. However, as the list of AOR and chart-topping acts suggests, the mainstream in the 1970s was instead a diverse array of melodically oriented styles. This is an expected consequence of the inherent diversity of rock.

If one had to reduce the relationship between sixties and early-seventies music to a single word, that word might well be more. Whatever happened in the sixties happened more in the seventies. Rock became diverse in the sixties; it became more diverse in the seventies as styles and substyles proliferated. Sixties musicians found the new grooves of rock and soul. Seventies musicians found them more easily; rhythms were often freer and more daring, or more powerful. The sounds of bands got even bigger in the seventies through more powerful amplification and additional instruments. Contrasts between styles and the attitudes that they conveyed also became more pronounced. The seventies both heard the intimate confessions of the singer-songwriters and witnessed the bombast of David Bowie’s grand spectacles. Sometimes these contrasts even appeared in the same song; Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven” is a memorable example. Some artists, such as Joni Mitchell, created highly personal music. Other acts hid behind a mask: David Bowie is an extreme example.

The breakup of the Beatles symbolized the fragmentation of the new mainstream of the rock era. After they dissolved in 1970, each of the band members went his own way. Paul McCartney was the most active and the most commercially successful. Wings, the group that he formed in 1971, was one of five 1970s acts to reach the Top 20 in both singles and album sales. Another was Elton John, the top pop artist of the decade.

54-3 Elton John and the Expansion of Mainstream Rock

The career of Elton John (born Reginald Dwight, 1947; his stage name came from the first names of fellow band members in his first band, Bluesology) is a testimony to the power of personality. Off stage, he is an unlikely looking rock star: short, chunky, balding, and bespectacled. On stage, his costumes and extroverted style made him larger than life; it rendered his everyday appearance irrelevant. He was one of the top live acts of the seventies and the best-selling recording artist of the decade.

John’s first hits were melodic, relatively low-key songs like “Your Song,” but his albums also contained harder-rocking songs like “Take Me to the Pilot.” As he repositioned himself in the mainstream, he retained his ability to tell a story in song, largely due to his partnership with lyricist Bernie Taupin, while infusing his music with pop elements that helped expand the range of his music. He followed “Crocodile Rock,” a fun take on fifties rock and roll and his first No. 1 hit, with “Daniel,” a sensitive ballad. For the remainder of the decade, he veered from style to style. At the center of his music was his husky voice, which changed character from the soul-tinged sound in songs like “The Bitch Is Back” to a much more mellow sound in songs like “Little Jeannie.” Moreover, because of his considerable skill as a songwriter, he was able to fold external elements into his own conception, rather than simply mimic an existing sound.

On stage (here in 1975), Elton John’s costumes and extroverted style made him larger than life.

On stage (here in 1975), Elton John’s costumes and extroverted style made him larger than life.

“Tiny Dancer,” a track from his 1971 album Madman Across the Water, demonstrates both the craft and the range of his music at the start of his career. The lyric, written by his long-time collaborator Bernie Taupin, begins as if it is going to tell a story. However, as it develops, it resolves into a collage of vivid images. It is as if we see short video clips that quickly cut away to another scene. There are oblique first-person references; some of the scenes seem to describe a relationship between John and the tiny dancer (“Piano man, he makes his stand”). But it is not a direct narrative.

John’s setting of the lyric begins simply with John playing syncopated piano chords, first to get the song underway, then to accompany his singing of the melody. Through most of the opening statement of the verse, it is as if the song will be set simply and intimately. However, other instruments enter in stages: steel guitar at the end of the first large section, other rhythm instruments at the repetition of the opening section, then a choir at the end of the repeated section. At that point, John shifts gears, using the piano to give a stronger, more marked rhythm and shifting the harmony into uncharted waters. This builds toward the chorus, which adds a string countermelody to the many instruments and voices already sounding.

As recorded, “Tiny Dancer” takes over six minutes to perform: even at this length, there are less than two complete statements of the song. (In “Tiny Dancer,” a complete statement consists of two verse-like sections that are melodically identical, a transition and a chorus.) This expands the verse/chorus template used, for example, in so many Motown songs. We can gauge the degree of expansion by noting that one verse-like section is equivalent to a complete chorus of a “Heart and Soul”–type song. To realize this larger form, John uses a huge ensemble: his voice and piano, plus bass, drums, guitar, steel guitar, backup vocals, rich strings, and choir. The result is, when desired, a denser and fuller-sounding texture. Moreover, John adds and subtracts instruments to outline the form and accumulate musical momentum through the verse sections to the climax of the song in the chorus.

Listening Cue

“Tiny Dancer” (1971)

Bernie Taupin and

Elton John

John, vocal and keyboard.

STYLE 1970s mainstream rock ⋅ FORM Expansive verse/chorus form

Listen For …

INSTRUMENTATION

Vocal, piano, steel guitar, electric guitar, electric bass, drums, strings, choir

RHYTHM

Slow sixteen-beat rhythm in verse; shift to rock beat in bridge; back to sixteen-beat rhythm in chorus; syncopation, especially in piano part

MELODY

Verse melody grows from short riff; title-phrase hook in chorus is longer

HARMONY

Dramatic shifts in harmony: verse = I-IV-V; bridge = new key; chorus = looping chord progression with delayed return to home key

TEXTURE

Texture “crescendos” through layering-in of instruments, from just voice and piano to orchestral richness

Remember …

ARTY LYRIC

Taupin’s arty, cinematic lyric shifts from image to image: there is no central narrative holding the lyric together. Even the chorus is deliberately obscure.

EXPANSIVE FORM

Form of “Tiny Dancer” follows a predictable verse/chorus pattern but unfolds on a much grander scale than a typical sixties rock or Motown song

LAVISH INSTRUMENTATION

Piano, rhythm-section instruments, steel guitar, strings, and voices added layer by layer for maximum impact

RHYTHMIC CONTRAST

Rhythmic shifts, from active sixteen-beat rhythm of verse, through clearly marked rock rhythm in bridge, back to sixteen-beat rhythm; help outline form

Listen to this selection in the unit playlist.

In the four albums following Madman Across the Water, John often integrated catchier riffs and rhythms into his songs. All four were No. 1 albums; so was a subsequent “greatest hits” compilation. John remained active through the eighties and nineties, despite his short and difficult marriage to recording engineer Renate Blauel, acknowledgment of his sexual preferences, and numerous substance abuse issues. In the early nineties, he cleaned up his life and directed his energy to film and stage. He won his first Grammy in 1994 for one of the songs from the Disney animated film The Lion King, written in collaboration with lyricist Tim Rice. Another of their successful projects was what one reviewer called a “camp” remake of Giuseppe Verdi’s famous opera Aida.

Two of the most impressive and fascinating aspects of John’s career are its longevity—he is still an active performer—and the range of his collaborations. John Lennon’s last public appearance came at an Elton John concert in 1974; about three decades later, John performed with Eminem at the Grammy awards ceremony. The list of those whom Elton John has performed with and befriended reads like a rock-era Who’s Who. This speaks not only to his musical flexibility but also his generous nature.

