I nev­er know what to do with the fact that Jef­fer­son Air­plane became Jef­fer­son Star­ship became Starship—purveyors of “We Built This City,” a “bar­na­cle made of syn­the­siz­ers and cocaine,” writes GQ, and an hon­ored guest on worst-of lists every­where. (Also a song co-writ­ten by none oth­er than Elton John lyri­cist Bernie Taupin).

It might seem peev­ish to get so worked up over how bad “We Built this City” is, if it didn’t derive from the lega­cy of one of the best bands of the 1960s. Even Grace Slick dis­avows it. “This is not me,” she says.

Of course, by 1985, all of Slick’s best collaborators—the great Jor­ma Kauko­nen, Jack Cas­sidy, Paul Kant­ner, Mar­ty Balen, Spencer Dry­den, et al.—had moved on, and it was that volatile col­lec­tion of musi­cal per­son­al­i­ties that made psych rock clas­sics like “Some­body to Love” and the slinky, drug­gy, Lewis Car­roll-inspired bolero “White Rab­bit” so essen­tial.

Grace Slick is a great singer and song­writer, but she need­ed a band as uncan­ni­ly tal­ent­ed as Jef­fer­son Air­plane to ful­ly real­ize her eccen­tric vision, such as the acid rock song about drug ref­er­ences in Alice in Won­der­land, played in the style of Span­ish folk music and Miles Davis’ Sketch­es of Spain.

Before she wrote “White Rab­bit,” Slick dropped acid and lis­tened to Davis’ jazz/folk/classical exper­i­ment “over and over for hours,” she told The Wall Street Jour­nal in 2016. “Sketch­es of Spain was drilled into my head and came squirt­ing out in var­i­ous ways as I wrote ‘White Rab­bit.’”

No less­er band could have tak­en this swirl of influ­ences and turned into what the Poly­phon­ic video at the top calls a dis­til­la­tion of the entire era. But “White Rab­bit” didn’t always have the per­fect­ly exe­cut­ed inten­si­ty we know from 1967’s Sur­re­al­is­tic Pil­low and Jef­fer­son Airplane’s com­mand­ing per­for­mance at Wood­stock (above).

In 1965, LSD was still legal. Grace Slick was work­ing, she tells WSJ, “as a cou­ture mod­el at I. Magnin in San Fran­cis­co.” Before sign­ing on as the singer for Jef­fer­son Air­plane, she formed The Great Soci­ety with her then-hus­band Jer­ry Slick. She wrote “White Rab­bit” for that ensem­ble and the band first per­formed it “in ear­ly ’66,” she says, “at a dive bar on Broad­way in San Fran­cis­co.”

Below, you can hear a 6‑minute live ver­sion of The Great Society’s “White Rab­bit.” It’s unrec­og­niz­able until Slick starts to sing over four min­utes into the song. We are not like­ly to be remind­ed of Miles Davis. But when Slick brought “White Rab­bit” to Jef­fer­son Air­plane, as the Poly­phon­ic video demon­strates, they real­ized its full poten­tial, ref­er­ences to Sketch­es of Spain and all.

Record­ed in 1966, the sin­gle “kicked off” the fol­low­ing year’s Sum­mer of Love, “cel­e­brat­ing the grow­ing psy­che­del­ic cul­ture” and freak­ing out par­ents, who pas­sion­ate­ly hat­ed “White Rab­bit.” These were the very peo­ple Slick want­ed to pay atten­tion. “I always felt like a good-look­ing school­teacher singing ‘White Rab­bit,’ ” she says. “I sang the words slow­ly and pre­cise­ly, so the peo­ple who need­ed to hear them wouldn’t miss the point. But they did.”

