In the previous two episodes, we followed
the collapse of the counter-culture that emerged
out of the ideals of acid-rock, and its descent
into hard drugs, revolutionary violence, dialectic
thought and esoteric mysticism.
In this chapter we will see how the rock artists
dealt with the situation, and what solutions
they offered.
Bob Dylan regarded the counter-culture, which
practically emerged out of his loins, with
contempt almost from day one.
In 1967, when psychedelia ruled the world
and many bands tried to imitate his surrealist
lyrical style, Dylan himself sought other
directions.
He didn't connect to psychedelia, and regarded
Sgt.
Pepper as the end of the Beatles.
In contrast, he went back to good ole' country
music, and released the album John Wesley
Harding, a cornerstone of country-rock.
And in 1968, when the counter-culture became
revolutionary, Dylan reacted with icy disdain.
While the revolutionaries saw him as their
prophet, Dylan distanced himself from the
music world, and in the next five years he
provided very few new records or performances.
The records he did release ignored the counter-culture,
and when the young revolutionaries turned
to him for advice or reassurance, they encountered
the same sarcastic mockery he aimed at the
establishment.
In general, he seemed like someone who just
waits for all of this revolutionary nonsense
to end.
So Dylan didn't share his genius with us in
those years, and didn't release records that
permeated the spirit of the time like he did
in other periods.
But there were other geniuses working in the
rock world, and they actually found the tumultuous
period to be a goldmine for artistic ideas.
One such genius was Pete Townshend, guitarist
and leader of the Who.
In the mid-sixties, Townshend wrote brilliant
songs that portrayed and criticized youth
culture and daily life in London, and together
with the band he turned them into superb pop
records.
At the end of the decade, he decided it was
time to try something more ambitious, and
in 1969 he gave us the album Tommy, considered
to be the first rock opera.
The story is about a young boy named Tommy,
who witnesses a murder committed by his parents,
and the trauma makes him detach from the world
and become deaf, dumb and blind.
Instead of being part of the criminal world
of his parents, he lives in his inner world,
which is full of wondrous sights and sounds,
and goes on mind trips.
You can see that as an allegory to youth culture,
which broke away from the malfunctioned world
created by the previous generations, and created
a purer world of music and fun.
The Who use psychedelic music to express Tommy's
inner world.
His parents, in the meantime, try all the
known methods to snap him out of his autism,
but to no avail.
Tommy does actually want to connect, and is
constantly asking "see me, feel me, touch
me, heal me", but the old methods are incapable
of understanding his inner truth, incapable
of seeing and touching him.
His inner world is completely alienated to
the outside world.
Until one day, he finds an external object
that he can connect with: the pinball machine,
whose rings and flashes are compatible with
his inner world.
The pinball machine, at the time, was illegal
in some places, because it was claimed that
it leads the youth to gambling.
It can therefore be seen as a symbol for all
the illegal pleasures, which the counter-culture
regarded as the key to salvation.
Tommy becomes a pinball wizard, the champion,
and wins the adoration of the youth.
Eventually this leads him to break out of
his prison, and he can see, hear and speak
again.
He announces that he is free, and furthermore,
that he is the messiah that will set us all
free, and teach us how to be happy.
When he gathers enough followers who believe
in his gospel, Tommy arranges a camp where
he shows them the road to salvation: every
follower gets covers for their ears, eyes
and mouth, making them deaf, dumb and blind
like he was, and then they are told to play
pinball.
But, of course, none of them finds happiness
in this way – the pinball machine was compatible
only with Tommy's inner world, and it doesn't
do a thing for them.
They all ditch him, and he is once again left
alone and alienated.
The message is quite clear.
The Hippies found the psychedelic experience
that brought them happiness, and believed
that they discovered the truth that will bring
happiness to everyone, and that they need
to spread it to the world.
However, says Townshend, the psychedelic experience
is no more than Tommy's pinball machine: something
that corresponds to the inner world of some
people, but not any universal and eternal
truth that is for everyone.
The closing track calls on us to not drown
in our own private thoughts, but open up and
enjoy the daily contact with people.
After this classic album, Townshend went for
something even more ambitious, and envisioned
a piece that will use electronic synthesizers
to combine music and technology, and create
a completely new experience that will connect
directly to the brain.
