Chapter IIIGOLD
Midnight Raga
Sitars, spiritual jazz and the Eastern turn of the 1960s
Showing all 038 works
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001
Help!
The Beatles
In 1965 the Beatles were filming Help! – one of their dismal, rictus-grin ‘capers’ when, one afternoon, waiting for a scene in an Indian restaurant to be readied, a group of Indian musicians hired to provide background music began to play.
Film 1965 Open ↗ IMDb -
002
Rubber Soul
The Beatles
Returning to London for the Rubber Soul sessions, he got hold of a cheap sitar and recorded a clumsy backing to ‘Norwegian Wood’ – the instrument’s first use in a rock context.
Album 1965 Open ↗ YouTube -
003
Three Ragas
Ravi Shankar
Shankar’s debut album – Three Ragas – was released in 1956, and he again toured Europe and America in support.
Album 1956 Open ↗ YouTube -
004
Improvisations
Ravi Shankar
However, it was 1962’s album Improvisations that set his lifelong reputation for cross-pollination in motion.
Album 1962 Open ↗ YouTube -
005
The Man Who Turned on the World
Michael Hollingshead
Hollingshead recalled the detailed procedure in his autobiography The Man Who Turned on the World:
Book Open ↗ Goodreads -
006
Concert Percussion
John Cage
Shortly after dropping the acid, I played a tape of Buddhist Cakra music, followed by Concert Percussion by the American composer, John Cage.
Album Open ↗ YouTube -
007
The Psychedelic Experience
Timothy Leary, Ralph Metzner & Richard Alpert
In The Psychedelic Experience Timothy Leary co-opted the Tibetan Book of the Dead as psychedelic manual.
Book Open ↗ Goodreads -
008
Revolver
The Beatles
Revolver (1966) was steeped in acid, although the band’s introduction had been an unnerving affair.
Album 1966 Open ↗ YouTube -
009
Sitar Beat
Big Jim Sullivan
Legendary session guitarist Big Jim Sullivan, for example, recorded a full album of high-camp sitar-based rock covers (Sitar Beat) in 1967.
Album 1967 Open ↗ YouTube -
010
S.F. Sorrow
The Pretty Things
The Pretty Things’ masterful S.F. Sorrow (1968) meanwhile – one of the earliest concept albums – was darker still, navigating the lonely life of one ‘Sebastian F. Sorrow’.
Album 1968 Open ↗ YouTube -
011
The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter
The Incredible String Band
Keen travellers, they’d spent serious time in both India and Morocco and brought a questing, cross-cultural bearing to their sound, felt particularly intensely on their 1968 masterpiece The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter.
Album 1968 Open ↗ YouTube -
012
The Hurdy Gurdy Man
Donovan
Having accompanied the Beatles on their Rishikesh sojourn, he’d experimented with drones on his 1968 album The Hurdy Gurdy Man.
Album 1968 Open ↗ YouTube -
013
Fantasias for Guitar and Banjo
Sandy Bull
Guitarist Sandy Bull, for example, predated the Beatles by some three years in incorporating Indian rhythms and drone elements on his magical Fantasias for Guitar and Banjo (1963).
Album 1963 Open ↗ YouTube -
014
Blind Joe Death
John Fahey
He released a single – ‘Paint Brush Blues’ (1959) – under the name Blind Thomas before setting up the Takoma imprint to release his Blind Joe Death album the same year.
Album 1959 Open ↗ YouTube -
015
Hooray for Another Day
Max Ochs
The 2008 Hooray for Another Day compiled long out-of-print pieces like ‘Ain’t Nobody High Raga’ and ‘Raga Puti’.
Compilation 2008 Open ↗ YouTube -
016
The Falconer’s Arm I and II
Robbie Basho
With its open-stringed drones and intricate finger picking The Falconer’s Arm I and II (1967) (the sleeve has Basho standing next to a stream, resplendent in moccasins, falconer’s sleeve and multicoloured smock, glazed eyes fixed dead ahead) is imbued with the soul of the windswept journeyman.
Album 1967 Open ↗ YouTube -
017
Surrealistic Pillow
Jefferson Airplane
The imposing voice of Grace Slick propelled their Surrealistic Pillow (1967) into a space entirely evocative of late-sixties San Francisco: jangling guitars, mildly foreboding whimsy, churning Moogs.
Album 1967 Open ↗ YouTube -
018
Platoon
Oliver Stone
This aspect of the war has been long immortalised in film, from Charlie Sheen’s young GI huffing blowbacks down a rifle barrel in Platoon to the hallucinatory languor of Apocalypse Now.
Film 1986 Open ↗ IMDb -
019
Apocalypse Now
Francis Ford Coppola
This aspect of the war has been long immortalised in film, from Charlie Sheen’s young GI huffing blowbacks down a rifle barrel in Platoon to the hallucinatory languor of Apocalypse Now.
Film 1979 Open ↗ IMDb -
020
Milestones
Miles Davis
Playing in Thelonious Monk’s quartet in 1957, his dizzying cascades of rapid notes were memorably described by Ira Gitler in DownBeat magazine as becoming great ‘sheets of sound’; Coltrane played with Miles Davis later that year, recording on Milestones and Kind of Blue, while suffering a debilitating heroin addiction.
