Serge Gansboo and Jane Berkin wearing Paisley pattern shirts This article is an infographic
When I was a hairy kid, I read a lot of anecdotes about rock stars, and it was all about travel, what beaters went to India, and the Rolling Stones went to Morocco twice. Former Zeppelin members Page and Plant were inspired to write a song in the Sahara Desert after travelling to Morocco— a bit confusing because they had neither gone to India nor Pakistan.
John. Lennon was also a fan of Paisley patterns
At that time, I thought that the sitar was the unique instrument of those psychedelic old guns of the sixties, and later learned that the sitar originated in India and Persia, and the hippie's beloved paisley pattern appeared on Isfahan's wooden seal earlier before it was mass-produced by Scottish companies.
Paisley pattern on isfahan wooden seal
In 1970, Paul McCartney and Jane Arthur, who later became his girlfriend, visited Tehran. The two first met with the sage Master Mahessi in Rishikesh, India, and then came to the Iranian capital to stay, enjoying shisha and food while hanging out with Vigen Derderian, the king of Iranian pop music and known as the "Sir Sultan". Because he only says "don't take pictures" in Persian, McCartney was judged frivolous and brainless by locals.
Paul McCartney, Jane Arthur and Wigan Drandian in Tehran in 1968
In 1926, when Milanese audiences first enjoyed the opera Turandot, Puccini was influenced by the 12th-century Persian Romantic poet Nizami's seven beauties. 50 years later, by chance, Nizami became the inspiration muse of Western music, this time it was the turn of the "guitar god" Eric Clapton. At the time, Clapton desperately found himself in love with his friend's wife, Paul McCartney's then-wife, Betty Boyd.
Fashion designer Paul Bolje has a passion for oriental elements and has hosted Persian-style salon parties
The brotherhood has come to an end, but there is still a struggle inside. At this time, Clapton had a copy of Nizami's Lyra and Majinu. Under the double offensive of ancient Persian love stories and new love, Clapton wrote a new song "Lyra layla" and became the most dazzling one on the new album "Lyra and Other Love Songs". I heard that in those two years, many newborn baby girls named Lyra, because their parents in love listened to this famous rock song inspired by medieval Persian poets...
It's not unusual to hear about the Luxury Train of the Orient Express, have you ever heard of the Orient Express Band? This band really existed on Earth, the founding member Ofi Gaidis is a French guy obsessed with the ud piano, love to travel, when roaming to Iran, met a hit-and-go, iranian percussionist Fahid Gorsoki, who had been awarded the pahlavi King, the two of them plus the former Belgian pilot bassist Bruno Gate, produced an album of the same name of "Orient Express", in which the music was set off by oriental instruments, with mysterious and illusory exotic colors. Although today's people think that their understanding of "West meets East" is a bit cliché, the time turns back, and the first encounter at that time was still full of sincerity and excitement.
Oriental Express album cover of the eponymous band
Also in the 1970s, German musician Holger Czukay had a hobby of listening to foreign (domain) stations. Through the short wave, he became fascinated by iran's Iraj radio station, which exhilarated him by the sound of human voices and drums, and after recording it with a hot mind, he directly used it as a sample for his new album "Persian Love". I have to say that the cover of this album is very characteristic of the Persian miniature paintings of the Safavid era, but it is imitated more poorly: cypress trees, naked-breasted beauties and blood-red wine... Westerners' understanding of the Persian mood is more or less like this.
Persian Love album cover
Don't forget Queen, lead singer Freddie Mercury, a Parsi born in Zanzibar, East Africa, whose ancestors were Zoroastrians who fled from Iran. How many people, even music fans, will mention/remember/know his Persian real name "Farouq"? Perhaps because of this, in Iran, where Western rock music has long been banned, Queen was treated with a green light until the Outbreak of the Islamic Revolution.
Punk-inspired Shah Shah a Go Go
Speaking of the Islamic Revolution, there was a British psychedelic punk band, The Stranglers, who wrote a nonsense song "Shah Shah a Go Go", the MV style is extremely ghostly, of course, it is banned in some countries. In fact, although the lyrics ruthlessly satirize the extravagant life of the Pahlavi dynasty, they also satirize the eager Western missionaries, who belong to the type of unpopular on both sides, harm others and harm themselves, and are simply not qualified for the role of a bridge between the East and the West.
A hundred years ago, Jiplin said: The East is the East, of course, the West is the West, and the two will never meet. In fact, the East and the West not only met, they also loved and killed each other, but later they forgot each other.
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