Garage Band, The 1960's - Rock & Roll is Dead
Rock and Roll is dead! Or at least it has been for me, since about 1973. Its corpse is resurrected every decade or so, but since that last golden year, the music as a whole hasn't done much but regurgitate its past—an aging fashion show trotted out for a new generation too young to remember its glory days. There have been moments when it has tried mightily to resuscitate itself, but without much success.
Such is the nature of commerce and art. There is a moment when the necessary confluence of cultural forces conspires to bring change—and then as quickly as it arrives and the money changes hands, the decline begins. Its short life is much like a band. Raw desire, coupled with a youthful urge to play, brings musicians of disparate backgrounds together who share a vision—one that’s not much more complex than the three chords and a backbeat that forms the basis of all American music. If you’re lucky, there is a natural chemistry. And, if you’re luckier still, you find a place to practice and begin to wail. Every band starts out in more or less the same way, a couple of friends, a garage and someone who has tolerant parents who are willing to subject their home to a rock-and-roll invasion.
My own first band was a power trio, formed in the heat of the sixties and bathed in the luminosity of other great power trios, like Blue Cheer, Cream and The Jimi Hendrix Experience—thirteen-year-olds with a thirst for power chords and explosive riffs. We weren't exactly a garage band, we were more underground, to be exact, we played in a basement.
Our stage was a cement platform raised about four inches off the floor. To the one side was a toilet, which doubled as a seat when the mood changed and the need for a ballad was required. The other side was wide open, perfect for a dance floor, enabling the writhing bodies of the just-barely, teenage-girls, who danced together in lieu of any willing, male, partners. The boys took root at the side of the stage with a stoic cool, feigning indifference, while the band furiously played something that resembled music. This had the effect of transforming the place where my friend’s mother did her laundry, into a psychedelic cavern of libidinous possibilities. And as a lead guitarist and vocalists, my stature was elevated to new heights with every riff that I played. It didn’t matter whether it was any good or not, it only mattered that my peers had a new way in which to see me. I was a rock musician, not a very good one mind you, but, just being one was enough.
Such is the nature of commerce and art. There is a moment when the necessary confluence of cultural forces conspires to bring change—and then as quickly as it arrives and the money changes hands, the decline begins. Its short life is much like a band. Raw desire, coupled with a youthful urge to play, brings musicians of disparate backgrounds together who share a vision—one that’s not much more complex than the three chords and a backbeat that forms the basis of all American music. If you’re lucky, there is a natural chemistry. And, if you’re luckier still, you find a place to practice and begin to wail. Every band starts out in more or less the same way, a couple of friends, a garage and someone who has tolerant parents who are willing to subject their home to a rock-and-roll invasion.
My own first band was a power trio, formed in the heat of the sixties and bathed in the luminosity of other great power trios, like Blue Cheer, Cream and The Jimi Hendrix Experience—thirteen-year-olds with a thirst for power chords and explosive riffs. We weren't exactly a garage band, we were more underground, to be exact, we played in a basement.
Our stage was a cement platform raised about four inches off the floor. To the one side was a toilet, which doubled as a seat when the mood changed and the need for a ballad was required. The other side was wide open, perfect for a dance floor, enabling the writhing bodies of the just-barely, teenage-girls, who danced together in lieu of any willing, male, partners. The boys took root at the side of the stage with a stoic cool, feigning indifference, while the band furiously played something that resembled music. This had the effect of transforming the place where my friend’s mother did her laundry, into a psychedelic cavern of libidinous possibilities. And as a lead guitarist and vocalists, my stature was elevated to new heights with every riff that I played. It didn’t matter whether it was any good or not, it only mattered that my peers had a new way in which to see me. I was a rock musician, not a very good one mind you, but, just being one was enough.
This was the power of being in a rock band in the late 1960’s, at least as imagined by a trio of adolescent’s caught up in the thrall of “the new” rock music. Not rock and roll, which had been shaped by poor southern culture, but rock—hard edged, experimental, laced with the protest ethic of Bob Dylan and infused with the jazz-man’s need for improvisation and reinvention.
It was a music created by a new generation of musicians. Some came from England; others came from places well east of the Deep South. The only cotton they ever picked was the lint off their shirts—Ivy Leaguers and liberals with a political ideology closer to Ho Chi Minh and Che Guevara than Bull Connor and Huey Long.
These were our idols. They gave birth to the extended solo in pop music and created the image of the guitar player as a heroic figure. Just the name Eric Clapton alone sounded like one of the Norsemen of legend. And so we practiced, frantically wiggling our fingers on guitars bought from the Sears catalogue, paid for by cutting lawns and summer jobs—and sometimes by generous parents who were anxious that their little darlings not get caught up in hoodlum like activities. Far better to play the blues than puffing some Mary Jane like those beatnik, hippie, and war protesting punks—little did they know.