John’s career path epitomizes the trade-off between artistic integrity and commercial success that was a common theme in the 1970s. His early albums showed him to be a singer-songwriter of considerable gifts. As his star rose, he immersed himself in the Top 40, while adopting a Liberace-like stage persona, eventually donning elevator shoes, flamboyant costumes, and outlandish eyewear. His songs found the middle of the road, and he found megastardom. Somewhere along the line, he lost some of his musical individuality, trading it for familiarity and accessibility, and his visual identity at times deflected attention away from his real talent. John was not alone in this regard; others went down his yellow brick road to superstardom.

Ch. 55

Rock in the Early 1970s

Chapter Introduction

It took rock musicians about 15 years to really get it—that is, to completely assimilate the numerous musical influences that fed into rock, transform them into the dominant style, and become comfortable with its conventions. Most fundamentally, this is evident in the top bands’ approach to rhythm. As the 1970s began, musicians approached rock rhythm with unprecedented freedom because they had reached a comfort zone with its essential elements.

Two landmark recordings from the early 1970s, The Who’s “Won’t Get Fooled Again” and Led Zeppelin’s “Black Dog,” show in quite different ways the rhythmic independence achieved by elite rock musicians when they felt comfortable with the rhythmic foundation of rock.

55-1 The Who

The Who came together as a group in 1964. Vocalist Roger Daltrey (b. 1944), guitarist Pete Townshend (b. 1945), and bassist John Entwistle (1944–2002) had been part of a group called the High Numbers. They became The Who when drummer Keith Moon (1947–1978) joined them. A year later, their music began to appear on the British charts. Their early hits, most notably “My Generation” and “Substitute” (both 1966), speak in an ironic tone. Indeed, “My Generation” became the anthem for the “live hard, die young, and don’t trust anyone over 30” crowd. Musically, they were a powerhouse band with a heavy bass sound that displayed the strong influence of 1960s rhythm and blues. Townshend’s power chords, Entwistle’s agile and imaginative bass playing, and Moon’s flamboyant drumming gave Daltrey’s searing voice a rock-solid foundation. Still, it seemed that they were no more than a singles band, incapable of anything more than a series of good 3-minute songs. That perception began to change with the release of the album Happy Jack (1967), which included an extended piece, “A Quick One While He’s Away,” and it was dramatically altered with the release of the rock opera Tommy in 1969.

The Who (left to right, bassist John Entwistle, singer Roger Daltrey, drummer Keith Moon, and guitarist Pete Townshend), onstage here in 1973, never forgot how to rock and roll.

The Who (left to right, bassist John Entwistle, singer Roger Daltrey, drummer Keith Moon, and guitarist Pete Townshend), onstage here in 1973, never forgot how to rock and roll.

Townshend conceived of a sequel to Tommy, called Lifehouse, which was to be even grander. He eventually put the project aside but incorporated some of the material into an album of singles, entitled Who’s Next. Among the most novel features of the album was Townshend’s extensive use of the brand new ARP synthesizer.

55-1aSynthesizers

In 1969, Alan R. Pearlman founded ARP Instruments in order to produce  synthesizers  capable of creating a variety of electronic sounds. His first synthesizer, released in 1970, was a fairly large machine. His second model, the ARP 2600, which was released in 1971, was portable and flexible enough to be used in live performance.

The first synthesizers were cumbersome machines: The Moog synthesizer used by Wendy Carlos in her landmark 1968 recording Switched-On Bach looked like an old-fashioned telephone switchboard, with plugs connecting the various oscillators. By contrast, the ARP 2600 was one of the first to use transistors instead of tubes, which made the synthesizer smaller and lighter. It was limited, in that it was capable of producing only one sound at a time. However, as transistors became smaller and more powerful, improved models capable of simultaneously playing several sounds began to appear.

To promote his new instruments, Pearlman gave units to some of the top rock and R&B musicians of the era, in return for permission to use their names in advertising his product. Among his first clients was The Who’s Pete Townshend. Judging by the almost immediate results, Townshend was fascinated by the synthesizer and the cutting-edge technology it represented. The synthesizer played a central role in “Won’t Get Fooled Again,” a track from Who’s Next.

In “Won’t Get Fooled Again,” Townshend uses the synthesizer as a futuristic rhythm guitar, pitched in a high register instead of the more characteristic mid-range, but providing steady reinforcement of the rock rhythmic layer throughout the song. The insistent rhythm of the synthesizer chords seems to liberate the rest of the band. Townshend’s power chords and riffs, Entwistle’s active and free bass lines, and Moon’s explosive drumming all play off this steady rhythm. It is this interplay between the steady rhythm of the synthesizer and the rest of the group that gives the song its extraordinary rhythmic energy.

Listening Cue

“Won’t Get Fooled Again” (1971)

Peter Townshend

The Who.

STYLE Hard rock ⋅ FORM Expansive verse/bridge/chorus form, with long introduction and extended vocal and instrumental interludes

Listen For …

INSTRUMENTATION

Vocal, ARP synthesizer, electric guitar, electric bass, drums

RHYTHM

Complex, highly syncopated rock beat at moderately fast tempo, with synthesizer marking rock rhythm, and Moon’s manic drumming playing against the beat

MELODY

Vocal line assembled mainly from short riffs

HARMONY

Harmony built around I-IV-V but colored with modal chords and complex, shifting harmonies on synthesizer-only sections

TEXTURE

Dramatic shifts in density, with long synthesizer-only stretches contrasting with thicker sections featuring full band

Remember …

SYNTHESIZERS IN ROCK

Innovative use of ARP synthesizer as rhythm instrument: In its steady rock-beat speed timekeeping, synth effectively assumes role (if not the sound and register) of rhythm guitar.

EXPANSIVE FORM

Extended form, with strong contrasts among synthesizer alone, vocal sections, and instrumental sections. More than half the song comes from long instrumental sections.

RHYTHMIC LIBERATION

Steady timekeeping in synthesizer part liberates band rhythmically. All three instrumentalists are free to keep time or play against the time. The result is an extraordinarily varied rhythmic texture, from heavy timekeeping by everyone, to the open sound of the synthesizer alone or the band playing riffs, lines, and rhythms that conflict with beat.

Listen to this selection in the unit playlist.

“Won’t Get Fooled Again” is a sprawling song—well over 8 minutes of music. The long synthesizer introduction and even longer interlude toward the end provide a dramatic contrast to the vocal sections, and its steady rhythm underpins the electrifying group jams in the extended instrumental passages. In “Won’t Get Fooled Again,” innovative technology enhances the basic sound and rhythm of a rock band. Despite the new sound source, the result is classic rock and roll.

55-2 Led Zeppelin

Although often cited as a seminal heavy metal band, Led Zeppelin ultimately defies categorization. From Led Zeppelin (1969), the group’s first album, it was clear that heavy metal was just one aspect of their musical personality. Their center is clearly the blues; their version of heavy metal evolved from it. At the same time, there seems to be nothing in their musical world that is not fair game for appropriation. What’s particularly interesting in their music is the way in which influences bleed into one another. Their music may cover a lot of stylistic territory, but it is not compartmentalized.

