The Space Between the Notes
examines a series of relationships central to sixties counter-culture: psychedelic coding and rock music, the Rolling Stones and Charles Manson, the Beatles and the ‘Summers of love', Jimi Hendrix and hallucinogenics, Pink Floyd and space rock. Sheila Whiteley combines musicology and socio-cultural analysis to illuminate this terrain, illustrating her argument with key recordings of the time: Cream's
She Walks Like a Bearded Rainbow
, Hendrix's
Hey Joe
, Pink Floyd's
Set the Controls For the Heat of the Sun
, The Move's
I Can Hear the Grass Grow
, among others.
The appropriation of progressive rock by young urban dance bands in the 1990s make this study of sixties and seventies counter-culture a timely intervention. It will inform students of popular music and culture, and spark off recognition and interest from those that lived through the period as well as a new generation that draw inspiration from its iconography and sensibilities today.