We'll never know what exactly he had in mind,
because he didn't manage to bring it to fruition,
but some of the songs he wrote for it appeared
on the next album, aptly named 'Who's Next'.
One of the tracks on the album constitutes
Townshend's final word on the revolutionary
aspirations of his generation.
The protagonist is a musician who lives in
a time of a bloody revolution, and finds a
place to hide until it blows over.
When things calm down and the new regime is
in place, he comes out of his hiding to see
what has changed, and finds that there have
been some cosmetic changes, but in essence,
everything has remained the same.
This was the Who's position: they were still
Mods, who believed that there is nothing better
than daily life in a bourgeois society.
Happiness is to be found in creating alternative
spaces within this society, not by trying
to destroy it to create a different society.
The final verdict on the revolution, any revolution,
is provided in the last line…
Like Dylan, then, the Who have always been
cynical about the revolution, so they were
not disheartened by its failure.
But there were also many rockers who were
part of the counter-culture and identified
with at least part of its revolutionary values,
and they experienced the crisis of the death
of the dream.
These rockers were now required to give answers
to the dismayed youth, show it how to deal
with the world of the seventies.
In the sixties, the Beatles were the ones
showing the way, but every member of the Beatles
now had to deal with the situation on his
own, since by 1969, they weren't really a
band anymore.
Paul McCartney opened 69 with a prayer that
a day will come when humans will come to an
agreement, and create a world based on love.
This was McCartney's solution: a turn towards
sentimentalism, connecting to traditional
Western values.
After the Beatles disbanded, Paul continued
to fuse rock with more traditional musical
styles, and thus weave sixties music and values
into the texture of Western culture.
But he refrained from delving deeply into
the problems, and was content with simple
and universal messages.
George Harrison, who lived in the shadow of
Lennon and McCartney and couldn't fully express
himself within the band, actually thrived
after the breakup, and emerged as a magnificently
talented creator, combining blues-rock with
Eastern influences.
He continued to develop the mystical course
he charted in 1966, and presented a sort of
universal spirituality which seeks peace and
love.
When it came to dealing with social and political
issues, however, Harrison was either simplistic
like he is here, or philosophical.
Like McCartney, he maintained the spirit of
the Summer of Love and anchored it in older
traditions, but kept the message simple.
While in the sixties the Beatles could combine
their spiritual endeavors with commentary
on what was going on in the world, the reality
of the seventies didn't lend itself to it,
and Paul and George were no longer part of
the spirit of the time.
As for John Lennon, here the story was a lot
more complicated and interesting.
In 1968, still part of the Beatles, Lennon
wrote the song 'Revolution', attacking the
Marxist elements that infiltrated to counter-culture,
and reminding it of its original values.
Instead of trying to bring down the establishment,
he says, you'd better focus on freeing your
mind.
He sympathizes with their revolutionary impulses,
and says that we all want to change the world,
but when you talk about destruction, he says,
know that you can count me out.
Strong words indeed, but right after that,
he says…
He adds "in" as an aside.
Turns out that Lennon wasn't absolutely sure
about his position on revolutionary Marxism.
There was something in it that spoke to him,
and it left him wavering, and not sure that
when the revolution comes, he will stay on
the sidelines, and not join in on the destruction
of the system.
The next couple of years were hard for Lennon,
as he had to witness the death of the Summer
of Love dream, along with the demise of his
band.
As someone who positioned himself as one of
the spokespersons of the peace/love movement
with anthems like 'All You Need is Love' and
'Give Peace a Chance', he now had to deal
with its downfall.
In the song 'God', from 1970, he angrily smashes
all the heroes of the sixties, the fallen idols.
A moment of silence, and then…
To me, this is the most touching moment in
all of Lennon's outstanding canon.
Having destroyed his old self, he now creates
himself anew, as a common man.
He no longer wants to be our weaver of utopian
dreams.
All he wants is to live a simple life, with
his wife Yoko.
The dream was over.
But it's hard to live without dreaming, and
a year later, in the record 'Imagine', Lennon
once again weaved a utopian dream.
It is quite a magical record, but when you
peel the layers of magic, you realize that
the utopian world he wants us to imagine is
tremendously boring, and is nothing more than
the old Marxist vision.
