The 1960s saw a lot of cognitive revolutions.
One of these revolutions, which I already
hinted at, was the hierarchical reversal between
the written word and the action.
Traditionally, in Western culture, writing
had superiority over action, and writers were
considered superior to performers.
The main reasons for it were that the written
word was regarded as more universal than the
private action, and more importantly, more
durable.
But towards the twentieth century, humanity
invented recording technologies that enabled
us to preserve actions as well, and the middle
of the century already saw the rise of people
who felt that the subordination to the written
word is oppressing the human spirit.
We've already met Jack Kerouac, who felt that
his art of writing was inferior to the art
of jazz musicians, and wanted to write the
way they played.
We've also met Allen Ginsberg, whose poetry
truly came to life only when he read it out
loud.
Here's Kerouac doing something similar, reading
excerpts from
'On  the Road'.
Dean Moriarty, the central figure of
the novel, is actually Neal Cassady, and the
book tries to capture the unique essence of
his personality.
What Cassady-Moriarty chases throughout the
story is what he calls "it".
He cannot explain what he means by "it", but
he finds it at some moments, usually in jazz
performances.
"It", as I understand it, is the feeling that
you are at the center of your existence, flowing
along with it, rather than being behind it
due to the time it takes your consciousness
to perceive it.
But you are not just passively flowing along,
but being an active force that affects the
direction of the flow.
Then you become "it", become the thing itself.
The novel portrays Cassady as a spontaneous
and energetic man, a man who flows from within,
a man who is closer than anyone to the ideal
of "it".
This was the ideal that the Beatniks aspired
to live by, and through it they distinguished
themselves from others.
The person who was rigid in his thinking,
enslaved to patterns that deny him the ability
to experience the flux of existence, was what
they called "square".
Whereas the person whose mind is tuned in
to the right wavelength was called "hip".
The Beatniks' goal, then, was to be free of
any mental rigidness, and develop an elastic
and flowing consciousness.
Beat consciousness is not something you can
read and learn, but only grasp intuitively,
get on the same wavelength.
The Merry Pranksters adopted this attitude,
and defined it as being "in the movie", part
of the plot of existence, not an outside viewer.
They too regarded Neal Cassady as the ideal
man, seeing him as someone who is always in
the movie, but they also took the philosophy
of Beat further and created an entire worldview
around it: the way they saw it, the universe
is synchronized and happiness is being part
of this synchronicity, but our consciousness
detaches us from it and therefore we are not
synchronized with the universe, and feel misery
as a result.
And so, whoever manages to overcome the mental
time lag and experience "it", experiences
the biggest joy of them all.
In music, as mentioned, the revolution occurred
sooner.
Traditionally, western music was also subordinate
to the written sign, so much so that the title
"musician" was taken away from the performers,
those who actually play the music, and given
to the composers, those who write it on paper.
In the 19th century, the cultural heroes were
composers such as Beethoven, Schumann and
Wagner, whereas the performers were less important.
But once the recording technologies reached
a point where you could get pleasure while
listening to a musical recording, the tables
began to turn.
The emphasis was shifted back to the musicians
themselves, those who actually play the music.
From that point, most youngsters preferred
to listen to pop music, which puts the emphasis
on the performance and the recording, above
classical music, which puts the emphasis on
the note sheet.
Nevertheless, the American pop industry, known
colloquially as Tin Pan Alley, was still bound
to old concepts, and maintained a clear distinction
between the different crafts: the lyricist
would write the lyrics, the composers would
set them to music, and the performers would
perform the songs.
Usually, the lyricist and composer were teamed
up to create a songwriting duo.
But the real heroes of pop music in the first
half of the 20th century were the jazz musicians,
who regarded Tin Pan Alley songs merely as
a starting point, on which you should improvise
and create music.
In jazz, the creative act takes place when
the music is played, not when it's written.
This is the ideal that the Beatniks tried
to bring into literature and poetry, and to
create the perfect art form, they wanted to
combine it with jazz music.
Unfortunately, by the 1950s, jazz drifted
away so much from the world of the pop songs
that it was almost impossible to attach lyrics
to it.
