Secret History of Rock. The Most Influential Bands You've Never Heard (6 page)

BOOK: Secret History of Rock. The Most Influential Bands You've Never Heard
11.34Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub

PHILIP GLASS

David Byrne:

[The Talking Heads] and a lot of other rock-oriented people really got into his trancelike repetition. We could relate to it. Like a lot of R&B – it’s got a different kind of groove obviously – but it’s still precise repetition with slight changes. Occasionally we would structure things with that repetition, maybe with an odd meter similar to something he would do...

Beginning in the late ‘60s, as art rock aspired to a higher level of respect and academic acceptance, a new generation of classically trained composers became interested in accomplishing the inverse. Tired of Western musical traditions – even those, such as serialism, which had only been developed in this century – they looked to popular and folk music, particularly non-Western styles, for new inspiration. The most visible among these composers was Philip Glass.

While Western composers’ attention to Eastern music was a trend that had been developing for almost a century, what made Glass and his peers different was that they were consciously a part of the rock era. Not content to sit around waiting for commissions from orchestras or become college professors, these young composers formed bands, played club gigs, and produced records. And having aligned themselves with the rock world, it was only a matter of time before rock musicians and fans took notice.

For at least three generations of musicians working in pop, Philip Glass was a key link to both classical and Eastern music. Over the last few decades, Glass has collaborated with artists from Paul Simon and David Bowie to Suzanne Vega and David Byrne to Aphex Twin. By meeting pop musicians half way, Glass has impacted not only rock, but ambient and techno music as well.

Born and raised in Baltimore, where Glass’s father owned a radio and record store, Philip studied violin and flute at Peabody Conservatory as a kid, graduated from the University of Chicago at 19, then studied composition at New York’s Julliard with Darius Milhaud in his early ‘20s. It wasn’t until he went to France in 1964 to study with famed instructor Nadia Boulanger that Glass began to find his own musical voice.

In Paris, Glass was hired to transcribe the music of Indian composer Ravi Shankar (later a large influence on the Beatles) into Western notation. Glass was mesmerized by the music’s timeless quality, and he was soon off to hitchhike through India and Africa in search of these new (to him, at least) approaches to music. By the time he’d returned to the U.S. in 1967, Glass was composing in a style that borrowed heavily from the structures, if not the sounds, of Indian music. He, along with a small group of composers taking a similar approach, became known as the minimalists.

The music of Glass and the other major minimalists –
LaMonte Young
, Terry Riley, and Steve Reich – shared a number of traits. Profoundly influenced by Eastern music, minimalism was highly repetitive, with cycles of notes developing slowly and subtly, and continuing with no apparent end.

It could be cold and mechanical, and yet mystical and meditative. Though minimalism tended to be more traditionally tonal than the serial music that had dominated previous decades of concert music, the psycho-acoustic phenomena often resulting from the use of electronic instruments – such as Glass’s preferred electric organ – could make it sound quite alien.

Tim Gane, Stereolab:

Repetition and minimalism are the two major things we always come back to, from the first record to the last. Particularly in early Philip Glass and Steve Reich, I like the simple components. You can see how it starts, then hear as instruments are added. It lets you into the secret, but it doesn’t take away from the beauty or wonder of the music. I always liked the idea of not covering up the music and allowing people to understand where the ideas come from, I think that’s important.

The minimalists also agreed that they themselves were the best performers of their own music. Each led small groups, or performed their works solo (Reich and Glass, former classmates, appeared in each other’s groups early on). Soon after his return to New York, Glass formed the Philip Glass Ensemble, which included keyboards, wind instruments, and voices, all amplified and controlled through a mixing board. Too loud and “undignified” for most concert halls, the group played wherever it could, mostly the galleries and rock clubs of New York’s downtown art scene.

Though Glass would later stray somewhat from his roots, the Glass Ensemble’s earliest material – such as
Music with Changing Parts
and
Music in Fifths
– is quintessential minimalist. By the early ‘70s, the group was playing to small crowds in the United States and Europe, and Glass began releasing work on his own record label, Chatham Square. The ensemble’s format and volume made the music attractive to more adventurous rock fans, and early on musicians such as David Bowie and
Brian Eno
attended Glass concerts in London, while New York art bands like the Talking Heads became fans as well. Soon, an Eastern, minimalist quality could be heard in these bands’ pop and rock music.

