It was a moment in time. But we thought it would last forever.
The oldsters, the denizens of the sixties, crapped on the seventies. It was too obvious, too overblown, some sunny element had been sacrificed, it was no longer a lark, but business, and what exactly was prog rock anyway, didn't we abhor those who were classically trained?
And then disco came along and killed it all. Well, there was corporate rock before that. Which was akin to the hair band era of the late eighties, but less cynical. But the entire enterprise collapsed, the music business was in the doldrums, only to be saved by MTV and a wave of young English bands not beholden to what had come before.
And now everybody is getting older. Even the seventies are fading in the rearview mirror. Nirvana and Pearl Jam came along to kill the hair bands, and then hip-hop powered through, the internet came along and it hasn't been the same since.
The feeling of isolation, doing it with no one watching, that's palpable in the beginning of this film. Today as soon as you create, you post, maybe even hype. You feel you're part of something, that if you're lucky you could go viral. But there was no virality in the pre-internet era. Very few could play. And they were on the road less taken. But you could afford to do that back then. Today America is immobilized, people don't have enough money to move. But relocating was a feature of the seventies. You packed up and drove to another city, another state, to live another life, to learn, to leave the past behind. Now you can never leave the past behind, it follows you your whole life.
And life is very hard financially. The best and the brightest don't become artists, because they know how cruel capitalism is, and they don't want to be left without. I remember someone at the Howard Stern Show taking a year off to bicycle around the world. Howard couldn't fathom it, what about his career? Well, back in the seventies we weren't worried about careers. We were living in the moment. And going to the show was a regular activity, after all the tickets weren't even ten bucks, the hardest part was getting one. And bands were still rampant. You got a gang together to conquer the world. That's rare these days because it's economically unfeasible. Even if you make it you've got to split the money too many ways. Believe me, it is different now. Hell, in an electronic world so much of the music is electronic, it doesn't even resemble the music of the past.
So everything you know about the music business was codified in the seventies. That's when Peter Grant flipped the live script, so that the act got ninety percent and the promoter only a sliver. Hell, everybody knew the show was playing, advertising was unnecessary. Today you constantly hear about acts that have already played that you missed, that you didn't even hear about.
If you're a boomer, if you were conscious in the seventies, if you were a music fan, addicted to the record store, you'll know every song in this movie. The album covers. This is your DNA. The school I went to when I was supposedly in college and law school. The music was art, it was vital, it was everything.
And it channeled the culture so well that it threw off untold amounts of currency. Bands were rich. As rich as anybody in the world. Taxes were high, there were no billionaires, to be a rock star was to be unfettered, to be free, with millions waiting for your words.
Sure, there was a commercial business. Kind of like today. But that was on AM radio. Some tracks could cross over to the Top Forty, but oftentimes albums had no singles, and it didn't matter.
You went to the record store, purchased your disc, came home, ripped off the shrink-wrap, dropped the needle and listened. You didn't do anything else, you only listened. As you studied the album cover, memorized the album cover. We knew who Hipgnosis was, they did all the innovative sleeves!
They weren't the only ones, but the Hipgnosis covers were statements unto themselves. They weren't dashed off, you could see the thought behind them. And the only thing you wanted to do was to get closer. I was talking to a friend with a record company today who lamented he couldn't get good help, couldn't even get his millennial employees to go to the gig. In the seventies you couldn't even get a job at Tower Records, never mind a record company. If you worked at a record company you were part of the retinue, royalty, you were where the essence was created, where it all lived, you were where we all wanted to be.
