Mountains Come Out of the Sky

by Will Romano

  Premiata Forneria Marconi: Chocolate Kings (1975)

  II Rovescio della Medaglia: Contaminazione (1973)

  Il Balleto di Bronzo: Ys (1972)

  Museo Rosenbach: Zarathustra (1973)

  Locanda delle Fate: Forse le Lucciole non si amino pui (1977)

  New Trolls: Concerto Grosso per 1 (1971)

  New Trolls: Concerto Grosso number 2 (1976)

  Banco del Mutuo Soccorso: Darwin! (1972)

  Banco del Mutuo Soccorso: s/t (1972)

  Banco del Mutuo Soccorso: lo Sono Nato Libero (1973)

  Banco del Mutuo Soccorso: Come in un’ultima Cena (1976)

  Semiramis: Dedicato a Frazz (1973)

  Arti + Mestieri: Tilt (1974)

  Arti + Mestieri: First Live in Japan (2006)

  Osanna: Palepoli (1973)

  “Peter Sinfield said the music would be more universal if new lyrics were written, and I agree with him,”’ says Di Cioccio. “If you write lyrics that reflect only a small part of your life or your country, then people aren’t going to be interested in your music. Per Un Amico, which means, ‘for a friend,’ for instance, addressed political situations in Italy at the time. Basically, we were saying, ‘Hey, friend, instead of talking and talking, don’t waste time. Make something. Do something.’ At that point it was very hard to live here in Italy. The early ’70s had a lot of fighting, and it started one of the worst periods of Italian life with the Red Brigade [aka Brigate Rosse, a rogue communist guerilla group]. So the story of the record was not so important for the rest of the world.”

  “We shouldn’t forget about the fact that PFM did an album called Chocolate Kings, which is an anti-American album about excess,” says Sinfield. “I said, ‘You’re touring America. You can’t do something so blatant.”’

  “Pete Sinfield offered a lot of advice,” says Di Cioccio. “He also said [we’d] be better off using PFM as the band name. But the problem was, people didn’t know what PFM stood for. When people asked what it meant, we would joke about it and say that it stood for ‘Pass the Fettuccine and Macaroni.’ Or ‘Please Fuck Me.’ But that is not true. We took our name from the Marconi bakery.”

  In some ways, performing in English hurt Banco as it did all of the Italian bands. As backward as it sounds, part of what gives the music its mystique is the fact that English-speaking people don’t always understand the words. (Ironically, it was the Italians, in many cases, who supported the English progressive bands such as Genesis, Van der Graaf Generator, and Gentle Giant before they were fully accepted in Britain. “Our style must have appealed to them,” says Van der Graaf Generator keyboardist Hugh Banton. “We figured it had to do with the perceived operatic qualities of our rock music.”)

  PFM’s ability to communicate with an audience was fundamentally changed upon translation (e.g., the English version of Le Orme’s Felona e Sorona, translated by Van der Graaf Generator guitarist/vocalist Peter Hammill, is now a collector’s item.) Yet PFM’s Photos of Ghosts ranked on the Billboard Top 200 Albums chart. PFM and Banco were breaking through: The New Musical Express, when PFM toured Britain in 1974, even compared flautist/violinist/guitarist Mauro Pagani to Niccolò Paganini, calling him a master.

  As if averting the language barrier altogether, Banco entered a heavily instrumental period in the mid-1970s, composing the score for a 1976 Luigi Faccini film about love and political unrest in Sicily, Garofano Rosso (based on the Sicilian author/political dissident Elio Vittorini’s first novel, Il Garofano Rosso), and, in 1978, . . . di Terra, an instrumental symphonic rock record featuring the Orchestra della Unione Musicisti di Roma—what Banco call their most complex music.

  Banco would return (more or less) to form with Canto di Primavera (though the record contains some instrumental tracks), with Di Giacomo’s vocals taking the musical lead once again. Canto di Primavera also marked a change in musical direction for Banco—a condensation of their creativity—that roamed far from the band’s progressive early days. Banco, arguably for the first time, were clearly attempting to write a hit single.

  Banco stands as an example for the entire rock progressivo movement in Italy: They might have been misguided in the late 1970s and in the 1980s, and even began imitating some of their British and American counterparts. But they’ve clawed their way back to their roots, continuing to perform music from the glory days of the early and mid-1970s.

