Two Spheres of Rock

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Books about rock music, and especially about the sordid histories of rock musicians, tend to leave me cold. Books, no matter how hard they try, can’t capture the primal urgency of the music. Recently, I’ve come across a couple of books, however, that make me think that perhaps I’ve been reading the wrong books. That being said, I still suggest you crank up the respective music described to achieve maximum impact.

Part graphic novel, part biography, part shooting script and part fanzine tribute, Gorillaz: Rise of the Ogre is a lavish book detailing the origins of the world’s first virtual rock band. Depending on your point of view, Gorillaz are either the animated creation of Damon Albarn of the band Blur and Tank Girl illustrator Jamie Hewlett, or an actual band from the backstreets of cyberspace. Rise of the Ogre makes a convincing case for the latter theory.

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It’s not even a matter of suspending disbelief. All one need do is allow the premise that cyberspace is another dimension of reality with which we’re only recently communicating, due to our tinkering with computers. If we accept that idea, then the entire Gorillaz phenomenon takes on an entirely new complexion. Through their music, we get glimpses of the slightly different plane in which they dwell. And since they do exist in a reality that’s a tiny bit out of synch with our limited perceptions, we see them almost as cartoon characters, and hear their music as something comfortingly familiar, yet ominously alien. It may sound far-fetched at first, but consider this: cartoon characters don’t produce debut albums that skyrocket to #1 in record time, as Gorillaz did in 2001 (about the time the Internet changed the face of communication.) Coincidence?—I don’t think so.

Rise of the Ogre traces the origins of Gorillaz, beginning with the birth of bassist/mastermind Murdoc Niccals, and following him through his formative years of low-paying jobs and failed bands. It chronicles his fateful first encounters with Stuart Pot, who would become known as 2D, the band’s singer and sometime keyboardist. Guitarist Noodle had herself shipped FedEx from Japan to join the band, after answering an ad in NME. She was voted one of Teen People’s “25 Hottest Stars Under 25” in 2006 - no small feat for a “cartoon” character. Drummer Russell Hobbs, a native of Brooklyn, New York, was a veteran of street wars when he joined Gorillaz, and has been known on more than one occasion to serve as the group’s unofficial protector.

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The book can’t be dismissed as a promotional tool for another self-serving rock group. Rise of the Ogre pulls no punches as it chronicles the numerous rises, falls and resurrections of Gorillaz, all brilliantly illustrated with archival “photos” that show the band at their best - and worst. Interviews with such notables as Neneh Cherry, Dennis Hopper and Ike Turner add a dimension of credibility to the proceedings.

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While Rise of the Ogre may be best taken with several grains of salt, it is no more audacious than Strange Brew: Eric Clapton & the British Blues Invasion 1965-1970. In order to fully appreciate this 350 page tome, you have to first accept its core premise that British Blues can be traced to Eric Clapton’s stint with John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers. That’s certainly debatable, but author Christopher Hjort is undaunted in his pursuit of that thesis. What results is an exhaustive, and often exhausting chronology of British Blues as it played out on a daily basis between 1965-1970.

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Eric Clapton, as the title would suggest, is the central player here, but he is by no means the only character. It begins with Clapton leaving the Yardbirds at the age of 20, and joining Mayall’s struggling Bluesbreakers, wherein he became the darling of the burgeoning blues scene. But it goes beyond Clapton as catalyst, and illustrates the parallels between his career and those of Peter Green (who would co-found Fleetwood Mac) and Mick Taylor (who would go on to transform the sound of the Rolling Stones). Other parallel careers spring from there, as the degrees of separation narrow to include the early days of Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page.

Strange Brew utilizes every newspaper clipping, every magazine notice, every handbill, in fact, any and everything it can pull out of the hat to give a sense of urgency to the British blues boom. It succeeds largely because it literally takes those five years and breaks them down to a daily chronology. That’s also its shortcoming.

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It’s not a book to read cover-to-cover, unless you’re obsessive-compulsive, or a rabid rock historian. There’s a lot of information here, and finding analogies between Jethro Tull and the Bluesbreakers is certainly admirable, but the wealth of info can become tiresome. On the other hand, Strange Brew is a great book to merely pick up and open to any given page. Either way, you’ll know more than you ever thought you wanted to know about the British Blues Invasion.

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It gets down to this: Rock and roll is a sentient being, constantly evolving and living with its own heartbeat. Its histories are woven of legend, and cannot be tied to a singular version of reality. Whether we’re detailing the history of British blues, as in Strange Brew, or whether we’re glimpsing into an alternate universe, as with Rise of the Ogre, is largely irrelevant. What’s important is that the music is so integral to our self-image that we feel compelled to archive it.

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And that's where the reality really sets in forever.