Listening to the Future by Bill Martin

Author:Bill Martin
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780812699449
Publisher: Open Court
Published: 2015-12-04T00:00:00+00:00

1969

Without going quite so far into the details as before, even a little name-dropping will show that 1969 was also a very exciting year for rock music, and the experimental currents that were creating a basis whereby progressive rock could take that crucial next step were much in evidence.

Abbey Road appeared, the Beatles’ most mature and, as we now know, final effort. George Martin’s production here set a standard that progressive rock producers, such as Eddie Offord, would strive to emulate, and Billy Preston’s excellent keyboard work brought a new unity to the group. Even some of Paul McCartney’s and Ringo Starr’s silliness makes a good deal more sense in the extended suite that forms a large part of the album’s second side. With “Something” and “Here Comes the Sun,” George Harrison demonstrated that, at his best, he is a truly fine songwriter, while Lennon’s “Come Together” is no less the prime example of acid-cool today than when it was first heard.

Among those who were extending blues rock were Brian Auger and the Trinity, Led Zeppelin with their second album, and Steamhammer. The latter’s Mk.II album, which has much in common with the spacier jams of Soft Machine, Colosseum, and Pete Brown’s Piblokto (on which more in a moment), is well worth a listen, especially for the wistful singing of Kieran White and the nocturnal sax work of Steve Jolliffe. Zeppelin took blues dynamics into whole new territory; their sound was, at turns, explosive and richly textured, especially in songs such as “Ramble On,” which contrasts acoustic and electric guitars to great effect. Auger was showing himself to be one of the best practitioners of post-Jimmy Smith Hammond B-3 playing, and his group featured the singing of Julie Driscoll off and on. She would later marry Keith Tippett, an innovative jazz pianist who played on King Crimson’s second album. An earlier, nonrecording version of Auger’s group featured John McLaughlin and Rick Laird, later of the Mahavishnu Orchestra. So, at the expense of sounding like a broken record, let’s once again take note of how closely connected were many of the interesting developments of that time.

In that same year, John McLaughlin did record with an extraordinary trio (sometimes a quartet with the addition of Jack Bruce), Tony Williams’s Lifetime. This group featured the B-3 work of Larry Young, someone many people (myself included) consider to be the next step in jazz organ after Jimmy Smith. Young died in 1978 at the age of thirty-eight, of a combination of racism and medical malpractice. It might be convincingly argued that innovative jazz organ playing died with him. (Young’s 1965 album for Blue Note, Unity, features Elvin Jones on drums and is perhaps his best effort.) Eerily, Tony Williams, the brilliant percussion prodigy and master of “free drums” and polyrhythms who began his career with the Miles Davis Quintet at the age of seventeen, died of similar causes earlier this year (1997). Lifetime’s 1969 album, Emergency!, was the forerunner of much jazz-rock “fusion,” with

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