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In
the 30s, Blue Man Group lived in Mississippi near Robert Johnson. At night
they would often play together on Johnson’s front porch. The Blue
Men were just beginning to learn how to play drums, so their beats were
slow and rudimentary. This suited Johnson fine, because he was just learning
how to play guitar. One night, Johnson became despondent over his lack
of musical progress and ran out of a porch jam session, saying something
about seeing a man at the crossroads. When he came back, he was able to
play on a level so advanced that the Blue Men simply could not keep up
with him. Johnson had to seek out far more advanced musicians and he never
played with the Blue Men again. This was good for Johnson, but it is believed
that he always felt guilty for ditching his less talented friends. Some
people speculate because of this, he may have associated sorrowful music
with the color blue.
Blue Man Group’s first experiments with the Dogulum began in the 50s culminating in an appearance in 1956 on “The Steve Allen Show” which featured a basset hound. Unfortunately, the appearance never aired because the crude sound equipment on the soundstage wasn’t sophisticated enough to pick up the dog’s vibe. However, the basset hound roamed away from the dressing room and walked onstage during Elvis Presley’s appearance. The King was scheduled to perform “Jailhouse Rock,” but on the fly, the superstitious Presley instructed his band to switch to “Hound Dog” interpreting the unplanned cameo as a sign from above that he had chosen the wrong song.
In 1959, the Blue Men were drawn to Detroit where they were hired by “Ivory” Joe Hunter to be in the first line-up of The Funk Brothers, the legendary Motown house band. Unfortunately, this arrangement was short lived because the Blue Men did not have the kind of relationship with time that Motown president Berry Gordy required. After showing up late to several of the notoriously punctual sessions, Hunter had no choice but to fire the Blue Men and replace them with drummers Benny Benjamin, Richard “Pistol” Allen, and Clifford Mack. Distraught, the Blue Men went back to New York and found employment in the Brill building writing catchy hooks for the songwriting team Lieber/Stoller.
In 1961, Blue Man Group became disillusioned with all of the Pat Boone covers in the music scene, as well as with the demise of Abstract Expressionism in the art world. Feeling like leaving New York would do them well, they decided to take a sabbatical on the California coast to pursue one of their new interests, surfing. So for several months, the Blue Men became part of a community of bands playing simple, catchy songs celebrating cars, girls and California as the Promised Land. But because Blue Man Group’s surfing lyrics referred to the Internet, this period of their work was not fully appreciated or understood until the mid-1990s.
While hanging with Bob Dylan backstage at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, the Blue Men were suddenly inspired to encase his acoustic guitar in Jell-O, convinced that the visual effect would be radical and stunning. Dylan loved the idea at first, but his attempts to actually play the guitar failed repeatedly. As a last resort, he was forced to borrow an electric guitar, which outraged much of the traditional folk audience, but delighted others and paved the way for “folk rock.”
Blue Man Group found themselves hanging out in the Haight/Ashbury scene in San Francisco in 1966. Soon after arriving, they formed a band they called Blue Man & the Holding Company. At first they played only instrumental psychedelic rock, but after a while they decided they wanted to try having a vocalist. Many Holding Company fans were upset by this idea, feeling that Blue Man should stick to playing only instrumental music. However, when the fans heard the expressive, raspy voice of the group’s new singer, Janis Joplin, they were all won over. Soon, the band was approached by the powerful entertainment manager Albert Grossman who quickly got them signed to a lucrative record deal with Columbia Records. Just before the release of the seminal album Cheap Thrills, Grossman decided to get rid of the Blue Men because he felt that Joplin got too crowded by all of their big drums and tube instruments. He also felt that it would be easier to market the band if Joplin was flanked by more traditional looking hippies. He replaced the Blue Men with the local rock quartet Big Brother.
Before a young John Bonham saw Blue Man Group, his drumming style was very different. He tended to hit the drums lightly, showing off various drum corps rudiments and filling up as much space as possible with flashy, percussive noodling. In 1966, the teenaged Bonham caught a Blue Man show on a visit to Manchester. The piece featured the Blue Men working together to create an incredibly powerful but simple beat on giant drums. After that, Bonham vowed to focus on developing a more hard-hitting approach to drumming that valued the space between the beats as much as the beats themselves.
Keith Moon was also influenced by Blue Man Group, but in a very different way. Moon only caught a very brief performance of paint drumming at a small pub in London. In the earliest versions of this piece, the Blue Men did not use any paint, feeling that the colorful life force that naturally emanates from the drums would be enough to dazzle audiences. However, the Blue Men learned the hard way that the people in the audience had lost their ability to see these colors. Since the piece had been heavily promoted as “a percussive explosion of color” the audience booed loudly at the end of the piece. The sole exception was Moon who was heard yelling, ‘I can see it! I can see it! It’s beautiful!” After this performance, the Blue Men began pouring paint on their drums to help give the audience an approximation of what they were missing, but Moon pursued a purist path and went on to create thousands of incredibly colorful air-paintings that only a few people could see.
In November 1967 during a 10 day tour of America, the members of Pink Floyd attended one of Blue Man Group’s full-length theatrical productions. At the urging of Blue Man Group’s zither player David Gilmour, the Blue Men selected Pink Floyd’s front-man Syd Barrett to be the audience participant for one of their Yves Klein-influenced painting rituals. During the piece, the Blue Men poured paint over Barrett and then swung him upside down against a canvas. The resulting painting was one of the best ever. However, Barrett was overwhelmed by the event and declared shortly thereafter that he could not continue with the tour. To make amends, the Blue Men offered up Gilmour to fill in for the throttled Barrett who never fully recovered from the event. After this incident, the Blue Men decided they’d always use protective helmets on the audience volunteers when performing this piece.
