What does Elvis Presley’s music have to do with that of, say, the Soft Machine? Nothing, frankly.
Listening to Soft Machine’s Fifth album reveals a sound that is vastly different from Elvis’s. There is no connection, either stylistically or sonically, between the two. What is it that unites these two different types of music under the same label of “rock”? It is the approach, the “way” in which the musicians approach it: the “field” that has been chosen. This is not cultured music, nor, despite the very strong proximity, that of African American jazz. It is that of a new popular music, rock in fact, which fearlessly mixes high and low, composition and improvisation, youth culture and spiritual research.
Moreover, the ’70s saw a new technological revolution, born from the increasingly sophisticated possibilities offered by recording studios. While during most of the ’60s recorded music was a faithful reproduction of what a group could and knew how to perform live, slowly but surely records began to become profoundly different objects: assuming a cen
tral importance in the lives of artists, no longer just a means, but often the end of artistic creation. Early ’60s mono recordings were soon replaced by stereo recordings. This technology quickly became more sophisticated, with four, eight, and eventually sixteen tracks. This allowed groups to record a song one instrument at a time, separately.
This led, on one hand, almost naturally, to a secondary role for the spirit of “collective” creation that animated the rock of the previous decade, while on the other hand it was precisely the music of the decade that gave much more creative, collective improvisational space than the ’60s rock had done, to a music that, live, is never the same as the one recorded on an album.
By the end of the ’70s, around 1977, a new generation of bands had arrived in England. They harshly criticized their predecessors, viewing progressive rock as nothing more than a fiction, an intellectual way of producing smoke without fire. They believed that hippies and their remnants were harmful and outdated, and that the wealthy rock stars had no
| CHUCK BERRY
THE GUITAR, THE “DUCK WALK,” BUT, ABOVE ALL, A HANDFUL OF SONGS THAT ESTABLISHED THE BASIC RULES FOR ALL
SUBSEQUENT GENERATIONS.
CHUCK BERRY
WAS THE GREAT FATHER FOR MILLIONS OF CHILDREN IN ROCK ’N’ ROLL.
51 Chuck Berry during a performance in Paris in 1973.
“If you had tried to give rock and roll another name, you would call it Chuck Berry.” These are the words of John Lennon, describing what Chuck Berry represented for that generation of musicians: one of the founding fathers of rock ’n’ roll. Berry set the standards of the genre with songs such as “Maybellene” in 1955, which combined blues and country rhythms, addressing topics relevant to post-war American youth who were experiencing economic prosperity. In addition to John Lennon, many great rock stars, such as Eric Clapton, Keith Richards, Angus Young, The Who, Bob Dylan, and The Beach Boys, have credited Chuck Berry as a major source of inspiration. These are only a few of the many musicians who could not have achieved success without him. Chuck certainly loved the rhythm and electricity of the new music. He did, however, admit multiple times that he learned from Nat King Cole how to sing sentimental songs with good diction, and from Muddy Waters how to sing the blues in its original language. The sound of Chuck Berry’s guitar was essential for the development of rock ’n’ roll. Without a guitarist like him, the sound would not have been the same. This is especially true when considering that Elvis and Bill Haley were primarily singers and Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard mainly pianists. Berry drastically shifted the sound of rock ’n’ roll toward that of the electric guitar, elevating the creation of the riff to an art form. Moreover, Berry’s relationship with his guitar was truly exclusive, to the point that in the ’70s he decided to embark on a series of tours solely with his faithful
| THE BEATLES
FOUR TEENAGERS FROM LIVERPOOL TAKE
THEIR INSTRUMENTS AND UNLEASH A REVOLUTION: MUSICAL, SARTORIAL, POLITICAL, SEXUAL, AND SPIRITUAL. IN JUST SEVEN YEARS, THE WORLD WITNESSED THE RISE AND FALL OF AN UNPARALLELED BAND.
79 From top left, clockwise: John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr: the Fab Four pose for a portrait in 1963.
