Those Darn Hippies and the Disco 70s!
The 70's- the Real Deal
it wasn't all like this- honest
sadly, some was like this
The 70's- The Real Deal
the 70s- The Real Deal
The Big Lie
It appears to me that the media/journalist community unanimously believes that the only musical aspect of the 70s worth noting is 'disco'.
The entire decade is referred to and spoken of in this way. Documentaries typically play 'Saturday Night Fever' clips of Travolta dancing to the Bee Gees' 'Stayin' Alive' as a foundation for the disco-based narrative to come.
This is like labeling the 'Industrial Age' as Thomas Edison alone, and ignoring the likes of Ford and Royce, among many others.
To those who weren't there that believe the media, all the music of the the entire 70s is a disco joke- to be laughed off as superfluous by lack of virtue of the 'disco generation'.
As they sing along with 'Won't Get Fooled Again'.
So, tonight we're 'Defending the 70s!' (Yea, we used to say 'groovy' but at least we didn't say 'dude'.)
Like a Moth to a Mirror Ball
Let's start with disco itself, epitomized in the press by New York's Studio 54 and the gliterati crowd.
Who, really, was in these '70s disco clubs?
Girls that like to dress up and go out dancing, and guys who want to meet those girls.
Same as the Sock-Hops of the 50s, the original Discoteches of the 60s and the DJ boom of the 80s to this day.
From local dance clubs to ultra-lounges, the same crowd still dresses up an goes out to dance to piercingly loud recorded music under flashing colored lights.
Heavy, funky dance music, borne of Motown and R&B, was already popular by 1970.
But this wasn't 'disco' as we know it, yet.
It all starts, one could say, with Van McCoy's 1972 album, 'From Disco to Love' - but that's just foreshadowing.
With his 1975 hit, 'the Hustle', he inspires a wildly popular line dance.
The fad ignites a resurgence in club dancing. They all want to do 'the hustle'.
Disco had arrived.
Now, the jukebox fills the bar with one song. Who needs a band?
A flood of records, a few movies and tv dance shows later, disco is here to stay and we're stuck with it whether we like it, uh-huh-uh-huh, or not.
This is where the split between live rock and dance music began.
Let's dance! or..not...
Clubs with DJs are musically about dancing. People who want to dance don't need a live band to do it. Dancing to records is an age-old common practice. Serious dancers prefer the predictable record over an unpredictable band playing a song. A really solid, rhythmically tight band, however, can overcome this and please all the dancers as much or more.
So, no, this wasn't about dancing.
Rock and roll fancied itself that way already. Throughout the, 50s and 60s, danceable rock songs hit the charts. Elvis, the Beatles and the Stones all had equal penchant for danceability and melody..
This was about the music.
The main reason that disco was a joke to those of us wearing jeans was the dumbing-down of the music.
For every funk masterpiece from the likes of Average White Band and Tower of Power, there were a dozen more 'Boogie Oogie Oogie's'.
Lyrics and melodies were rarely memorable if not facetious. Records were overproduced and the bass and snare drums were mind-numbingly loud and repetitive. The beats and tempos barely varied from song to song. Typically not much soloing going on, either. Heavy string and keyboard/synth arrangements (Dance clubs and tunes remain this way to this day.)
Great for people timing out fancy dance moves.
And great for rhythmically challenged guys there to pick up women. Anyone can find a beat so simple and loud.
The perfect entertainment for 'social' dance clubs.
(ahem)
Very boring for folks who came out to see a band.
Now, to put that in perspective, one must keep in mind two things-
One, during the early 70s there weren't really that many 'discos'. If a bar or restaurant didn't have live bands, they usually just played the jukebox and folks danced to what was on it.
The other, more important thing to remember is that disco was just one small part of the musical world, albeit given more press than much music gets in general.
Where was the rest of the musical world during that time?
Off being part of the 'musical industrial age'.
'Pretty files of your forefather's fruit....'
Tipping our hat appropriately to the 60s, The Beatles are probably the best template example for the foundation of the real 70s. The Rolling Stones, Moody Blues, and many other artists could be cited just as authoritively.
Musically, the Beatles (and et al) covered such a great variety of styles successfully, the whole palette was opened up wide for audience and artist alike. The 70s would see massive amounts of both danceable and performance-based music in virtually every style.