  Italy might not have beaten Britain or the U.S. to the experimental rock boom, but their enduring music is one of the most beloved strains of progressive music.

  “Progressivo Italiano has been recognized around the world,” says Il Balletto di Bronzo’s Gianni Leone. “What we were doing in those years, not really even being aware of what we were doing, really can’t be topped and can’t be repeated.”

  “There really was a magic about the time, at least for a little while,” says Beppe Crovella. “You could feel it in the art, the schools, the workers, everyday life. And I think that spilled over into the music.”

  Osanna: Suddance (1978)

  GERMAN PROG AND THE KRAUTROCKER

  IN THE LATE 1960S AND EARLY 1970S, GERMAN ROCK BANDS came in all shapes and sizes, ranging from the avant-garde and experimental to the electronic, minimalist, avant-garde, Wagnerian, conceptual, and (paradoxically) quintessential British progressive.

  While many similarities exist between these German bands, there were far more points of divergence. Several factors contributed to this, including the rise to prominence of record labels such as Pilz, Sky, Ohr, and the Hamburg-based Brain; the geographic locale of a particular band; the political and socioeconomic conditions of the city in which a band was based; and even the nature of the German psyche.

  “I think all the German rock bands were very idealistic people,” says Milla Kapolke, bassist for Grobschnitt, a band formed in Hagen in the mid-1960s. “At this time, German bands were not in it purely for the money. They didn’t give a shit about selling lots of records.”

  “I guess it came down to a common guilt in Germany—you were not supposed to admit that you were German,” says Amon Düül guitarist/vocalist John Weinzierl. “We grew up not knowing why. We didn’ t see the war, but we had all of these disasters, disasters that our parents made, shoved in our face. We didn’t want to be new nationalistic Germans. We just wanted to be ourselves.”

  “It was frowned upon if you listened to American or English music,” says bassist Dave Anderson, the only Englishman during his time with Amon Düül. “It was a clear, definite decision to develop a different style and sound.”

  “Even our band names were different,” adds Weinzierl. “In those days, everybody was called the Beatles or ‘the’ something. We didn’t want to have an English name. Amon is related to the Egyptian sun god. One of the bands we used to listen to was Canadian, called Hapshash and the Coloured Coat, and they released a record [in 1967] called Featuring the Human Host and the Heavy Metal Kids, which featured a mythology that included the word Duul, or Dyyl. We took our name from that. Later we placed in the umlaut dots to point out that we are German.”

  GERMAN SCENES

  Musicians were allowed to grow independently of and isolated from other artistic scenes in Germany, and the fractural nature of the musical landscape created a diverse brand of art and progressive rock, which has inspired generations of artists from Porcupine Tree and the Jesus and Mary Chain to Sonic Youth, Stereolab, Radiohead, Air, and Primal Scream.

  “[In] every little village in every city there was live music,” says Charly Maucher, bassist of Hannover’s Jane, a band that reached its psychedelic/prog peak with the three-track 1976 release Fire, Water, Earth & Air, the double LP Live at Home (also 1976), and 1977’s Between Heaven and Hell.

  “In England it seems like most of the movers and shakers were in London at some point, but not every important band in Germany was in Munich or Berlin,” says Kapolke.

  Proximity didn’t always equate with musical homogeneity, either. For instance, Düsseldorf pr
oduced the minimalism and orderliness of Kraftwerk as well as the messy musical interactions of Neu!

  Hamburg (initially) fostered the acid-induced workouts of the English natives Nektar as well as the avant-garde art rock of Slapp Happy, a group led by English keyboardist Anthony Moore, American guitarist Peter Blegvad, and German singer Dagmar Krause, who collaborated with Britain’s politically charged Henry Cow—kindred spirits who appeared on Virgin Records along with Slapp Happy—on 1974’s Desperate Straights and 1975’s In Praise of Learning.

  “Slapp Happy reminded us how great short song form could be, and how flexible,” says Henry Cow drummer Chris Cutler, who formed Art Bears with Cow guitarist Fred Frith and Slapp Happy’s Krause in 1978.