Heavy Metal

Volume 90%

 

©Michael Campbell/Cengage

The range of their music came mainly from guitarist Jimmy Page (b. 1944), whose curiosity led him not only to immerse himself in the blues but also to seek out exotic musical styles (e.g., flamenco and East Indian music). Led Zeppelin’s front man was vocalist Robert Plant (b. 1948), who was Page’s second choice as lead singer but turned out to be an ideal voice for the group. Bassist John Paul Jones (b. 1946) had been, with Page, part of the British music scene in the late 1960s; drummer John Bonham (1948–1980) was a friend of Plant’s from their Birmingham days. Page also produced their albums. His production skills were as important a component of their success as his guitar playing; he brought a wonderful ear for sonority and texture to their music.

Page and Plant shared a deep interest in the mystic, the mythical, and the occult. This interest would increasingly inform their work, from untitled albums to cryptic covers, sparse liner notes, nonreferential lyrics, and numerous arcane musical influences.

Another quality that sets their music apart from almost every other group of the era is their ability to establish, then reconcile, extremes. The extremes are evident in virtually every aspect of their music making. Plant sang higher than most other male vocalists (and many females too). Their ensemble playing was more daring, their riffs more elaborate and beat defying, the contrasts within and between songs deeper and more striking.

Their untitled fourth album, known variously as Led Zeppelin IV, Zoso, and the Runes LP gives a clear sense of the breadth of their expressive range—from the unbridled power of “Rock and Roll” to the delicacy of the acoustic “The Battle of Evermore.” “Stairway to Heaven,” perhaps the best-known song on the album, merges both.

“Black Dog,” another track from the album, demonstrates Led Zeppelin’s connection to heavy metal and their role in the continuing evolution of rock rhythm. From the very beginning of the song, it’s clear that they’ve internalized the feel of rock rhythm. The beat is implied under Plant’s unaccompanied singing, the silence, and the extended, blues-based instrumental line, but there is not the kind of comfortable timekeeping heard in so many good rock songs. Even the chorus-like riff under Plant’s “Oh, yeah” is completely syncopated. What timekeeping there is in this song is purposeful and specific, rather than routine. In terms of freeing rhythm while still retaining the groove, “Black Dog” goes about as far as is possible. The track makes clear that Led Zeppelin became so comfortable with the rock groove that they could play with it—boldly.

The extended instrumental lines in “Black Dog” also point out another feature of Led Zeppelin’s approach to rock—one that would profoundly influence heavy metal bands. In effect, they harness solo-like lines within a tight group conception. In rock, guitar solos can be spectacular displays, but they can also undermine the collective conception that is at the heart of a rock groove. Page’s solution was to work out solo-like parts and integrate them into a group conception. For future heavy metal bands, this aspect of the recording was key: one of the marvels of good heavy metal performances is the tight ensemble of a band as they negotiate challenging and intricate passages. We can hear its roots in recordings like this.

Plant and Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin on stage in 1975 at the Chicago Stadium.

Plant and Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin on stage in 1975 at the Chicago Stadium.

Listening Cue

“Black Dog” (1971)

John Paul Jones,

Jimmy Page, and

Robert Plant

Led Zeppelin.

STYLE Early heavy metal ⋅ FORM Multisectional

Listen For …

INSTRUMENTATION

Vocal, electric guitar, electric bass, drums (guitar overdubbed during solo)

PERFORMANCE STYLE

Plant’s singing in extreme high range; moderate distortion in guitar and bass parts

RHYTHM

Highly syncopated rock rhythm at moderate tempo with long sections without steady timekeeping

MELODY

Contrast between opening, with long vocal and instrumental exchanges, and other sections, with rapid exchange of short riffs

TEXTURE

Contrast between open, voice-alone sound and dark, dense instrumental response; thick sound, with low-register guitar and voice in chorus

Remember …

RHYTHMIC PLAY

From very beginning to final fadeout, rock rhythm is implied but never clearly marked. Instead, Plant hints at it in his unaccompanied singing, and instrumental responses soar over it with long lines or bounce off it with syncopated riffs. Only Bonham marks the beat and rock rhythm consistently.

COMPLICATED LINES

Long instrumental responses in verse sections suggest solo-like lines worked out by entire group. Considerable expansion of typical answering riff in more conventional rock song.

VOCAL/INSTRUMENTAL BALANCE

Musical interest divided between Plant’s abnormally high singing and more complex and melodically interesting instrumental parts. There is also more strictly instrumental music than vocal or vocal/instrumental music, both within verses and overall, because of Page’s extended solo.

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Led Zeppelin gained a large, loyal audience. They were also one of the first British bands to concentrate on the United States as a fan base because of its huge population compared to Britain’s; they toured the United States far more than most of their peers. Their tours sold out and broke attendance records, and all of their recordings went platinum. They’re still popular more than three decades after they disbanded. There is no ambiguity about why: their music is a rare combination of almost unrestrained power and subtle artistry, of raw emotion and superbly calculated craft. For some, the mix was too heady; the band never attracted the broad-based audience of the Beatles or Elton John. But for a large core, it was just the right strength. Millions of loyal fans remain unsatiated. Many were aspiring heavy metal musicians.

55-3 Heavy Metal and Early 1970s Rock

Joe Elliot, lead vocalist for Def Leppard, was quoted as saying, “In 1971 there were only three bands that mattered. Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, and Deep Purple.” The differences among the three bands make clear that  heavy metal  was anything but a monolithic style. Their similarities highlight the qualities that set heavy metal apart from other hard rock styles.

Power and craft are two outstanding qualities of heavy metal. Most of its musical conventions—distortion; massive amplification; use of modes, pentatonic scales, and power chords; basic rhythms; power trio instrumental nucleus—were also part of the vocabulary of all hard rock music in the early 1970s. What metal bands did was to take these features and streamline or amplify them to give them more impact. Metal bands used more distortion and played more loudly. They took rock’s shift away from traditional harmony several steps further by using conventional chords sparingly or, in some cases, abandoning harmony altogether. There is little harmony in “Black Dog” and it is based on modes instead of conventional harmony. Metal guitarists played power chords with more “power”—that is, greater resonance—and used them almost exclusively, and they developed more flamboyantly virtuosic styles. Metal’s riffs and rhythms were stronger and more pervasive: at times, vocal lines seemed to ride on the riffs like a whitewater raft.

All of this supported nonmusical manifestations of power. Heavy metal evoked supernatural, or at least paranormal, power, especially in the group personas of Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin. Even as the women’s rights movement was in the ascendancy, metal bands projected masculine power, to the point where performers could sport skillfully styled long hair, wear makeup, and sing higher than many women without fear of abandoning their sexual identity.

The other was the mastery of craft. Like the alchemists of old, heavy metal performers diligently studied ancient formulas, from the modes of medieval music to the musical patterns of Bach and Vivaldi. These they adapted to rock, then juxtaposed them with elemental musical material. Guitarists like Page and Ritchie Blackmore of Deep Purple spent countless hours mastering their instruments. As a result, heavy metal has been, almost from the start, rock’s most virtuosic substyle. It is evident not only in the individual brilliance of the many technically fluent performers but also in the complex and intricate ensemble playing, often at breakneck speeds. Both individual and group virtuosity are evident in “Black Dog.”