Everyone knows The Beatles. They are one of the cornerstones of contemporary popular culture, even if their story ended fifty years ago. But their music, their songs are still among us, every day, in playlists, on the radio, on television, and at the movies. The “Fab Four” are still part of the collective imagination, with their long hair, colorful military uniforms, and black boots, depending on where they were in their journey. They invented the beat and, together with Bob Dylan, were the fathers of rock as we understand it today. They wrote some of the most beautiful and famous songs of the last century, contributing to make youth “visible.” They established new rules of dress and helped to change the way of thinking of an entire generation. And they did even more. In less than ten years, between 1962 and 1970, they released a dozen albums, all of which have gone down in history. At first, their formula was simple: one riff, a clean and pleasant melody line, essential instrumentation, with bass, drums, and two guitars, a rhythm and a lead, and most importantly no singer and no leader: because all four members of the band knew how to sing. It was the “group” that made the difference, the “band” as such, a band made up of young people who communicated, in addition to their music, their desire for a life based on completely new rules compared to the past. Their horizon gradually expanded, paving the way for rock music. They immersed themselves in psychedelia and delved into Indian music and avant-garde.
| THE ROLLING STONES
THE ROLLING STONES ARE THE LONGESTLASTING BAND IN THE ENTIRE HISTORY OF ROCK. AND THEY WROTE A LONG SERIES OF MASTERPIECES THAT MARKED CULTURE AND SOCIETY, EDUCATING DIFFERENT GENERATIONS IN BLUES AND CREATIVITY.
87 The Stones during the recording of the Thank Your Lucky Stars TV show at the Teddington Studios in London on January 13, 1965.
It is difficult to add anything new about The Rolling Stones. A looming presence, in any sense, for a rock critic or historian. For the past half-century, since 1962, The Rolling Stones have, for better or worse, taken up space, minutes or hours of our lives, with their music, their presence as news, their hidden pressure as a mass-media phenomenon, as a lifestyle, and as a model of behavior. From the moment Andrew Oldham and Eric Easton first set eyes on The Rolling Stones on the evening of April 28th, 1963 at the Crawdaddy Club in Richmond, London, England, time seemed to accelerate for the band, culminating in their first record deal with Decca the very next day. Theirs was a lifestyle driven by a hunger to live on their own terms, heedless of the norms that governed others. It was a time of aesthetic experimentation, but not just that. In just a few short years, The Stones became a touchstone for a youth culture in open conflict with the institutions of society, rejecting acquiescence and subservience, refusing to accept the conditioning that governed their personal lives. The Stones, from the start, and this was especially noted by American critics, made a choice of individual freedom that was completely in tune with the myth that was coming to the British Isles from the Deep South of the United States. Raised with Huckleberry Finn and the blues, with Chuck Berry's ironic lyrics and John Lee Hooker's sorrowful ones, with the classics of Muddy Waters and Jimmy Reed, the Stones
124-125 Pink Floyd posing for a promotional shot in 1973, the year of The Dark Side of the Moon, their most commercially and critically successful album.
| FRANK ZAPPA
FEW ARTISTS HAVE HAD THE ABILITY TO BLEND ART AND ENTERTAINMENT, SARCASM AND HISTORY, AVANT-GARDE AND SATIRE.
FRANK ZAPPA DID EVEN MORE, BECOMING ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT COMPOSERS OF THE CENTURY.