With the new music came a new journalism, an underground press that could transmit messages beyond the purview of our parents and other authority figures. Magazines like Rolling Stone, Creem and Crawdaddy told of the latest happenings in concerts and clubs, as well as in Rock festivals in far off lands. And sometimes, even television, with its conservative ethic, would offer up bands that played music that fell somewhere between Miles Davis and Muddy Waters, with a fashion sense that echoed both The Hell’s Angels and an androgyny’s freak show.
On the other side of the segregated isle, that was 1960’s America, were the soul acts, wearing tight, shark-skin pants and black, pointed toed, Puerto Rican, roach-killer-shoes—called that because they were favored by New York Puerto Ricans—and because of the severity of the pointed toe, making it easy to kill any cucaracha that made its way into a tight corner.
It was a music created by a new generation of musicians. Some came from England; others came from places well east of the Deep South. The only cotton they ever picked was the lint off their shirts—Ivy Leaguers and liberals with a political ideology closer to Ho Chi Minh and Che Guevara than Bull Connor and Huey Long.
These were our idols. They gave birth to the extended solo in pop music and created the image of the guitar player as a heroic figure. Just the name Eric Clapton alone sounded like one of the Norsemen of legend. And so we practiced, frantically wiggling our fingers on guitars bought from the Sears catalogue, paid for by cutting lawns and summer jobs—and sometimes by generous parents who were anxious that their little darlings not get caught up in hoodlum like activities. Far better to play the blues than puffing some Mary Jane like those beatnik, hippie, and war protesting punks—little did they know.
With the new music came a new journalism, an underground press that could transmit messages beyond the purview of our parents and other authority figures. Magazines like Rolling Stone, Creem and Crawdaddy told of the latest happenings in concerts and clubs, as well as in Rock festivals in far off lands. And sometimes, even television, with its conservative ethic, would offer up bands that played music that fell somewhere between Miles Davis and Muddy Waters, with a fashion sense that echoed both The Hell’s Angels and an androgyny’s freak show.
On the other side of the segregated isle, that was 1960’s America, were the soul acts, wearing tight, shark-skin pants and black, pointed toed, Puerto Rican, roach-killer-shoes—called that because they were favored by New York Puerto Ricans—and because of the severity of the pointed toe, making it easy to kill any cucaracha that made its way into a tight corner.
The soul acts, unlike most of the rock bands, were vocal driven, with an emphasis on groove and feel. They produced some of the greatest singers and songwriters of the era. Radio, while still segregated, played plenty of cross-over music. Sam and Dave, Wilson Pickett, Otis Redding, James Brown and Motown were played right alongside The Beatles, The Stones, Bob Dylan and the 1910 Fruit-Bat Company. The soul acts tended to sing about love and sex, while the rock bands sang about sex, drugs and electric bananas.
That was the sound of the 1960’s and the template for my own first band. On rhythm guitar was John Trump, a cousin of the then unknown, Donald Trump; albeit, from the poorer wing of the family. On drums was Rich McCracken, a short, wiry Ginger Baker wannabe who resembled an anemic twelve-year-old Buddy Holly, replete with black, horn-rimmed glasses. His drum set was an old waste paper basket, which he used as a bass drum, a pair of sand buckets that were used as tom toms, and a plastic snare drum with a broken head, conveniently covered in rain coat material. I was on lead guitar and vocals, dressed in a pair of skin-tight bell bottoms and Nehru jacket, playing with eyes closed, a stern grimace of blues intensity on my face, trying desperately to figure out how to stretch the three Chuck Berry licks that I had memorized into a solo of Clapton-esque proportions.
John and I would hammer mercilessly on our guitars, which had been chosen based upon the number of knobs and switches, creating the impression that they could easily double as Swiss army knives, just in case a rumble were to break out or somebody had a camping emergency. Our guitars were powered by a couple of tiny amplifiers which enabled us to attain maximum feedback by pressing our guitars against the amp and then wait for the riot to begin. It was the stuff of legend, if only as remembered by us.
That was the sound of the 1960’s and the template for my own first band. On rhythm guitar was John Trump, a cousin of the then unknown, Donald Trump; albeit, from the poorer wing of the family. On drums was Rich McCracken, a short, wiry Ginger Baker wannabe who resembled an anemic twelve-year-old Buddy Holly, replete with black, horn-rimmed glasses. His drum set was an old waste paper basket, which he used as a bass drum, a pair of sand buckets that were used as tom toms, and a plastic snare drum with a broken head, conveniently covered in rain coat material. I was on lead guitar and vocals, dressed in a pair of skin-tight bell bottoms and Nehru jacket, playing with eyes closed, a stern grimace of blues intensity on my face, trying desperately to figure out how to stretch the three Chuck Berry licks that I had memorized into a solo of Clapton-esque proportions.