Power and craft put the focus on the music. The music is there more; one of the qualities that distinguishes heavy metal from most other styles is the sheer amount of nonvocal music. Even more important, music is the primary source of heavy metal’s overwhelming impact and expressive power. Words serve a largely explanatory role. Most of the audience at a metal concert will know the lyrics to songs, but not from the vocal, which is often unintelligible.

In its emphasis on instrumental virtuosity and power, its distance from more mainstream practice (including intelligible, conventional lyrics), and its cult-like environment, heavy metal represents a more extreme point along the continuum of hard rock styles. This is evidenced in its reception during the 1970s: the relatively small but fervent audience, hand in hand with limited airplay on mainstream radio and negative press from rock critics. Still, it was one of the most influential and distinctive hard rock styles of the era.

55-4 A Timeless Music

“Won’t Get Fooled Again” and “Black Dog” exemplify a key moment in the history of rock. It is around this time that rock emerged as a fully developed style; what makes rock rhythm rock becomes common currency. Up to this point, we hear rock musicians restlessly seeking to discover the optimal approach to rock rhythm; they found it around 1970. From this point on, rock becomes a timeless music, in the sense that its conventions are clear and widely understood, and that musicians feel comfortable enough with them to play rock with great freedom. The rhythms and sounds of rock-era music would continue to develop beyond this point, as we will discover. But the rock that emerged around 1970 defines the core values of rock in a way that neither the rock that preceded it nor the rock that evolved beyond it does.

Ch. 56

Black Pop in the 1970s

Chapter Introduction

Among the people of the African diaspora, the impulse to play with sound seems almost as strong as the impulse to play with rhythm. Two aspects of this impulse that seem especially persistent are the discovery of found sounds and the quest to make multiple sounds at the same time. Found sounds have taken many forms: making instruments out of everyday materials, like the cowbell in Cuban music, the steel drums of calypso, or the turntables of rap DJs; using everyday objects—a toilet plunger, the neck of a wine bottle—to modify the sound of a conventional instrument; or simply inventing new ways of making sound from an instrument, like “patting juba” by tapping out rhythms on various parts of one’s body, or slapping an electric bass.

The most familiar instance of the impulse to play multiple instruments simultaneously is the drum kit. More complex expressions of this practice range from jazz multi-instrumentalist Rahsaan Roland Kirk’s ability to play the saxophone and two other instruments simultaneously to one-man bands like the obscure Abner Jay, the self-styled “last great southern black minstrel show,” who accompanied himself with an electric guitar, bass drum, and hi-hat while he sang or played harmonica.

With his emancipation from Gordy’s tight control, Stevie Wonder was able to combine both of these practices and take them high-tech. Both the electronic instruments (especially keyboards) that Wonder used on recordings like “Superstition”, and the twenty-four-track mixing boards that made the recording possible, were new, rapidly developing technologies. Wonder was the first major artist, black or white, to take them to their logical extreme: make a complete recording by not only assembling it track by track but also recording each track himself.

Wonder’s high-tech one-man band was one of several important new directions in black pop during the early 1970s. Motown continued turning out hits. The Jackson 5 was their biggest new act of the 1970s, but Motown was losing its dominant position in the marketplace. Former Motown acts like Marvin Gaye and Gladys Knight and the Pips enjoyed significant success. A diverse group of solo singers, including Roberta Flack and Bill Withers, offered mature expressions of love, whereas Barry White offered love without limits. Philadelphia superseded Detroit as the main hit-making locale in black pop. We sample this music through tracks by Stevie Wonder and the O’Jays, one of the top Philadelphia acts.

56-1 Stevie Wonder

There’s a certain irony that Motown’s most powerful and original talent, and its longest running success story, is in many ways the antithesis of the Motown image and sound. Stevie Wonder is a solo act; most Motown acts were groups. The visual element was crucial to Motown’s success: its groups, dressed in gowns or tuxedos, moved through stylized, carefully choreographed routines as they sang their songs. Our enduring image of Stevie Wonder? A blind man with sunglasses and long braided and beaded hair, sitting behind a keyboard and rocking from side to side in a random rhythm. Motown recordings were collective enterprises; behind the groups were largely anonymous songwriters and studio musicians. Wonder created his own recordings from soup to nuts, not only singing and playing all the instruments at times but also performing the technical tasks—recording, mixing, mastering, and so on.

There are also differences in subject and attitude. In the mid-sixties, Motown song lyrics talked mainly about young love, usually in racially neutral, often-idealized language. Only reluctantly did they begin to address “real life” in songs like the Supremes’ “Love Child.” By contrast, Stevie Wonder took on social issues from his self-produced first album; the vignette of an innocent man’s arrest in “Living for the City” is chilling. Stevie Wonder has advocated a long list of causes, from his firm push for a national holiday for Martin Luther King, Jr., to rights for the blind and disabled.

Stevie Wonder was born Steveland Morris (some accounts say Steveland Judkins) in 1950. A hospital error at birth left him blind. By ten, he was a professional performer, singing and playing the harmonica (he also played piano and drums). Within two years, he had signed a Motown contract and was being billed as “Little Stevie Wonder, the 12-Year-Old Genius.” (The “little” disappeared two years later, but the “Wonder” stuck.) He had a number of hits in the sixties, including “Uptight” (1966) and the beautiful love song “My Cherie Amour” (1969), but emerged as a major force in popular music only when his contract with Motown guaranteed him complete control over his work.

Stevie Wonder

Stevie Wonder

Wonder was the most popular black artist of the seventies. A series of albums, beginning with Music of My Mind (1972), established his unique sound and cemented his reputation as a major player in popular music. Each album release was a major event, especially within the black community, and his recordings also enjoyed enormous crossover success.

The widespread popularity of Wonder’s music grows out of a style that is broad in its range, highly personal in its sound, and universal in its appeal. His music is a compendium of current black musical styles. In his songs are the tuneful melodies and rich harmonies of black romantic music, the dense textures and highly syncopated riffs of funk, the improvisatory flights of jazz, and the subtle rhythms of reggae and Latin music. Yet, even though he absorbs influences from all quarters, his style is unique.

“Superstition,” a No. 1 single from the 1972 album Talking Book, is a funky up-tempo song with a finger-wagging lyric; in it, Wonder chastises those who would let their lives be ruled by superstitious beliefs. The melody that carries the lyric grows slowly out of a simple riff. Like so many Motown (and rock-era) songs, it builds inexorably to the title phrase.

The harmony shows the two main sources of his style. The verse sits on a bed of riffs, all built from the African-American pentatonic scale; there is no harmonic change. By contrast, the transition to the hook is supported by rich, jazz-like harmonies.

