For those young peo­ple – includ­ing you – who live this mod­ern ago­nis­ing ado­les­cence and who are want­i­ng the true rad­i­cal music, I sin­cere­ly wish the dia­logue accom­pa­nied by pierc­ing pain will be born and fill this recital hall.

– text from late 60s’ Les Ral­lizes Dénudés con­cert fly­ers

In Span­ish writer Car­los Ruiz Zafón’s best­selling nov­el The Shad­ow of the Wind, nar­ra­tor Daniel Sem­pere spends his ado­les­cence try­ing to solve the mys­tery of an obscure dead nov­el­ist. Fans of the book might see Daniel’s detec­tive sto­ry in Grayson Haver Currin’s quest to learn more about Japan­ese psych rock band Les Ral­lizes Dénudés and its elu­sive founder Takashi Mizu­tani. The band has inspired devo­tion and end­less fas­ci­na­tion among their small cult fol­low­ing. But Currin’s inves­ti­ga­tions met with one after anoth­er dead end. Les Ral­lizes Dénudés is, he writes, “a band that’s exist­ed behind a veil of secre­cy for so long that it’s almost impos­si­ble to tell where facts end and where fan­ta­sy begins.”

It does not help that many people’s first and last encounter with Les Ral­lizes Dénudés was Julian Cope’s 2007 Japrock­sam­pler, a gen­er­ous, even ency­clo­pe­dic intro­duc­tion to post-war Japan­ese rock and roll. The book played “a piv­otal role in expos­ing Amer­i­can and Eng­lish audi­ences to Les Ral­lizes Dénudés’ tantric gui­tar shrieks,” yet its mea­ger chap­ter on the band is appar­ent­ly rid­dled with inac­cu­ra­cies, includ­ing the claim that the band nev­er record­ed in the stu­dio in their entire 29-year exis­tence. They did, in 1991, 24 years after they began play­ing stages in Tokyo.

So how did any­one hear about them if they did­n’t make or pro­mote albums? “Through bootlegs, bootlegs and more bootlegs,” Cope wrote. Here he does not exag­ger­ate, but even where he does, “it’s in the ser­vice of truth,” Dan­ger­ous Minds argues, going on to sum­ma­rize the “skele­tal” biog­ra­phy Cope sketch­es out for the band:

Takashi Mizu­tani formed the group as a col­lege stu­dent in the ‘60s, when, Cope writes, French cul­ture still found devo­tees among post­war Japan­ese youth look­ing for a rev­o­lu­tion­ary alter­na­tive to Uncle Sam. That means: Cool for these guys was ice cold. Dead­pan as the Vel­vets or Space­men 3, Mizu­tani and his band­mates iden­ti­fied with the loud­est, dark­est and most destruc­tive aspects of psych-rock.

Les Ral­lizes Dénudés is leg­endary for good rea­son, as you can learn in the Band­splain­ing video at the top. One thing we do know about them is that a for­mer bassist appar­ent­ly hijacked an air­plane for the Japan­ese Red Army Fac­tion (then found asy­lum in North Korea), but “it’s actu­al­ly not the most inter­est­ing thing about them.” Those who already know a cer­tain kind of psy­che­del­ic rock may hear the dark, echoey drone of White Light/White Heat-era Vel­vet Under­ground and lat­er bands like Bri­an Jon­estown Mas­sacre or Moon Duo, as well as the No Wave noise rock of Son­ic Youth and hazy shoegaze of My Bloody Valen­tine.

The band’s echo­ing vocals and swirling, wail­ing peals of fuzzed-out gui­tar “fore­shad­owed the next five decades of under­ground rock,” the Band­splain­ing video notes. This seems to be the case whether the musi­cians inspired by Les Ral­lizes Dénudés had ever heard their music direct­ly. Japan­ese under­ground music “only began reach­ing West­ern ears in the ear­ly 90s,” writes Alan Cum­mings, a Uni­ver­si­ty of Lon­don pro­fes­sor of Japan­ese trans­la­tion, dra­ma, cul­ture, and his­to­ry, and a fore­most West­ern author­i­ty on Japan­ese psych rock. When the music first reached lis­ten­ers out­side Japan, how­ev­er, it wasn’t Les Ral­lizes Dénudés they first heard.