Brian Eno
:

It was a dense, strong sound, and that really impressed me, the physicality of that sound. There was no attempt to draw your attention by standard musical devices. It was just, here is the sound. Live in it... A lot of people left that show, but it really bowled me over. I thought, Oh God, this is it! This is the future of rock music! [from Option, Nov./Dec. 1997]

While Glass was developing a reputation in more progressive circles, it wasn’t until 1976 that he broke through in the classical world. With the premiere that year of his first opera, a collaboration with scenarist Robert Wilson called
Einstein on the Beach
, Glass became a recognized composer uptown as well as downtown (though afterward, he was still forced to make a living driving a cab).
Einstein
, a four-hour theatrical piece without plot or well-defined characters, is still Glass’s most celebrated work. It took Glass’s music beyond strict minimalism, and laid the groundwork for a new, multimedia art form that would come to be known as performance art.

Over the next decade, Glass composed other theater works, including operas
Satyagraha
(based on the life of Gandhi) and
Akhnaten
, as well as film scores (
Powaqqatsi
,
Koyaanisqatsi
), dance pieces for choreographer Twyla Tharp, and even soundtracks for events (his music for the torchlighting ceremony at the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles introduced his music to millions of television viewers).

Toby Marks, Banco de Gala:

I saw
Powaqqatsi
and I thought, “Wow, amazing.” The way the music and the images marry together in that film is quite something. I was fascinated by the repetitiveness and small changes over time – and running different arpeggios against each other to get constantly shifting patterns – I definitely took something away from that, whether it was consciously or not.

By the ‘80s, Glass’s reputation had developed to a point where CBS Records offered him a recording contract (the first composer to receive one since Aaron Copland). Subsequent records like
Glassworks
and
Songs for Liquid Days
moved Glass closer than ever to becoming an actual pop star.
Liquid Days
, which featured songwriting collaborations with Paul Simon, Laurie Anderson, Suzanne Vega, and David Byrne, is by design a rock record. In addition, he produced a record for new wave band Polyrock, and lent arrangements to both Simon and Vega on their own records.

Jim O’Rourke, Gastr del Sol:

[Glass’s music] was rock and roll to me. Complete headbanging music. People around me were listening to Rush and Metallica; to me that was the stuff that made me pump my fist in the air.

Glass’s full impact on rock has undoubtedly yet to be felt. Musical styles such as New Age, ambient, and techno have all embraced minimalist concepts in their repetition, slow development, linear structures, and layering of parts. In addition, Glass’s 1995 collaboration with electronica star Aphex Twin connects him to yet another generation of pop explorers. And with his recent trilogy of symphonies based on David Bowie’s late ‘70s work with
Brian Eno

Low
,
Heroes
, and
Lodger
– Glass seems to be once again looking to rock music for inspiration.

DISCOGRAPHY

Music with Changing Parts
(Chatham Square 1972, Elektra Nonesuch 1994)
.

Solo Music
(Shandar, 1972; Elektra Nonesuch, 1989)
.

Music in Similar Motion
/
Music in Fifths
(Chatham Square, 1973; Elektra Nonesuch, 1994)
.

Music in Twelve Parts 1 & 2
(Elektra Nonesuch 1974; 1996)
.

Einstein on the Beach
(1976; CBS Masterworks, 1984; Elektra Nonesuch, 1993)
.

Dance Nos. 163
(Tomato, 1976)
.

North Star
(Virgin, 1977)
.

Glassworks
(CBS, 1982)
.

Koyaanisqatsi
(Antilles, 1982)
.

The Photographer
(CBS, 1983)
.

Mishima
(Elektra Nonesuch, 1985)
.

Satyagraha
(CBS Masterworks, 1985)
.

Songs from Liquid Days
(Columbia, 1986)
.

The Olympian
(Columbia, 1986)
.

Akhnaten
(CBS Masterworks, 1987)
.

Dancepieces
(CBS Masterworks, 1987)
.

Powaqqatsi
(Nonesuch, 1988)
.

Mad Rush
/
Metamorphosis
/
Wichita Vortex Sutra
(CBS Masterworks, 1989)
.

(w/ Allen Ginsberg)
Hydrogen Jukebox
(Elektra Nonesuch, 1993)
.

The Low Symphony
(Point, 1993)
.

Heroes Symphony
(Point, 1994)
.

La Belle et la Bête
(Nonesuch, 1995)
.

Symphony No. 2
(Nonesuch, 1998)
.

