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First of all I would like to ask you why you decided to write the book
'Kaleidoscope Eyes'. Was it out of personal love for the genre?
"First and foremost it was a labour of love, because it was about three years'
of hard work for pretty much no money. And I heard certain themes that
connected some of my favourite artists through four decades of rock history,
even if no one else heard them, and I wanted to explore those. (Linking up
Pink Floyd and the Flaming Lips, say, or the Beatles and P.M. Dawn.) And
finally I think that the rock-critic establishment is always presenting rock
history and the canon of worthy artists as if it's engraved in stone, and
this ignores the fact that there are myriad ways of looking at the music. For
example, an entire generation exists for whom Kraftwerk is infinitely more
important than the Beatles, or for whom the 13th Floor Elevators are a lot
more significant than the Grateful Dead. Psychedelic rock is always presented
as San Francisco Summer of Love, and I wanted to show that it is much, much
more than that--in fact, that I think SF was a low point. This is my version
of history, of course, and it's possible that many others could be written,
and I'd like to read 'em. To me that's when rock criticism is at its best,
when it's offering a strong vision of a music."
Why did the rock scene get influenced so much by psychedelic drugs and not
for example folk music?
"Well of course it did get influenced by folk music: Dylan is arguably the
most influential performer of the '60s. But that confluence of new musical
technology (multi-track recording, echo effects, etc.), a big social shift
(the Baby Boom, Vietnam, free love, etc.) and a drug that seemed to encourage
people to think beyond the mundane realities of the everyday produced this
mass movement. To me that's the least interesting part of psychedelic rock's
legacy, because that was a passing thing, and the music still exists devoid
of all that. (You didn't "just have to be there.")
As I wrote in my chapter about the psychedelic garage bands, many of
those groups had never even taken the drugs--to them, it was more the freedom
to invent and the ability to disconnect from reality that the drugs
signified. So some of the most psychedelic music was made by people not under
the influence of psychedelic drugs. Ultimately I think that sense of freedom
in the recording studio is the most important meaning of the word
'psychedelic.' (The greek roots of the word, by the way, mean
'soul-manifesting' or 'mind-revealing')"
How would you define psychedelic rock music?
"It's got to have the two components of that phrase--it has to be good rock
and roll (which is why I don't particularly like the Dead or many of the jam
bands; they don't rock) and then it aims for this second, higher goal of
being "soul-manifesting" or "mind-revealing," which is to say spiritual in
some sense, transcending the everyday and trying to reach a place that exists
only in the artist's imagination. I am waffling here, sort of; psychedelic
rock is a goddamn slippery slope! I spent a whole book writing about it, and
I am not sure I ever could define it in one handy passage. That is part of
its charm."
Where do you see the start of psychedelica? Songs like "Rumble" by Dick
Dale or Phil Spector's Wall Of Sound definitely have a certain effect on
the listener's mind, you can't really say that was the start. When do you
see the *official* start of Psychedelica?
"I cite those surf songs and Screamin' Jay Hawkins' "I Put A Spell On You" and
a few other rock tunes as precedents, but I think the official start is 1966,
with "Revolver" by the Beatles (especially "Tomorrow Never Knows") and "Pet
Sounds" by the Beach Boys and the earliest examples of the one-hit-wonder
psychedelic garage bands (nicely compiled on "Nuggets"), plus the Byrds. That
was the watershed year when the musicians began making sounds directly
inspired by the drug experience--or what they THOUGHT the drug experience was."
Although the Beach Boys introduced the world to psychedelic music, their
record Pet Sounds wasn't that accepted by the large public. Why did the
public accept the Beatles' Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club band better than
Pet Sounds?
"Pet Sounds is a difficult and very emotional record coming from a man at an
extremely troubled point in his life. The audience was expecting more songs
about girls, cars and fun in the sun, not this soul-searching. The Beatles
arrived at the right place at the right time with a well-hyped product, and
it captured the mainstream imagination--despite the fact that many critics
and Beatles fans never thought (and still don't) that "Pepper's" was the
band's best."
Many people look down upon, seeing the musicians as a bunch of stoners. But
they don't realize psychedelica helped rock advance technologically. Why
did psychedelica embrace new instruments like the theremin and recording
techniques so easily?
"Again, I think it's that kid-in-a-candy store vibe that freeing oneself up
via psychedelic drugs (or an embrace of the philosophy of them) engenders. The
psychedelic mindset emphasizes that there are no rules, that imagination is
everything. It was an invitation to experiment in the studio, whether or not
drugs are actually involved."
There seems to be a difference between the sixties psychelica scene in the
States and the UK. In the states the psychedelic sound was a bad trip,
whereas in the UK it was more optimistic. You can definitely hear the
difference in VelvetUnderground's 'I am waiting for the man' which depicts
a much darker side to drugs than the Beatles' 'Tomorrow never knows'. How
do you explain that difference?
