Hendrix Spawned By 1965 Greenwich Village Scene

I had an older friend who told me once that he’d seen Jimi Hendrix in Minneapolis in November 1968. He said, “I didn’t get it.” His statement surprised me because at the time the music world had already shifted. But as I listened to Manic Depression again this week, I wondered if the reason he couldn’t relate to what Dylan was doing was because he was still living on the "Before Dylan" side of the divide. That is, before Rock ‘N Roll had been transformed to Rock.

Saturday I wrote about this insight I’d gleaned from Lee Marshall’s Bob Dylan: The Never Ending Star, which many of us have known intuitively for decades. The essence is this: up until a certain point in time rock and roll was music you could shuffle and tap your feet to. After that moment in time, rock was a permanently altered genre.

Listening to Hendrix again today I understand how confusing his music might have been. When the first three notes steam up and then pause, what follows is a riveting ride. It’s not a dance tune. It’s not rock and roll. And Hendrix was never a rock and roll star. He was a rock star.

Where did Hendrix discover his path? According Charles R. Cross’s Room Full of Mirrors, even though in '65 Hendrix was playing gigs up in Harlem, he was drawn to the scene that was happening in Greenwich Village. Something explosive and real was going on. He recognized it and wanted to be a part of the freedom it promised.

Before this time Hendrix spent several years honing his skills as a backup guitarist in big name bands that included the likes of Little Richard, Wilson Picket, the Isley Brothers, Jackie Brown and others. Cross points out in his book how Hendrix was a student of these experiences, picking up all those tricks that he wowed people with later, including playing with his teeth and behind his back.

The one thing he picked on the scene in the Village was the inspiration and motivation to quit being a backup guitarist and go it on his own. It happened when heard Bob Dylan. Hendrix didn’t care much for his own singing, so it held him back. But if Dylan could make it with his voice (and Dylan had made it), Hendrix figured he could also make it.

Depending on which legend you read Hendrix was invited to England by either Keith Richards’ girl friend, Stones manager Andrew Loog Oldham or bassist Chas Chandler of the Animals. It was there that he hooked up with drummer Mitch Mitchell and bassist Noel Redding, establishing himself and assembling his new sound.

The Copernican Revolution was essentially a paradigm shift. Before Copernicus, it was believed that the earth was the center of the galaxy. Copernicus published a treatise positing that the earth and planets revolved around the sun. The odd thing about this revolution is that it didn't happen overnight. It took more than 100 years, yet we label it a revolution.

The so it was that the Rock Revolution cannot be called a single incident, a single song. It was a space in time. It took place in the Sixties. It caused a shift in everything, upheavals in values, and strove for something elevated which felt within reach for a time: Freedom.

"The emergence of rock culture, from 1965 to 1968," writes Marshall, "thus depends upon a series of ideas concerning how rock music is actually a form of popular art, and rock stars popular artists. Dylan is central to the emergence of this kind of discourse. As part of a 'more mature' folk genre, he had already utilized the album as his main format and thus his electrified albums carried cultural legitimacy into the teen market."

This idea of albums, not pop chart singles, was a major shift. Hendrix, the Beatles, Bowie and others are remembered by their albums. Are You Experienced, the album, put Hendrix on the map, not the singles extracted from it which served as a form of advertising for the albums. We follow the arc of Hendrix's career by the albums he

Marshall continues, "During 1965 and 1966 he (Dylan) embodied the idea of an artist following a unique personal vision no matter where (personally and professionally) it took him. Dylan came to represent the artistic change itself....  Dylan provided pop artists with a new model of the star and a new range of topics for songs."

In short, Dylan demolished the logjam and let the river flow again. Hendrix was one of many ships that sailed through to a newly opened sea.

'Scuse me, while I kiss the sky.

EdNote: A few thoughts from this piece were drawn from this brief Hendrix bio by Keno. Top right: Hendrix painting by Ennyman

Was Dylan the First Real Rock Star?

During Duluth’s Dylan Days in 2012 there was a panel discussion at Tycoons in which Dylan’s significance was explored. It’s a topic of recurring interest for me because from time to time in my readings there is a trigger that unlocks another room full of ideas to examine and analyze, to hold up to the light to see if they have any substance to them.

My current stimulant has been Lee Marshall’s Bob Dylan: The Never Ending Star. The new idea, which I had not recognized before but seems to ring true as I consider it, is that “rock” A.D. (After Dylan) is not the same as the rock and roll that preceded Dylan’s emergence as a rock star.

To illustrate this point, ask yourself this: Why is the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland? Answer: It was there that the label “rock and roll” was coined. This was the heart of it: There were many disc jockeys of the time taken up in the euphoric new sound, which was a blend of African-American rhythms and blues while borrowing from traditions of cowboy music, jazz, country and folk. The key thing, though, was making music kids could dance to.*

Before Dylan, rock ‘n roll was about making music you could dance to. When Dylan emerged from the constraints of folk, where he was unquestionably a star, he welded a new sensibility to this established music form. Here’s how Marshall explains it: Dylan is the foundational figure in rock culture. Dylan’s shift to electric music brought to the mainstream the political authority and communal links of his folk past while his song-writing skills offered the examplar of what could be achieved artistically within the new form. 

And it wasn't "going electric" that was the significant thing in and of itself. Elvis, Chuck Berry and a host of others had been there for some time, obviously. What's different is that although rock and roll was fun, Dylan brought to it a new seriousness, a new sensibility.

As Marshall explains: Rock emerged in the mid-sixties as a was of stratifying mainstream musical consumption, as a means of creating higher and lower levels of popular music.... Rather than merely assuming a difference in quality between serious/classical music and light/popular music, rock functions to differentiate between serious, worthwhile popular music (rock) and trivial, lightweight popular music (pop).

When Dylan went electric he served as the catalyst for the formation of this new type of music.

The natural rebuttal to this argument would be that it was the Beatles or the British Invasion that changed rock and roll, so Marshall examines this thesis as well, citing Bernard Gendron’s book that posits that it was the Beatles who made this happen, “arguing that the critical acclaim of their later albums is the key force behind rock’s critical acceptance.”

But what was it that transformed the Beatles from cheery-faced mop-top boppers into the young men who really did, for a while, rule the world? And when? When you lay their careers side by side in a timeline, Dylan's achievements in 1965 reverberated everywhere. Bringing It All Back Home was released in March. In June he wrote and recorded "Like a Rolling Stone". In July he plugged in and went electric at the Newport Folk Festival, and in August released Highway 61 Revisited. Both of these latter events have been considered by some to be the pivot point of rock history.

In 1965 the Beatles were still making love songs and foot-tappers. Everything they did climbed the pop charts like monkeys. Even in late fall they were still churning out songs like Kansas City/Hey Hey Hey Hey, Boys and Roll Over Beethoven. That year the movie Help, as a follow up to Hard Day's Night, placed them squarely in the center of a well established Hollywood pattern to capitalize on youth heroes for commercial gain, as they had done previously with Elvis. The Fab Four were definitely a sensation, but in a wholly other manner than Dylan. They were pop, but they were not hip. 

Hence, Marshall declares: "My argument is that Dylan was the first real Rock Star. His razor-sharp hipness in 1965 and the strung out excesses of 1966 laid down the prototype for his new social role. Some of the substance of Dylan’s new star-image was rooted in his public persona developed as a folk star but his image in 1965-6 is a clearly different type of star-image." 

One sentence on page 93 says it all: "In 1965, Bob Dylan was the coolest person on the planet."

Today is Saturday, June 30. The Never Ending Tour will roll into town in nine days..... See you there.

* Ennyman’s Territory, Dec. 7, 2010