Electric Music
Keith Levene died a couple days. He's one of those influential figures who few ever heard of, though greatly appreciated by those who did. He was a magnificent guitarist who put out beautiful sounds in the last days of rock and roll. He founded The Clash with Mick Jones, left pretty much immediately, hooked up with John Lydon and Jah Wobble as Public Image Ltd, and made three wonderful records.
With Levene PiL put out: First Edition, sort of rock and roll; the seminal Metal Box, might be described as rock, dub, and electronic; and The Flowers of Romance, also quite marvelous, only one track with a guitar, hard to classify as Pop. Unfortunately, in an all too squalidly tragic and frequent “rock” story, Levene had a major smack problem, destroying a major talent – use em don't abuse em kids.
Kind of funny about rock and roll, its defining characteristic as the first electric music never gets enough consideration. With the electric broadcast media of radio and television as its main distribution channels, media controlled by handful of corporations, you had all the elements for a mass cultural phenomenon, an ephemeral one, taken far too seriously by far too many, though I for one was always certainly glad some of them did.
While Levene on guitar was at one end of the rock and roll era, Jerry Lee Lewis on piano was at the other. “The Killer” died last week and while maybe not as he claimed the first rock and roll record, “Whole Lotta Shakin' Going On” was the definitive rock and roll record. In an interview, Lewis notes on the song’s recording, “I hooked my piano up to a violin pickup to a Bassman Amp. It sounded like an orchestra within itself.”
God Love Keith Levene and Jerry Lee Lewis.