Album 1958 Open ↗ YouTube -
021
Kind of Blue
Miles Davis
Playing in Thelonious Monk’s quartet in 1957, his dizzying cascades of rapid notes were memorably described by Ira Gitler in DownBeat magazine as becoming great ‘sheets of sound’; Coltrane played with Miles Davis later that year, recording on Milestones and Kind of Blue, while suffering a debilitating heroin addiction.
Album 1959 Open ↗ YouTube -
022
Free Jazz
Ornette Coleman
Ornette Coleman, who had unwittingly given name to the nascent movement on 1961’s Free Jazz, was another seismic inspiration on Coltrane.
Album 1961 Open ↗ YouTube -
023
Dancing in Your Head
Ornette Coleman
On Ornette Coleman’s ‘Lonely Woman’ (1959), for example, a frolicking, folksy melody is underpinned by Charlie Hedon’s bass thrum while Dancing in Your Head (1977) was recorded with the Master Musicians of Joujouka in Morocco.
Album 1977 Open ↗ YouTube -
024
Indo Jazz Suite
Joe Harriott & John Mayer
A world away from the wild frontiers of Coltrane, Ayler, Coleman et al., Joe Harrison and John Meyer released two smooth Indo-fusion records – Indo Jazz Suite (1966) and Indo Jazz Fusion (1968) – with a polite coffee-table vibe.
Album 1966 Open ↗ YouTube -
025
Indo Jazz Fusion
Joe Harriott & John Mayer
A world away from the wild frontiers of Coltrane, Ayler, Coleman et al., Joe Harrison and John Meyer released two smooth Indo-fusion records – Indo Jazz Suite (1966) and Indo Jazz Fusion (1968) – with a polite coffee-table vibe.
Album 1968 Open ↗ YouTube -
026
Music for Yoga Meditation and Other Joys
Tony Scott
Likewise Tony Scott’s Music for Yoga Meditation and Other Joys (1968) – a collaboration between Italian American clarinettist Tony Scott and sitarist Collin Walcott, an ex-pupil of Ravi Shankar – was a humdrum affair.
Album 1968 Open ↗ YouTube -
027
Codona
Collin Walcott, Don Cherry & Naná Vasconcelos
Indeed, Walcott’s sitar is heard to much more powerful effect alongside Don Cherry and Naná Vasconcelos on Codona (1979), a foreboding take on Indian and North African traditions, sitar and polyphonic vocals from the trio shimmering with eerie luminescence.
Album 1979 Open ↗ YouTube -
028
Brown Rice
Don Cherry
Don Cherry was also strongly influenced by Indian music elsewhere, most notably on the masterful Brown Rice (1975).
Album 1975 Open ↗ YouTube -
029
A Love Supreme
John Coltrane
His most critically storied – and, in an age where the word is much abused, iconic – record, A Love Supreme, was a case in point.
Album 1965 Open ↗ YouTube -
030
Om
John Coltrane
While A Love Supreme was cerebral, Om – recorded in 1965, released posthumously in 1968 – was no holds barred.
Album 1968 Open ↗ YouTube -
031
Ascension
John Coltrane
Ascension (1965) was equally wild but, unlike the unfairly derided Om, is widely regarded as a masterpiece.
Album 1965 Open ↗ YouTube -
032
A Monastic Trio
Alice Coltrane
After her husband’s death in 1967, Alice Coltrane recorded her debut solo LP A Monastic Trio.
Album 1968 Open ↗ YouTube -
033
Infinity
Alice Coltrane & John Coltrane
They derided her decision to posthumously overdub harp and string arrangements onto unreleased John Coltrane recordings during the early 1970s, the resulting album – Infinity (1972) – seen by some as an ‘insult’ to his legacy, this despite the fact that the couple had made detailed written plans together for the inclusion of other instruments on the album before he died.
Album 1972 Open ↗ YouTube -
034
Journey in Satchidananda
Alice Coltrane
Journey in Satchidananda (1971) was a case in point.
Album 1971 Open ↗ YouTube -
035
Transcendence
Alice Coltrane
Likewise, Transcendence (1977) reflected the pivotal role Indian spirituality had taken in her life, group chants moving atop a funky backdrop.
Album 1977 Open ↗ YouTube -
036
Turiya Sings
Alice Coltrane
These tapes – the most well known are Turiya Sings (1982), Divine Songs (1987) and Infinite Chants (1990) – are a separate entity from her 1970s canon.
Album 1982 Open ↗ YouTube -
037
Divine Songs
Alice Coltrane
These tapes – the most well known are Turiya Sings (1982), Divine Songs (1987) and Infinite Chants (1990) – are a separate entity from her 1970s canon.
Album 1987 Open ↗ YouTube -
038
Infinite Chants
Alice Coltrane
These tapes – the most well known are Turiya Sings (1982), Divine Songs (1987) and Infinite Chants (1990) – are a separate entity from her 1970s canon.
Album 1990 Open ↗ YouTube
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