as the first pop artist given complete creative control of his recordings. (Van Morrison, The Mothers of Invention, Jimi Hendrix, The Beau Brummells, Pentangle, Randy Newman, Jethro Tull, Family, Neil Young, The Youngbloods, The Fugs, The Kinks, Arlo Guthrie, Pearls Before Swine, Tim Buckley, Ry Cooder, The Grateful Dead, Captain Beefheart, Little Feat, Gordon Lightfoot, Van Dyke Parks, and Joni Mitchell were just some of the acts signed to WB/Reprise at the time.) A casual look at the roster of bands recording for Warner Bros./Reprise during this time shows just how daring even mainstream record companies were forced to become. Given the congenital venal values of the music business, the emergence of this new ambition among musicians shows the power of the musical renaissance that was the 1960’s. Its very definition almost guarantees a shallow, short-lived music, exhausted within a few listenings and then thrown away.įor a brief period in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, however, musicians working in the pop music field attempted to break out of that superficial, throw-away mentality and tried to produce deeper works, works that could be called art by any standard.
One of the stronger arguments against considering commercial popular music a genuine Art is the question of its staying power – its ability to continue to reveal new aspects over time and repeated exposure, to somehow remain inexhaustible.
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