The attempts to marry Ginsberg style poetry
with jazz music were not very successful.
The salvation came from rock'n'roll, but it
took time until that happened.
At first, rock'n'roll was unruly teen music,
which shattered some of Tin Pan Alley's conventions.
But once the pop industry got over the initial
shock, it managed to put a leash on rock'n'roll,
and in the beginning of the sixties it became
pretty sophisticated music.
Again, it was songwriting teams who wrote
songs about the world of the adolescents,
with some clever musical arrangements.
This held on until the Beatles conquered America
in 1964, and after that, Tin Pan Alley never
went back to the way it was.
The Beatles signed their songs "Lennon-McCartney",
going by the old convention of a lyricist
and composer duo, but in reality there was
no such work division.
Both Lennon and McCartney wrote both lyrics
and music.
They created their songs spontaneously while
playing together, and the result were songs
that were tailor made for the band, and they
had the talent to make them no less sophisticated
than those of the professional songwriters.
The Beatles turned the pop band into an autonomous
unit that isn't dependent on anyone to create
its art, and everyone who came after them
internalized this change.
Under their influence, Bob Dylan also formed
a band, and managed to combine poetry with
music.
The electric guitars and keyboards, which
were developing fast in those years, allowed
the musicians to sustain a chord and bend
it in every direction, and thus match it to
the singing in a way that jazz blowers couldn't.
And they had another advantage: the ability
to create buzzing, distorted sounds that feel
like acid eating at your brain, sounds that
were previously unheard in music and had an
enormous novel effect.
These sounds, along with the elasticity of
rock, and freestyle improvised playing in
the style of bebop jazz, formed the basis
for what became known as acid rock.
And the first to concoct it were the Grateful
Dead.
The Grateful Dead belonged to the next generation
of rock'n'roll, the more sophisticated generation
that came in the wake of the Beatles.
The members of the band came from folk, jazz
and classical music, genres that considered
themselves superior to rock'n'roll, but the
combined attack of the Beatles, the Stones
and Dylan made them realize that rock'n'roll
is the true purveyor of the spirit of the
time.
The band formed in San Francisco in 1965,
and developed a style that started out from
a familiar tune of rock'n'roll, blues or folk,
but then broke in freestyle improvisations,
extending the piece into a long jam.
As part of the San Francisco scene, they soon
became acquainted with LSD and realized it
made them feel synchronized with each other,
as if one mind was controlling all of them.
The Merry Pranksters took notice, and felt
that these youngsters are on the same wavelength
as they are, so they invited them to be the
house band in their acid tests.
It didn't take long until the Pranksters began
to consider the Grateful Dead as the engine
driving the bus, as the band that creates
the music that expresses "it".
In a Grateful Dead performance, the ideal
was achieved.
The participants felt that they are losing
themselves, swallowed by the music, and the
music would take them on trips to unexpected
places, because it was completely improvised.
An ideal Grateful Dead concert had the band
mingle with the crowd, with everyone flying
high on psychedelics and everyone constituting
one tribe dancing together, each doing their
own thing but also being part of the whole.
But it's hard to find filmed documentation
of these concerts, because the Dead were afraid
that exposure will commercialize them and
detach them from this happy existence.
This is footage from 1967, filmed without
their knowledge.
It's a more standard performance, on stage,
but it does give some idea of their style.
We can witness the advantage rock has over
jazz, when it comes to manifesting the psychedelic
ideal.
When the band begins to sing, the members
stop improvising on their instruments and
start playing background chords, but the electricity
allows them to maintain the power and acidic
sound, creating a sense of continuity between
the singing parts and the instrumental parts,
continuity that bebop found it hard to create.
Thus, through acid rock, the ideal of merging
Beatnik poetry and bebop improvisations could
be achieved.
So the
Pranksters and the Grateful Dead largely managed
to live up to the ideal of Beat, but for that
they had to make some fundamental changes
to some of the ingredients of Beatnik culture:
rock instead of jazz, acid instead of cannabis,
wild dancing instead of meditative thought.
Of course, this did not escape the eyes of
the Beatniks, and while some of them joined
the revolution, many others didn't like the
new direction.
