Secret History of Rock. The Most Influential Bands You've Never Heard

by Roni Sarig

  Between 1962 and 1966, a group of classically trained experimental musicians and composers came together under the direction of LaMonte Young to create a hypnotic ensemble of endlessly droning sounds they called “dream music.” They were informally called the Dream Syndicate (not to be confused with the ‘80s rock band of the same name), and later officially dubbed the Theater of Eternal Music. The partnership lasted only a short time and pursued a limited agenda, but the group would prove to be among the most significant outside contributors to the sound of modern rock.

  The influence of LaMonte Young’s group on contemporary music is quite direct: It lies almost completely in one band, the Velvet Underground (and to a lesser extent, Faust), and one musical gesture, the drone. In the past 30 years, however, the Velvets’ drone has inspired and informed countless bands, whether directly or through the many V.U.-influenced bands.

  Thurston Moore, Sonic Youth:

  The “existence” of LaMonte Young was influential. I had no idea what his music sounded like until later, and at that point we were already playing music that was coming out of his lineage anyway. I found it really beautiful, but it didn’t change my world. It had already changed my world through others.

  Young’s earliest musical memory from his Idaho childhood in the ‘30s and ‘40s was the steady hum of an electrical transformer behind his grandfather’s gas station. By his late teens, Young was in L.A. playing saxophone with free jazz experimentalists Don Cherry and Ornette Coleman, studying the serialist composition of Anton Webern, and discovering Indian music. By the late 1950s, Young had fallen under the influence of John Cage and was involved with what would become known as the Fluxus movement. With New York composers and visual artists such as Al Hansen and Yoko Ono, Fluxus set out to playfully blur the lines between different art forms (music, theater, visual art), as well as between art and life.

  Young’s work in this period was often more conceptual than musical. The score to his Composition 1960 #10, for instance, called for the performer to “draw a straight line and follow it.” When it was musical, it retained an essential simplicity that came to define his work (his Composition 1960 #7 consists of a single piano interval, “to be held a long time”), and Young is often recognized as the first major minimalist composer (a group that would include Steve Reich, Terry Riley, and Philip Glass as well).

  Young’s 1958 Trio for Strings served as a blueprint that he would use for his major life’s work. Consisting of long, sustained viola notes, with other instruments joining for various durations to complete a chord, the droning strings created fascinating harmonic effects and psycho-acoustical phenomena. By 1962, Young had largely moved away from Fluxus and formed a group of like-minded musicians (including Terry Riley early on) to exclusively pursue these sounds, which he called “dream music.”

  One of his collaborators was Tony Conrad, a composer-violinist Young met in California who shared his fascination for Indian and experimental music and had been trained in harmonic theory. In addition to Conrad on violin and Young on saxophone (and later singing), the group dubbed the Dream Syndicate included poet (and original Velvet Underground drummer) Angus MacLise on percussion, future Warhol scenester Billy Name on guitar, and Young’s wife Marian Zazeela singing and designing a light show. Rounding out the group on viola was John Cale, a young Welsh music student who had come to the United States on a Leonard Bernstein scholarship.

  Expanding on the basic premise of slow, sustained tones and a limited number of pitches, the group produced The Four Dreams of China, an extended trancelike improvisation. The work’s most developed section, called The Second Dream of the High-Tension Line Stepdown Transformer, explored the harmonic relationships between notes and used techniques such as amplification, throat singing, and a minimalist bowing style to emphasize certain harmonics.

  By 1964, the group was renamed the Theater of Eternal Music to reflect the transcendental quality of the ever-lengthening performances. Conrad introduced new pitches based on notes in the harmonic series rather than the traditional Western system of equal temperament. The Tortoise, His Dreams and Journeys, which used the pitch of Young’s turtle aquarium motor as the root frequency, was their first piece based on this harmonic tuning system, known as just intonation. That same year, Young’s solo piano piece The Well-Tuned Piano, employed just intonation as well.

  As the group’s explorations grew, so did an inherent power struggle. On one side there was Young, who considered himself the Theater of Eternal Music’s composer. On the other side was Conrad (along with his roommate Cale), who considered the group collaboration and was openly disdainful of even the idea that this music could have a composer in the traditional Western sense. Though they would remain active for at least another year, Conrad and Cale were soon exploring other career options.