All this musical depth had it's effect on the recording industry, too.
Starting as a dance band, recording live in the studio to monophonic or stereo tape, the Beatles progressed in musical depth as the recording industry took corresponding technological leaps.
Using multiple tape recorders, splicing techniques and re-recording, the Beatles were part of a new kind of demand on the recording studio equipment of the day.
Les Paul's insightful multi-track designs, his remarkle invention of the audio compressor, Neumann's still industry-standard U87 microphone and Tom Dowd's game-changing contribution- the sliding fader, all played a role in the Beatles' evolving art and music's new technical requirements.
By 1968, some of the top studios, including Abbey Road, are using 8-track reel recorders rolling one inch wide tape. This is a huge boon. This means you don't need to record the whole song all at once or juggle 2 tape machines. You can get the rhythm instruments down first, then add the other instruments and vocals at leisure and adjust or 'mix' the volume of each track. You then re-record it all on another stereo tape machine.
This would become the standard procedure for making records, and remains so.
Musical electronic technology would explode in the 70s and give us the momentum to get to where we are today. Even with modern software, such as Pro Tools, many of the recording techniques we use today originated then. And, that's when mixing songs became an art form of it's own.
By 1970, top groups were recording on the first 16-track tape recorders using 2" wide tape.
By 1975, 16 and 24-track recorders were the norm. The recording and mixing consoles became far more elaborate as well. Automation came into practice- automatically turning the channels of the console on or off and changing volume as the song played. Electronic special effects devices, such as echo boxes and reverbs, came onto the scene, all adding unparralelled control of the music.
Records could be perfect.
And all at a much higher quality than ever before.
Which was convenient, because musicians used every bit of it and wanted more.
The vinyl tide rolls forth
The decade starts with the likes of 'Who's Next', Jethro Tull's 'Aqualung', Derek and the Dominos 'Layla', Traffic's "Low Spark of High Heeled Boys' and the 'Allman Brothers Live at the Fillmore'.
Among the legends to make their marks in the next decade to come- Steely Dan, Pink Floyd, Yes, Emerson, Lake and Palmer, Peter Gabriel, Genesis, David Bowie, Alice Cooper, Frank Zappa, Steve Miller, Rush, Aerosmith, the Eagles, Tom Petty, Bruce Springsteen, Heart, Deep Purple, Queen, Kansas, Doobie Brothers, Rod Stewart, Jim Croce, Harry Chapin, America, Crosby, Stills and Nash and Neil Young, BTO, Elton John, Prince, Lynrd Skynyrd, James Taylor, Chicago, Todd Rundgren, Jimmy Buffet and, well, I could go on for quite a while.
Even now, classic rock still has relevance and most markets have at least one classic rock station. Our ads, movies and tv themes are still tapping on songs from that era. Barely a night goes by when a bar band isn't asked to play 'Sweet Home Alabama' or 'Hotel California'.
It goes deeper than that. What we're talking about here is really our collective musical vocabulary- all the songs and snippets that we tend to recognize, identify with or find comfortable. Our modern vocabulary is based predominantly on the classic rock era- 1955-1989.
60s and 70s artists continued adding to this vocabulary through the 80s. Bands like the Police, Dire Straits, passed the torch to REM, UK and Guns and Roses, who kept the volume growing. By 1990 and since, though, fewer artists are contributing at the same depth.
'a transistor and a large sum of money to spend'
Though the era looms large, many of the individual pop and rock songs of the 60s are forgotten. There were an awful lot of them, you know.
Well, the 70s had that many times that many. Every style of music or fusion thereof was playing somewhere.
Through the new magic of recording gear and synthesizers, albums like 'Dark Side of the Moon', 'Thick As a Brick' and 'Close To the Edge' rocked our worlds at point blank range- through headphones.
Records really became masterpiece works in the 70s. All the musical parts were getting through, all the time.
Techniques pioneered by George Martin and the Beatles, et al, were embraced and advanced, raising the sophistication and the quality of the music, to us, immeasurably.
We could hear it.
Stereo FM radio made listening in the car a joy, and component stereos provided that and more at home.
Aaah, FM. The musical wonderland.
Until 1975-77, FM radio stations were not considered mainstream. Although FM became quite popular, Top 40 stations were still on AM. By the mid-70s, as FM radios became standard equipment on new cars, they began making the jump.