In the beginning of the sixties, when the
North Beach scene became too commercialized
for their taste, many of the Beatniks moved
to Haight Ashbury, a picturesque San Francisco
neighborhood.
But there, too, they found many youngsters
who wanted to imitate them and become part
of their world.
Annoyed by these upstarts, they started to
derisively refer to them as "Hippies" – meaning,
individuals who desperately want to be hip,
but don't really know how.
But it was these youngsters who had the last
laugh, because they formed the social crowd
that adopted the new gospel of the Pranksters
and the Dead, and turned Haight Ashbury into
the new cultural center.
In September 1965, a local newspaper published
an article on the new Beatnik scene, and used
the word 'Hippies' to distinguish its members.
The moniker stuck.
Another thing that the Beatniks bequeathed
to the Hippies was the attempt to add a lightshow
to the multimedia art they envisioned, so
there will be a visual element to complement
the poetry and music.
Here, too, the Beatniks didn't succeed, but
a decade later there was better technology,
which also blended in naturally with the electricity
of acid rock and allowed the Hippies to materialize
the vision.
The Merry Pranksters used a stroboscope to
project a plethora of lights and create a
kaleidoscopic effect, and the San Francisco
dance clubs adopted this technique, and invented
others, to create an overall experience.
Today it looks primitive, but back then it
was new and exhilarating.
This is the Fillmore Auditorium, one of the
main Hippie hangouts.
Check out the amazingly advanced technology
used to create the lightshow.
The band we see here is Jefferson Airplane,
one of the local bands that adopted the Grateful
Dead style.
Jefferson Airplane would also play long improvised
pieces, but their real power was actually
in writing three minute pop songs, something
the Dead were never good at, and they also
figured out how to squeeze acid rock into
the three minute format to produce hits.
They also had a good female singer, Grace
Slick, that had not only sex appeal but also
a powerful voice that could transfer the power
of acid rock.
Jefferson Airplane was the first band on the
scene that got a record contract, in the middle
of 1966, and they led the style out of the
underground in 67, with some major hits.
In this record they take surreal images out
of Alice in Wonderland and turn them into
a psychedelic trip.
And yet, Grace Slick was not the most powerful
female voice on the scene.
There was someone who surpassed her.
Big Brother & the Holding Company was a band
that played acid rock that veered towards
the blues, but their real asset was their
lead singer.
Janis Joplin was white, but she appropriated
and intensified the ecstatic style of black
soul singers.
Joplin, a free spirited and pleasure-seeking
chick, soon became the most recognizable Hippie,
the one who symbolized the culture in the
eyes of the world.
Another prominent band on the scene, which
solidified in the early months of 1966, was
Country Joe & the Fish, a band that came from
leftist folk but was taken over by psychedelia.
Country Joe wrote satirical and amusing songs
on political and social issues, and combined
his leftist approach with the Hippie message.
Here are some other bands on the San Francisco
scene, which played acid rock and nourished
the fledgling Hippie culture.
By late 66, the style began to have an effect
outside of San Francisco.
In Los Angeles, the band Love started out
playing nasty garage rock, but then changed
direction towards soulful ballads, with acid
inflections.
Another important band from LA was Frank Zappa
& the Mothers of Invention, a band that combined
the worlds of rock, doo-wop, jazz and classical
music, and threw it all into a psychedelic
cauldron to produce music that made fun of
all these worlds.
Their music was satirical, freestyle, unbound
by any rules, to the point of cacophony.
Zappa and his gang did not belong to the Hippie
subculture, but they took a lot from it, even
as they were ridiculing it.
In Austin, Texas, the 13th Floor Elevators
were busy developing their own sound.
It was basically a jug band, a country style
known for its wild mirth, but the Elevators
electrified the jug to intensify the merriment
and turn it into raucous garage rock.
This is their first single from 1966, and
after that they combined their sound with
acid rock.
In New York, a bunch of smart ass Beatniks
formed the Fugs, a band that tried to bring
the Beatnik spirit into sixties music, and
created anarchic and sarcastic rock.
Finally, we should mention another band that
operated in New York in 1966 and combined
free form rock music with a dazzling lightshow,
just like the Hippies.
