Don’t stop it… Celebrating the 40th Anniversary of Future Shock and “Rockit”!

Thank you Herbie Hancock!

The breakthrough album Future Shock was released on August 1, 1983.

This is the cover art for the album Future Shock by the artist Herbie Hancock. The cover art copyright is believed to belong to the label, Columbia Records, or the graphic artist(s).  "Rockit” is the album’s first track.

“Rockit” has fascinated me ever since I first heard it nearly forty years ago.

It was my introduction to Hip-Hop and one of the genre’s core musical elements, scratching. I especially loved the Batá drums, which really come to life at around the 26-second mark (at 18 seconds in the video).

I was always excited to hear the song or to see the video on MTV, although the video itself was a little creepy and weird, except for the squawking bird, which always seemed to crack me up…

I also seem to recall the song later being used for “ABC’s Wide World of Sports” and its commercial bumpers. At the time, I did not know who Herbie Hancock was. I did not know that the man who briefly appeared across the video’s blue monitors was (is) a legend. Another of Mr. Hancock’s seminal works also celebrates an anniversary this year; “Head Hunters” turns 50 on October 26. Hip-Hop itself also turns 50 in ten days. According to historians, it was born at a party in New York City’s South Bronx on August 11, 1973.

This is the cover art for the album Head Hunters by the artist Herbie Hancock. The cover art copyright is believed to belong to the label, Columbia Records, or the graphic artist(s).  Source: Wikipedia.org

“Future Shock re-aligned the balance between electronic and acoustic music, street music and pop music, in favor of the electronic. Herbie’s ‘vocal’ LPs and Future Shock opened doors for composing music that was created electronically first, using sequencers. In 1973 Head Hunters and the single ‘Chameleon’ caused a revolution in which jazz and funk merged perfectly. Future Shock and ‘Rockit’ from 1983 caused a similar revolution. While the effects were not felt as strongly in the jazz community at the time, they were embraced wholeheartedly in the global electronica and digital arts communities and on the streets and dance clubs of the world.” – Bob Belden, 2013 Sony Box Set Liner Notes

Source: herbiehancock.com

The Making of ‘Rockit’

“…Laswell and Beinhorn went to L.A. to deliver the track to Herbie at his home at 1260 North Wetherly Drive, just off Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood — a residence formerly owned by the renowned composer Igor Stravinsky. When they played it for him, in the converted guesthouse-turned-studio behind the main house, Beinhorn says, “He didn’t know what the fuck was going on.” He adds, “So no one has a melody, right, so what happens is me, Bill, and Herbie are standing outside of Herbie’s studio for about 15 minutes, humming, and we basically composed the melody that way.”

Herbie actually used three different synthesizers for his parts, but he had to overdub each one of them — again because there was no midi on any of them. Then he wanted to add some scat phrasing through a vocoder, and Laswell and Beinhorn suggested some phrases culled directly from the lyrics to the 1982 monster hit, “Planet Rock,” such as “Rock it, don’t stop it.” The song finally had a melodic hook and title.

On a second trip to L.A. to mix the song, they brought along D.ST and Grandmaster Caz of Cold Crush Brothers. That session, held at legendary El Dorado Studios on Hollywood and Vine with engineer Dave Jerden, who went on to produce such groups as Jane’s Addiction, Alice in Chains, and The Red Hot Chili Peppers, took no longer than an hour and a half. According to Beinhorn, “Dave told me Herbie came up to him and was like, ‘This is cool, isn’t it?’ ‘Cause he just had no idea at all. To me, it felt like a case of when you got nothin’, you got nothin’ to lose.”

As soon as the song was mixed, they left for the airport with a reference copy on cassette. “We had some time to kill,” Laswell recalls, “so I said let’s stop at this speaker store. And we went inside and wanted to hear some different speakers. The guy in the store was going to play some bullshit rock stuff, so I said, ‘Here, play this. I want to hear how this sounds.’ And it was ‘Rockit.’” Laswell cranked up the volume. “When we played it,” he says, “there were all these kids from the neighborhood, and they gathered around us, and they’re like, ‘What the fuck is this?!’ I looked at D, and I was like, ‘That’s a hit record…’”

- Fernando, Jr., S.H. “How Herbie Hancock Crafted a Hip-Hop Classic”. Apr. 21, 2015

My love for Hip-Hop grew stronger in 1984…

“My musical palate was definitely changing and becoming more diverse. In addition to my steady diet of Hard Rock and Metal (the latter of which my parents were not particularly fond of), along with occasional bites of synth-driven Pop and New Wave, I had a growing appetite for Hip-Hop. This genre not only brought a new focus on lyrics, syncopation, and phonetic delivery (which I loved), it also brought awesome physicality, especially in forms of dance. While I couldn’t do Windmills like a few of my friends could, I finally learned the Worm (we called it the ‘Centipede’) and even learned to Moonwalk and Sideglide, all to the sounds of ‘I Feel for You’ and ‘Jam on It’.”

- Woodard, Anthony. “There’s a big world out there, and remember, when one door closes, another opens... (Repost)”. Feb. 8, 2023

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