The most distinctive element of Stevie Wonder’s sound, however, is the rich texture that flows underneath the vocal line. The song begins simply enough, with a rhythmically secure drum part. Onto this, Wonder layers multiple lines: the signature riff, a repeated-note bass line, plus several more riffs in the background, all highly syncopated. Stevie played all the lines on synthesizers, overdubbing until he produced the dense, funky texture that became one of his trademarks. (Wonder was one of the first musicians to develop a sound based almost completely on synthesizers.)

“Superstition” shows us the rhythmic side of Wonder’s musical personality; there is also a romantic side, as evidenced in songs like “You Are the Sunshine of My Life.” In either mode, Stevie Wonder is an optimist, a “glass is half full” person. Even in his darkest songs, hope is implicit, if not in the lyric, then in the bounce of the beat. How can you be down if your hips are shaking and your foot is tapping? Wonder’s optimism is remarkable in light of numerous personal problems. Not only has he been blind from birth, but he also suffered a devastating automobile accident in 1973 that left him in a coma for several days. He followed this adversity with some of his best music. He remains one of the icons of rock-era music.

Listening Cue

“Superstition” (1972)

Stevie Wonder

Wonder, vocal and keyboard.

STYLE 1970s black pop ⋅ FORM Verse/chorus

Listen For …

INSTRUMENTATION

Vocals, drums, percussion, electric keyboards and synthesizers, trumpet/sax horn section, electric bass

RHYTHM

Rock beat at moderate tempo with multiple syncopated double-time riffs

MELODY

Both vocal line and instrument figures are based on repeated riffs

HARMONY

Oscillation between static harmony on pentatonic scale (verse) and rich harmony leading up to hook

TEXTURE

Thick texture, with several keyboard patterns and horn riffs weaving around timekeeping and vocal

Remember …

DARK LYRICS, UPBEAT GROOVE

Lyrics sermonize on real-life concern, but Wonder’s singing and song’s rhythm project optimism

DENSE, RIFF-RICH TEXTURE

Dense texture woven together by multiple repeated riff figures in low- and mid-range

NOVEL ELECTRONIC SOUNDS

Numerous synthesizer sounds replace conventional instruments

FUNKY RHYTHMS

Layers of active, syncopated rhythms at sixteen-beat speed over rock beat create funky groove

Listen to this selection in the unit playlist.

56-2 The Sound of Philadelphia

In the early seventies, it seemed as if Motown had opened a branch office in Philadelphia. The most Motown-like records of the period appeared on Gamble and Huff’s Philadelphia International label, not Gordy’s. The basic formula was the same: lush orchestrations, solid rhythms coming from a rhythm section that had played together for years, jazz-tinged instrumental lines—all supporting vocal groups singing about the ups and downs of love. Only the details were different.

Three men engineered the  Philadelphia sound : Kenny Gamble (b. 1943), Leon Huff (b. 1942), and Thom Bell (b. 1941). All were veterans of the Philadelphia music scene; they had worked together off and on during the early sixties in a group called Kenny Gamble and the Romeos. A few years later, Gamble and Huff began producing records together. They enjoyed their first extended success with Jerry Butler, who revived his career under their guidance. Their big break came in 1971, when Clive Davis, the head of Columbia Records, helped them form Philadelphia International Records. The connection with Columbia assured them of widespread distribution, especially in white markets.

The artist roster at Philadelphia International included the O’Jays, Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes, Teddy Pendergrass (who left the group to go solo), Billy Paul, and MFSB, which was the house band. Their competition came mainly from Thom Bell, who produced the Stylistics and the Spinners, a Detroit group that went nowhere at Motown but took off when paired with Bell in 1972.

56-3 The O’Jays

In the early 1970s, the O’Jays included Eddie Levert (b. 1942), William Powell (1942–1977), and Walter Williams (1942). Formed as a quintet in 1958, the group languished on the fringes of the R&B scene throughout the 1960s, with only a few hits. The turning point in their career came in 1968, when they met Gamble and Huff. Chart success came in 1972, shortly after Columbia Records created the Philadelphia International subsidiary for Gamble and Huff. Their first hit, “Back Stabbers,” began a run of 40 hit singles over the next 15 years; nine of them topped the R&B charts and five reached the pop Top Ten.

Listening Cue

“Back Stabbers” (1972)

Leon Huff,

Gene McFadden, and

John Whitehead

The O’Jays.

STYLE Philadelphia sound ⋅ FORM Verse/chorus

Listen For …

INSTRUMENTATION

Lead and backup vocals, plus large rhythm section (piano, electric guitar, electric bass, drums, extra percussion), vibraphone, strings, horns

RHYTHM

Brisk rock rhythm clearly marked by percussion instruments, with double-time riffs in vocal line, free rhythms in bass, syncopated riffs in melodic instruments

MELODY

Chorus = chain of riffs; verse and bridge have longer phrases; melodic material

HARMONY

Minor key supports dark theme of song: like Marvin Gaye’s “I Heard It Through the Grapevine”

TEXTURE

Rich texture, with strong bass, active mid-range percussion, low/mid-range horns, high strings behind vocals, often in harmony

Remember …

RHYTHMIC EFFECTS

Syncopated orchestral riffs and stop time dominant when they occur, overpowering steady rock rhythm in percussion

MULTIPLE MELODIC HOOKS

Motown influence evident in multiple melodic hooks, heard in vocal line, strings, and rhythm instruments

RICH ORCHESTRATION

Large, percussion-enhanced rhythm section, plus full string section and horns, support vocals

SPRAWLING FORM

Expansion of Motown-type form: big multistage, jazz-influenced instrumental introduction; chorus framing verse, extended bridge

Listen to this selection in the unit playlist.

“Back Stabbers” shows how the Philadelphia-based producers extended and updated the black pop style developed at Motown. The instrumental introduction of “Back Stabbers” runs for 40 seconds—far longer than any of the Motown intros. It begins with a quasi-classical piano tremolo, an ominous rumble that helps establish the dark mood of the song. The unaccompanied piano riff that follows simply hangs in sonic space; there is still no regular beat keeping. Finally, the rest of the rhythm section enters, with the guitarist playing a jazz-style riff.

The rhythm sound is fuller than late sixties Motown records, not just because of the addition of Latin percussion instruments (Motown had been using them for years) but because there are more of them, and the reinforcement of the beat and the eight-beat layer is more prominent. After the conclusion of the opening phrase, the strings and, later, brass enter; all combine to create a lush backdrop for the O’Jays.

The song, cowritten by Huff, advises an unnamed man to guard against “friends” who are out to steal his woman. Like so much black pop, the song is about love, or at least a relationship. What’s different about the lyric is that the narrator is an observer, rather than the person in the relationship. In effect, it’s “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” told from the other side of the grapevine, but up-close and personal. It was the first of a series of such songs by the O’Jays.

As typified in this song, the Philadelphia sound is the Motown formula revised, expanded, and modernized. The instrumental introductions are more elaborate; the texture is richer; the songs themselves are more complicated; the spotlighted instruments are more contemporary sounding (in the case of the guitar); and there is greater rhythmic freedom, not only in the opening but also in the syncopated riffs that are the instrumental hooks of the songs.