"Partly it's cultural--There's that whole English tradition of fairy tales
and myths and the romance of the lush green countryside etc. American rock is
largely urban and free of such mythmaking, though it can still be
romantic--witness the Byrds, or the Flaming Lips. But Americans I think are
by nature more cynical than the Brits (punk excluded)."
Although the scene definitely spawned great bands like Pink Floyd, Love and
13th Floor Elevators, you also see its victims. People like Roky Erickson,
Syd Barrett and of course Brian Wilson come to mind. Just a few bands
survived. How did the genre collapse, was it the drugs?
"The whole point of 'Kaleidoscope Eyes' is that the genre did not collapse,
that it continued through the Summer of Love into Krautrock and progressive
rock and psychedelic punk and the psychedelic revival and psychedelic hip hop
and the shoegazer movement etc. etc. etc. There were obviously some notorious
and much-romanticized and mythologized examples of guys who fried their
brains. Their tales (whatever the truth behind them is) should be separated
from the music they produced, because that's what endures and continues to
influence other musicians."
In the eighties there was a small revival with the Paisley Underground.
Most famous band coming out of that scene was the Bangles of course. Can
you tell something more about the scene?
"The L.A. scene was incredibly rich and fertile, producing not only the
Bangles but the Long Ryders, the Dream Syndicate, the Rain Parade, Green On
Red, the Three O'Clock. I devoted a chapter to this, and to other New Wave
and post-punk psychedelic explorers such as XTC, Julian Cope, Bevis Frond,
Plasticland, to name but a few, all of whom approached the sounds in very
different ways, and not necessarily retro-mindedly. It was more the
philosophy that was living on, from "Tomorrow Never Knows" to all of this
wonderful new music, the philosophy being much more important than the drugs
or the specific sounds of the '60s."
With bands like Mercury Rev and Flaming Lips putting out critically
acclaimed records, it seems as though there's this new interest in
psychedelica. Moreover you have guys like Bevis Frond man Nick Salomon
making the Ptolemaic Terrascope, a zine devoted to mainly psychedelica. Can
you say there's a revival in the genre or do you feel it has always been
active?
"By now you probably know what I'm gonna say: Psychedelic rock has never
disappeared. It just continues to thrive and mutate."
You see a connection between Richie Valens' La Bamba, My Bloody Valentine's
Loveless and Smells Like Teen Spirit by Nirvana. Can you explain that?
"I think you have that wrong. Here's what I wrote:
During the punk explosion of the mid-’70s, Lester Bangs drew a new line
through rock history that connected the three-chord drive and amped-up
attitude of Ritchie Valens’ "La Bamba" to "Louie Louie" by the Kingsmen, "No
Fun" by the Stooges, "Blitzkrieg Bop" by the Ramones, and—we could add
now—"Smells Like Teen Spirit" by Nirvana. Critics have rarely attempted this
sort of overview with psychedelia. The history books tell us that the high
point of psychedelic rock was the Haight-Ashbury scene of 1968, but the genre
didn’t start in San Francisco, and its evolution didn't end there. A line can
be drawn from the hypnotic drone of the Velvet Underground to the
disorienting swirl of My Bloody Valentine; from the artful experiments of the
Beatles’ Revolver to the flowing, otherworldly samples of rappers P.M. Dawn;
from the dementia of the 13th Floor Elevators to the grungey lunacy of the
Flaming Lips, and from the sounds and sights at Ken Kesey's ’60s Acid Tests
to those at '90s raves. This book is an attempt to connect the dots."
When looking at your psychedelic rock discography, I notice Blur, Chills
and Portishead. Maybe I am tone-deaf but I don't hear the psychedelica when
listening to their records. How do you define a band or record being
psychedelic?
"All of those bands at various times (and not throughout the entire careers)
created music that attempted to create its own world existing only between
the headphones: parts of 'Modern Life is Rubbish', 'Kaleiodoscope World',
hell, all of Portishead. I hear that spirit of experimentation and the effort
to craft these imaginative soundscapes that I've been harping about, but
other folks (including the artists) might disagree. That's why it's fun as
music fans to have a discourse about these topics!"
When a kid would ask you the essential five psychedelic records, what reply
would you give him?
"Hmmm, that's a tough one. 'Revolver' by the Beatles. 'Piper at the Gates of
Dawn' by Pink Floyd. 'Here Come the Warm Jets' by Brian Eno. 'Loveless' by My
Bloody Valentine. 'Transmissions from the Satellite Heart' by the Flaming
Lips. 'UfOrb' by the Orb. Damn, that's six. See, it's a tough one."
And that was the end of the interview. You have more questions that need to
be answered? Well, there's his splendid mindexpanding book on the subject.
Run to your bookstore and order 'Kaleidoscope Eyes' (published by Fourth
Estate London - ISBN 1-85702-599-7). If that still isn't enough, you can
always email Jim Derogatis (JimDeRo@aol.com). Tell him KindaMuzik sent you!
http://www.kindamuzik.net/achtergrond/709/psychedelic-music/486/
Meer op KindaMuzik: http://www.kindamuzik.net/artiest/709
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