The Space Between the Notes : Rock and the Counter-Culture

A study of sixties and seventies popular music and its related counter-culture. Whiteley illuminates her theories with analysis of key recordings by artists such as The Rolling Stones, Cream and Jimi Hendrix.

The Space Between the Notes examines a series of relationships central to sixties counter-culture: psychedelic coding and rock music, the Rolling Stones and Charles Manson, the Beatles and the `Summers of love'', Jimi Hendrix and hallucinogenics, Pink Floyd and space rock. Sheila Whiteley combines musicology and socio-cultural analysis to illuminate this terrain, illustrating her argument with key recordings of the time: Cream''s She Walks Like a Bearded Rainbow, Hendrix''s Hey Joe, Pink Floyd''s Set the Controls For the Heat of the Sun, The Move''s I Can Hear the Grass Grow, among others.
The appropriation of progressive rock by young urban dance bands in the 1990s make this study of sixties and seventies counter-culture a timely intervention. It will inform students of popular music and culture, and spark off recognition and interest from those that lived through the period as well as a new generation that draw inspiration from its iconography and sensibilities today.