Slick’s own par­ents were a lit­tle freaked out when she start­ed her first band, after an inter­view she gave the San Fran­cis­co Chron­i­cle got back to them. “I argued in favor of mar­i­jua­na and LSD,” she says. “It was painful for them, I’m sure, but I didn’t care whether they mind­ed. Par­ents were crit­i­ciz­ing a generation’s choic­es while sit­ting there with their glass­es of scotch.” They were also reg­u­lar­ly pop­ping pills, although “the ones that moth­er gives you,” she sang, “don’t do any­thing at all.”

“To this day,” she says, “I don’t think most peo­ple real­ize the song was aimed at par­ents who drank and told their kids not to do drugs. I felt they were full of crap, but write a good song, you need a few more words than that.” And to turn a good song into an instant clas­sic, you need a band like Jef­fer­son Air­plane.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lis­ten to Grace Slick’s Hair-Rais­ing Vocals in the Iso­lat­ed Track for “White Rab­bit” (1967)

Jef­fer­son Air­plane Plays on a New York Rooftop; Jean-Luc Godard Cap­tures It (1968)

Dick Clark Intro­duces Jef­fer­son Air­plane & the Sounds of Psy­che­del­ic San Fran­cis­co to Amer­i­ca: Yes Par­ents, You Should Be Afraid (1967)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness.

On a hot Octo­ber day in 1971, Pink Floyd and their crew assem­bled their live gear in an emp­ty ancient Pom­peii amphithe­ater and, with a film crew along for the ride, record­ed one of the first epic con­certs of their career, play­ing “Echoes,” “Set the Con­trols for the Heart of the Sun,” “Care­ful with that Axe, Eugene,” and oth­er prog num­bers that set the stage for Dark Side of the Moon. A few years lat­er, they’d be play­ing in sta­di­ums actu­al­ly filled with peo­ple, and well, you know the rest.

In 2016, gui­tarist David Gilmour returned to the same amphithe­ater with his cur­rent band in tow, and filmed anoth­er con­cert movie (also called “Live at Pom­peii”). This time the sta­di­um was filled (though not on the ancient seats), night­time was exchanged for day­time, and the set list was a com­bi­na­tion of Floyd clas­sics, old­er rar­i­ties like “Fat Old Sun” and “One of the These Days”, and plen­ty of tracks from his then new solo album Rat­tle That Lock, released in 2015.

Gilmour opt­ed not to play “Echoes,” telling Rolling Stone that it was too much a Rick Wright song and didn’t feel right to play it with­out him. It was the first pub­lic per­for­mance in the ancient Roman amphithe­atre since AD 79. (The gui­tarist was also made an hon­orary cit­i­zen of Pom­peii).

Well, Gilmour just released the full con­cert on YouTube after a world­wide cin­e­ma screen­ing of the con­cert in 2017. The YouTube playlist con­tains tracks that weren’t in the film, so for fans, this is just an extra spe­cial bonus.

The band includes Chester Kamen on gui­tars, a ses­sion musi­cian who has played with both Gilmour and Waters on var­i­ous occa­sions; Guy Pratt, who’s been Pink Floyd’s tour­ing bassist since Roger Waters split; Chuck Leavell of the All­man Broth­ers; Greg Phllinganes, and Steve DiS­tanis­lao.

The show begins as the last rays of sun­light dis­ap­pear behind Mt. Vesu­vius, a nice Floy­di­an touch. It ends, appro­pri­ate­ly enough, with “Com­fort­ably Numb,” (embed­ded above) but not with an exact copy of its famous gui­tar solo.

“I just try and let the solo come out,” Gilmour said in the same Rolling Stone inter­view. “I couldn’t play the one off the album. I try not too think about it too much.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Pink Floyd Play Live Amidst the Ruins of Pom­peii in 1971 … and David Gilmour Does It Again in 2016

Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour Sings Shakespeare’s Son­net 18

David Gilmour Invites a Street Per­former to Play Wine Glass­es Onstage With Him In Venice: Hear Them Play “Shine On You Crazy Dia­mond”

David Gilmour Talks About the Mys­ter­ies of His Famous Gui­tar Tone

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

If you’ve won­dered why projects cel­e­brat­ing women in the his­to­ry of rock are need­ed, maybe all you need to do is lis­ten to women in rock. Sto­ries of boys’ clubs in the indus­try, from record labels to jour­nal­ists to fan­doms, are ubiq­ui­tous, which is why so many voic­es are pushed to the mar­gins, say rock his­to­ri­ans like Tanya Pear­son, direc­tor of the Women of Rock oral his­to­ry project.