  KLAUS TO THE EDGE

  Klaus Schulze, an original member of Tangerine Dream, spawned his own career in electronica after abandoning the drums for the synthesizer in the early 1970s.

  Schulze, much like Manuel Göttsching (see Space Rock sidebar), not only embraced emerging keyboard/sequencing technology (EMS, Moog, ARP, and later Fairlight), he successfully circumvented the limitations of contemporary recording equipment to produce layered compositions independent from his American and British rock influences.

  “An analogue synthesizer could not store sounds,” says Schulze. “But I made records like Irrlicht [1972], Cyborg [1973], [and] Picture Music [1975] with them. Up until Moondawn [1976], Body Love [1977], and X [1978], which I recorded in a small studio in Frankfurt [Panne-Paulsen studios], I only had a two-track Revox [reel-to-reel analog tape recorder], so I had to play everything in one go, like in a live concert.”

  Schulze began incorporating percussion (courtesy of drummer Harald Grosskopf) and swing feel, which lightened the repetitive nature of a milestone record such as Moondawn, for instance, and helped to enhance Schulze’s adventures in sound design ever since.

  “[Schulze] was a master of synthesis,” former Santana drummer Michael Shrieve told the author in 2006. Shrieve first worked with Schulze on Japanese percussionist Stomu Yamash’ta’s 1976 extraterrestrial kung fu musical extravaganza, Go. “I loved all of the sequencers pumping this rhythm stuff that he was doing, but one of the things that drove me crazy was the drum patterns. He had these powerful rhythms . . . and yet I didn’t like the groove.”

  Trancefer (1981)

  “When I played with Go, I listened to [Shrieve], because he helped me to adjust my sequencers,” says Schulze. “He talked to me about body movement and told me, ‘Klaus, walk with the rhythm you’ve made.’ It was a strange request, but I did, and I ended up adjusting my grooves to the point that I could walk with them. From that point on, I learned that you could groove with machines and not to be so mathematical.”

  Cologne-based Triumvirat, formed in 1972 by classically trained keyboardist Jürgen Fritz, recorded impressive symphonic material such as 1974’s Illusions on a Double Dimple and 1975’s Spartacus– something akin to what their British progressive rock brethren had been doing some years earlier.

  Interestingly, the city also was home to the talents of the musically adventurous Can, formed in 1968, which took rock experimentation to its very limits (nearly to the point that the musical fiber disintegrated) with 1969’s Monster Movie (credited to the Can), 1971’s double album Tago Mago, and 1972’s Ege Bamyasi.

  Their 1973 offering, Future Days, perhaps Can’s most accessible effort of the 1970s (and the last to feature vocalist Kenji “Damo” Suzuki, who replaced Malcolm Mooney after the latter’s nervous breakdown) is a satisfying, if disturbing, listen at times.

  Can’s avant-garde approach, which helped to spawn the genre known as “krautrock,” was an amalgam of backward vocals; Michael Karoli’s guitar effects processing; tape loops of rhythmic patterns; Holger Czukay’s wheezing and wobbling bass lines; plucked and sawed stringed instruments; Irmin Schmidt’s bleeping and spiraling keyboards; funky/bluesy syncopated grooves (courtesy of the magic hands—and feet—of drummer Jaki Liebezeit); Suzuki’s profound/nonsensical panting, chanting, and ranting; organic simple chord jams; hissing sheets of electronic white noise; and cavernous echoes (applied during the mixing stage).

  “This was one of the rare periods when the record industry was running behind the music, not manufacturing it,” says Cutler. “We all benefited from the album culture. For a short span, novelty was popular and record companies were falling over one another to sign the strangest bands and unearth new ones.”

  TANGERINE DREAM

  Tangerine Dream, an innovative synthesizer-based band formed in 1967, produced textural and undulating programmed soundscapes via Moog, Mellotron, organ, and VCS-3 synthi, an approach best captured on Phaedra (1974), a Top 20 British hit; Rubycon and Ricochet (both 1975); and Stratosfear (1976), featuring the much-heralded lineup of Russian-born keyboardist/guitarist Edgar Froese, keyboardist Chris Franke, and keyboardist/flutist Peter Baumann.