Cum­mings, who saw Les Ral­lizes Dénudés live in Japan, wrote “what might be the first Eng­lish piece to ever men­tion the band” ten years lat­er in 1999 in a Wire arti­cle on under­ground Japan­ese rock. “What is or was a ral­lize, and why it should be naked,” he remarked of their non­sen­si­cal French name, “remains unknown,” like most every­thing else about them. This was by design. As one musi­cian liv­ing in Tokyo put it, their ubiq­ui­tous obscu­ri­ty was “part of the Les Ral­lizes Dénudés strat­e­gy.”

You start hear­ing about this band, and once you know what their music sounds like, you hear their influ­ence every­where. Yet they’re not any­where. They’re ether. They’re smoke.

Les Ral­lizes Dénudés are so obscure in Japan, they don’t receive a men­tion in the fol­low-up arti­cle Cum­mings wrote for the Wire in 2013, in which he sur­veys the under­ground Japan­ese rock scene once again. He also admits to being part of a mys­ti­fi­ca­tion of Japan­ese sub­cul­tures and adopt­ing an atti­tude of “fan­ta­sy and pro­jec­tion” that he traces back to the 19th cen­tu­ry. In the case of Les Ral­lizes Dénudés, how­ev­er, fan­ta­sy and pro­jec­tion are often all we have to work with in the sto­ry of a band whose sound is every­where but whose for­mer asso­ciates and mem­bers, includ­ing Mizu­tani him­self, don’t wish to be found. As Cur­rin writes, “Peo­ple not only talk about Mizu­tani as a folk leg­end; they talk about peo­ple who sim­ply know him as such.”

Thanks to YouTube and the preva­lence of cam­corders at Les Ral­lizes Dénudés shows, hours of footage of the band per­form­ing live can be viewed online, avail­able to peo­ple out­side the small com­mu­ni­ty of cas­sette and VHS tapers and traders who kept their leg­end alive. See some of that footage above, includ­ing an hour and a half long “doc­u­men­tary” that con­sists of noth­ing but the band’s hyp­not­ic jams.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dis­cov­er the Ambi­ent Music of Hiroshi Yoshimu­ra, the Pio­neer­ing Japan­ese Com­pos­er

Zam­rock: An Intro­duc­tion to Zambia’s 1970s Rich & Psy­che­del­ic Rock Scene

Hear Enchant­i­ng Mix­es of Japan­ese Pop, Jazz, Funk, Dis­co, Soul, and R&B from the 70s and 80s

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

Chloe Jack­son was asked to cre­ate a lyric video for Tom Rosen­thal’s won­der­ful song, ‘Don’t Die Curi­ous’. And she deliv­ered. Enjoy…

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bob Marley’s Redemp­tion Song Final­ly Gets an Offi­cial Video: Watch the Ani­mat­ed Video Made Up of 2747 Draw­ings

Watch “The Stroke,” a Hand-Ani­mat­ed Music Video Where the Visu­als Came First & the Impro­vised Music Sec­ond

Watch Tom Waits For No One, the Pio­neer­ing Ani­mat­ed Music Video from 1979

“The peo­ple who are try­ing to make this world worse aren’t tak­ing a day off. How can I?,” said Bob Mar­ley after a 1976 assas­si­na­tion attempt at his home in Jamaica in which Mar­ley, his wife Rita, man­ag­er Don Tay­lor, and employ­ee Louis Grif­fiths were all shot and, incred­i­bly, all sur­vived. Which peo­ple, exact­ly, did he mean? Was it Edward Seaga’s Jamaican Labour Par­ty, whose hired gun­men sup­pos­ed­ly car­ried out the attack? Was it, as some even con­spir­a­to­ri­al­ly alleged, Michael Man­ley’s People’s Nation­al Par­ty, attempt­ing to turn Mar­ley into a mar­tyr?

Mar­ley had, despite his efforts to the con­trary, been close­ly iden­ti­fied with the PNP, and his per­for­mance at the Smile Jamaica Con­cert, sched­uled for two days lat­er, was wide­ly seen as an endorse­ment of Manley’s pol­i­tics. When he made his now-famous­ly defi­ant state­ment from Island Records’ chief Chris Blackwell’s heav­i­ly guard­ed home, he had just decid­ed to play the concert–this despite the con­tin­ued risk of being gunned down in front of 80,000 peo­ple by the still-at-large killers, or some­one else paid by the CIA, whom Tay­lor and Mar­ley biog­ra­ph­er Tim­o­thy White claim were ulti­mate­ly behind the attack.