We've seen that there was a duality in Lennon's
soul, and so, when the Hippie dream died,
the only option he had left to keep the hope
alive was to fall back into Marxism.
And so, the ironic, whimsical, imaginative
and enchanting poet faded away, and in its
place came a protest singer who wrote simpleminded
Marxist anthems – still with exceptional
talent, for sure, but nothing close to the
quality he produced in the sixties.
In late 1971 he left Britain and settled in
New York, and was immediately welcomed by
the Yippies, who made him part of their far-left
politics.
In 1972 he released the album 'Some Time in
New York City', which was pretty much made
of nothing but John and Yoko preaching leftist
platitudes, to the tune of plain anthemic
music.
The album got thrashed by the rock critics,
and received poorly by the record buying public
as well, and Lennon learned that he has lost
touch with the spirit of the time.
At the end of the year, the presidential elections
ended with a resounding victory for President
Nixon, who won 49 of 50 states, a reelection
that was partly due to the disgust the public
felt towards the far left.
The Marxist revolutionaries of the late sixties
were sure that the public was on their side,
and the revolution is right around the corner.
By 1972, they learned how wrong they were.
An example of Lennon's approach in this period
is the record 'Woman is the Nigger of the
World'.
Lennon here adopts the line of dialectic feminism,
and does it from a man's perspective - that
is, from the perspective of the oppressor
– calling on other men to realize what we
are doing to our women.
Lennon, like many men at the time, was abusive
towards his women, and this record is a step
forward for him, an admission that he has
to change.
But he goes too far.
The record exposes the problem in dialectic
thought, which believes that the oppressed
class is a victim, whose consciousness is
completely imposed on it by the ruling class.
When he sings "we make her paint her face
and dance", it implies that women dance and
put on makeup solely for the pleasure of men.
This completely ignores the fact that dancing
and looking good are things that are enjoyable
in themselves, and not just done for someone
else.
It also ignores the fact that makeup can be
a way for a woman to express her creativity.
In short, on its way to liberate women of
all the things that men allegedly put into
them, feminism also trampled on many customs
that bring women joy, and demanded of them
to hate themselves because they like these
customs.
The result was that many women rejected feminism.
What still gives Lennon's messages power is
that he wasn't one of those middle-class bleeding
heart liberals, but a complex man who was
familiar with the darkness of the human mind.
A troubled and angry orphan, a working-class
boy who grew up with hooligans and was a bit
of a hooligan himself, a man who suffered
from emotional disabilities and was aware
of it, Lennon honestly tried to bridge the
gap between his lofty ideals and his flawed
human nature.
The sixties were a decade of revolutions in
many areas of daily life, revolutions that
made the world freer, but left the following
decades with the mission of creating values
that would fit this world.
Lennon reflects these struggles, in his personality
as well as in his music.
In one thing, Lennon remained consistent even
in this period.
He never abandoned his conviction that the
change should be achieved in a non-violent
way.
As we hear in 'Imagine', he doesn't believe
in actively overthrowing the system, but presents
the Marxist dream for us and asks us to imagine
it, hoping that this will make us come around
to his point of view.
Lennon's Marxism was angry but not hateful,
and in that he was better than most Marxist
manifestations of the time.
Unlike many of his contemporaries, Lennon
took the slogan "make love, not war" seriously,
and kept on believing that love will triumph
eventually, if we remain true to it.
In 73 he released the album 'Mind Games',
that was not a return to form, but was better
than its predecessor.
The title track brings back some of the magic,
and reiterates his message: love is a flower,
which has to grow before it can conquer the world. And it will grow only if
we keep on talking to each other, and try to settle our differences peacefully.
On the personal level, Lennon was pretty lost.
Without the Beatles, with the revolution turning
out to be a total failure, he needed to find
something to live for.
At the end of 1973 he separated from Yoko,
moved to Los Angeles, and embarked on what
was essentially a drunken spree that lasted
a year and a half.
His condition pretty much reflected the condition
of the Hippie culture at the time.
With the disappearance of Dylan and the disintegration
of the Beatles, someone needed to fill the
void.
And the band that stepped up in the late sixties
was a band that didn't exactly identify with
the revolution, but drew a lot of its spirit
into its art.
From 1968 onward, the band that assumed leadership
over the rock world, and emerged as the main
purveyor of the spirit of the time, was the
Rolling Stones.