John and I would hammer mercilessly on our guitars, which had been chosen based upon the number of knobs and switches, creating the impression that they could easily double as Swiss army knives, just in case a rumble were to break out or somebody had a camping emergency. Our guitars were powered by a couple of tiny amplifiers which enabled us to attain maximum feedback by pressing our guitars against the amp and then wait for the riot to begin. It was the stuff of legend, if only as remembered by us.
America, in the 1960’s was, as Dickens wrote in “A Tale of Two Cities” “the best of times and the worst of times”. It was a period of unprecedented prosperity, of civil and uncivil disobedience and generational change. And all of it fed our sense of purpose, even if we had no real understanding of its meaning.
One night, while hanging out with a friend, playing guitars and jamming some blues, the local radio DJ announced Bobby Kennedy had just been shot and was believed to be dead. Another time I was walking home from band practice with my guitar in hand, when a convoy of maybe a hundred cars filled with angry black folk came driving down the main-street, fists clenched and raised in black power salutes, signaled a change was about to come. This did not happen in a place like Sharon Pennsylvania, maybe Chicago, or even civil rights embattled Mississippi, but not our little town. It was a sign of the times. But, for that one moment, it was just another in a long line of happenings, to be taken in and sifted for meaning at some later date.
It was a decade of triumph and turmoil. Where success quickly became hubris, freedom became license, and hope became anger. The 1960’s gave us a decade of political assassinations, the civil rights movement in full throttle and the woman’s movement, both of which were the seed bed of future liberation ideologies—and war, protracted and observed nightly on television, creating a historical first that had wide ranging repercussions.
What had begun in the previous decade, not surprisingly, carried into the seventies. There was no awakening to a new decade with a new attitude. People got tired, tired of war, and tired of conflict. The civil rights battles had been won for the moment and the door to Jim Crow had been broken down—the Vietnam War came to an end—and the hippies began cutting their hair. A generation of parents and their children had changed perceptibly from the onrush of the turbulent, future-shock of the decade—and then exhausted, sat, and waited for the smoke to clear. Riotous times require an equally riotous and powerful soundtrack. In some very small way, we added our voices to the mix.
It’s been years since I played in a band, and for the most part it’s easier to make music alone, unencumbered by egos and alternative opinions, but there's a social element to making music that’s about more than just music.
It may be that the essential ingredient of all pop culture is youthful ignorance—a commodity in short supply as we get older (I mean the youth part, not the ignorance!). If that’s the case, then rock and roll will never die.
Mark Magula
One night, while hanging out with a friend, playing guitars and jamming some blues, the local radio DJ announced Bobby Kennedy had just been shot and was believed to be dead. Another time I was walking home from band practice with my guitar in hand, when a convoy of maybe a hundred cars filled with angry black folk came driving down the main-street, fists clenched and raised in black power salutes, signaled a change was about to come. This did not happen in a place like Sharon Pennsylvania, maybe Chicago, or even civil rights embattled Mississippi, but not our little town. It was a sign of the times. But, for that one moment, it was just another in a long line of happenings, to be taken in and sifted for meaning at some later date.
It was a decade of triumph and turmoil. Where success quickly became hubris, freedom became license, and hope became anger. The 1960’s gave us a decade of political assassinations, the civil rights movement in full throttle and the woman’s movement, both of which were the seed bed of future liberation ideologies—and war, protracted and observed nightly on television, creating a historical first that had wide ranging repercussions.
What had begun in the previous decade, not surprisingly, carried into the seventies. There was no awakening to a new decade with a new attitude. People got tired, tired of war, and tired of conflict. The civil rights battles had been won for the moment and the door to Jim Crow had been broken down—the Vietnam War came to an end—and the hippies began cutting their hair. A generation of parents and their children had changed perceptibly from the onrush of the turbulent, future-shock of the decade—and then exhausted, sat, and waited for the smoke to clear. Riotous times require an equally riotous and powerful soundtrack. In some very small way, we added our voices to the mix.
It’s been years since I played in a band, and for the most part it’s easier to make music alone, unencumbered by egos and alternative opinions, but there's a social element to making music that’s about more than just music.
It may be that the essential ingredient of all pop culture is youthful ignorance—a commodity in short supply as we get older (I mean the youth part, not the ignorance!). If that’s the case, then rock and roll will never die.
Mark Magula
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