For Stevie Wonder, the Philadelphia stars like the O’Jays, and many other black acts, the early and mid-1970s were their commercial and artistic peak. Wonder’s most valued albums come from this time; they have assured his iconic status. The formula behind the Philadelphia sound worked well for the better part of the decade. However, toward the end of the decade, the Philadelphia sound was supplanted by disco, in many ways a more obvious version of the style. The Jackson 5 enjoyed their greatest success at Motown in the early 1970s; a shift to Philadelphia International did not spark a resumption of their earlier success. Other Motown artists followed a similar career trajectory, even though some, like the Jackson 5 and Marvin Gaye, left Motown altogether.

Much of the romantically-oriented black pop of the 1970s was a continuation of the Motown-dominated black pop of the 1960s—not surprising, because many of the acts were Motown veterans or modeled their sound on the Motown style. Wonder’s music was exceptional in its willingness to address social issues, its more complex rhythms, and extensive use of electronics. Still, it is typically tuneful music. This tunefulness would give way to more rhythmic styles—funk, disco, and rap—as the decade drew to a close.

Ch. 57

Gender, Art, and the Boundaries of Rock

Chapter Introduction

In the decade between 1965 and 1975, one of the primary sources of creative energy in rock was the tension between its core and its boundaries. Rock’s core look and sound has been four or five aggressively heterosexual males singing and playing electronically amplified instruments loudly, to a driving rock beat. However, even as acts like the Rolling Stones consolidated this core style, others—most notably Dylan, The Beatles, Frank Zappa, and Brian Wilson—were leaving it behind. Among the important new directions of the early 1970s, two—singer-songwriters and glam rock—explored questions of art, artifice, and gender in rock-era music from radically different perspectives. We consider these questions through the music of Joni Mitchell and David Bowie.

57-1 The Singer-Songwriters

The term  singer-songwriter  came into use during the early seventies to identify those solo performers who made personal statements in song. Their songs were typically supported by a subdued, often acoustic, accompaniment that put the vocal line in the forefront.

Within these general parameters, there has been astonishing variety: autobiographical confessions, cinéma vérité portraits or acerbic social commentary, cryptic accounts that leave the identity of the narrator in question. Most are songs in a restricted sense of the term, in that they have coherent melodies that help tell the story and make musical sense through an inner logic. They are seldom formulaic; formal and melodic imagination finds its greatest outlet in these songs.

Among the first wave of singer-songwriters were established acts who went solo: Neil Young left Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young, and Paul Simon dissolved his long-time partnership with Art Garfunkel. They were joined by a new generation of folk-inspired performers, most notably Joni Mitchell and James Taylor. Randy Newman, by contrast, came from a family heavily involved in traditional pop and film music; Carole King had been writing hit songs for over a decade.

The music of the singer-songwriters of the late sixties and early seventies represents the continuing evolution of the folk/country/pop fusions of the mid-sixties. The dominant influences were Bob Dylan and The Beatles, but other influences were also evident—folk and country especially, but also jazz, blues, pop, gospel, and Latin music.

57-2 Elevating the Feminine

The folk revival provided women with the most accessible point of entry into rock. With its intimate environment, emphasis on words and melody, and understated acoustic accompaniment, the urban folk music of the postwar era was far less macho than rock and roll, jazz, or blues. Indeed, young women folksingers were fixtures in coffeehouses throughout the sixties; Joan Baez was the most notable.

During the sixties, the repertoire of many female folksingers mutated from reworked folksongs to contemporary songs in a similar style. Judy Collins’s work in the sixties embodies this transition; Janis Ian’s “Society’s Child” (1965–1967), her first hit, helped mark this new direction.

Among the new voices of the early 1970s were Carole King and Joni Mitchell. Both enjoyed success as songwriters before breaking through as performers. After a decade of working behind the scenes writing songs for others, Carole King began a solo career after her divorce from Gerry Goffin in 1968. She broke through in 1971 with Tapestry, which remained on the charts for almost six years and eventually sold over 22 million units. Similarly, Mitchell’s first foray onto the charts came as a songwriter: Judy Collins’s version of “Both Sides Now” reached No. 8 in 1968.

57-3 Joni Mitchell

Joni Mitchell (b. 1943) was born Roberta Anderson in Fort Macleod, Alberta, Canada, and grew up in Saskatchewan, the neighboring province. As a young girl, she had equally strong interests in art and music. After high school, she enrolled in the Alberta College of Art and Design and played folk music in the local coffeehouse. Like many Canadians in search of a career, she gravitated to Toronto, where she met and married Chuck Mitchell, also a folksinger, in 1966. The couple moved to Detroit. After her divorce a year later, she moved to New York, where she connected into the folk scene, mainly as a songwriter, and then to Southern California the following year.

Joni Mitchell

Joni Mitchell

Mitchell began recording under her own name in 1968. She found her musical voice, and her audience, in a series of albums released between 1969 and 1974. In them, Mitchell uses the folk style of the early sixties as a point of departure, but she transforms every aspect of it—lyrics, melody, and accompaniment—into a highly personal idiom. We hear this in “All I Want,” a track from her milestone 1971 album Blue.

Although it deals with a relationship, “All I Want” is a distinct departure from conventional songs about love. Most love-related songs present their situation in a coherent narrative. Typically, both words and music follow a predictable path toward a goal that serves as the expressive high point of the song. By contrast, Mitchell’s songs disdain the conventions of rock and pop. In her songs, ideas shape the forms, not vice versa. Melodies respond to the words, yet follow their own internal logic. Other aspects of the setting—most notably harmony, instrumentation, and rhythm—are individual to a particular song. They remain in a supporting role; the focus is squarely on the words and melody.

By contrast, Mitchell’s lyrics seem to open the door to her subconscious. There are mercurial shifts in mood. One moment she’s high on love (“Alive, alive … juke box dive”), the next, she’s licking her emotional wounds (“Do you see … both get so blue”). The only consistent feature of the lyric is the emotional inconsistency of her relationship (“Oh I hate you some … I love you some”). Thoughts and images tumble over each other in a stream of consciousness. There is no story; indeed, there is no sense even of time passing.

The music amplifies the temporal and emotional ambiguity of the lyric. The accompaniment begins with Mitchell playing an ostinato—a note repeated over and over—on an Appalachian dulcimer and James Taylor playing guitar. They deliberately avoid establishing a key or even marking the beat clearly. The song itself is strophic: The same melody serves three stanzas of poetry. It begins tentatively, echoing the indecision of the lyric. The most intense point comes in the middle. Shorter phrases and a more active, wide- ranging melodic contour echo the more active and frequent images in the text. They in turn lead to the heart of the song: “Do you want.” Like smoke rising from one of Mitchell’s ever-present cigarettes, the melody gradually drifts up, reaching its peak on the words “sweet romance,” the real issue of the song. It drops down quickly, but not to rest; the final sustained note is not the keynote. The instrumental introduction returns as the outro; the song ends limply, as if it is a musical question mark.

Listening Cue

“All I Want” (1971)

Joni Mitchell

Mitchell, vocal and dulcimer; James Taylor, guitar.