The Stones, as we recall, were symbols of
youth rebellion from the start, ever since
1963, when they presented themselves as the
antithesis to the Beatles' nice boy image.
In 1965, they released their first youth disaffection
anthem.
'(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction' is an attack
on consumer society, which provides you with
endless products that give you pleasure, but
nothing that brings full satisfaction.
But the Stones, unlike Marxists, are not demanding
a revolution that will create a world where
you will be satisfied.
On the contrary, they sound like they are
taking their vital energies from this state
of constant dissatisfaction.
That's the philosophical problem in the materialist
worldview: it argues that satisfaction is
happiness, and dissatisfaction is suffering.
Marxism revolts against capitalism and consumer
culture, but just like them it is a materialist
view, which accuses capitalism of not satisfying
our needs, and wants to replace it with a
system that will guarantee full satisfaction.
Capitalism and Marxism, then, are not as opposed
to each other as they'd like to think.
They are just two sides of the same materialist
coin, which cannot provide true happiness.
Pop culture, on the other hand, holds a different
position: the state of full satisfaction is
a neutral state, while happiness is actually
in a state where you have some dissatisfaction,
and you act to fulfill it.
At some point dissatisfaction becomes suffering,
but mild dissatisfaction is a necessary condition
for the pursuit of happiness.
The Rolling Stones are the greatest representatives
of this approach, they are the ones who remind
us that emotions like hunger and lust are
what gives you the feeling you're alive, and
the moments when you act to fulfill them are
those that bring elation.
"I can't get no satisfaction" shouts Jagger,
and the feeling he transmits isn't that he
is complaining about the situation, but rather
that he is proud of being someone who is never
satisfied.
The Stones, then, posited the youth as a generation
that is never satisfied, but is driven by
a constant craving that brings it joy.
In contrast, they posited the older generations,
and portrayed them as looking to forget the
hunger, forget existence.
'Mother's Little Helper', that came out in
mid-66, is one of the first rock'n'roll records
that explicitly referenced drugs, and it mocks
the housewives who get addicted to tranquilizing
pills, to escape their daily problems.
Meaning, that instead of taking drugs to achieve
elation, like the youth does, the adults are
taking drugs to feel nothing.
This is one of the records that took the Stones
into the psychedelic period, but this period
didn't exactly suit them.
At the basis of psychedelia was the Hippie
dream of going back to Heaven, but Heaven
is a place where there is no want, a place
where all your needs are satisfied.
In other words, Paradise is a place where
there is no happiness, just boredom.
In 1967, the Stones released the psychedelic
album Their Satanic Majesties Request, which
looks and sounds like other Summer of Love
albums, but when you go into it, you find
darker content.
In the opening track, the Stones invite us
to sing along with them, saying that if we
do that, we may find where we all come from.
So, it's about self-introspection, like we've
seen in other psychedelic records.
What the self-introspection reveals is that
our belief in progress is nonsense.
At heart we are all still savages, still the
same superstitious jungle dwellers who bang
on our drums to bring the rain.
This is pretty much the belief that we will
find in subsequent Stones records.
1967 wasn't a good year for the Rolling Stones,
but the following year, when the dreams of
the Summer of Love crashed against the rocks
of reality, was perfect for them.
After their passage through psychedelia, Jagger
was now ready to spring like a monster out
of the subconscious, and represent our inner
savage.
Their first 1968 record reinstated them as
the epitome of youth rebellion.
The next record kept the momentum going, and
was more in tune with the reality of the moment.
The opening verse paraphrases the classic
Motown record 'Dancing in the Street', by
Martha and the Vandellas from 1964, which
announces that summer is here, and the time
is right for dancing in the street.
It was one of the records that heralded what
was to come, declaring that youth culture
is now ready to burst from the dance clubs
out into the streets, and fill the world with
rock'n'roll.
Only four years have passed, but youth culture
has changed beyond recognition, and was no
longer expressing itself through dancing. Now it was about…
But, he mourns, London has remained sleepy,
and has not experienced the riots that overtook
other cities in the world that year.
All that a street fighter like himself can
do is take his anarchic urges and turn them
into rock'n'roll.
He proceeds to describe the fantasies of mayhem
and destruction that fill his mind, while
the band backs him up with its aggressive
and explosive rock'n'roll power.