  In the fall of 1964, Conrad and Cale became the bassist and lead guitarist for a rock band, the Primitives, where they backed up singer Lou Reed on an inane teenybopper dance song he’d written called “The Ostrich.” The band was short-lived, but Cale and Reed soon began a musical partnership that would evolve into the Velvet Underground. Combining Cale’s background in experimental music – particularly his droning viola work in the Dream Syndicate – with Reed’s tough pop sensibility, between 1965 and 1967 the Velvets created some of the most original and most influential rock ever made.

  Sean O’Hagen, High Llamas:

  I find John Cale fascinating insofar as he could actually write a happy song but convey an element of malice. That was very much an influence in Microdisney [O’Hagen’s first band]. When he was investigating intervals and drones, that was something I love and we try to do a little with Turn On [O’Hagen’s side project with Stereolab’s Tim Gone].

  Conrad opted not to pursue rock with Cale and Reed (although he did name the Velvet Underground, after an SM book he found in the street). Instead, Conrad got involved with avant-garde filmmaking, creating works such as The Flicker, a 1966 short that stands as a milestone of minimalist cinema. Currently a professor of video arts in Buffalo, Conrad never fully left music. In 1972, he traveled to Germany where he recorded Outside the Dream Syndicate with influential prog rock band Faust (it was from this record, not Young’s Dream Syndicate, that the ‘80s group took its name). A decade later, Conrad embarked on a piece called Early Minimalism (released in 1997), which, like the Faust album, is an attempt to realize some of the harmonic ideas he first put forth with dream music. Conrad has also performed with rock experimentalists Gastr del Sol and recorded a further study of his anticompositional, anti-Western microtonal violin work, Slapping Pythagoras.

  Jim O’Rourke, solo / Gastr del Sol:

  In Tony’s music, the message is all laid out. There’s no man behind the curtain, like there is in Stockhausen and Young... If anybody gives me credit for helping Tony Conrad come back I’ve finally done something worthwhile on this planet.

  Cale, who left the Velvets due to creative and personal conflicts with Lou Reed, has pursued a solo career that bridges the worlds of classical and rock. His records run the gamut from orchestral (Academy in Peril) to hard rock (Animal Justice, Sabotage), and from tuneful and plaintive (Paris 1919) to cold and minimalist (Church of Anthrax with Terry Riley). Cale has composed song cycles around the life of Andy Warhol (Songs for Drella, with Lou Reed) and the poetry of Dylan Thomas (Words for the Dying), written with playwright Sam Shepard (Music for a New Society), and scored films (I Shot Andy Warhol, Eat/Kiss, Basquiat). As a producer, Cale is responsible for some of rock’s landmark recordings, including the debut albums by Jonathan Richman’s Modern Lovers, Patti Smith, and the Stooges. Through collaborations, he has had a profound influence on the music of both Brian Eno (Wrong Way up) and David Byrne.

  Brian Eno:

  John Cale influenced me quite a lot. The way he works with musicians [in the studio] is very interesting. You get in there, you’ve just got yourself set up and the tape’s suddenly rolling!... And this is something I’ve picked up,
if you catch someone on their first time through they do some very odd things. You get this kind of liveliness to it which is a mixture of a sense of danger and excitement. I also picked up Cale’s sense of arrangement. I started listening to the kind of instruments he uses; he uses a lot of orchestral instruments in a way that doesn’t sound trite and sloppy.

  LaMonte Young has continued to create drone works. In the late ‘70s, Young and Zazeela brought the concept of “eternal music” to a logical extension with their Dream House, an on-site installation of slowly evolving light and sound that runs continually, sometimes for several years at a time, in their New York studio. The Theater of Eternal Music has continued as well, in various forms including a brass ensemble and big band. In 1990, Young formed the Forever Blues Band to apply his drone and just intonation ideas to blues. Dorian Blues in G, the group’s extended jam originally composed in 1961, can go on for hours. The piece brings non-Western harmonic principles full circle by reuniting the just intonation developed in 20th-century classical music with the similarly microtonal folk music derived from African “blue” notes. In 1997, Pulp, Spiritualized, Nick Cave, and others participated in a benefit concert for Young and Zazeela, to help the couple pay for medical bills incurred during Zazeela’s recent sickness.

