Seven Ages of Rock - Episodes - Programme 2: "White Light, White Heat"

Programme 2: "White Light, White Heat"

In 1967, Pink Floyd published "Arnold Layne", a song about a clothes-stealing transvestite, introducing a new concept in pop music, psychedelia. Like Andy Warhol did with The Velvet Underground in the US, they turned their shows into multimedia spectacles. Warhol came up with the idea of projecting films on the background of the stage. With Peter Jenner seeing Pink Floyd as the English version of the Velvet Underground, they decided to use this medium to illustrate the songs they were singing, projecting what effectively were the first music clips on a large screen behind the band. The shows grew ever more weird, and others followed. David Bowie was inspired by the weirdness of Velvet Underground and the madness of Pink Floyd's Syd Barrett (as exemplified by his Jugband Blues). Bowie created an alter-ego named Ziggy Stardust, which gave him an excuse to dress up on stage. Genesis' Peter Gabriel took Bowie's stage act even further dressing in even more elaborate and bizarre costumes; "Compared to what Gabriel wore on stage, Bowie was dressed for a night at the pub."

Another new thing in rock music was experimenting with sounds. Roxy Music introduced an oboe to rock. And when Pink Floyd wondered what a piano would sound like through a Leslie speaker, they came up with the intro to Echoes, a piece that lasted the entire second side of the album Meddle. The stage performances of songs could also last much longer than the album versions. The performances grew so large that Pink Floyd felt ever more alienated from the audience and decided to 'protest' against that by putting up such a large performance with huge puppets for the stage show of The Wall that the band became almost invisible. During the show they built up a wall on stage between themselves and the audience making them literally invisible. This performance lasted only four shows and marked the end of this age of rock.

In the VH1 version of this episode, David Bowie's early influences are discussed in less detail, there is no discussion of Bowie and Roxy Music playing the Rainbow theatre and Hang On To Yourself- David Bowie, Ladytron and Re-make Remodel are not featured with the section on Roxy Music being much smaller and Supper's Ready- Genesis is played but not discussed except in relation to costumes.

In this episode some of the featured songs on the BBC website were not the same as featured in the episode as The Velvet Underground - Venus In Furs is replaced by The Velvet Underground - All Tomorrow's Parties.