Mar­ley doesn’t just show up at the con­cert, he “gives the per­for­mance of his life­time,” notes a brief his­to­ry of the event, and “clos­es the show by lift­ing his shirt, expos­ing his ban­daged bul­let wounds to the crowd.” Erro­neous­ly report­ed dead in the press after the shoot­ing, Mar­ley emerged Lazarus-like, a Rasta­far­i­an folk-hero. Then he left Jamaica to make his career state­ment, Exo­dus, in Lon­don — as much a fusion of his right­eous polit­i­cal fury, reli­gious devo­tion, erot­ic cel­e­bra­tion, and peace, love & uni­ty vibes as it is a fusion of blues, rock, soul, funk, and even punk.

It’s a very dif­fer­ent album than what had come before in 1976’s Ras­ta­man Vibra­tions, which was an album of “hard, direct pol­i­tics” and right­eous, “macho” anger, wrote Vivien Gold­man, “with sur­pris­ing specifics like ‘Ras­ta don’t work for no C.I.A.’” The apoth­e­o­sis that was 1977’s Exo­dus begins, how­ev­er, not with Mar­ley’s pre­vi­ous album but with the Smile Jamaica con­cert. What was meant to be a brief, one-song, non-aligned appear­ance became after the shoot­ing “a tran­scen­den­tal 90-minute set for a coun­try being torn apart by inter­nal strife and exter­nal med­dling,” says Noah Lefevre in the Poly­phon­ic video his­to­ry at the top. “It was the last show Bob Mar­ley would play in Jamaica for more than a year.”

See the full Smile Jamaica con­cert above and learn in the Poly­phon­ic video how “six months to the day” lat­er, on June 3, 1977, Mar­ley left on his own exo­dus and came to record and release what Time mag­a­zine named the “album of the cen­tu­ry” — the record that would “trans­form him from a nation­al icon to a glob­al prophet.” On Exo­dus, he achieves a syn­the­sis of glob­al sounds in a defin­ing cre­ative state­ment of his major themes. Mar­ley was “real­ly try­ing to give the African Dias­po­ra a sense of its strength and… uni­ty,” Gold­man told NPR on the album’s 30th anniver­sary, while at the same time, “real­ly embrac­ing, you know, white peo­ple, to an extent; doing his best to make a mul­ti­cul­tur­al world work.”

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Bob Marley’s Redemp­tion Song Final­ly Gets an Offi­cial Video: Watch the Ani­mat­ed Video Made Up of 2747 Draw­ings

Watch a Young Bob Mar­ley and The Wail­ers Per­form Live in Eng­land (1973): For His 70th Birth­day Today

30 Fans Joy­ous­ly Sing the Entire­ty of Bob Marley’s Leg­end Album in Uni­son

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

How many songs did Pat­tie Boyd — fash­ion mod­el, pho­tog­ra­ph­er, muse, and wife of George Har­ri­son and Eric Clap­ton — inspire? It’s hard to say, since some of the lyrics pur­port­ed­ly writ­ten for her, like those in Harrison’s break­out “Some­thing,” may have been for some­one else, then diplo­mat­i­cal­ly attrib­uted to Boyd. Or, in the case of “Some­thing” — the first Har­ri­son song to come out as a Bea­t­les A‑side sin­gle and the song that con­vinced the world of his for­mi­da­ble song­writ­ing tal­ents — they might have been about a big, blue super­nat­ur­al some­thing.

Accord­ing to Joe Taysom at Far Out mag­a­zine, Har­ri­son “became obses­sive in his stud­ies of Krish­na Con­scious­ness when he wrote the song, and more specif­i­cal­ly, its orig­i­nal intent was as a devo­tion to Lord Krish­na.” Har­ri­son “insist­ed that the orig­i­nal lyric was ‘some­thing in the way HE moves,’ but he changed it.”

The mas­cu­line pro­noun would have removed all spec­u­la­tion about Boyd but also would have con­fused lis­ten­ers in oth­er ways. In any case, Some­thing’s ambi­gu­i­ty, inher­ent in the title, made it a clas­sic. Frank Sina­tra once called it “the great­est love song ever writ­ten.”