What the Stones are telling us is that what
drives the revolutionaries, at least some
of them, is not the wish to create a better
world, but the savage appetite for destruction
that is at the heart of every human.
This record, then, continues the line of 'I
can't Get No Satisfaction', in that it expresses
inner urges without looking for release that
will bring satisfaction, but rather relishes
in the feeling of dissatisfaction and turns
it into vital and vigorous rock'n'roll.
This is the attitude that ruled Stones records,
and it allowed them to connect to the darkest
impulses in the human soul, to express them
through their records without succumbing to
them, and to make great art out of it.
Unlike early rock'n'roll singers like Little
Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis, who would give
in completely to what came from inside and
would achieve full orgasmic release, Jagger
was always in control, never being taken over
by the impulses, but always riding them.
Here he allows the anarchistic impulses inside
him to bubble to the surface, but masters
them and turns them into art, and refrains
from falling into the trap of joining a revolutionary
political movement.
The Stones kept toeing the same line in the
album Beggars Banquet, which came out towards
the end of the year, and captured the tumultuous
spirit of 68.
The highlight is the track 'Sympathy for the
Devil', in which, over a beat that sounds
like it came straight out of the jungle, Jagger
assumes the character of Lucifer, dancing
through the chaos and bloodshed around him,
and celebrating his victory.
With these records, the Stones solidified
their status as the bad boys of rock, and
utilized this image to express the wicked
side of humanity, pouring cold water over
the naivete of the Hippies and the Marxists,
who believed that the nature of Man is good.
In 69, after the Beatles released 'Let it
Be', the Stones counteracted with Let it Bleed,
an album that lives up to its name.
The album doesn't try to cover the mortal
wounds of the counter-culture with naïve
songs that maintain the faith in its righteousness,
but rather opens up the wounds and digs into
them, letting the blood flow freely, turning
it into rattling rock'n'roll.
The title track starts out as a song that
calls on us to hold each other and lean on
each other, and sounds like another song from
the Hippie school of peace/love.
But the more it progresses, the more morbid
it becomes, and the mutual holding turns into
mutilation and cannibalism.
From here, the Stones went on and released
two more classic albums: Sticky Fingers in
1971, and Exile on Main Street in 1972.
Through these four albums, the Stones documented
all that happened in the period between 68
and 72: social disintegration, violence in
the streets, racial tensions, fascination
with dark mysticism, hard drug abuse, loss
of belief in the future, and the fall from
the peaks of joy to the pits of despair.
They were still the bad boys of rock, who
seemed to be living everything their albums
expressed, but their art was rich, and explored
the subjects from many different angles.
The opening track of Let it Bleed, once again,
describes the chaos and death all around,
but this time it does it not through rock'n'roll
exultation that wants to be part of this bedlam,
but through bluesy sadness that manifests
existential dread, and a wish to escape and
find shelter somewhere, before we are consumed
by the flames.
If you tried hard, you could find comfort
in the Stones' albums.
The closing track of Let it Bleed seems to
be answering 'I can't Get No Satisfaction',
and tells us: you can't always get what you
want, but if you try sometime, you'll get
what you need.
In the four intermediary years, youth culture
turned to revolution and tried to achieve
full satisfaction, but failed.
But out of such attempts, the Stones tell
us, we might find what is needed to be happy.
Four more years went by, in which the revolutionary
dream melted away completely, and in 1973
the Stones released a record that sort of
closes the trilogy.
It is a love and comfort ballad for a woman,
who is sad because their mutual dreams have
evaporated, and it's easy to see this woman
as a metaphor for the entire generation, which
Jagger is trying to console.
The goal, he reminds us, was not to find satisfaction.
The goal was to try, and through that, get
what we need.
And now, when it's all over, we have the memory
of the fantastic journey we went through together.
And so, youth culture landed back into reality,
and rock music had to deal with it.
It was time for introspection.
In 1970, a newcomer called James Taylor released
the hit record 'Fire and Rain', a song about
his personal battle to overcome loss, depression
and drug addiction.
More than any other, this record opened up
the era of what became known as the singer-songwriters.
Traditionally, pop songwriters would write
universal songs that many professional singers
would then perform.
The rock'n'roll generation changed that, and
artists were expected to write their own songs,
but in the sixties they usually did it as
a band.
