Saturday, September 11, 2010

William Burroughs on Led Zeppelin. Whoa!



This article from a 1975 Crawdaddy Magazine is quite the mind-bender. Burroughs waxes transcendental with the Dark Prince about the ebb and flow of a live Led Zeppelin performance.

“The essential ingredient for any successful rock group is energy–the ability to give out energy, to receive energy from the audience and to give it back to the audience. A rock concert is in fact a rite involving the evocation and transmutation of energy. Rock stars may be compared to priests, a theme that was treated in Peter Watkins’ film ‘Privilege’. In that film a rock star was manipulated by reactionary forces to set up a state religion; this scenario seems unlikely, I think a rock group singing political slogans would leave its audience at the door.

“The Led Zeppelin show depends heavily on volume, repetition and drums. It bears some resemblance to the trance music found in Morocco, which is magical in origin and purpose–that is, concerned with the evocation and control of spiritual forces."

Read it for yourself here, and commence mind blowing.

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