Review: Rock´n´Roll
ROCK – THE DREAM OF UNLIMITED FREEDOM
Rock is a life force that explodes the limiting chains and is overshadowed by the death drive.
“The Summer of Love” in 1967, the “crazy year” of Europe in 1968. Four decades ago, our colleagues in today’s youth were going through an unbridled mental upheaval, the signs of which are now being remembered. At the Rock, Rhythm, Love concert at the Night of the Arts, more than 30,000 listeners enjoyed the great hits of 1968.
The Prague Spring of 1968 shatters the illusions of the blissful power of communism in the City Theatre’s new play Rock’n’roll. Rock represents Western freedom for both Czech and Western youth; counterforce to the parents, the System and other occupiers. Everything must be questioned, as is the case with rebellious youth.
In the 60s, rockers, artists, hippies and social activists built utopias of a better or even funnier world. Many wanted to free themselves from sexual morality, capitalism and Christianity, which were perceived as narrow. Rock played a much bigger role in this fight for freedom than the accompanist. It didn’t just mean a one-generation soundtrack. Through music, an understanding of the youth of the New Age, with its molds and unconventional forms of life, was created.
Rock is the sound of liberation, which is created when the hips of the dancer break away from the laws of the stump-salted stump body and the mind moves free from under authority. The rhythm of the music channels the same drive energy that draws the woodpeckers to the tree.
Crazy, Short Shooting Stars
The flowery idea of peace and love was suddenly confronted with realities as harsh as the “socialism with a human face” of the Czechs. The Beatles and the hippie movement disintegrated. Top rockers who chemically expanded their consciousness threw their lives away: Jimi Hendrix (1942–1970), Janis Joplin (1943–1970), Jim Morrison (1943–1971)… The king of rock,Elvi (1935–1977), who still lives in the swinging of her hips, staggered in a drug-induced stupor bordering on a coma.
The City Theatre’s Rock’n’Roll features the legendary Syd Barrett (1946–2006), who was a key player on Pink Floyd’s first albums. A third of the play’s 15 songs are by psychedelic rock masters.
Barrett, who had consumed a lot of LSD, went on a trip in his early twenties from which he never returned. Pink Floyd dedicated his masterpiece Wish You Were Here (1975) to the young man who had lost his mental health. The recording session was accompanied by a similar surprise as the mystical encounter between the Risen One and the disciples on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24). Just as the band was recording a song about their crazy friend, Shine On You Crazy Diamond, a swollen freak sneaked into the studio that had shaved off all its hair. The callers no longer recognized their comrade from years ago. They burst into tears.
The ransom of songs bowing to the unholy trinity of Sex & Drugs & Rock’n’roll dulls the blade of rock romanticism. I was once on an expedition to a commune of Scottish drug addicts. The thick air of the dim camper van was mixed with more than incense. The album Wish You Were Here , which depicts a psychedelic escape from the evil world, was played over and over again
The release from the System was successful. Rock plays day and night long. But the dirty children and infants of drug-taking parents squeaked constantly.
Freedom is a big prison
The rock attitude lives on as long as there are young people. But the young rockers and Christians may have to think about how rock ideals relate to Christian values on the roads of Emmaus. How can the expression of the life force exploding out of its chains – the rock dream of unlimited freedom – be combined with “Christian freedom”?
In terms of longing, restlessness and spiritual search, both rock and Christianity open up stunningly interesting times of exploration. The “liberation” offered by rock – which all too often takes hedonistic or self-destructive forms – and the inner freedom promised by Christianity also have elements that are difficult to reconcile.
The Christian notions of overcoming death and the prerequisites for a good life aim in a different direction than the cliché playing with the death drive associated with rock life: “Die young and leave a beautiful body!”. “It’s better to burn quickly than to fade slowly…”
Janis Joplin sang about how the word freedom is just another way of expressing that there is nothing left to lose. “Freedom is a great prison,” confirmed Pelle Miljoona. In the eyes of our idols, was it “freedom from something” or “freedom to something”?