But the Velvet Underground were in no way
a psychedelic band.
Actually, they were the antithesis of what
came out of San Francisco: different philosophy,
different drugs, different attitude.
They despised the Hippies, and were rejected
by them.
But they, too, played an important part in
the revolution that overtook rock'n'roll music
in 1966.
As we can see, acid rock took on slightly
different forms in every city.
That's because unlike today, young musicians
had no ability to see or hear what their peers
were doing in other places in the world at
that moment, and had to rely on hearsay from
those who travelled between the cities.
And so, the attempts to imitate San Francisco
produced various and original offshoots.
This was especially true for London, were
a psychedelic underground also started to
develop in 1966, revolving mainly around the
UFO club.
There were several bands on the scene, among
them the band that we are hearing now, Soft
Machine, which took its name from a book written
by the godfather of Beat, William Burroughs.
But the biggest British acid rock band was,
without a doubt…
The Pink Floyd is the best example for the
advantages of slow communication.
Its members heard wonders about what was going
on in San Francisco, wanted to match the Americans,
and ended up creating something more advanced.
While the San Francisco bands were dependent
on the lighting provided by the clubs they
played in, the Pink Floyd hired a team to
help them create their own unique lightshow,
and gave every song its own treatment.
They also experimented with sound systems,
and scattered loudspeakers all over the venue
to create a feeling that the music is coming
from every direction and flooding the listener.
Musically, the Haight Ashbury bands improvised
within regular blues scales, while the Floyd
blended eastern scales into their music, displayed
influences of avant-Garde composers like Stockhausen,
and were not shy of including sounds that
were considered non-musical.
The Pink Floyd brought the model of the autonomous
band
to new heights.
We see how much this music was unfathomable
to those who grew on classical music, and
were therefore bound to the form of the music
instead of trying to open up to the experience.
On the one hand, the musicologist is open
minded enough to admit that maybe the problem
is with him.
But even with this open-mindedness, he still
displays a snobbish attitude and believes
that he is the musician, as if his musical
logic is the real one, and there could be
no other.
But the kids who grew up on rock'n'roll were
ready to understand music that was driven
by its own rules, not enslaved to the logic
of written music.
Despite his misgivings, the music of the Pink
Floyd emerged triumphant, and it still sounds
fresh and exciting, even fifty years later.
Most clips we see here are from 1967, and
that is because in 1966, the exciting year
in which acid rock took form, it was still
underground, and was not filmed.
The 1966 clips we saw, like the 13th Floor
Elevators, sound more like mid-sixties rock'n'roll,
with touches of acid.
This is the most that the general public was
able to take that year.
But all of that was about to change.
Towards the end of 1966, Ken Kesey came back
from his exile in Mexico, and, true to the
Prankster credo, began popping up in different
places in San Francisco, including appearing
on TV, and daring the police to catch him.
Eventually he got caught, was brought before
a judge, and released on probation due to
his declaration that he came back to tell
the youngsters to stop taking drugs.
The authorities were hoping that he was going
to talk about how dangerous the drugs are,
but Kesey had different reasons to abandon
LSD.
The way he saw it, the drugs were just a way
to achieve a higher level of consciousness,
and now that we've achieved it, it is time
to move on and look for the thing that will
take us to the next level.
Therefore, he summoned the Merry Pranksters
and the Grateful Dead for one last acid test,
named The Acid Graduation Test, which will
be based only on music, no drugs, and will
mark the transition to the next phase.
Kesey didn't know what the next phase will
be, but believed it will emerge during the
test.
But the graduation ended in failure: no new
idea was born out of the event, and the only
thing it marked was the demise of the Merry
Pranksters.
But the seed the Pranksters have sown has
already sprouted, and was beginning to grow
and spawn.
Acid rock was now the center of San Francisco's
bohemian life, the thing around which everything
else revolved.
The psychedelic scene was now trickling into
the consciousness of the people living outside
the golden city, and what was more important,
acid was beginning to trickle into the music
of the leading pop bands, and from early 1967
it was going to wash over the pop world and
change it beyond recognition.
Summer was coming, and it was going to be
a very special Summer.