  The Dream’s percolating, wordless music evoked otherworldly visual images while expressing basic human emotions, inducing altered states of consciousness. Despite some of the genuinely terrifying sonic turns of Phaedra and Rubycon (something like a bad trip), the meditative aspects of Tangerine Dream’s spontaneously composed songs fulfilled the band’s musical destiny as transcendental impressionists (an approach only hinted at on their debut, 1970’s Electronic Meditation).

  “All the rhythmic aspects of what they did came from synthesizers and sequencing, as opposed to playing,” says producer Mick Glossop, who engineered Rubycon and Ricochet. “Ninety percent of what they did was improvised. One of them would sit down at the synthesizer and start making a sound and the others would respond.

  “If they felt there was something they had done that was worth listening to, they’d come into the control room and have a listen,” continued Glossop. “They would perform overdubs or take a theme from one part that was improvised and copy it and place it somewhere else. It was like a cut-and-paste function in a word processing program.”

  Mainstay Froese proclaimed, in a statement that’s largely true of most German prog artists/krautrockers, that Tangerine Dream was not striving to be a pop band at all, but aimed to be “far away from all the silly things.”

  Though conventional rock instruments became more prominent in Tangerine Dream’s live performances and studio recordings by the late 1970s, Froese and the band have stayed true, more or less, to their electronica musical roots, churning out stellar efforts such as 1980’s Tangram and 1983’s Hyperborea, and even finding commercial success via Hollywood film scores, including those for William Friedkin’s 1977 gripping thriller Sorcerer, 1983’s Risky Business, starring Tom Cruise; the film adaptation of Stephen King’s best-selling Firestarter (1984); 1985’s horror-comedy Fright Night; and 1987’s Three O’Clock High.

  “They were a unique band, not just because they played three banks of synthesizers,” says Glossop. “They shaped music until they achieved the sound they wanted. The whole approach to music was quite different.”

  GROBSCHNITT

  Grobschnitt is one of two major German bands that resembled their British progressive rock counterparts closely by translating musical drama and campy theatricality into “gold” with 1974’s Ballermann, 1975’s slightly absurd Jumbo, and—considered by many to be the band’s crowning achievement—1977’s fantasy-based concept record, Rockpommel’s Land.

  The brainchild of keyboardist Volker “Mist” Kahrs and founding member/drummer/lyricist Joachim Ehrig (aka “Eroc”), Rockpommel’s Land told the musical adventure of a troubled boy named Ernie, who escapes life’s doldrums by hitching a ride with Maraboo, a paper airplane that transforms itself into a giant bird.

  It’s little wonder that Rockpommel’s Land struck a chord in fans on the Continent, the U.K., and America: The music blends chirping acoustic riffing, stratospheric synthesizer flights of fancy, and odd electronic noises (manipulated by Eroc) that perfectly capture all the confusion, joy, oppression, and wonder inherent in the plot.

  Yet bec
ause the record, delivered with straight-faced conviction, was a slight departure from the band’s earlier psychedelic efforts, audiences took a while to warm to its overtures toward classical and British folk. (Even the fantasy-based cover was purposefully Roger Dean–esque.)

  “When [Grobschnitt] played Rockpommel’s Land live in 1978, there was no applause,” says bassist Milla Kapolke. “The people didn’t want to hear it. I could compare it to Yes, maybe, when they did Tales from Topographic Oceans, which some people didn’t like at first. For some it’s their greatest album. Rockpommel’s Land is the same way: It’s the most popular and [commercially successful] record Grobschnitt has, and it’s what people want to hear most when we perform live.”

  By the time audiences began appreciating Rockpommel’s Land, Grobschnitt had changed its musical style yet again. “The band followed [Rockpommel’s Land] with Merry-Go-Round, a much more song-oriented album,” Kapolke says. “After Merry-Go-Round the band wanted to go in yet another new musical direction. With every LP we finished, we said, ‘This is not our music anymore.’ That makes Rockpommel’s Land something rather special.”

  ELOY

  Like their German rock compatriots Novalis and French, Mahler-influenced symphonic rockers Pulsar, Hannover-based Eloy were, at times, derivative of Pink Floyd, but built a cult following that continues into the twenty-first century, thanks to the band’s layered, Wagnerian sound.