Transatlantic Trauma 1970

"The nature of pop is temporary, fleeting, and arising out of sentiment to excite the senses. And senses are bound up with passion; and passion must accept suffering."

Shyamsundar of the Radha Krishna Temple gave out with this profound utterance a couple of months back. The operative word, is 'temporary'—change, in other words. Why? Simply because people, especially young people, like change. But communication is necessary—it's essential to reach out to people. If it's a hang up being homo sapiens then it's more of a hang up being an introspective individual. So it's all down to what pop music docs—it reaches to young people and communicates to the individual. Giorgio Gomelsky, boss of Marmalade Records, has this to say; "Music is the most uncensorable of all the arts. You can't censor Dylan, Floyd. Zappa—anyone. This is why it's the most important means of communication today. More so than TV or newspapers."

David Bowie, a gifted English songwriter/singer adds: "Communication has taken away so much from our lives that now it's almost totally involved in machines rather than ordinary human beings."

All in all, the point is not whether you regard rock'n'roll as good or bad, musically, but whether or not you regard it at all. It's necessary; not as a sort of musical soup kitchen, where cheap music is dispensed to all and sundry, but as an expression by young people of what they groove to, and how they feel about love and life. When you're young that's all there is—when you're older you mightn't give a damn about either, so it's better to hold on tight while you've got the chance.

The Nice are part of it—Keith Emerson, Lee Jackson and Brian Davison produce some of the most mind-blowing music around today. Listen to their version of Dylan's She Belongs to Me—if it doesn't move you, you're made of stone.