https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHJ3jhg-pdg
The Doors’ Jim Morrison, on the future of music, from his perspective in 1969:
“The two types of music indigenous to this country are….blues and folk music. Rock ‘n’ roll was like a blending of those two forms.
In four or five years, the new generations music will have a synthesis of those two elements and some third thing, that might rely heavily on electronics and tapes.
I can kind of envision one person with a lot of machines, tapes and electronics set up, singing or speaking.”
While his prediction may not have been that bold to musicians familiar with late 60s Moog albums, and Morrison had seen a Moog modular in action in the making of The Doors’ Strange Days – within 5 years, Kraftwerk had a mainstream hit with Autobahn.
via youredm
You can’t really say he predicted the future because people were already doing what he described in 1969.
In a studio, as avante garde experimentation. Not as a popular form, not in real time, not as music. “talking or singing” almost presages rap.
Plus, you know, John Cage said much the same thing in 1952.
Lots of people were doing lots of things in 1969, but he successfully pointed out something people were doing that would become quite commonplace in the future, in our current time. He could have pointed to something else and been dead wrong. He pointed to something and was right, even the tape bit.
Morrison’s vision of one person using various synthesis machines in a performance was prophetic.
Sure, 1950s and 1960s experimental musicians paved the way for this thinking but it was well outside of the mainstream, and it was mainly studio compositions, abstract audio art, avante garde sound design. Morrison was musing on popular American forms. To say that the dominant paradigm – a group of musicians playing music on traditional instruments – might give way to a one-man-band using synths and tape was right on.
His tape comment is all the more interesting for what it represented – playback and manipulation of prerecorded elements – sampling. Morrison took a stab a futurism and had a vision that is not too far off from the DJ/Producer electronic style of live performance. A man and a machine, not a group plucking strings.
Jimbo! Good man.
There’s a great section in ray Manzareks autobiography about the moog modular they used on strange days. I can only imagine what a mind fuck it must have been experiencing sounds that were unheard to most in 1968
The lizard King would know.
He’s just telling people who don’t know..
Francis Bacon’s soundhouses (1627)..’We have also sound houses, where we practice and demonstrate all sounds and their generation. We have harmonies which you have not, of quarter sounds and lesser slides of sounds. Divers instruments of music likewise to you unknown, some sweeter than any you have; together with bells and rings that are dainty and sweet. We represent small sounds as great and deep; likewise divers trembling and warblings of sounds, which in their original are entire. We represent and imitate all articulate sounds and letters, and the voices of beasts and birds. We have certain helps which set to the ear to do further the hearing greatly. We have also divers strange and artificial echoes, reflecting the voice many times, and as if it were tossing it; and some that give back the voice louder than it came, some shriller and some deeper; yea, some rendering the voice, differing in the letters or articulate sound from that they receive. We have also means to convey sounds in tubes and pipes, in strange lines and distances…
ive always loved that quote.. thanks for posting
gonna bookmark it
You are very welcome, my mad Arab friend 😉
heres my guess… Morrison was tripping and managed to catch a performance of tangerine dream or maybe some krautrock or something like that.. and then he saw “the future”
Precisely, in some ways. We know now that for instance Bon Jovi had a live concert in the social game Second Life and then there’s the Oculus Rift that is going to make an impact (as well as Sony’s version of it). So if I’d take lots of drugs and space out I could say that the future of music will also be not just the songs themselves and the album artwork/packaging, but there will be a 3D-virtual way to experience the music and immerse yourself even deeper in the music. This will be more common as technology will become cheaper and a VR-system will cost maybe half the price of a new video game console. Maybe then even hook you up to neurological triggers that simulate the intent impact of the musical work. You’ll be listening to “Tainted Love” and feel genuinely afraid of catching HIV from a lover.
Surprised this is the first time this interview has been posted on Synthtopia. Never gets old.
LSD and Weed will let you see the future
A lot of musicians see equipment and talk about how they’re interested in using it. Just because someone deduced that someone would start making music with gear coming into the mainstream isn’t some prophetic statement. Even Bob Dylan says he didn’t understand all the hype piled on him by fans and the industry. Jim Morrison is just as much a hype machine. Difference is Jim Morrison wanted you to. Not news.
Morrison made a prediction in 1969 that came true. Most predictions do not. If you want to try, please tell us: What brand new virtually unknown technology in music will become the new dominant paradigm in the future, and how will it be used?
Otherwise, great example of kneejerk contrarianism.
it wasn’t brand new by this time tho that’s the thing. there had been a full decade of growth of the synth idea inside music faculties and among professionals. the band had connections to these circles through Ray and studio acquaintances. the idea of a revolution through synths was literally in vogue at the time. he was lucky enough to be there at the moment it was already obvious, and to be a famous person filmed while relaying what was obvious in those circles at the time.
The future ain’t what it used to be.
If he were still alive he’d be dropping E and djing somewhere in a balearic island 🙂
Nah, he’d be 300 lbs, doing a show in Vegas and during the ‘get your mojo rising’ part of LA woman there would be giant inflatable penises on stage and 4 hell’s angels would come out on motorcycles.
And you KNOW that I’m right.
I knew it!…
I’m surprised no-one has mentioned where this was most recently sampled and made famous (again):
http://www.billboard.com/articles/news/511163/jim-morrison-would-love-skrillex-the-doors-says-ray-manzarek
And the finished track:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUULBlDcju4
Skip forward to 1.50. 🙂
It’s not much of a prediction if guys like Karlheinz Stockhausen, Kid Baltan, Tom Dissevelt, Jean-Jacques Perrey, Tod Dockstader, John Pfeiffer, and many others still were already doing it.
I read that interview way back in some Rolling Stone paperback that came out in the 70’s and had been searching for it for years. I suspect what Morrison was envisioning was something he himself would have very much liked to do. I doubt it would have sounded much like (c)rap, though. More like Creation…Let there be LIGHT.
In 1936 Composer Edgar Varese predicted “musical machines will be able to perform music as soon as a composer inputs his score”
that is a computer sequencer…