129 The rebellious spirit of America: Frank Zappa portrayed as a modern “Uncle Sam” in March 1979 in Los Angeles.
Of mixed European and Middle Eastern descent, with great intellectual passions and enormous political and cultural clarity, Frank Zappa was, without a doubt, a genius: one of the most important musical personalities of the 20th century. Two asteroids (3834 Zappafrank and 16745 Zappa), a gene (ZapA gene of the Proteus mirabilis bacterium), an extinct mollusk (Amauratoma zappa), and a spider with a marking on its abdomen, reminiscent of the musician’s famous mustache (Pachygnatha zappa), have been dedicated to him since his death. Additionally, a bronze bust made by sculptor Konstantinas Bogdanas has been installed in Vilnius’s Old Town. He testified to the U.S. Senate during the debate on the PMRC (Parents Music Resource Center), an organization promoted by Al Gore’s wife, which sought to restrain the freedom of speech of artists in a new form of McCarthyism. But most importantly, he has created a variant of pop that is unparalleled. Following in the footsteps of Edgard Varèse, always utilizing cutting-edge technology, blending life, fiction, and music, he transferred the cut-up from William S. Burroughs’s literature to rock music. The first albums, including Absolutely Free (1967) and We’re Only in It for the Money (1968), portray the hypocrisy and conformity of American society, as well as the struggles to destroy the free and underground culture. They expose the hypocrisies of the new champions of that culture that was becoming a business, such as the hippies, the flower-power movement, and the emerging Woodstock
| JANIS JOPLIN
EXTRAORDINARY AND DESPERATE, JANIS
JOPLIN WAS THE BEST WHITE SINGER TO INTERPRET THE BLUES AND TRANSFORM IT INTO ROCK. SHE PUT HER LIFE AND HER HEART ON STAGE WITH FRAGILITY AND EMOTION.
133
Jim Morrison is a legend, Jimi Hendrix a myth. But Janis Joplin, unfortunately, is too often forgotten. She was one of the greatest voices of American rock in the ’60s, an extraordinary blues performer, a woman who helped to change the rules of the game. A desperate and sad girl, but a star who could ignite the hearts of the boys who listened to her live. She should be rediscovered and celebrated as she deserves. Janis Joplin’s production during her brief recording career, which lasted only three years, is limited to four albums, all full of excellent music, perfect to illustrate Joplin’s vocal and expressive talents. Her first album in 1967, Big Brother & the Holding Company, was named after the band that Joplin belonged to. The band was one of the best Californian rock-blues bands, led by guitarists Sam Andrew and James Gurley. Joplin joined the group in 1966 and performed with them at the Monterey Festival the following year. But it was with Cheap Thrills, from 1968, with the memorable cover designed by Robert Crumb, that her success became enormous: it is one of the most classic albums of the California rock era, acidic and passionate, recorded entirely live. In December 1968, Joplin left Big Brother and the Holding Company to continue her career as a solo artist, forming the Kozmic Blues Band, with which she debuted in December 1968 and recorded an album, I Got Dem Ol' Kozmic Blues Again Mama! , in 1969, which contains some gems, but does not entirely shine. Immediately after Janis abandoned the
An intense portrait of Janis Joplin, taken by photographer Michael Ochs.
| DAVID BOWIE
DAVID BOWIE WAS UNDOUBTEDLY ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT ARTISTS OF THE LAST CENTURY. HIS STORY, FROM THE '70S TO THE '00S, IS THAT OF A GENIUS
CAPABLE OF INTERPRETING MANY DIFFERENT CHARACTERS, ALL FAKE AND ALL TRUE.
191 A striking portrait of David Bowie taken during the photoshoot for his 1973 album Pin-Ups.
David Robert Jones was born on January 8, 1947, in Brixton. He developed a passion for rock ’n’ roll at a young age, particularly for Fats Domino and Little Richard, and humbly declared his intention to become “the English Elvis Presley.” He learned to play the saxophone through his older brother, who introduced him to jazz and beat writers. His first solo album was released in 1967 and had little commercial success, but it caught the attention of Lindsay Kemp, who initiated the blond singer into the art of the stage, when he would later become a master in rock, and Tony Visconti, who would later produce most of his records. Bowie was like a sponge, assimilating mod and folk, Brel and Velvet, psychedelia, vaudeville, cabaret, and cinema. Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey inspired him to his first UK chart success in 1969, “Space Oddity,” which was also released in the U.S. The BBC used it in their coverage of the Apollo 11 launch, and it gave the title to the reissue of his second album (originally Man Of Words/Man Of Music), a record still oriented toward psychedelic folk with orchestral inserts. In 1970, he collaborated with Marc Bolan, who was at the time more glamorous than him, and began his partnership with the artist’s brand, the “chameleon” par excellence. The following album, Hunky Dory, despite having a classic like “Changes” with tributes to the masters Andy Warhol, Lou Reed (“Queen Bitch”), and Crowley (“Quicksand”), earned Bowie little. The breakthrough of the subsequent album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars was needed to make the star of glam rock shine definitively, with its ambiguous and flashy stage costumes.