There went the neighborhood.
Meanwhile....back at the ranch-
just like the album
As listeners, our attention to the details in the music grew. We identified and memorized more of the individual instruments, most notably guitar riffs, vocals and solos.
So, the 70s also became one of the the harshest decades for working or aspiring musicians.
A new sea of future rock stars flowed forth, and while the width and breath of styles is vast, the talent pool is not uniformly deep everywhere.
Audiences were so familiar with the albums that they knew when an artist deviated from the record during live performance. No one would complain, of course, when it's the original artist.
But, if it's the band at the corner bar and they don't sing it right or play that guitar solo just like the record, the whole band stinks.
Since the coffee houses of the 50s, there were always outlets for completely original performers without pay. Like open mics and indie music bars today, audiences expect you to play what you want, and are quite forgiving to a wide range of performance quality.
But, the lion's share of clubs then preferred a mix of recognizable songs, maybe danceable, for which they'll pay. If a musician wants to make that pay, they learn the songs. If their originals stand up to the other hit songs, they can sneak them in.
Performing musicians had a basic choice to make- play what ever you want, mostly for free, or get paid to play 40 songs like the record.
So, throughout the 70s, local rock players were playing along with the records, learning parts note-for-note just like their classical counterparts poring over a written score.
And, critically important, learning all these now-classic songs verbatim adds immensely to a player's musical vocabulary, broadening the canvas of their original works.
So, if you could really play and weren't just repeating rote finger movements, you could do your own solo instead of the record's.If it was as good or better, that was cool with the audience.
Unless, of course, you could REALLY play.
Jazz moved galaxies ahead. The students of Brubeck, Miles, Coltrane and their contemperaries were 70s innovators like Chick Corea, Pat Metheny, Herbie Hancock, Weather Report and Jaco Pastorius. They and many more like them were playing shows, making records and getting FM airplay.
And many local musicians scurried to follow in their footsteps.
The term 'covers', for playing other artist's songs live, was not in use yet. Bands identified themselves by the style of music or the type of gigs they played. A band that played strictly pop dance music was a 'top 40'. A band that played banquet halls was a wedding band. ('Casuals' out west.) Otherwise, they called themselves by genre- folk, rock, blues, jazz, original or fusion.
Clubs featuring live music of all these genres were common. Then, as now, the governing factor was-
The dance floor.
"freeeeeee biiiirrrrrrrrrrrrrrd"
Once again, as it still is now, there were 3 types of live music clubs in the 70s- dancing, listening and concert.
A dance club is a bar or restaurant that has a dance floor. Period. It's there to be danced on. That meant at least a trio with bass and drums back then. Bands would play popular, danceable songs. (Which still covered a wide range of styles.)
The band may be on a small stage or on the floor. Maybe a cover charge, maybe not.
A listening club has no dance floor. Could be a restaurant, a bar or a coffee house. They might have a band playing danceable stuff, but essentially an artist can likely do whatever they do (or what the club prefers). Anything from a solo performer or duo to a full band could be on tap. Musical offerings ranged across the board- folk/rock, i.e., Dan Fogelberg, Buffet, John Prine, to jazz, blues, original or performance oriented classic rock. The musicians may be on a small stage or on the floor. Probably no cover charge.
Concert clubs have featured acts, in a concert style setting with a stage and pro sound and lights. Bands playing originals or themed shows, sometimes minor celebrity acts. Usually a cover charge or ticketed entrance. 'The Troubadour' in LA would be a prime example of a concert club operating since the 60s.
And why you ask, was everything from jazz-fusion to Dylan-style folk playing in litlle bars and restaurants?
Because acts of all kinds were selling out arenas, theatres and stadiums with little more than a 2" x 3" announcement ad in the local paper for a couple days.
I attended sold out early 70s arena concerts by then 'underground' acts Jethro Tull, Elton John, Robin Trower, Rick Wakeman, Jeff Beck, Allman Brothers, Peter Frampton and 4 by Yes. All promoted, as with their albums, with underground radio and a few small ads.
These shows, ignored by the media pretty much wholesale, were the beginning of today's concert extravaganzas. Live sound equipment benefited from the advances in recording gear as well. Again, many of our current concert sound mixing practices originated during this time.
