Listening Guides

Listening Guide 18.1

Listening Guide 18.2

Listening Guide 18.3

Listening Guide 18.1
"White Rabbit" 4 beats per measure

iTune link = White Rabbit

"White Rabbit" is from Jefferson Airplane's 1967 album Surrealistic Pillow, the first recording from the San Francisco scene to gain national attention. On this album the group's sound had matured around Grace Slick's penetrating vocal style. Their song topics addressed intimate romantic love and broader universal love; but true to the culture of the times, they also addressed the drug experience.
    Reference to drugs was not unprecedented in literature and the arts. In the nineteenth century, opium and opium-based pharmaceuticals were the prominent drugs. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's famous fictional detective Sherlock Holmes was an opium user. The famous French composer Hector Berlioz based his Symphonie Fantastique on an opium drug experience. Lewis Carroll's story Alice's Adventures in Wonderland was a metaphor for a drug experience, though its popularity as a children's story has played this down. Jefferson Airplane, on the other hand, played the drug reference to the hilt in "White Rabbit."
    The electric bass begins this song with a two-note pattern; it seems to imitate timpani drums in an orchestra. In the third measure the snare drum enters with a military style rhythmic pattern, and the bass notes move up a half step. This half-step bass motion (1 to flat-2) is common in Spanish folk music, and "White Rabbit" does take on the character of a Spanish march. The electric guitar enters with a brief melody to finish out the introduction.
    Grace Slick enters with the first verse; it is easy to hear the strength and assertiveness in her voice, although, at this point, she is singing in a soft and spellbinding manner. Her voice becomes more commanding over the course of the two verses, as she points out Alice 's constantly altered state after ingesting one thing or another and questions what is in the caterpillar's water pipe. As the song's chorus begins, the band breaks away from the Spanish march feel and goes into a folk-rock beat. When Slick sings the recurring line "go ask Alice," the march beat is resumed. The group's intensity builds over the next 12 measures as Slick vividly describes Alice 's strange world. The final push of the song is signaled by an electric guitar chord played in persistent eighth notes, supported by a similar rhythmic pattern in the drums. A crashing chord concludes the performance, a dramatic climax to a song of fearsome majesty.

Listening Guide 18.2
"I Don't Live Today" 4 beats per measure

iTune link = I Don't Live Today

Other songs from Jimi Hendrix's Are You Experienced? album are more famous, but "I Don't Live Today" is a fine single example of Hendrix's songwriting, guitar playing, and use of studio techniques. Solo drums begin the song, soon joined by a rhythmic pattern from Hendrix's guitar. The structure of the verse is a long call-and-response pattern between a bluesy, descending guitar riff and Hendrix's vocal. The lyric is an expression of personal hopelessness and uncertainty of the future. The chorus is a similar call-and-response form. This time the riff is two consecutive quarter notes at the beginning of each measure answered by the vocal.
     The first chorus is followed by the first guitar improvisation. With the underpinning of a driving rock beat, Hendrix plays an expansive chantlike, almost meditative solo. The disparity of character between his solo and the hard drive of the band is mesmerizing; Hendrix is obviously saving something for another solo later in the song, a true sign of his artistry and immaculate sense of pacing. The vocal chorus returns, acting as a bridge or interlude to the next instrumental section.
     The second solo begins with an effect electric guitarists sometimes termed a dive bomber. With the tone of the guitar heavily distorted, Hendrix slowly slides down and up a low string. He then manipulates the tone of the guitar by flipping a switch that turns each of the guitar's pickups on and off. The rest of the band has dropped out at this point, adding to the floating sensation of this part of the song. The spell is suddenly broken when the first guitar riff (from the verse) returns, played over and over in rapid succession. The momentum builds, the instrumentalists gradually drift away from the riff and create an engulfing wall of sound. Using a studio "board fade," the track is brought down in volume and Hendrix fades in with the line "Oh, there ain't no life nowhere." This effect is repeated two more times before the final fade-out. Programmatically, Hendrix is at his deepest point of despair, his senseless mutterings on the fade-outs and the pounding effect of the band suggest a raging storm of emotional or drug-induced insanity.

Listening Guide 18.3
"Light My Fire" 4 beats per measure

iTune link = Light My Fire

The root of "Light My Fire," the Doors' biggest hit, was organist Ray Manzarek's and guitarist Robby Krieger's love of modern jazz, particularly that of pioneering saxophonist John Coltrane (see Chapter 9). The two were determined to figure out how they could bring the improvisational freedom and expansiveness of jazz, as exemplified by Coltrane, into rock music. But as mentioned above, influence from blues, surf music, beat poetry, and many other elements came into play as well.
     "Light My Fire" was Krieger's first compositional contribution to the band, but it was in a very embryonic state when first presented to the rest of the band. Starting out with a folksy flavor, Manzarek added an electric organ solo reminiscent of Johann Sebastian Bach. With Krieger stuck for words by the second verse Morrison began playing around with rhyme combinations to flesh it out, such as "wallow in the mire" with "our love is a funeral pyre."
     After the first two verses Manzarek and Krieger get to indulge their passion for open jazz improvisation over a two-chord vamp, inspired directly by John Coltrane's 1960 treatment of the Rodgers and Hammerstein song from The Sound of Music, "My Favorite Things" (My Favorite Things, Atlantic SD-1361-2). Both Manzarek and Krieger had witnessed Coltrane in live settings in Los Angeles where he improvised for over a half-hour on the two-chord vamp he created on his version of "My Favorite Things." In turn, the Doors would improvise for 15 minutes or more over their two-chord vamp on "Light My Fire." For the studio recording their improvisations extend the song to just over seven minutes, inappropriate for AM airplay at the time. After the album's release, the Doors produced a whittled-down three-minute version hoping for the AM hit, but fans who owned the album demanded that radio stations play the full album version.
     Both the organ and guitar solos build to a climax with driving triplet rhythms. It is also interesting to note that, toward the end of the guitar solo, the organ returns to a more soloistic role, interweaving improvised melodic lines with the guitar. The Bach-like intro reintroduces the vocal at the end of the solo section.
     Morrison does the verses in reverse order (second, then first), giving the overall format of the song an arch form or mirror image from the first half of the recording to the last half. This arch form is also enhanced by the use of the organ introduction at the beginning, middle, and end of the performance.
     "Light My Fire" became a number-one hit in 1967 and was a turning point for hit songs. Its extended length, ambitious instrumental solos, and brooding view of love made it a watershed in the history of rock.