Mar­gin­al­iza­tion hap­pens not only on stages and stu­dios but at the lev­el of mem­o­ry and preser­va­tion. “Canons influ­ence how we remem­ber the past,” Pear­son writes. “Rock jour­nal­ism, media, and schol­ar­ship per­pet­u­ates a one sided, andro­cen­tric rock nar­ra­tive…. Women do not eas­i­ly fit and so they con­tin­ue to be under­rep­re­sent­ed. If they are rep­re­sent­ed at all, they are not giv­en the same lev­el of atten­tion or grant­ed the same access to audi­ence as their male coun­ter­parts.”

Women of Rock, a “col­lec­tion of dig­i­tal inter­views and writ­ten tran­scripts housed at the Sophia Smith Col­lec­tion at Smith col­lege,” focus­es “pri­mar­i­ly on artists who have been left out of the pop­u­lar rock nar­ra­tives.”

Pear­son and her vol­un­teer col­lab­o­ra­tors hope that “by cre­at­ing space for women, trans, and gen­der non­con­form­ing artists to share their per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al his­to­ries” the project can “con­tribute to their per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al his­to­ries and accu­rate pop­u­lar rock nar­ra­tives.”

Pear­son cre­at­ed the project while an under­grad­u­ate at Smith, find­ing her­self “frus­trat­ed by the scant details avail­able about her favorite musi­cians,” writes Sharon Han­non at Please Kill Me. “The main rea­son I start­ed this project,” she tells Han­non, “was that it’s some­thing I wish I had access to when I was 13 or 14,” a time in her life when she was “des­per­ate­ly search­ing for rep­re­sen­ta­tion.” The prob­lem wasn’t that women like her did not exist in rock, but that she couldn’t find out much about them.

The site’s cur­rent ros­ter of inter­vie­wees is an inter­est­ing and impres­sive mix. It includes women who have been inte­gral to punk, indie, and alter­na­tive rock—like Lydia Lunch (fur­ther up), Nina Gor­don and Louise Post of Veru­ca Salt, Alice Bag, Shirley Man­son, Julie Cafritz, Melis­sa Auf der Mauer, Kristin Hersh, Mary Tim­o­ny, Kira Rossel­er, JD Sam­son, Aman­da Palmer, and Exene Cer­van­ka. (Sad­ly, Kim Shat­tuck of the Muffs, who passed away recent­ly, isn’t fea­tured.) And there are less­er-known artists who deserve a much wider audi­ence, like Brie (Howard) Dar­ling, a mem­ber of the crim­i­nal­ly under­rat­ed Fan­ny, and whose full inter­view you can see below.

All of these women have sto­ries to tell about sur­viv­ing in a “male dom­i­nat­ed busi­ness” as Tra­cy Bon­ham says in the trail­er at the top of the post. Sto­ries about “the patri­ar­chal sys­tem,” as Shirley Man­son says in her inter­view fur­ther up, “that allows men to thrive” and push­es women out. All of these musi­cians also tell us sto­ries about themselves—their child­hoods, influ­ences, strug­gles, and pas­sions, leav­ing behind a record in which future women rock­ers and rock his­to­ri­ans among the cur­rent gen­er­a­tion of 13- and 14-year-old kids can see them­selves.

