militant blues on campus history of rock & roll chpt. 12
TRANSCRIPT
Jimi Hendrix• Part Cherokee • From a broken home in Seattle • Hendrix and the Experience – Flower Children
• Freely experimented with drugs• “Stone Free”
Jimi and the Blues
• Rock’s greatest virtuoso • Grew up listening – Muddy Waters – Howlin’ Wolf
• Honorable discharge as paratrooper • Played with: – Little Richard, James Brown & B.B. King
Psychedelic Jimi
• Delivered loud, angry electric blues that captured the violence of the era.
• Electronic devices – Wah-wah pedal – Fuzz box – Feedback
Machine Gun
• Trying to express that at every moment there are terrible things going on all over the world – war, destruction, and terror…he wanted to open people’s eyes
• “to all the soldiers who are fighting in Chicago and Milwaukee and new York, oh yes, and to all the soldiers who are fighting in Vietnam.”
• “That’s all I’m singing about. It’s today’s blues”
Janice Joplin
• Hitchhiked from Port Arthur Texas to San Francisco
• Influenced greatly by Blues artist Bessie Smith • Razor sharp cries of anguish • Sang with several different groups: – Big Brother and the Holding company – Kosmic Blues Band – Full Tilt Boogie Band
Heavy Metal Thunder
• Militant mood of the times
• Delivering loud, explosive blues
• Unfettered by psychedelia
• Initially defined by Steppenwolf
Led Zeppelin
• Reworked version of Howlin’ Wolf’s “How Many More Years” called “How Many More Times”
• Lead guitarist Jimmy Page became one of heavy metal’s main stars
Black Sabbath
• Perfected the loud, aggressive blues that characterized heavy metal
• Originally called themselves Earth• When they were “Earth” they did more blues
from Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters & John Lee Hooker.
• They began doing heavier stuff and in 1969 changed their name.
Ozzy Osbourne
• Lead vocalist of Black Sabbath • John “Ozzy” Osbourne • “Now you consider everyone’s all jolly and tip-
toein’ around, stoned on acid, havin’ Woodstock and all love, peace, sex, drugs and rock-’n’-roll, and all that’s great…but for us guys that were livin’ in this hole in the world, it wasn’t that way.”