STYLE Singer-songwriter ⋅ FORM Strophic, open-ended

Listen For …

INSTRUMENTATION

Voice, acoustic guitar, Appalachian dulcimer

RHYTHM

Subtle eight-beat pulse supports syncopated guitar chords, melody with varied rhythm

MELODY

Melody spins out from long idea; forms a long curve peaking toward end

HARMONY

Ambiguous harmony frames song; accompaniment outlines key with rich harmony

TEXTURE

Subdued but rich, rhythmically active accompaniment under melody

Remember …

CONFESSIONAL LYRICS

Words reflect the turbulent state of mind of narrator by jumping from image to image

OUTPOURING OF MELODY

Melody spins out from the opening phrase, finally peaking toward the end

INDECISIVE HARMONY

Instrumental intro and outro that frame melody are harmonic question marks; harmony that supports melody is also unpredictable and unstable at times

OPEN-ENDED FORM

Form of “All I Want” consists of three distinct sections; there is no sense of resolution at the end

Listen to this selection in the unit playlist.

All of this underscores the message of the lyrics. Mitchell describes a complex, difficult relationship and the emotional rollercoaster that it puts her through; there is no change in it during the course of the song, no resolution at the end. In “All I Want,” Mitchell opens herself up, so that we can experience the turmoil in her troubled relationship. It is an emotional breakthrough—for her, for rock, and for popular music.

After 1974, Mitchell turned in other directions. Through the rest of the seventies, she connected with jazz and the avant-garde. This culminated in a collaboration with jazz great Charles Mingus, which was cut short by Mingus’s death in 1979. Her seventies experiments anticipated the world music movement of the eighties. In the eighties, she continued to explore what some called “jazz/folk” fusion, as well as to develop her career in the visual arts as a photographer and painter.

57-4 Glam Rock: Rock as Spectacle and Artifice

Rock has had a strong visual element ever since Elvis first combed his hair into a pompadour and curled his lips into a sneer. By the late sixties, the visual dimension of rock had become, in its most extreme manifestations, far more flamboyant and outrageous: flaming or smashed guitars, provocative gestures and body movements. This outrageousness was in part a consequence of larger venues. With arena concerts now increasingly common, performers had to appear larger than life to have visual impact.

Among the most spectacular expressions of theatricality in rock was  glam (or glitter) rock . It emerged in the early seventies, mainly in the work of David Bowie and T Rex, a group fronted by Marc Bolan.

As it took shape in the mid-sixties, rock prided itself on being real. It confronted difficult issues, dealt with real feelings, looked life squarely in the eye. This realism provoked a reaction. The Beatles followed A Hard Day’s Night, a documentary-style film of their life on the run from fans, with Help! a psychedelic fantasy, in which they assumed personas, visually and musically.

Rock as artifice—rock behind a mask—found its fullest expression in glam rock, most spectacularly in David Bowie’s first public persona, Ziggy Stardust. In portraying Ziggy Stardust, Bowie stripped identity down to the most basic question of all: gender. Was Ziggy male or female, or something in between? With his lithe build, flamboyant costumes, and heavy makeup, Bowie as Ziggy was a mystery. Particularly because he was not well known prior to Ziggy, there was no “real” Bowie to compare with his Ziggy persona. As Bowie pranced around onstage, he rendered his gender—or at least his sexual preference—ambiguous. Add to that a fantastical story, and—when performed live—a spectacular production: Glam rock, as exemplified by Bowie, was the opposite of real.

57-5 David Bowie/Ziggy Stardust

Bowie (born David Jones, 1947-2016) began his career in the sixties as a British folksinger. Influenced by Iggy Pop, Marc Bolan, and the Velvet Underground, he began to reinvent his public persona. In 1972, he announced that he was gay. (However, he commented in an interview over a decade later that he “was always a closet heterosexual.”) Later that year, he put together an album and a stage show, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. It featured Bowie, complete with orange hair, makeup, and futuristic costumes, as Ziggy, a rock star trying to save the world but doomed to fail.

The songs from Ziggy Stardust provide the musical dimension of Bowie’s role-playing. Their effect is not as obvious as his appearance, but without them, his persona would be incomplete. The three components of the songs—the words, Bowie’s singing, and the musical backdrop—all assumed multiple roles, as we hear in “Hang On to Yourself,” one of the tracks from the album. The lyric is laced with vivid images: “funky-thigh collector,” “tigers on Vaseline,” “bitter comes out better on a stolen guitar.” These arrest our ear, without question. But Bowie continually shifted from person to person as he delivered them. He “reported” in the verse—“She’s a tongue-twisting storm”—and entreats in the chorus—“Come on, come on, we’ve really got a good thing going.” His voice changed dramatically from section to section. It’s relatively impersonal in the verse and warm, almost whispered, in the chorus. The music was both obvious and subtle in its role-playing. Bowie embedded instrumental and vocal hooks into the song: the guitar riff and the whispered chorus, a shock after the pile-driving verse. Both made the song immediately accessible and memorable.

David Bowie performing as Ziggy Stardust at the Hammersmith Odeon, 1973.

David Bowie performing as Ziggy Stardust at the Hammersmith Odeon, 1973.

But there were also subtle clues woven into the song that seem to tell us that, for Bowie, the hooks were the dumbed-down parts of the music. With such features as the extra beats after the first line of the verse “… light machine” and elsewhere, Bowie seemed to be hinting that he was capable of a lot more sophistication than he was showing on the surface. Indeed, the spare style of the song was one of the freshest and most influential sounds of the seventies. Like Ziggy, he was descending down to the level of mass taste (even as he reshaped it) because he wanted the effect it created, not because that’s all he could do.

In Ziggy Stardust, Bowie created a persona that demanded attention but was shrouded in mystery. What made his persona so compelling, both in person and on record, was not only its boldness but also its comprehensiveness. Precisely because accessibility and ambiguity were present in every aspect of the production—the subject of the show, Bowie’s appearance, the lyrics, his singing, the music—Bowie raised role-playing from simple novelty to art. This quality made him one of the unique talents of the rock era. Bowie was also one of the most influential musicians of the decade. The “lean, clean” sound of “Hang On to Yourself” was a model for punk and new wave musicians; indeed, Glen Matlock of the Sex Pistols remarked that “Hang On to Yourself” influenced “God Save the Queen.”

Ziggy was Bowie’s first and most outrageous persona. For the rest of his career, he continually reinvented himself in a variety of guises, all markedly different from the others, including “plastic soul” man and techno-pop avant-gardist. Bowie was rock’s ultimate poseur. And that was his art: assuming so many different personas—not only in appearance and manner, but also in music—that he made a mystery of his real self. Given Bowie’s constantly changing roles during the course of his career, it is small wonder that he was the most successful film actor among post-Elvis rock stars.

