Roni Sarig - Secret History of Rock. The Most Influential Bands Youve Never Heard

THE SECRET HISTORY OF ROCK

THE MOST INFLUENTIAL BANDS

YOUVE NEVER HEARD

RONI SARIG

Billboard Books

An imprint of Watson-Guptill Publications / New York

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

In bringing this book from a vague idea, to a huge pile of research materials, to a written and edited reality, many people have gladly given their help. I would like to thank those without whom I could not have made it through:

First, to my closest advisor, earliest editor, greatest supporter, and primary inspiration, my wife Danielle. And to all my family and friends for their support, particularly those with music business rolodexes: Tommy and Sabrina.

Thanks as well to my editors Bob Nirkind and Sylvia Warren, to my agent Sheree Bykofsky, and to my research assistants Jason Schepers, Chris Toenes, John Cline, and David Rosen. Also, to the nearby friends who provided advice and information, and helped track down albums, stories, and people: David Menconi, Tim Ross, Ben Goldberg, Joe and Elizabeth Kahn, Farnum Brown, and the music library at WXDU.

I am indebted to all the artists who, without anything to promote except the music they loved, enthusiastically agreed to be interviewed. Thanks especially to those who went out of their way to contact me and continued to make themselves accessible in whatever way they could: King Coffey, Jim ORourke, and Kate Shellenbach.

And of course, thanks to the many publicists, managers, label heads, and journalists who provided material and assistance. Particularly, those who went beyond the call of duty Michael Shore, Carol Cooper, Bill Adler, Neil & Lucas Cooper as well as those who did their jobs promptly and happily: Kathy Keely, Deborah Orr, Darcy Mayers, Sabrina Kaleta, Alison Tarnofsky, Mike Wolf, Beth Jacobson, Taylor Mayo, Bill Bentley, Steve Cohen, Bettina & Howard (at Thrill Jockey), Brian Bumbery, Renee Lehman, Karen Weissen, Andy Schwartz, Helen Urriola, Scott Giampino, Michelle Roche, Jennifer Schmidt, Tommy McKay, M. C. Kostek, Sarah Feldman, Marc Fenton, Cathy Williams, Glenn Dicker, Jason Consoli, Carl Munzel, Kurt (at Atavistic), Matt Hanks, Vicky Wheeler, Josh Mills, Julie Butterfield, Hallie (at K), Susan Darnell, Shawn Rogers, Tami Blevins, Colleen Mollony, John Troutman, Drew Miller, Jennifer Fisher, Heather (at Fire), Curtis (at Taang), Terri Hinte, Aaron (at SST), Josh Kirby, Heidi Robinson, Jen Boddy, Paula Sartorius, Carrie Svingen, Erica Freed, Susan Silver, Tony Margherita, Stacey Slater, Tracy Miller, Malik Bellamy, Claudia Gonson, Kevin ONeil, Howard Weuffing, Jeff Hart, Jeff Tartikoff, Gene Booth, Jason (at Epitaph), Perry Serpa, Sandy Tanaka, Ali (at Cleopatra), Anne Pryor, Sandy Sawotka, and anyone else who helped out.

Final thanks go to the subjects of this book, who have not been thanked enough for daring to be original.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

1 20 TH -CENTURY COMPOSERS

Erik Satie

Raymond Scott

John Cage

Theater of Eternal Music (the Dream Syndicate): LaMonte Young, Tony Conrad, John Cale

Philip Glass

Glenn Branca

2 INTERNATIONAL POP UNDERGROUND

Van Dyke Parks

Scott Walker

Serge Gainsbourg

Big Star

Young Marble Giants

Beat Happening

3 PSYCHOTIC REACTIONS AND GARAGE ROCK

MC5

The Stooges

Roky Erickson / 13 th Floor Elevators

Silver Apples

Syd Barrett

4 ABSURDISTS AND ECCENTRICS

Captain Beefheart

The Residents

Pere Ubu

Red Krayola / Mayo Thompson

5 NAIVE ROCK

The Shaggs

Half Japanese

Daniel Johnston

Jonathan Richman / The Modern Lovers

6 FRAYED ROOTS

Gram Parsons

Nick Drake

The Cramps

Gun Club

7 KRAUTROCK

Can

Faust

Kraftwerk

Neu!