Not to mention the light shows. Visual staging effects were on a similar trajectory.
By 1975, synchronized film and video cameras trained on the performers, displayed on a large screen above the stage were in use. I saw Jethro Tull's Passon Play tour, with a synchronized film in 1973. I saw the Who in 1975, using a camera on a big screen.
All of this went on seemingly under the national media radar.
None of our now-revered artists were getting anywhere near the media attention afforded to top 40 disco dance artists.
A brief side note-
The term 'Top 40' is a double edged sword. It means the 40 most popular- according to sales that Billboard Magazine monitors. Because it's based on record sales alone, the list usually includes many different styles.
Frankly put, artists have always had to sell their way to top radio play and media time.
It's a 'catch-22' ironically in place today- you need airplay to sell a lot of records but you can't have it unless you sell a lot of records.
Artists we call 'Classic', from the late 60s and early 70s, had a great deal of popular material that didn't make the Top 40 AM playlists.
Fortunately, FM was more open-minded.
Take, for example, Elton John's classic album 'Goodbye Yellow Brick Road'. AM listeners heard 'Bennie and the Jets', 'Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting' and 'Candle In the Wind'. FM fans heard the whole album, sometimes an entire side at once.
Now, back to the plot!
So, you say, if the 70s were really this golden age of musical creativity, then what the hell happened?
Why does the media say it was just about disco when you say it's so massively important? What gives?
Glad you asked me that.
1970 wasn't the end of the psychedelic age, or the progressive, widely styled fusion and diversity of music.
If the 60s were coined as the 'Rennaisance Era' of rock, then the 70s would be the Impressionist period.
Psychedelia, athletic playing, strong vocal melodies and variety all went hand-in-hand through the 70s.
The mainstream media only looks at the top 5% or so of what's going on that they want to cover. They don't cover things they're embarrassed about or don't want to publicize.
These artists, the holdovers from the 60s and the new faces alike, were all still,
(shudder)
hippies.
Media loves to say that the Summer of Love, 1969, was the end of the counterculture era. That the 1970 deaths of Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix were it's epitaph.
Poignantly tragic poppycock.
Obviously, every hippie in the country didn't cut his hair and join the 'establishment' on 1-1-1971. The hippies went on, and many of their siblings joined them. All the mryiad protest issues remained- political corruption, the war, the economy, the environment, civil rights, corporate greed and recklessness, government intervention in constitutional rights, etc.
The old rock and roll groups we love today were portrayed badly or ignored by mainstream media throughout Nixon's administration. The hippie message was to be silenced as much as possible, music and all.
I should probably advise you that concerts back then often involved a certain smoky odor permeating the arena.
When Carter came into office, 1977, media tension relaxed a bit and they now gladly reported on what that dastardly Nixon had put them up to. Okay to cover rock stars now. John Lennon can be on the talk shows.
Meanwhile, since cars now have FM radios as standard and Neilsen is rating it, big media corps are buying up the undergound stations and catering to the hippie crowd. Soon there is little difference between the classic rock and top 40 stations.
Ads, products, films and tv shows start including the 'hippe factor' (again). This time around, though, big business really has a hold on the whole game, and by 1980 the hippie movement is effectively reduced to 'classic rock attitude' and fashion.
The hippie community finally splintered off in many directions, and the traditionals went into hiding, only daring to step out into the world at Grateful Dead, Phish concerts and Burning Man.
and the beat goes on.....
All this time, disco remains big in the news for the same reasons it was in the first place- pretty women who like to dance look good on tv, celebrities flock to it and someone will be arrested.
Throughout the 80s, the disco crowd would continue to provide the news with saucy tales of celebrities, cocaine and sex scandals as they evolve into today's 'ultra'-loungers.
As we see, describing disco doesn't take much effort to do or remember. One can quickly sound authoritive.
That's why journalists say 'the 70s was 'just disco'.
The rest of the 70s, musically, is not so easy to spit out as a glib sound byte. Nor is it lightly dismissed in any serious musical discussion.
A large part of our musical vocabulary came from this underground decade of legendary artists. Some made it to the mainstream then, some just for one song, others endearingly over the years.
Overall, the 70s are likely among the thicker volumes in our musical history lexicon.
Technology and creativity reached new levels in the 70s, levels we unwittingly call the floor on which we stand.