Rock Music History 1973 – Part 5

Bob Dylan – from an Interview with Mickie Most, by Mike Beatty

from an article in Music Scene, November 1973.

“Hi There …. my name’s Bob Dylan. Remember those faaab­ulous sixties!

“Come along with me and relive those truly great memories like Barry McGuire totterin’ on the ‘Eve Of Destruction’ …. Trini Lopez threatenin’ ‘if I Had A Hammer’ …. Simon & Garfunkel wishing they were rocks …. Peter, Paul & Mary’s faggy ‘Puff The Magic Dragon’ …. Joan Baez with her finger on the trigger and of course my own ‘Masters Of War’.

Remember learning how to arrange flowers in your hair, run up a kaftan out of that old bed­spread, prepare microbiotic food out of re-cycled paper and wood or how to make love beads out of dried chick peas and milk bottle tops”.

The Beatles may well have been the most popular entertainers ever to have emerged inBritain, but when they hit the States they brought about one of the most drastic social changes in living memory.

Overnight, new values were established and with one hefty swipe virtually all the top selling record stars were sent crashing to the wall. Very few managed to recover from the shock. With all the computerized finger-poppin’ morons having been ruthlessly dispensed with, America’s concerned young folkies . . . who comprised what was then regarded as the ‘underground’, rose up, went electric and in challenging the British invaders produced a commercial ethnic music known to record buyers as folk-rock. A fusion of serious lyrics with a danceable hard rock foundation. Technically he was no great shakes as a musician, as a singer not much better, but nevertheless Bob Dylan quickly emerged as the voice of a whole new generation.

For a time, seemingly the whole world echoed his sentiments while burning draft cards, staging sit-ins and printing up subversive literature. Then, while Simon & Garfunkel and the Byrds picked up the protest banner, a whole new scene was evolving in theHaight-Ashburydistrict of San Francisco. In a puff of hash, a dropping of acid, the tinkel of temple bells, the chanting of Hare Krishna and the disemboweling of electric guitars, psychedlia reared it’s well stoned head. The Love Genera­tion rocked out, led by the Jefferson Airplane, Grateful Dead, Country Joe Et the Fish, the Mamas & Papas, Timothy Leary, the Doors, Love, The Fugs, Moby Grape, Janis Joplin & The Big Brother Holding Company, Captain Beefheart, Frank Zappa plus a million and one other strangely assorted groups.

Within months it spread toEuropeto manifest itself in the Pink Floyd, Soft Machine, the Nice, Donovan and the legendary Jimi Hendrix.

Along with the first real supergroup, Cream, the Jimi Hendrix Experience was to dominate the scene until the sixties gave way to the seventies.