This was not tech. Tech is tools. You deliver the content on social media. The smartphone is inert, you take the journey. Back in the seventies the artists took the journey and we marveled. We revered the art itself. Sure, we studied the equipment, the guitars, the Fenders, Gibsons and Martins, and the Marshall and Hiwatt amplifiers and the Neve consoles and...those were the tools and the music was the product. Everything was in service to the music. And it was hard to play and hard to sustain. You had to have the chops, the vision and someone who believed in you. Everybody wrote their own songs, because the music was direct from them to us, unfettered. And selling out was anathema, your credibility was everything. And Hipgnosis did not make the music, but the covers, the artwork, was created with the same intentions. If it didn't feel right, if it wasn't art, Storm wasn't interested. He walked from "Venus and Mars" because he didn't like McCartney's concept, there just wasn't enough there, he left it to Po.
The concept. That's the essence of art. Always. It started in the modern era with abstract expressionism, and then we had the minimalists. Maybe we need to hearken back to Picasso, at the turn of the century. You see the idea is everything, but sans execution it's nothing. Prog rock was an idea. Punk was an idea. What have we got today? A bunch of me-too. When was the last time you were amazed, wondered how someone came up with something?
So they attribute the breakthrough to the Nice album "Elegy." With the live version of "America" we heard on FM radio. Nice couldn't break through because the vocals were substandard. So Keith Emerson decamped and formed ELP with Greg Lake and Carl Palmer.
And "Atom Heart Mother," when most people still had no idea who Pink Floyd were. The cow on the cover. It's meaningless! Intentionally. But it became iconic because of the success of the album.
"Band on the Run"... The video of the photo shoot is a window into what once was. When everybody was still young and it was all the aforementioned lark. People with no CV succeeded and then blew all their money pushing the envelope, constantly. Not only the acts, but Hipgnosis too.
And there's footage of the Wings Over America tour. The trucks were famous, they were featured in "People." And the video of fans running onto the field. He was not yet Sir Paul, he was a guy who created a breakthrough LP that was all over the airwaves and people had to go to experience it. Nostalgia was a minor factor. Today it's all nostalgia.
So the issues of talking heads and licensing are nonexistent when you play on this level. The members of Pink Floyd, Graham Gouldman of 10cc, Peter Gabriel, McCartney, they're all testifying, as to their relationship with Hipgnosis and how the album covers came to be. And we get a window into Peter Grant. You couldn't speak to his acts directly, you had to go through him. Everything was still street, you can't learn how to be Peter Grant in music college. And Grant's instincts and creativity... Yes, not only the acts were inventing it as they went along, but so were the managers, the record companies, the promoters...
And we all wanted in.
These movies cost too much to make, so they open them theatrically for reviews, hoping to get better streaming licensing deals. But the audience for these flicks doesn't go to the theatre. And by time the films hit the flat screen, the audience has moved on and forgotten about them.
You can rent "Squaring the Circle" for $5.99, but no one does that, almost no one anyway. I wish the hype coincided with streaming availability, but it does not.
The business still hasn't adjusted to the present. It's the opposite of the seventies, everyone can play and it's nearly impossible to break through to an audience. Millions of tracks on Spotify have never been listened to even once. So, in the world of creation today, always put money second, like the techies. Gain an audience, then there are a ton of ways to monetize. Monetize first and you're screwed. Building an audience behind a paywall? Nearly impossible.
So, can you live without seeing "Squaring the Circle"?
Absolutely. But if you lived through the era, you'll be brought back, your life will seem meaningful, you'll be reminded how much it counted, and that they call it classic rock for a reason.
If you're a young 'un... "Squaring the Circle" is like the Dead Sea Scrolls. An artifact of a past era that will utterly amaze those who were not there originally. I'm glad it's documented, because history is slipping through our fingers as I write this. At least there starts to be footage in the seventies, unlike so much of the sixties. But how much art from the past has been lost to the sands of time because documentation was so expensive or impossible, everybody did not have a 4k video camera in their pocket. I'd like to go back, but I can't.
But you can go back to when dinosaurs roamed the earth in the seventies. And at this point, just like little kids know the name of all the reptiles, everybody knows almost all of the work in this movie. "Dinosaur" is no longer a pejorative when it comes to music. All the young people wish they were there.
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