  Considering its impart, remarkably few have ever heard the original Theater of Eternal Music. Though Young often recorded the group’s sessions, and likely still has many of the tapes, he has refused to release any of it officially. Some attribute this to Young’s perfectionism – suggesting that he deems the recordings unacceptable for public circulation – while Conrad and Cale have contended for years that Young is only interested in protecting his reputation as “sole composer,” which would be damaged if people heard what really went on. This feud, which has long strained Young’s relations with Conrad and Cale, continues with no end in sight (Conrad was recently seen picketing a Young concert in Buffalo). Those willing to do some searching may be able to find a rare 1992 bootleg called the White Album, featuring an old radio broadcast of Young, Conrad, and Cale’s Theater of Eternal Music. While the recording quality is only fair, it remains the only available artifact of this legendary group’s dream music.

  DISCOGRAPHY

  YOUNG

  89 V18 C. 1:42-1:52 AM Paris Encore from “Poem for Chairs, Tables, Benches, Etc.” in “Fluxtellus” (Tellus).

  (w/ Marian Zazeela) The Black Record (WG, Edition X, 1969).

  (w/ Marian Zazeela) Dream House 78’17” (Shandar, 1974).

  The Well-Tuned Piano (Gramavision, 1987).

  90 XII 9C. 9:35-10:52 PM NCY, The Melodic Version of the Second Dream of the High-Tension Line Stepdown Transformer from the Four Dreams of China (Gramavision, 1991).

  Forever Bad Blues Band: Just Stompin’: Live at Kitchen (Gramavision, 1993).

  CONRAD

  Outside the Dream Syndicate (Caroline, 1974; Table of the Elements, 1993).

  Slapping Pythagoras (Table of the Elements, 1995).

  Four Violins (Table of the Elements, 1996).

  Early Minimalism (Table of the Elements, 1997).

  CALE

  Vintage Violence (1970; Columbia, 1990).

  (w/ Terry Riley) Church of Anthrax (Columbia, 1971).

  The Academy in Peril (Reprise, 1972; Warner Archives, 1994).

  Paris 1919 (Reprise, 1973; Warner Archives, 1994).

  Fear (Island, 1974).

  (w/ Kevin Ayers / Brian Eno / Nico) June 1, 1974 (Island, 1974).

  Slow Dazzle (Island, 1975).

  Helen of Troy (Island UK, 1975).

  Guts (Island, 1977).

  Animal Justice EP (Illegal UK, 1977).

  Sabotage Live (Spy / IRS, 1979).

  Honi Soit (ASM, 1981).

  Music for a New Society (Ze / Passport, 1982; Rhino, 1993).

  Caribbean Sunset (Ze / Island, 1984).

  John Cale Comes Alive (Ze / Island, 1984).

  Artificial Intelligence (Beggars Banquet / PVC, 1985).

  Words for the Dying (Opal / Warner Bros., 1989).

  (w/ Brian Eno) One Way up (Opal / Warner Bros., 1990).

  (w/ Lou Reed) Songs for Drella (Sire / Warner Bros., 1990).

  Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (ROIR, 1991).

  Fragments of a Rainy Season (Hannibal / Rykodisc, 1992).

  Seducing down the Door: A Collection 1970-1990 (Rhino, 1994).

  The Island Years (Island, 1994).

  (w/ Bob Neuwirth) Last Day on Earth (MCA, 1994).

  Walking on Locusts (Rykodisc, 1996).

  Eat/Kiss (Hannibal / Rykodisc, 1997).

  PHILIP GLASS

  David Byrne:

  [The Talking Heads] and a lot of other rock-oriented people really got into his trancelike repetition. We could relate to it. Like a lot of R&B – it’s got a different kind of groove obviously – but it’s still precise repetition with slight changes. Occasionally we would structure things with that repetition, maybe with an odd meter similar to something he would do...