Now, in the new decade, as rock became more
mature, came this style of individual poets
who would write candid songs about their personal
experiences, and perform them themselves,
usually with minimal musical accompaniment,
baring their own soul.
And although their songs were personal, the
singer-songwriters touched the souls of many
others in their generation, who experienced
the sixties with them.
This less aggressive, more intimate style opened
up the field for female creators to play a
bigger part in rock music, and the story of
the generation could now be told from a woman's
perspective as well.
Psychedelia may have died, but the Hippies
were still looking for transcendence.
For several singer-songwriters, the personal
journey had a strong mystical dimension.
So the singer-songwriters told the story of the generation, and the changes it went through.
Through that, they could also offer solace,
and ways to deal with the post-sixties reality.
Here's the American singer-songwriter Don
McLean, singing a song that begins in 1959,
on the day he learned that Buddy Holly had
died, and it felt like the death of rock'n'roll,
the death of music.
From there, it continues through the sixties,
and, in a highly symbolic tongue, describes
how rock'n'roll kept getting reborn whenever
it seemed to die, but now, it looks like it
is finally dead for good.
There is also a message of hope here, then.
If rock'n'roll keeps getting reborn, maybe
there will be someone who will come and bring
it back to life again.
In the last verse of the song, which came
out in late 1971, McLean wonders if there
is "happy news", if there is someone out there
who will rekindle the flame.
And McLean didn't know it yet, but at that
time there was someone in Britain who was
working on a project that would revive rock'n'roll,
and take it out of the bog it sunk into.
That someone, however, wasn't entirely new.
He had a hit, way back in 1969, with a record
that was still grounded in psychedelia, but
already contained criticism of it, as well
as a nucleus of an answer on how to get out
of it in a new direction.
We must therefore return to the source of
psychedelia, to The Psychedelic Experience,
Timothy Leary's book, and see how we go from
there in another direction.
We've already mentioned that the book emphasizes
that the psychedelic trip is not to be taken
alone, but there must be someone by your side
when you take the drug, to guide you on your
trip.
Leary writes:
A psychedelic session lasts up to twelve hours
and produces moments of intense, intense,
INTENSE reactivity.
The guide must never be bored, talkative,
intellectualizing.
He must remain calm during long periods of
swirling mindlessness.
He is ground control in the airport tower.
Always there to receive messages and queries
from high-flying aircraft.
Always ready to help navigate their course,
to help them reach their destination...
The pilot is reassured to know that an expert
who has guided thousands of flights is down
there, available for help...
It goes without saying, then, that the guide
should have had considerable experience in
psychedelic sessions himself and in guiding
others...
Routine procedure is to have one trained person
participate in the experience and one staff
member present in ground control without psychedelic
aid.
To guarantee the success of the trip, then,
there must be someone next to you, someone
who will be "ground control" and will guide
you in your flight through the psychedelic
vortex.
The existence of this "ground control", says
Leary, will ensure that no harm will happen
to you from the drug, and you'll pass through
all the stages of the psychedelic experience
unscathed.
And this situation that Leary delineates will
be the inspiration for a rather unique record,
the record through which David Bowie made
his first impression on the world.
There were other inspirations.
In mid-1969, when Bowie wrote the song, the
world was following the launch of the spaceship
Apollo 11, on its way to put the first man
on the Moon.
The record 'Space Oddity' combines the two
stories, and portrays the astronaut Major
Tom as he embarks on a space mission, but
the terms it uses, like ground control or
the rank Major, are taken not from astronautics
but from aeronautics, and put us in Leary's
settings.
The record begins with Bowie gently strumming
an acoustic guitar, singer-songwriter style,
and describing the preparations for the flight.
Then comes the takeoff, paralleling the feeling
of acid running through your body and filling
your brain, and from this moment we are in
a psychedelic space record.
Ground control asks of Major Tom to report
on his experience, and we hear all the regular
descriptions: the feeling of passive floating,
the feeling that you gain a different perspective
on reality, and the joy that fills your being.
But then, Major Tom decides to stop following
ground control's orders, and go his own way.
The spaceship brought him to this euphoria,
and he believes that if he allows it to continue
to direct him, it will take him to even greater
realms of happiness.
