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‘A magic science’: rock music as a recording art

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

Paul Clarke
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Extract

Jimi Hendrix once claimed ‘I'm working on music to be completely, utterly a magic science’ (Henderson 1981, p. 337). It is a description that fits not just the best of Hendrix's own music, but the best of all that late twentieth-century music in which the ability to capture and control sounds (on tape or disc) has become a means of extending old musical forms and traditions, and establishing new possibilities for them. Throughout his career, Hendrix drew nourishment from his musical roots in black traditions, but it was not until the summer of 1967 that he plugged himself fully into the new possibilities opened up by the technology of sound recording. Hendrix had already proved himself something of a musical ‘magician’ in the ancient sense in that he attempted, through music, to mediate between order and disorder, using his guitar as an expressive extension of himself to flirt with the danger and power of musical disintegration (for the parallel with non-Western musical practice see Shepherd 1977, p. 72; Mellers 1973, pp. 24–6; Clarke 1982, pp. 227–9).

Type
Part 3. Modes of Musical Production
Information
Popular Music , Volume 3 , January 1983 , pp. 195 - 213
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1983

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References

References

Books and articles

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Records

Ian, Dury and the Blockheads. 1979. ‘Waiting For Your Taxi’, Do It Yourself, Stiff Seez 14A (London)Google Scholar
Johnson, L. K. 1978. ‘Five Nights of Bleeding’, Dread, Beat and Blood, Virgin vx looz (London)Google Scholar
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Extracts from ‘Waiting For Your Taxi’, ‘I've Been Loving You Too Long’ and ‘Sail Away’ quoted by permission of Warner Bros. Music Ltd. The extract from Linton Kwezi Johnson's ‘Five Nights of Bleeding’ appears by permission of Virgin Music Publications Ltd.Google Scholar