Har­ri­son, as usu­al, demurred: “The words are noth­ing real­ly,” he said in 1969. “There are lots of songs like that in my head. I must get them down.” The song first came togeth­er dur­ing the 1968 White Album ses­sions. “There was a peri­od dur­ing that album,” he remem­bered, “when we were all in dif­fer­ent stu­dios doing dif­fer­ent things try­ing to get it fin­ished, and I used to take some time out. So I went into an emp­ty stu­dio and wrote ‘Some­thing.’” Lack­ing con­fi­dence in his abil­i­ty to per­suade the band to record it, he first tried to give the song to Apple Records artist and old Liv­er­pool friend Jack­ie Lomax. The song, he felt, came too eas­i­ly and might not be good enough, and he had lift­ed the open­ing line direct­ly from James Tay­lor.

Lomax went with anoth­er Har­ri­son tune for his first sin­gle, and the Bea­t­le con­tin­ued to work on “Some­thing,” record­ing a demo of the fin­ished song in Feb­ru­ary of 1969. But he still didn’t think of it as Bea­t­les-wor­thy and gave it to Joe Cock­er instead, who released his ver­sion that year, with Har­ri­son on gui­tar. (Har­ri­son lat­er claimed to have writ­ten the song with Ray Charles in mind.) What­ev­er his reser­va­tions, he did, of course, final­ly record “Some­thing” with his band­mates, with results famil­iar to all and every­one. But you’ve prob­a­bly nev­er heard the song as you can hear it here, with iso­lat­ed vocal har­monies “you can’t put a cig­a­rette-paper between,” writes Julian Dut­ton on Twit­ter. “Total­ly in sim­pati­co; a syn­er­gy that began I sup­pose all those years ago on the school bus.”

At the top, hear the mul­ti­track vocals that made the Bea­t­les’ “Some­thing” such an incred­i­ble record­ing (includ­ing a fun, yelp­ing sing-along to the gui­tar solo at around 1:50). Fur­ther up, hear the whole song decon­struct­ed into its parts (with time­stamps for each one at the video’s YouTube page.) And just above, hear the band fig­ure out the har­monies in a stu­dio demo of the song. It was, John Lennon con­ced­ed after Abbey Road came out, “about the best track on the album, actu­al­ly.” Paul McCart­ney said of the Har­ri­son clas­sic that “it’s the best he’s writ­ten.” And Bob Dylan lat­er remarked that “if George had had his own group and was writ­ing his own songs back then, he’d have been prob­a­bly just as big as any­body,” a the­sis Har­ri­son got to prove the fol­low­ing year with his sur­pris­ing­ly amaz­ing All Things Must Pass.

via Julian Dut­ton

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

How “Straw­ber­ry Fields For­ev­er” Con­tains “the Cra­zi­est Edit” in Bea­t­les His­to­ry

A Vir­tu­al Tour of Every Place Ref­er­enced in The Bea­t­les’ Lyrics: In 12 Min­utes, Trav­el 25,000 Miles Across Eng­land, France, Rus­sia, India & the US

When the Bea­t­les Refused to Play Before Seg­re­gat­ed Audi­ences on Their First U.S. Tour (1964)

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

When a 17-year-old Mar­i­anne Faith­full fin­ished the final take of her 1965 hit “As Tears Go By” — penned by a young duo of Mick Jag­ger and Kei­th Richards as one of their first orig­i­nal songs — Rolling Stones man­ag­er Andrew Loog Old­ham “came and gave me a big hug,” she recalled “‘Con­grat­u­la­tions dar­ling. You’ve got your­self a num­ber six,’ he said.”

Richards remem­bered the song in his auto­bi­og­ra­phy as “a ter­ri­ble piece of tripe” and “mon­ey for old rope,” but it actu­al­ly peaked at num­ber 22 on the Bill­board Hot 100, where it stayed for nine weeks, no small thing. So pop­u­lar was “As Tears Go By” that the Stones them­selves record­ed a ver­sion the fol­low­ing year. Their take also entered the Hot 100, where it peaked at num­ber six.

