Rock intro to the topic of the month: BECK - MAGIC POTION THAT WILL GIVE YOU POWER / in ENGLISH

Rock introduction to the topic of the month:

BECK HANSEN - MAGIC POTION THAT WILL GIVE YOU POWER 

(at least they say it works…)

(NOTE: Every month as an introductory article I write a post about one rock group or solo artist. Thus I've been writing so far about U2, Nirvana, Bruce Springsteen, Evanescence, Yellow Magic Orchestra and Japan (David Sylvian's band), Green Day, The Police and this month my article is about Beck Hansen. I'm not a rock critic and I do not write these articles as a critique or a review of their songs. I am particularly interested in the specialties of life path and development of a musician whose music I consider original and highly valuable of course, and then I describe some details that are in some way related to the tourist theme of my monthly blog. One month this music introduction will be about some of our Croatian rock bands, which you in the English speaking area probably do not know much about.)

Beck Hansen (born Campbell), grew up in the artist family, father musician and mother visual artist. After the parents divorce he remained with his mother and took over her last name. This early-life turning point probably made more influence on Beck's musical sentiment, than many later experiences of a man who already traveled a lot of the world, as a young, anonymous musician in search of existence. Symbolically speaking, children from happy marriages usually sing about how they fell crazy in love and believe that this love will last forever. Beck, the child of divorced parents, among other songs has one called "Think I'm In Love".

In his music, there is the apparent weakness and fragility of a soul that at first glance seems to be a soul of a loser. However, it seems to me that all of these weaknesses have a much deeper cause than some ordinary melancholy or depression. The cause which lies, I suppose, in seeking some deeper inspiration for this art he is dealing with, and finding some deeper answers to typical religious-philosophical questions instead of the simplest solutions that self-help literature offers. Because of this, Beck's music, despite all the experiments with different music genres, sounds somehow antique. Beck is a real example how one musician should not strive for something new and different “from everything what was before” to create good music. His style is antique but of a classically good style and not worn out obsolete.
Of course, he has changed a lot in his music through these 3 decades, so in the 90’s in the beginning of his career he persisted on autoirony and unusual humor by which he mocked American folk, especially by using hip-hop samples that deliberately sound like a typical, superficial folk clichés. This kind of music humor is particularly evident in the hits that launched him on the international stage, "Loser" and "Where It's At".
In the next decade he has been stylishly varied from the real, energetic rock of some successful songs from the “Guero” album to the expressive psychedelia on the album “Modern Guilt”. But I think that Beck has reached his creative peak after that. In this decade, when he returned to his beginnings, but in a different way.
As it usually happens in life, that what we mock the most in our youth still marks our subsconsciousness, thus Beck Hansen in his mature years stopped mocking American folk and has even become one of the best authors of American psychedelic folk. His music quality is best expressed in this modern version of the psychedelia of those old bands from the 60s and 70s. Especially excellent songs "Waking Light" and "Morning" on the album from 2014 "Morning Phase" sound unpretentious and soothing almost like aspirin, not just by quality but by atmosphere as well. This album was recognized by the music professionals and deservedly awarded with the Grammy for the album of the year.
Therefore, "Lou Reed of our generation," alternative rocker Beck Hansen today wisely blends the psychedelic and proto-punk of Pink Floyd and Velvet Underground, getting thus "the best of both worlds", and not just that. I dare to say that Beck has become with the times even better than them. It’s obvious that he is a wise musician and composer who eclectically takes over the virtues of these famous bands, but avoids taking their flaws. Eg. Roger Waters' exaggerated narcissism, then the Lou Reed's exaggerated melancholy, and especially much too high artistical pretentiousness of the Pink Floyd, who were trying to create "musical masterpieces that go beyond the boundaries of psychedelic blues, wishing to reach classical symphonic music."
 (To explain, I have heard a lot of that classical music in my life and all the conceptual albums of Pink Floyd, the musicians grown up on blues instead of classical music, sound just as pretentious as if they wanted to be Beethoven or Tchaikovsky for the rock music of the 20th century. The only thing that is missing is that quality of composing needed for symphonies. Yes, in my opinion it is great psychodelic rock but not enough for the quality of classical music.)
On the other hand Beck Hansen, musician who has also grown up on American blues, still has a humble opinion about himself enough to know where are his boundaries of artistic creativity. Probably because he spent most of his life as a non-privileged outsider, the man who was mostly underrated, for every new hit being told that it would be the last one in his career and usually called "the king of useless slackers." It’s important to say that Beck always strongly opposed to this public image, citing his heavy ascending of one low paid worker and street player who learned every day in practice how to interest unknown people for his music, up to this present status of a serious composer.