See the pro­jec­t’s YouTube chan­nel for more full inter­views and inter­view clips and vis­it the Women of  Rock site for more.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Meet Fan­ny, the First Female Rock Band to Top the Charts: “They Were Just Colos­sal and Won­der­ful, and Nobody’s Ever Men­tioned Them”

New Web Project Immor­tal­izes the Over­looked Women Who Helped Cre­ate Rock and Roll in the 1950s

How Joan Jett Start­ed the Run­aways at 15 and Faced Down Every Bar­ri­er for Women in Rock and Roll

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness.

Like bud­ding ten-year-old pale­on­tol­o­gists with their dinosaur guides, music nerds who came of age in the 80s and 90s might spend whole days read­ing about obscure one-off bands and indie, punk, and alter­na­tive giants from all over the Eng­lish-speak­ing world in Ira Rob­bins’ ency­clo­pe­dic Trouser Press Record Guide ref­er­ence books. Their crit­i­cal entries were notable espe­cial­ly for what they were not: fan trib­utes.

Just the oth­er day, for exam­ple, I was brows­ing through the Trouser Press Guide to ‘90s Rock and was star­tled to read that Depeche Mode’s 101, a live album I lis­tened to repeat­ed­ly in my moody mid­dle school years, offered “per­ma­nent evi­dence of the band’s—a pitch-impaired singer cru­ci­fied on racks of keyboards—concert inad­e­qua­cy.”

This, I protest­ed, is too much.

But, I admit, that album, played at full vol­ume in head­phones, once car­ried me as an ado­les­cent through a grim three-day trek across the coun­try, in a van with my frac­tious fam­i­ly, dri­ving the entire length of Arkansas in sub-zero late Decem­ber and spend­ing New Years’ Eve in a motel room in a des­o­late nowheresville out­side Pine Bluff, AR.

My sense that there might be a roman­ti­cal­ly gloomy, weird­ly seduc­tive world beyond the frost­ed win­dows of our shab­by Ford Club Wag­on is what I will always asso­ciate with the album, its musi­cal mer­its aside. (That and a seri­ous crush on some­one who real­ly loved Depeche Mode.) I can’t remem­ber if I’ve lis­tened to it since.

It’s true Depeche Mode got a lot of mileage out of a lim­it­ed range of skills and musi­cal ideas, but that seems to be no valid crit­i­cism in pop music. The best pop songs are those peo­ple expe­ri­ence as oper­at­ic state­ments of their own emo­tion­al lives. As we see in the open­ing scenes of the Depeche Mode doc­u­men­tary above, Our Hob­by is Depeche Mode, their most fer­vent Eng­lish fans believe that they too might be Depeche Mode.

U.S., Mex­i­can, and Russ­ian fans roman­ti­ciz­ing Basil­don, Depeche Mode’s home­town, as a placid Eng­lish vil­lage say more about their own long­ings than about the band’s sound. Depeche Mode may have looked like a New Wave boy band in the 80s, but that was also the decade in which they were at their nois­i­est and most exper­i­men­tal, “seam­less­ly blend­ing con­crète sounds—factory din, clank­ing chains and so forth—into the music,” writes Trouser Press.

The sound—says one Eng­lish fan of “Depeche” from its beginnings—“came from the bricks” of Basil­don, a grit­ty place with fre­quent fight­ing in the streets. The bulk of the dense­ly crowd­ed town’s con­crete blocks, and fac­to­ries sprang up after WWII, a work­ing-class com­mu­ni­ty cre­at­ed to house the Lon­don pop­u­la­tion dis­placed by the bomb­ings. What set Depeche Mode apart from their syn­th­pop peers and inspi­ra­tions (aside from Siouxsie Sioux and Damned-inspired fetish cos­play) was the indus­tri­al noise that pop­u­lat­ed their sac­cha­rine off-key bal­lads and naughty S&M tracks.