Ground control is calling him, trying to snap
him back into reality, but Tom drifts away
into space, and ends up losing contact with
Earth.
Bowie here is mocking both the dominant culture
and the counter-culture.
The conquest of outer space, that was described
as a giant leap for mankind, is belittled
and becomes a story of going astray.
Meanwhile, the story of conquering the inner
space via hallucinogenic drugs, which Timothy
Leary promised us was safe if done in the
right way, is also shown as leading to oblivion.
This characterizes Bowie's early records:
on the one hand he was an outsider, wishing
to escape boring bourgeois society and find
something more exciting, and he therefore
identified with the counter-culture; on the
other hand he was a harsh critic of the counter-culture
as well, and portrayed its beliefs as delusions.
Many of his records are like tiny theatre
plays, dramatizing the failure of every existing
belief and ethics, and looking for another
way.
In the album Space Oddity, which came out
in 1969, we find the track 'Memory of a Free
Festival', in which Bowie tells us of a rock
concert he attended, and repeats all the Woodstock
slogans: the festival is described as a little
utopian bubble, a joy summit that words cannot
describe.
And he means it, too, but he also plants hints
that make us realize that this joy is a thing
of the past.
In one part he says that the attendants felt
like the source of joy was running through
them, but in the next sentence he says: "it
didn't, but it seemed that way".
Meaning, that the joy was real, but the belief
that it comes from connecting to some eternal
source, and will therefore keep going forever,
was false.
The most powerful track on the album is the
epic 'Cygnet Committee', in which Bowie assume
the character of a philosopher, who preached
the virtues of a revolution that will bring
freedom and equality for all, but when the
revolution he called for actually transpired,
he realized that it is not what he wished
for.
Bowie here summarizes all of the processes
we've encountered: the way in which lofty
ideals get twisted and serve people who use
them to spread hate and gain power, the way
in which all the dark urges are released in
the revolution and revel in bloodshed, and
finally the rise of a totalitarian regime.
The philosopher knows that he bares direct
responsibility for all of it, and is tormented
by his conscience.
Bowie isn't placing the story in any specific
time, and we get the impression that this
is the fate of every revolution that wishes
to fix the world using violent means, but
the names of several sixties records are strewn
within the lyrics, letting us understand that
this is what will happen if the counter-culture
revolutionaries ever get their way.
Bowie continued in the same vein in the next
two albums he released.
In 1970 came The Man Who Sold the World, which
contains the track 'All the Madmen'.
The narrator here is a man who willfully commits
himself to an insane asylum, because he believes
that the people there live a much more exciting
and authentic life than the people in conformed
society.
He brags about his ability to trick the doctors
and get them to keep him there, even though
he is completely sane.
But as we listen to his words, we realize
that the electroshocks and drugs that he receives
there are slowly making him lose his mind,
and by the end of the track he is a complete
lunatic, with no control over his life.
This is Bowie's answer to the Beatnik myth
about madness as the road to spiritual liberation
– it leads to nothing but madness.
In 1971 came the album Hunky Dory.
Here we find the track 'Song for Bob Dylan',
in which Bowie assumes the character of a
Dylan fan, who is asking his hero to come
back and share his wisdom with the world once
again.
But as we listen to him, we realize that he
is the kind of fan who just expects Dylan
to tell him what to do, because he can't think
for himself.
We further learn that he likes only Dylan's
polemic folk records, while the later ambiguous
and symbolical records confuse and frighten
him.
This was one of the problems of the counter-culture,
and revolutionary thought in general: it assumes
that all humans are capable of thinking for
themselves, and will do so if given the chance.
But, Bowie shows us, even Dylan fans, who
boast about their sophistication and free-mindedness,
can be nothing but sheep.
In the three albums of 69 to 71, then, Bowie's
knife cut mercilessly into the counter-culture,
and presented its maladies.
But from album to album he started to develop
an alternative way of thinking, and in 72
he will usurp the Stones as the figurehead
of youth culture, and will take it in another
direction, based on the insights he developed
in those early albums.
He will also take Dylan's place as the great
genius of rock, as the one who articulated
the worldview of pop consciousness.
In the coming episodes we will present some
of the solutions that Bowie offered, and then
we will realize that the buds of the new thinking
are already contained within 'Space Oddity',
within the record that is, to my ears, the
last great record of psychedelia.