8 SOUND SCULPTORS

King Tubby

Lee Scratch Perry

Brian Eno

Adrian Sherwood

9 ORIGINAL RAPPERS

U-Roy

Last Poets

Watts Prophets

Gil Scott-Heron

Iceberg Slim

10 NEW YORK ROCKERS

Suicide

Television / Richard Hell & the Voidoids

The Feelies

DNA

Swans

11 MINIMALIST FUNK

Trouble Funk

ESG

Liquid Liquid

12 THE POST-INDUSTRIAL WASTELAND

Throbbing Gristle

Einstrzende Neubauten

Chrome

The Birthday Party

Big Black

13 BRITISH POST-PUNK

Public Image Limited

Wire

Buzzcocks

The Fall

Gang of Four

Swell Maps

14 RIOT MOMS AND OTHER ANGRY WOMEN

Lydia Lunch

X-Ray Spex

The Slits

The Raincoats

15 AMERICAN HARDCORE

The Germs

Black Flag

Dead Kennedys

The Minutemen

Hsker D

Bad Brains

Minor Threat

16 AVANT PUNK USA

Wipers

Mission of Burma

Flipper

Slint

INTRODUCTION

When I read a flyer on the wall at a record store, or in the weekly classifieds, and it says something like Looking for a bassist. Our influences are Megadeth, Nena, Bram Tchaikovsky, and Sting, Im overcome with a strange combination of dread and embarrassment. No doubt this brand of influence peddling is practical God forbid you should have a calypso guitarist show up for your death metal auditions but it somehow seems shameful that any person or group would be willing to limit and define themselves that way. And yet I have composed an entire book in which Ive asked dozens of contemporary recording artists to go forever on record with comments about their influences. Truthfully, its not as perverse as it sounds. To explain the evolution of The Secret History as a concept, and then as a working process, I offer the following:

Nirvana may be heroes to some, but they came around at a time when I was just a little too old to connect with the bands angst and still too young to have grown nostalgic for my lost teen spirit. However, by laying in my path a more convincing rock sound than any Id heard in the previous decade, Nirvana forced me to re-evaluate the conclusion I had only recently reached, that rock music was dead. Thats not to say that in the years before Nirvanas rise to national attention say, 1987 through 1991 rock didnt have its moments, both in the underground (Sonic Youth) and mainstream (Guns N Roses). But as I began thinking critically about popular music, it became a matter of great distress that, in a rock culture which derived power and liberation by confounding, even attacking, its elders (as in, hope I die before I get old) the musical heroes of my peers were more likely to be our parents age than our own. Absurd as it seems, the great rock figures of the late 80s at least for the suburban white kids around me were Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, the Who, and of course, the Grateful Dead. With nothing else in rock capturing my attention, but unwilling to accept the widely held notion that the enormously popular radio format known as classic rock was better than any current music, by 1991 I had simply given up on rock as a spent, exhausted form.

The culprits, in my mind, were the baby boomers who seemed to control the media with a form of cultural fascism, the radio programmers and entertainment marketers who were selling my generation the idea that the 60s had been the pinnacle of youth culture, that our own youth culture could never be as important or as exciting as it was back then. And for the most part it seemed we were happily buying it.

With the arrival of Nirvana (and on a smaller scale, bands like Sonic Youth) on the national scene, boomer hegemony began to break. Simply the enthusiasm with which the band was received seemed to revive rock. But more importantly, for the first time in ages a group that was neither a classic rock holdover nor a younger band steeped in that tradition was the focus of attention in rock. Nirvanas success paved the way for the mainstream breakthroughs of other punk-based groups like Green Day and heightened listeners awareness of all underground music, as alternative rock became a hot marketing tool/pseudo-genre.