The sound of work­ing-class streets embed­ded in their music drew fans from Moscow—where singer Dave Gahan’s birth­day has become an unof­fi­cial hol­i­day. Their music is “tech­nol­o­gy, the sounds of life, of real­i­ty,” says one Mus­covite fan above. Depeche Mode bootlegs, which spread over the Sovi­et world, get par­tial cred­it for the fall of the Berlin Wall. Fans in Tehran risk severe pun­ish­ment from the Islam­ic author­i­ties for lis­ten­ing to illic­it copies of their albums.

They became gloomi­er, more navel-gaz­ing and “dis­mal,” our Trouser Press crit­ic writes, and the quirky sounds of Basil­don seemed to fade away, replaced by the cav­ernous reverb and goth-blues gui­tar riffs of their 90s apoth­e­o­sis. Their appeal to sen­si­tive and trou­bled kids every­where remained as pow­er­ful, if not more so. Our Hob­by is Depeche Mode doc­u­ments the band’s spread around the world in ded­i­cat­ed fan com­mu­ni­ties. Made in 2007, the film mys­te­ri­ous­ly dis­ap­peared and has only just resur­faced recent­ly, as Dan­ger­ous Minds reports. “No one’s quite sure what hap­pened there.”

It will be inter­est­ing to com­pare this redis­cov­ered doc­u­ment with a new Depeche Mode movie, Spir­its in the For­est, get­ting a the­atri­cal release Novem­ber 21st. Shot by Anton Cor­bi­jn, the film, as you can see from trail­er (above), also keeps its focus on the fans, mix­ing six sto­ries, writes Rolling Stone, “shot in each of their home­towns, with footage of the con­cert” in Berlin pro­mot­ing the band’s newest album Spir­it.

They may nev­er have been the great­est live band or most accom­plished of musi­cians, but Depeche Mode has always known how to work a crowd, and how to speak to the pri­vate long­ings of every indi­vid­ual fan. What more can one ask of inter­na­tion­al pop stars? Gahan says in a state­ment about the new con­cert film, a tra­di­tion that reached its apex with the 101 doc­u­men­tary com­pan­ion to the album, “It’s amaz­ing to see the very real ways that music has impact­ed the lives of our fans.” He’s talk­ing about an evi­dent con­nec­tion that spans gen­er­a­tions and cross­es many unlike­ly cul­tur­al, lin­guis­tic, and nation­al bound­aries.

Our Hob­by is Depeche Mode will be added to our col­lec­tion of Free Doc­u­men­taries.

The film by  Jere­my Deller & Nicholas Abra­hams is host­ed on Abra­hams’ Vimeo chan­nel.

via The Qui­etus

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Depeche Mode Releas­es a Goose­bump-Induc­ing Cov­er of David Bowie’s “Heroes”

The Cure Per­formed the Entire “Dis­in­te­gra­tion” Album on the 30th Anniver­sary of Its Release: Watch The Com­plete Con­cert Online

An Ani­mat­ed His­to­ry of Goth

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

When talk of clas­sic rock drum­mers turns to Kei­th Moon and John Bon­ham, I smile and nod. What’s the point in argu­ing? They were both, in their dis­tinc­tive ways, incredible—and in their ear­ly deaths, immor­tal leg­ends. Who knows what their careers would have looked like had either lived past 32? But tru­ly, for the all-around breadth of his influ­ence, for the amount of respect he gained in musi­cal cir­cles around the world, no greater clas­sic rock drum­mer ever lived, in my opin­ion, than Gin­ger Bak­er, may he final­ly rest in peace.

The famous­ly rest­less, vio­lent­ly can­tan­ker­ous drum­mer died yes­ter­day at age 80, out­liv­ing most of his peers, despite liv­ing twice as hard for well over twice as long as many of them—a feat of strength we might impute to his ath­let­ic phys­i­cal sta­mi­na and fright­en­ing will.

Like Moon and Bon­ham, he com­bined raw pow­er with seri­ous jazz chops. (Bak­er insist­ed he nev­er played rock drums at all.) After his polyrhyth­mic pum­mel­ing defined the sound of super­groups Cream and Blind Faith, he burned out and moved to Africa to find sobri­ety and new sounds.