57-6 Stretching Rock’s Boundaries

Mitchell and Bowie approach art from two different directions: intimate, personal music versus gaudy theater. In Mitchell’s case, the art grows out of her gifts as both lyricist and songwriter: the imagination and individuality of words and music and their synergistic integration. Her work ranks with the best popular songs of the century, and they invite comparison with the art songs of classical music. Although Bowie’s music also displayed craft and imagination, what stood out with Ziggy Stardust is the boldness of the premise and the theatricality of the result.

Rock’s deepest immersion in art lasted about a decade, from 1966 (the year in which the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds and Frank Zappa’s Freak Out were released) to the mid-seventies, when enthusiasm for the various  art rock  explorations seemed to wane. It was as if once rock had established its cultural credibility, it was time to move in other directions.

Listening Cue

“Hang On to Yourself” (1972)

David Bowie

Bowie, vocal.

STYLE Glam rock ⋅ FORM Verse/Chorus

Listen For …

INSTRUMENTATION

Lead and backup vocals, lead and rhythm guitar, electric bass, drums, handclaps, synthesizer

PERFORMANCE STYLE

Bowie’s varied vocal timbres; heavy distortion on rhythm guitar, whiney lead guitar sound on riff

RHYTHM

Fast, insistent rock beat periodically reinforced by guitar and drums; rhythmic play = syncopated guitar chords, active irregular bass line, occasional “extra” beats

MELODY

Abundance of riffs in verse and chorus

TEXTURE

Sharp contrasts in texture between verse and chorus, mainly because of shift in dynamics, timekeeping, contrasting riffs, different timbres, and busy bass line in chorus

Remember …

PROTO-PUNK

Loud, repeated power chords played on guitar with some distortion, in a basic rock rhythm and at a fast tempo; these are salient features of punk style. They inform basic feel of song throughout.

HOOKS

Loaded with instrumental (e.g., whiny guitar riff) and vocal hooks, which serve narrative of album/stage show (making the band appealing)

SOPHISTICATED FEATURES

Several sophisticated features not customarily found in straightforward rock (frequent shifts in mood, occasional addition of extra beats, sporadically active bass lines, and Bowie’s ever-shifting vocal timbres) = song about a rock band rocking out, rather than simply a good rock song

Listen to this selection in the unit playlist.

Ch. 58

Steely Dan and the Art of Recording

Chapter Introduction

In 1959, the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences began presenting a Grammy Award for the “Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical.” The award is given to one or more engineers for their work on a particular record date. The first winner of the award was Ted Keep, for his work on the novelty hit “The Chipmunk Song.” Subsequent winners include the engineers responsible for Sgt. Pepper and Abbey Road. The only act whose recordings have won four awards is Steely Dan: their engineers won the award in 1978, 1979, 1982, and 2001.

58-1 Steely Dan

The pursuit of studio perfection is just one of the qualities that distinguishes Steely Dan. Although it began as a band, Steely Dan became a popular and critically acclaimed act only after its two creative minds, keyboardist Donald Fagen (b. 1948) and bassist Walter Becker (b. 1950), dissolved the group and retained the name to label their studio-driven brainchild.

Steely Dan

Steely Dan

Becker and Fagen met at Bard College, where they played together regularly in a number of bands, including the Leather Canary. After Fagen graduated, they moved to New York, where they joined the backup band for Jay and the Americans. While in New York, they met producer Gary Katz, who would eventually invite them to Los Angeles to sign them up with ABC Records—first as songwriters, then as a working band. At ABC, they met recording engineer Roger Nichols; Nichols would record all of their music. On recordings, Becker and Fagen began using the cream of Los Angeles studio musicians, most of whom had extensive jazz experience. After 1974, Steely Dan became a studio band, in order to better realize Becker and Fagen’s distinctive musical vision.

Listening Cue

“Peg” (1977)

Walter Becker and

Donald Fagen

Steely Dan.

STYLE Jazz-influenced pop rock ⋅ FORM Verse/chorus (with two statements of verse)

Listen For …

INSTRUMENTATION

Lead and backup vocals, electric guitars, keyboards, lyricon, electric bass, drums, extra percussion

RHYTHM

Sixteen-beat rhythm at bright tempo; highly syncopated riffs in both vocal and instrumental sections

MELODY

Riff-based vocals; angular lines in instrumental intro and interludes

HARMONY

Sophisticated version of twelve-bar blues progression

TEXTURE

Dense texture, with numerous melodically interesting parts behind vocal

Remember …

WORDS VS. MUSIC

Clever, ironic lyrics with virtually no apparent connection to the music

FORMAL IMAGINATION

Conventional verse/chorus form, but verse is hip twelve-bar blues form and chorus has rich harmony, in instruments and backup vocals

INFUSION OF JAZZ VALUES

Evident in rich, varied harmony; rhythmic play; angular instrumental lines; virtuosic playing

Listen to this selection in the unit playlist.

It’s difficult to describe their “style,” because each of their songs seems so different from the next. Among their hits is an electronically enhanced “cover” of Duke Ellington’s 1927 recording of “East St. Louis Toodle-oo.” The three constants in their music seem to be impeccable production, stream-of-consciousness lyrics that offer slices of life in Los Angeles, and sophisticated, distinctive musical settings. There is often a jarring incongruity between the lyrics and the often-complex music to which they are set. It is apparent in songs like their 1977 hit “Peg,” one of the tracks from Aja, their sixth album and one of the first recordings to be certified platinum; Aja would win a Grammy for best engineered non-classical recording.

The lyric of “Peg” presents a fragmentary account of a film star on the rise, told by someone who knew her way back when, but who is probably on the outside looking in now. It conveys a bittersweet mood; whatever connection he had with Peg has dissolved now that her career is on the way up.

Although many of their fans have spent long hours trying to decode the lyrics to Steely Dan songs, the exercise seems ultimately beside the point, because the songs are mainly about the music. More than anything else, the lyrics serve as window dressing, to entice those listeners who find lyrics important, or at least a necessary point of entry into the song. The lyrics are hip and provocative—Fagen was an English major, and he and Becker shared a strong interest in Beat literature. But there is not the sense of connection between words and music that has informed so much of the music that we have heard.

The reason may well be Becker and Fagen’s abiding interest in jazz, a largely instrumental music. Jazz values, such as melodic and harmonic complexity, rhythmic play, virtuosity, imagination, permeate their music, independently of the lyrics. In “Peg,” the instrumental introduction evokes the angular lines and rich harmonies of bebop, while the harmony under the verse of the song is a clever reworking of a twelve-bar blues progression. Throughout the song, there is extensive rhythmic play among the rhythm instruments, especially the bass. At the same time, in its overall design the song follows the familiar rock-era verse/chorus pattern, and the chorus has a hook carved from a single, richly harmonized melody note: “Peg.”

With their particular mix of provocative lyrics, accessible sounds, rhythms, and riffs, jazz influence, and perfectionist approach to recording, Steely Dan was one of a kind. In their music and their attitude toward music making, they were without any real precedent, and no band has really followed their lead. Becker and Fagen parted ways in 1981. Twelve years later, they came together, resurrected the Steely Dan name, and began recording and touring again. They remain active and productive through the early years of the twenty-first century: Two Against Nature won four Grammy Awards in 2001, including top album.

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