  Beginning in the late ‘60s, as art rock aspired to a higher level of respect and academic acceptance, a new generation of classically trained composers became interested in accomplishing the inverse. Tired of Western musical traditions – even those, such as serialism, which had only been developed in this century – they looked to popular and folk music, particularly non-Western styles, for new inspiration. The most visible among these composers was Philip Glass.

  While Western composers’ attention to Eastern music was a trend that had been developing for almost a century, what made Glass and his peers different was that they were consciously a part of the rock era. Not content to sit around waiting for commissions from orchestras or become college professors, these young composers formed bands, played club gigs, and produced records. And having aligned themselves with the rock world, it was only a matter of time before rock musicians and fans took notice.

  For at least three generations of musicians working in pop, Philip Glass was a key link to both classical and Eastern music. Over the last few decades, Glass has collaborated with artists from Paul Simon and David Bowie to Suzanne Vega and David Byrne to Aphex Twin. By meeting pop musicians half way, Glass has impacted not only rock, but ambient and techno music as well.

  Born and raised in Baltimore, where Glass’s father owned a radio and record store, Philip studied violin and flute at Peabody Conservatory as a kid, graduated from the University of Chicago at 19, then studied composition at New York’s Julliard with Darius Milhaud in his early ‘20s. It wasn’t until he went to France in 1964 to study with famed instructor Nadia Boulanger that Glass began to find his own musical voice.

  In Paris, Glass was hired to transcribe the music of Indian composer Ravi Shankar (later a large influence on the Beatles) into Western notation. Glass was mesmerized by the music’s timeless quality, and he was soon off to hitchhike through India and Africa in search of these new (to him, at least) approaches to music. By the time he’d returned to the U.S. in 1967, Glass was composing in a style that borrowed heavily from the structures, if not the sounds, of Indian music. He, along with a small group of composers taking a similar approach, became known as the minimalists.

  The music of Glass and the other major minimalists – LaMonte Young, Terry Riley, and Steve Reich – shared a number of traits. Profoundly influenced by Eastern music, minimalism was highly repetitive, with cycles of notes developing slowly and subtly, and continuing with no apparent end.

  It could be cold and mechanical, and yet mystical and meditative. Though minimalism tended to be more traditionally tonal than the serial music that had dominated previous decades of concert music, the psycho-acoustic phenomena often resulting from the use of electronic instruments – such as Glass’s preferred electric organ – could make it sound quite alien.

  Tim Gane, Stereolab:

  Repetition and minimalism are the two major things we always come back to, from the first record to the last. Particularly in early Philip Glass and Steve Reich,
I like the simple components. You can see how it starts, then hear as instruments are added. It lets you into the secret, but it doesn’t take away from the beauty or wonder of the music. I always liked the idea of not covering up the music and allowing people to understand where the ideas come from, I think that’s important.

  The minimalists also agreed that they themselves were the best performers of their own music. Each led small groups, or performed their works solo (Reich and Glass, former classmates, appeared in each other’s groups early on). Soon after his return to New York, Glass formed the Philip Glass Ensemble, which included keyboards, wind instruments, and voices, all amplified and controlled through a mixing board. Too loud and “undignified” for most concert halls, the group played wherever it could, mostly the galleries and rock clubs of New York’s downtown art scene.

  Though Glass would later stray somewhat from his roots, the Glass Ensemble’s earliest material – such as Music with Changing Parts and Music in Fifths – is quintessential minimalist. By the early ‘70s, the group was playing to small crowds in the United States and Europe, and Glass began releasing work on his own record label, Chatham Square. The ensemble’s format and volume made the music attractive to more adventurous rock fans, and early on musicians such as David Bowie and Brian Eno attended Glass concerts in London, while New York art bands like the Talking Heads became fans as well. Soon, an Eastern, minimalist quality could be heard in these bands’ pop and rock music.

  Brian Eno:

  It was a dense, strong sound, and that really impressed me, the physicality of that sound. There was no attempt to draw your attention by standard musical devices. It was just, here is the sound. Live in it... A lot of people left that show, but it really bowled me over. I thought, Oh God, this is it! This is the future of rock music! [from Option, Nov./Dec. 1997]