dance and electropop, obviously passing through David Bowie and escaping every possible category, every label, every form of staticity.
Nothing has ever been stagnant in Queen's musical universe, and this makes them perfect for anyone who still wants to love them today. There is a song for everyone’s taste in the horizontality of streaming that makes everything “contemporary.” For those who are desperately in love, those who dream of a different life, those who want to clap in time, those who want to dance, those who love the contamination between the cultivated and the popular, and those who are content with a simple threenote riff — there is something for everyone. The only thing missing is hip-hop, but only because Mercury didn’t have time to take Queen down that road as well.
QUEEN HAS RENEWED THEIR LEGEND WITH THE MOVIE BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY, AND THEIR MUSIC IS STILL FIRMLY ENTRENCHED IN TODAY'S POPULAR CULTURE.
Then there is one particular factor that should not be underestimated: the extraordinary figure of Freddie Mercury himself, frontman, singer, and engine of the group. Mercury was not a singer like any other: he was a flashy and spectacular rockstar, brash and engaging, capable of surprising and, of course, singing like few others in the world. His story is that of a novel, told in the resounding success of the multi-award-winning film Bohemian Rhapsody: the birth of the hero, his rise, the inevitable fall and the heroic rise to triumph. An unbeatable story, especially if the hero wears tights and is never ridiculous, if he has an extraordinary voice that can be epic and heartbreaking, and, above all, if the story lacks the sad ending. Why Bohemian Rhapsody has an incredible happy ending is because the story of Mercury and Queen stops at the Live Aid of 1985.
In the movie, Mercury does not die, and in the end this is also true. The crowd at the cinema showed it: they didn't go to see a forgotten fallen hero, an old rockstar on the brink of retirement, or a missing celebrity, but a star that still shines in our firmament and, darn it, it seems, nobody can do without him.
There is no need for nostalgia, for Freddie Mercury is alive, with his music and songs, with his band and excesses, with his loves and weaknesses. And the magic of the show has ensured that he will never die.
207 Freddie Mercury on stage at the Rock in Rio festival in Brazil in January 1985.
| RAMONES
THE MOST IMPORTANT WORDS IN THE HISTORY OF ROCK? "ONE, TWO, THREE, FOUR," SHOUTED BEFORE THE START OF A SONG. LIKE A MAGICAL FORMULA, A POEM, A SHOUT, TURNED INTO ART IN THE HANDS OF THE RAMONES, BETWEEN PUNK AND ROCK ’N’ ROLL.
Around 40 years ago, the Ramones, with their punk-infused rock ’n’ roll, leather jackets, and hyper-fast, hyper-electric songs, became symbols of a musical and cultural revolution.
287 Real punk, but with a touch of lightness.
The Ramones performing in concert in 1977.