Bak­er trav­eled the con­ti­nent with Fela Kuti to learn its rhythms, record­ing live with Kuti’s band in ’71. Afrobeat drum­mer Tony Allen remarked that he under­stood “the African beat more than any oth­er West­ern­er.” (See him jam­ming in Lagos fur­ther down.) Baker’s discog­ra­phy includes clas­sic records with Eric Clap­ton and Jack Bruce, Kuti, Hawk­wind, and oth­er leg­ends. He trav­eled the world play­ing drums for over fifty years. Why, then, did he have such a low pro­file for much of his lat­er life? A 2012 doc­u­men­tary, Beware of Mr. Bak­er, based on a 2009 Rolling Stone arti­cle, offers some answers.

Baker’s seri­ous drug addic­tion and ter­ri­fy­ing per­son­al­i­ty alien­at­ed near­ly every­one around him. The doc­u­men­tary opens with an endorse­ment from anoth­er prick­ly and unlik­able red-haired char­ac­ter, John Lydon (for­mer­ly John­ny Rot­ten), whose Pub­lic Image Lim­it­ed is yet anoth­er project Bak­er ele­vat­ed with his play­ing. “He helped me rise,” says Lydon, and Bak­er would no doubt agree. He was not a mod­est man. He was, by most accounts, a right bas­tard, through and through, all of his life.

But he was too con­trar­i­an to be dis­missed as a mere nar­cis­sist. As a musi­cian, for exam­ple, he always thought of him­self as a sup­port­ing play­er. “I nev­er had a style,” he said in 2013. “I play to what I hear, so who­ev­er I’m play­ing with, what they play has a great influ­ence on what I play, because I lis­ten to what peo­ple are play­ing.” His skill at destroy­ing per­son­al rela­tion­ships was matched by his abil­i­ty for form­ing deep, awe-inspir­ing, if short-lived, musi­cal con­nec­tions. It’s a dichoto­my many drum­mers inspired by him have strug­gled to reconcile—taking lessons from Bak­er the drum­mer but not from Bak­er the man.

How do we sep­a­rate the man from his art? Why try? His mad pirate life makes for an epic saga, and Bak­er is a wild­ly excit­ing main char­ac­ter. He had ear­ly ambi­tions of becom­ing a pro­fes­sion­al cyclist. Though they didn’t pan out, he always retained the char­ac­ter­is­tics: he was both fierce­ly com­pet­i­tive and fierce­ly col­lab­o­ra­tive. Lat­er he picked up an even more rar­i­fied team sport—polo—keeping a sta­ble of hors­es on his gat­ed South African ranch, where he lived in his old age like a colo­nial ex-baron in a Nadine Gordimer nov­el. (He even­tu­al­ly had to sell the spread and move back to Lon­don.)

Bak­er was nev­er one to make apolo­gies, so his fans need not make any on his behalf. See him in some clas­sic per­for­mances above—at the top, solo­ing after an inter­view, at Cream’s Roy­al Albert Hall farewell con­cert; then play­ing a solo in a Cream reunion in that same venue almost forty years lat­er. After footage of him jam­ming in Lagos in 1971, we see what the inter­net calls the “BEST DRUM SOLO EVER,” fur­ther up. Just above, meet the man him­self, in all his unre­pen­tant glo­ry, and hear from those who knew him best, in the full doc­u­men­tary, Beware of Mr. Bak­er.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What Makes John Bon­ham Such a Good Drum­mer? A New Video Essay Breaks Down His Inim­itable Style

Who Are the Best Drum Soloists in Rock? See Leg­endary Per­for­mances by John Bon­ham, Kei­th Moon, Neil Peart, Ter­ry Bozzio & More

Kei­th Moon Plays Drums Onstage with Led Zep­pelin in What Would Be His Last Live Per­for­mance (1977)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness