Light shows were part of a key fusion between image and sound, much like a psychedelic experience, and aimed to emulate the feeling of total saturation, creating imagery improvised around the music being played in whatever setting the show was being hosted. In the case of psychedelic rock, it was an example of a wholly engaging environment to accompany a psychedelic trip. The light show has its origins in the beat era, which were initially ordinary slides projected onto the walls of the venue when a poet or writer was performing. The methods used in light shoes started to improve with the birth of modern jazz. Needing an accompaniment, different techniques were tried out, with “hot coloured oils and inks were swirled in glass bowls under the glare of several overhead projectors” which were beamed out over the audience, the patterns made as spontaneous as the flow of the jazz. Regarded as the pioneer of the light show, Bill Ham created The Light Sound Dimension, using electric flow to stimulate kinetic material on a 6 x 4 board, as well as using over head projectors as the canvas for further paintings. As psychedelic rock took off, more light show companies formed, to point where there reportedly nearly one hundred in the San Francisco area. Two of the biggest names were Brotherhood of Light, and Headlights, who only worked with Jefferson Airplane. Branching out from oils and coloured lights, the variety of formats increased drastically, to include items such as “showing strange slides or super 8mm film loops of train crashes and autopsy footage that were speeded up or projected backwards to create a surreal effect.”
Further techniques were used to mirror even further the effects of LSD, where “the liquid lights would then be projected over so that the flickering image could only be partly seen, to give the illusion of an acid trip that had reached its peak” Over in Manhattan, New York, Bill Graham opened the Fillmore East, complete with Joshua White’s Joshua Light Show, which was regarded as one of the leading and innovative light shows of the sixties. Edwin Pouncey described the scenes as the light show was at work; “Glycerine, alcohol, oil and water spat, boiled and separated into amoebic patters during one of these so called “wet shows”, in which the skilled operators would, as in free jazz, visually improvise around the music, with White as the principle conductor.” White had an experienced background in fashion and stage lighting at theatres, so the shows always ran professionally, and with the trust gained from this, White and his assistants had the room to experiment with different ideas and techniques. The light show had a purpose built platform at the back of the auditorium, with the venue having a very understanding relationship with the group. Using various aniline dyes mixed with water, the unique way of layering different mediums gave Graham the edge over his competitors. Commenting on this technique, Graham said “we never just showed a film, it was always just a section of film mixed with a slide and something else. The results were arrhythmic and therefore it was the audience and musicians which gave it a rhythm.”
With the dawn of back projections came the ability to photograph the light show with a flash without losing the background. Iron Butterfly’s In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida and Country Joe and the Fish’s Electric Music For The Mind And Body both used images with light show projections on their covers.
Light shows were not restricted to the US, with the UK’s evolution of light shows coming about in the same fashion, emerging from the coffee shops before spilling into music venues, the first one of note being the UFO club in London, opening on 23rd December, 1966, with Pink Floyd playing, and the lighting by Peter Wynne-Wilson. The Sensual Laboratory took over shortly after, ran by Mark Boyle, a notorious artist, who had previously used projection techniques in works such as Suddenly Last Supper (1964) and Son et Lumiere for Insects, Reptiles & Water Creatures (1966). Although not made for a psychedelic experience, it would be wrong not to mention Andy Warhol’s Exploding Plastic Inevitable, due to the sheer ambition and scale of the piece, and the fact that it was a complete multimedia experience, in line with the reason that the lightshows in London and San Francisco had sprung up in the first place. The show was put together and toured from 1966 to 1967, containing a barrage of effects. Brandon W Joseph pieces the scene together impeccably in his description of the piece: “at the height of its development, the exploding plastic inevitable included three to five film projectors, often showing different reels of the same film simultaneously, a similar number of slide projectors, movable by hand so that their images swept the auditorium, four variable speed strobe light, three moving spots with an assortment of gels, several pistol lights, a mirror ball hung from the ceiling and another on the floor, as many as three loudspeakers blaring different pop records at once, one or two sets by the velvet underground and nico, and the dancing of Gerard Malanga and Mary Woronor or Ingrid Superstar, complete with props and lights that projected their shadows high onto the wall”. It is easy to gather from this description alone just how alarming stepping into this circus would have been; a sensory barrage of sound, light and colour, jarring reactions with the abundance of material to react to. The project had developed from Warhol’s earlier forays into film, the first incarnation created for the second annual New York Film festival, in the lobby of the Lincoln centre’s philharmonic hall, which has looped three minute segments of his films Eat, sleep, kiss, haircut projected individually but simultaneously onto the wall from Fairchild 400s. Another key influence into the final outcome was Barbera Rubin’s “uptight” collaboration, which involved her aggressively questioning audience members at Warhol’s film premieres. This level of confrontation was aimed for in the EPI, invading the viewer as a participant in the chaos. As technology evolved, the appeal of light shows diminished. The music changed and the musicians wished to be seen and remembered, rather than being hidden in the patterns, and modern lighting gained popularity.
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