The sto­ry of the song rep­re­sents in brief the evo­lu­tion of its orig­i­nal singer. Fat­ed in her ear­ly years to be known as lit­tle more than Jagger’s muse, an image she grew to hate, Faith­full went from hang­er-on in the six­ties, “an essen­tial com­po­nent of the Swing­ing Lon­don scene,” writes review­er alrockchick; to a home­less hero­in addict; to a leg­end revived, her “whiskey-soaked” croak of a voice the per­fect vehi­cle for deliv­er­ing smoke-filled tales of weari­ness and betray­al.

Along the way, there was “As Tears Go By,” a song Faith­full came to embody, though she didn’t think much of it as a teenag­er. (See Bri­an Epstein intro­duce her on Hula­baloo, above, in 1965.)

She was “nev­er that crazy” about it, she said. “God knows how Mick and Kei­th wrote it or where it came from…. In any case, it’s an absolute­ly aston­ish­ing thing for a boy of 20 to have writ­ten a song about a woman look­ing back nos­tal­gi­cal­ly on her life.”

The “boys” had help — at first they cribbed the title “As Time Goes By” from the famous tear­jerk­er in Casablan­ca. Accord­ing to Loog Old­ham, he locked the two Stones in a room togeth­er and said, “I want a song with brick walls all around it, high win­dows and no sex.” How that became a Mar­i­anne Faith­full sig­na­ture is some­thing of a mys­tery. At times she claimed Jag­ger wrote the song for her; at oth­ers, she emphat­i­cal­ly denied it. But as the con­trast between her voice and the song’s sac­cha­rine, maudlin nature changed, so too did the pow­er of her deliv­ery, which is not to say her first record­ing didn’t war­rant the atten­tion.

“The voice on ‘As Tears Go By’ and ‘Sum­mer Nights,’” altrockchick writes, “has an airy, sur­re­al qual­i­ty; the voice on Bro­ken Eng­lish,” her 1979 come­back (which does not include “As Tears Go By”), “is as real as it gets” and only got more real with time. In a Nico-esque monot­o­ne drone, she revis­it­ed the song she made famous in the mid-six­ties in the 1987 take above for the album Strange Weath­er. She had just recent­ly got­ten clean and lost a lover to sui­cide.

The weath­ered vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty she projects is worlds away from the dreamy melan­choly of the past, her voice “a far cry from the 60s sweet­ness,” The Music Afi­ciona­do blog notes. “Years of sub­stance abuse and con­stant smok­ing dropped her pitch and made it raspy.” These qual­i­ties are even more pro­nounced in a 2018 ver­sion of the song from the album Neg­a­tive Capa­bil­i­ty. It func­tions almost as a coda for a career as an inter­preter of the songs of oth­ers, though she’s writ­ten no few of her own (and may yet release anoth­er ver­sion of “As Time Goes By.”)

She is remem­bered for much more than her first hit, but Faithfull’s revis­i­ta­tion of “As Tears Go By” over the years seems to speak to an ambiva­lent accep­tance of Mick Jagger’s con­stant pres­ence in her sto­ry — and a grace­ful, if not exact­ly uplift­ing, accep­tance of the inevitable rav­ages of age and fame.

You can hear her very recent inter­view on the Bro­ken Record pod­cast below:

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Jean-Luc Godard Shoots Mar­i­anne Faith­full Singing “As Tears Go By” (1966)

David Bowie Sings ‘I Got You Babe’ with Mar­i­anne Faith­full in His Very Last Per­for­mance As Zig­gy Star­dust (1973)

Watch the Rolling Stones Write “Sym­pa­thy for the Dev­il”: Scenes from Jean-Luc Godard’s ’68 Film One Plus One

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

And now for some­thing com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent…

Above, the Wiener Cel­loensem­ble 5 + 1–“an untra­di­tion­al cel­lo ensem­ble” found­ed by the Vien­na Phil­har­mon­ic’s Ger­hard Kaufmann–presents an uncon­ven­tion­al per­for­mance of Ravel’s “Bolero.” It’s min­i­mal­ist, in a cer­tain way. Four musi­cians. One instru­ment. And noth­ing more…

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

via Clas­sicFM/MyModernMet

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear a 1930 Record­ing of Boléro, Con­duct­ed by Rav­el Him­self

Juil­liard Stu­dents & the New York Phil­har­mon­ic Per­form Ravel’s Bolero While Social Dis­tanc­ing in Quar­an­tine

Copen­hagen Phil­har­mon­ic Plays Ravel’s Bolero at Train Sta­tion