However, when Beck has that image and when it comes to psychedelic, cosmic blues and other genres that exist in music since the 60's of the last century then it’s hard to avoid opening of another theme. With this kind of music, far more than other kinds, people automatically associate drugs. From the old LSD (which has long gone out of use) to modern synthetic opiates. So, to be sarcastic, in the world of opiates glory lasts even shorter than on the top charts of popular hits. Here is quite easy to see the effect of time passing. Once the greatest band in the world The Beatles (It's not good to think they are still the greatest today. Music is developing further and you never know what's new waiting for us very soon!) they were very modern and subversive guys in their time. Thus, in their psychedelic phase The Beatles wrote the song Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds or shorter, according to the initials of the title - LSD. On the other hand, the celebrated futuristic writer, Aldous Huxley, wrote the entire book about the Doors of Perception and was so obsessed with the search for creativity and inspiration under the influence of LSD and other hallucinogenic drugs that achieved to affect even the name of the celebrated band The Doors.

However, if you mention LSD to today's generation of young people they wouldn’t think of anything subversive, let alone modern. They would think that you were an old geezer from pre-internet era, weirdo who is listening at home the old Pink Floyd records from the Syd Barrett period. Who doesn’t know what‘s cool and trendy today. Who tells everyone in society that communism was better and all in all lives in that distant, lost past. Here you see how this "fashion" of narcotics changes fast and that it makes no sense to run for it, thinking you're going to be "in". It is only certain that you will soon become "out". Both in fashion meaning and literally.
Rather than dealing with today obsolete rock archaeology, I will do something more useful here, demystify that fake myth. It’s just prejudices that the drugs were the only means of creative inspiration in the rock genres then. Drugs equally exist in other types of music, those that are not usually associated with. Also drugs always existed in other arts, where those who can’t find inspiration in their soul and everyday life around them search inspiration in it.
If you are deeper interested in rock music then you have undoubtedly watched a lot of rockumentaries.
You surely heard in those movies interviews with a whole series of musicians. Mostly those whose real value is overestimated or those who are not particularly successful in their work when the stage lights switch off. However, many of them have one, psychologically important haven for comfort. So they don’t play that "pop garbage which sells well... no, they are trying to reach that real art in music." When you listen to their music, it usually happens that these musicians are some elitist snobs who play something between blues and jazz, and then usually tell in their interview that famous phrase, that their career was at its peak in the time when they were drugging the most, because as the urban legend says: "To play a good blues, you must drink and take a lot of drugs".
"Look my old man, if you can’t find the music inspiration in a natural way, but you have to use some extra stimuli to "be what you are", didn’t you think of changing that kind of music? Because what you do now might look cool and elitist for someone who you want to impress, but still isn’t the right thing for you. "Life as it is, most of the time hard and uncomfortable for most of us, still is immensely rich and varied with new and unexpected experiences. Not just your own life, but the world around you is filled with the experiences of other people, so much that anyone who wants to express artistically and is looking for inspiration, has far more of it than he needs.
That age of rock'n'roll that is most glorified in today's culture of rock magazines and nostalgic TV shows took place some 50 years ago. So, this is already distant past today and has very little in common with today's way of life. If we go back further, some 100 years in the past, we’ll find biographical data that then LSD, popular among artists, was absinthe, strong alcoholic beverage based on fennel and anise-flavoured spirit with a very high alcohol concentration (even over 70 percent!). Of course, the absinthe in large doses essentially damaged health and shortened human’s life, but the myth spreaded how Pessoa, Baudelaire, Joyce and all the other famous poets of that era were drinking absinthe, which made them "more extravagant artists and even bigger stars of literary salons." So the thing is clear. That's right recipe, a real magic potion, (but in fact chemical wish-wash) with which fame and success come true! Obviously that those other, less successful poets began to drink the absinthe too, believing, like in that era of alchemists, that the source for poetry of divine inspiration lies in it.
In other words, every time has its pop stars. All those inadequately talented people who are always looking for creative inspiration which they miss, in some drug, alcohol, nicotine or something fourth. But ultimately, when the story is reduced to its right size, those were just vices and nothing more. Something that can’t help a man to find inside himself something that was never there. Just ordinary vices which we all sometimes fight against, to beat them, and not become addicted to them. Art, creation, inspiration and all these beautiful words are not really the cause nor the consequence of it.
And something more for the end. When you put things in context it becomes clear that people have always behaved in the same way, even before that great rock'n'roll revolution that allegedly changed the world so much. Then I want to know what revolution is happening right now? Why am I not recognizing it NOW!? What does it serve to me to know about it some 20, 30 years later?
Final question. So you know all about Beck Hansen and if Beck was a capitalist corporation, he would be:

a) Bayer AG

b) British American Tobacco

c) Eli Lilly

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