GLENN BRANCA

Thurston Moore, Sonic Youth :

Branca was really interested in
John Cage
, but he was also completely into the Ramones. Which was heavy: equating this so-called D-U-M-B music with high-minded and intellectual ideas. I was really into that and the people I was playing with came out of that strain... When I first saw him play, it was the most ferocious, incredibly transcendent, rampaging guitar thing I had ever seen. It was uplifting, completely unlike anything I’d ever heard. A lot of it sounded like what I always imagined would be great to play someday, but he was already doing it.

Though the idea of a punk composer sounds strange, a quick glance at the history of classical music proves it inevitable. Composers like George Gershwin once used jazz to capture a contemporary mood in their pieces. And going back as far as composers existed, the “low” folk music of the common people was always primary source material for adaptation and appropriation.

Born in 1948, Glenn Branca was among the first generation raised on rock music. Like many rock musicians, Branca’s main source of training and education came from listening to the radio, and later from working in a record store. By introducing the sonic barrage of electric guitars and noise rock into a formal art-music setting, Glenn Branca has created a place for himself as one of the most vital composers currently active.

As a teenager in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Branca rejected classical guitar lessons and opted to play in rock bands. Initially interested in mainstream rock, his experiences in the late ‘60s, while studying acting at Emerson College in Boston, broadened his perspectives. Exposure to experimental theater revealed new ways to incorporate music into stage pieces and led Branca to the avant-garde work of
John Cage
and the Fluxus composers, whose music was often theatrical by design. Soon after, he took a job in a record store, where he was exposed to a wide variety of sounds, from ‘70s glitter rock to the 19
th
-century Romantic composers. Inspired in equal parts by Roxy Music, Gustav Mahler, and new composers like
Philip Glass
, Branca made no distinction between high and low music. “As far as I was concerned, what the Who was doing was just as important as what Penderecki was doing,” he says. “But at the same time, Penderecki was no less accessible to me than the Beatles. It was just music that worked for me.”

In 1975, Branca formed his own experimental company, the Bastard Theater, which enabled him to pursue acting, directing, and playwriting, as well as composing and performing his own theater music. When he heard about New York’s downtown art scene, where punk poets like Patti Smith and minimalist composers mingled with the experimental theater world, Branca moved there in 1976. Soon he was hanging around rock clubs like CBGB and Max’s Kansas City, and – on a whim – he decided to start his own band. Theoretical Girls featured Branca on guitar, co-songwriters Jeffrey Lohn and Margaret Deuys switching off on bass and keyboards, and drummer Wharton Tiers (who would later become Sonic Youth’s producer). With their jagged guitar noise, Theoretical Girls fell in with the no wave scene of bands like
DNA
and
Lydia Lunch
’s Teenage Jesus and the Jerks.

After releasing one single,
U.S. Millie
, Branca formed a second band, the Static, to pursue his own musical ideas exclusively. The trio featured Barbara Ess, a visual artist and Branca’s longtime girlfriend, and drummer Christine Hahn (who later played in CKM with Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon). In Static songs like
Inspirez Expirez
, his first extended instrumental, and
The Spectacular Commodity
, featuring a dense cluster of E notes, Branca began to explore more conceptual music.

At Max’s in 1979, Branca presented
Instrumental with Six Guitars
, his first work as a composer. Featuring 12 minutes of minor intervals layered over each other to create a dense wall of noise, the repetitious music was clearly influenced by minimalism, though the guitar roar was all rock. Branca realized that working as a composer rather than in a rock band was a better way to express his highly dramatic themes. At the risk of sounding pretentious, Branca decided to call his extended sonic explorations “symphonies.”

But while Branca made a conceptual leap into the world of art music, his material retained most of its rock roots. To maintain rhythm, Branca used a drummer and bassist, and to bolster the sound density he recruited a “guitar army” of up to a dozen musicians. Among the earliest members of his group was future Sonic Youth guitarist Lee Ranaldo (his bandmate Thurston Moore would soon follow). A bit later, Page Hamilton of Helmet joined the ensemble. Branca retained a theatrical element in his music by conducting in a very physical, dramatic style – writhing on the floor and flailing his arms madly – which he believed evoked better responses from the musicians.

Other books

Silk Is For Seduction by Loretta Chase
One Dance with a Duke by Tessa Dare
Secret Safari by Susannah McFarlane
Gently Instrumental by Alan Hunter
Seduced by a Rogue by Amanda Scott
Victorian Maiden by Gary Dolman