This revolution, together with the Sex Pistols in England, still resonates today. Deep down, they were never really punk. Their sound universe was that of rock ’n’ roll, surf, and music bridging the end of the ’50s and the beginning of the next decade. But it was their attitude, their disposition, that made them completely different from everyone else by the mid-’70s. They wanted to bring back fun and chaos, electricity and energy to the center of music. Their songs were made of three or four chords, lasting two to three minutes, and performed without any rockstar attitude—the exact opposite of their contemporaries. They were the music of the street that came out of the car stereos of rebellious teenagers tired of hippies and progressive, easy listening and pop. They were four “brothers” dressed alike, with leather jackets and ripped jeans, who didn’t care about talking. They just wanted to play fast songs, one after the other, to make the audience at their concerts go wild, interspersing the songs only with the magical formula of “one, two, three, four.” Johnny, Dee Dee, Joey, and Tommy. Their story lasted for twenty-two years, from their beginnings in Forest Hills in 1974, through the epic season of concerts at CBGB and Max’s Kansas City, up to their conquest of the world and their definitive breakup in 1996: with the
R.E.M.
R.E.M., FROM ATHENS, GEORGIA, WAS ONE OF THE FUNDAMENTAL BANDS OF THE ‘80S, BRINGING POETRY, ART, MELODY, FOLK, AND PSYCHEDELIA BACK INTO CIRCULATION, GIVING ROCK A NEW CHANCE.
There is a secret conception, a sort of manifesto, hidden behind R.E.M.’s music, a guiding light that has always moved their creativity. It is encapsulated in a sentence uttered by Peter Buck during an interview with a major American magazine. This conception underpins the vision that drives the band’s entire artistic production, illuminating even their early beginnings and subsequent output. Peter Buck, who founded the group together with Michael Stipe in 1980 in Athens, Georgia, said “Every kind of popular music is dead. All forms of expressive popular music have been killed by mass communication. When you can buy anything from hamburgers to your favorite song, you know it’s all over. But good artists can always revitalize any form of expression.” It is a striking conception that Adorno would have subscribed to.
In the early ‘80s, R.E.M. felt that one world had died and another “must” necessarily emerge. Their contribution was to write music, compose songs, produce new popular music, synchronized with the moments they were living in their American observatory of a small provincial town. They made their debut with dreamy small paintings (“Radio Free Europe,” “Gardening at Night”), supported by beat shivers that sink their roots in the electric purity of psychedelic sounds borrowed from The Byrds, but that have the color of the years in which they are born. There is already a vein of pain and melancholy, but also of positivity and strength.
331 R.E.M. in 1992: Michael Stipe in the foreground and behind him, from left to right, Mike Mills, Bill Berry, and Peter Buck.
| AMY WINEHOUSE
AMY WINEHOUSE, WHO PASSED AWAY
PREMATURELY AT 27 YEARS OLD, WAS THE MOST IMPORTANT FEMALE VOICE OF THE EARLY ’00S. SHE INFLUENCED AN ENTIRE GENERATION OF SINGERS, TOUCHING THE STRINGS OF THE SOUL WITH HER TRUTH.
There are stories where the ending is predictable, the plot obvious, and the events inevitable. The life of Amy Jade Winehouse, born on September 14, 1983 in Enfield, Middlesex, England, re-reading it today, seems to be part of this category: a badly written screenplay, with an ending that is anything but surprising.
465 A beautiful portrait of Amy Winehouse, dating back to 2004.
In 2002, Darcus Beese became the first to believe in her and to recognize the extraordinary potential of this atypical character; so far removed from the stars of talent shows or the prefabricated divas of the American music industry, with true, genuine, and pure talent. This undeniable talent is then complemented by an equally countercultural and original look, with a hairstyle “borrowed” from the ‘60s girl groups, and the “Cleopatra” makeup, directly taken from Ronnie Spector of The Ronettes. Her hairstyle becomes her trademark, along with a vocal style that doesn’t imitate anyone else, making her songs, both originals and the covers she enjoyed performing in concerts, truly unique. Things were going well, overall, for the very young Winehouse, even in her private life, after meeting the one she herself called a “great love”: Blake Fielder-Civil. In reality, theirs was a strong and tempestuous relationship. The two of them got together and broke up several times. This emotional roller coaster did not bode well for the young star, who in the meantime released her debut album, Frank , in 2003, produced by Salaam Remi. What stands out in Frank is the astronomical distance between her and
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