Guest Blog: Avant-Garde Influences on Modern Rock

Reader Michael Harack and I have been exchanging emails about some of the lesser-known influencers on alt-rock. He offers up this list of artists worth exploring. – AC

I have been browsing through a book entitled Blues and Chaos which are the music writings of Robert Palmer (1945 – 1997).  [Not THAT Robert Palmer; this guy was an academic who also wrote a book called Rock and Roll: An Unruly History that was made into a PBS series. -AC]

Palmer had a similar illness like Lou Reed.  He had hepatitis C, used drugs like heroin and cocaine and sampled drugs from the same doctor who supplied Elvis. He needed a liver transplant but passed away before he could get one.  Two-thirds of the book covers blues, jazz and world music but the rest covers subjects like Led Zeppelin, Lennon, Ono, Burroughs, Velvet Underground, minimalism etc.

There is some facts about four minimalist composers and their “difficult” music influence on rock. It’s interesting that all four of them were born in the mid-1930s.  

I always think that minimalism is just another way of saying “secular Zen.”  John Cage especialy had the real Zen influence (covered in the book Where the Heart Beats) but the music of Asia affected them all.

Most of the following comes from the Palmer book and Wikipedia.                                                                         

LAMONTE YOUNG (b. 1935) First minimalist composer, influenced by Indian, Indonesian and Gagaku music. He uses drugs such as LSD, cannabis and peyote as a creative tool. Influential on John Cale’s contribution to the Velvet Underground’s sound.  Cale left Young to join Lou Reed’s VU.

Cale said “The Sounds of the Velvet Underground really comes from work that was done with Lamonte Young. Lou and I had an almost religious fervor about what we were doing–like trying to figure ways integrate some of Young’s or Andy Warhol’s concepts into rock and roll.”

Andy Warhol attended Young’s 1962 concert and is said to have inspired his static films Kiss, Eat and Sleep

YOKO ONO (b. 1933) In the early 1960s, Yoko Ono had a New York loft space that she used for young artists/composers like Cage and Young at which they could perform (these kinds of loft performances were at this time a very new concept). American musician Joseph Byrd (according to his own CD notes) says he was at Yoko’s loft concerts in the early 1960s. He later became a member of the band United States of America (1967-1968).

It’s interesting to think that while the`Beatles were in their Beatlemania period, Yoko was hosting some of the future new composers.  

TERRY RILEY (b.1935) He was influenced by Indian classical music, jazz and western avant-garde.  In the 1950s he worked with tape loops, something that was very new then. Most known for music  In C (1964) and the psychedelic work  A Rainbow in Curved Air (1969, and sometimes marketed a rock album–something it was certainly not.) This music inspired Pete Townshend’s synthesizer parts on the Who’s  “Won’t Get Fooled Again” and “Baba O’ Riley,” the latter named in part after Riley [The “Baba” part came from Townshend’s spirtual mentor, Meher Baba.-AC]

He also had an influence onMike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells.  This music also used in video game Grand Theft Auto IV and original BBC radio production of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.                                                                        

STEVE REICH (b. 1936) He was influenced by Terry Riley, Balinese and African music. He was also into using innovations like tape loops and phasing patterns.  He has influenced King Crimson, Eno, Residents, the Maths and was sampled by Orb on “Little Fluffy Clouds” (1990).  Reich has said he admires the music of Radiohead, which resulted in a composition entitled Radio Rewrite (2013).  

There is a five minute talk by Reich on YouTube entitled Steve Reich on “Radio Rewrite” (Radiohead) that’s worth investigating.                                                                                                                              

PHILIP GLASS (b. 1937)  Influenced by Ravi Shankar, Zen and Tibetan music.  He is the most prolific of the four minimalist composers withtoo much to list here.  He is friends with Laurie Anderson, Eno and Bowie.  Brian Eno and Bowie were in the audience at some of Mr. Glass’s first European concerts (1970) and Eno has said of Glass that he delivered the “most extraordinary musical experience of my life”.  

Glass has also put music to the words by David Byrne and Paul Simon and compose his 1st symphony Low (1992) and Heroes based on the Bowie/Eno works.  Glass has said he still wants to turn Lodger into a symphony in the future.

Check out the YouTube video of Glass and Bowie discussing the Low symphony.                                                  

From reading Robert Palmer, he seems to put much hope in world music energizing Western music–which it has, like Peter Gabriel and Paul Simon.  But today it seems to be the opposite as rap, hip hop and electronic dance music has spread world wide all the way to the East and very little of their music seems to have no effect on our Western music.