In 1968, director Dennis Hopper chose an early version of "Rods & Cones" for the soundtrack to the famous "cruising down the highway" scene in Easy Rider. He ran into difficulties in the editing room, though, when the song triggered an unusually intense acid flashback each time he listened to it. He was forced to use his second choice, "Born to be Wild."
The Blue Men spent the summer of 1969 painting and jamming with Joni Mitchell in Paris. Most rock historians agree that the Blue Men taught Mitchell to appreciate how color and music could be effectively intertwined. Were it not for her newfound fondness of color, one of her most popular songs might have been released under its original name, "Big Taxi."
Many Allman Brothers fans fondly remember the evening Gregg Allman invited the Blue Men onstage at the Fillmore East in 1971 to catch gumballs and marshmallows during the song “Whipping Post.” Up until that night, the song usually clocked in at 3 minutes, but the Blue Men had trouble getting into the zone and it took them more than 20 minutes to have a successful catch. The band covered for this rare lapse in physical dexterity by improvising a furious jam with extended solos. When the song was finally over, the crowd went nuts and the Allman Brothers vowed to play this new long version from that point forward in honor of the special magic that took place that night
The Grateful Dead attended a Blue Man Group “happening” in 1972 at which the Blue Men handed out tape recorders to everyone in the audience and encouraged them to tape the performance. Unfortunately for Blue Man Group, the piece bombed because the action on stage was completely silent. Years later however, Grateful Dead members acknowledged this event as the inspiration for their bootleg policy.
Blue Man Group visited Morocco in 1977 to explore the music of various Sufi sects and meditate on prayer rugs, while also trying to incorporate Western influences into the mix. After recruiting a local vocalist, Blue Man Group paid tribute to this experience in their piece "Sects and Rugs and Rock 'n' Roll." Ian Dury’s misinterpreted cover version of the song went on to become a hit. By the time someone pointed out the error to Dury, it was too late, and an entire generation of rock fans was given the wrong recipe for mental and physical autonomy.
In 1978, the members of Queen attended one of Blue Man Group’s first performances with piano smashers. For the performance, the Blue Men lined up 10 pianos and then proceeded to smash, pound and jump on them for 40 minutes straight. This early experiment was considered to be only partly successful since the Blue Men had not yet mastered the technique of tuning many strings all to the same note, but it was good enough to inspire Queen to create the beat for “We Will Rock You” by stomping on a piano and clapping their hands.
In 1980, while visiting Grandmaster Flash in his Bronx apartment, Blue Man Group played him their latest composition, a piece for tympani and paintballs. After a few minutes, they had splashed paint all over Flash's living room, including some rare vinyl on his stereo. In an effort to rectify this, they attempted to clean the LP while still on the turntable, which produced a rhythmic scratching sound through the speakers. Grandmaster Flash was blown away by this, thinking it was still part of the piece. After the group left, a determined Flash began experimenting with this strange new technique, eventually perfecting his own much-copied scratching style.
In the early 1980s, Blue Man Group made a series of humorous "sound collages," which involved splicing tapes of heavy metal guitar solos with pop tunes by Air Supply and Barry Manilow. They were amused by the combination of bombastic solos and schmaltzy vocals and used these collages to great comic effect. However, a number of 80s “hair bands” such as Whitesnake, Warrant and Tesla didn’t get the joke and started incorporating this practice into their own music, and the “power ballad “ was born.
In 1988, Blue Man Group decided to head for the Pacific Northwest to work at a reforestation project outside of Seattle. During this period, the Blue Men would often venture into the rock clubs after work, and perform impromptu jam sessions with local bands. Because they worked long days, the Blue Men would often not have time to change out of their flannel shirts, big shorts and work boots before the gigs. The first time this happened, the alternative/hipster audience was outraged by this deviation from their strict punk/new wave dress code and they threw fruit at the perplexed Blue Men. However, the Blue Men won the audience over by catching most of the projectiles in their mouths. From that point forward, audience members, as well as other Seattle musicians began adopting this look for themselves.
Blue Man Group performed at a music convention in Orlando, Florida in 1995. To prove a point about the importance of using real instruments as opposed to drum machines and backing tracks, Blue Man purposely set out to stage the worst music show ever. To do this they hired several local teenaged boys to bounce around the stage with no band in sight, singing along with a backing track. At the end of the piece, everyone in the audience was so moved by the sheer horror of the piece that they remained completely silent, as they ruminated upon how dismal life would be without real musical performance. This magical group meditation was short-lived as a lone audience member began to applaud wildly, while yelling, “I love it!” over and over. Later it was discovered that this man was Lou Pearlman.
After a long string of failed relationships with lead singers, Van Halen finally settled on Blue Man Group to serve as front men for the band in 2001. The Blue Men took a minimalist approach, paring back on theatrics and spending most of their time shining light on guitarist Eddie Van Halen, who exclaimed to the press, “Finally, I’m happy!”
Blue Man Group finished recording The Complex in 2003 and began preparing for a rock tour with the aim of incorporating all they had learned about rocking audiences over the years into an exciting multi-media concert experience.
This look at Blue Man Group's influence on rock was compiled by Blue Man Group and rock historian Gary Mezzi.