walking upstream…
Mazzy Star
In a Fairfax district restaurant in the summer of 1990, Robert Hilburn asked David Roback and Hope Sandoval about their influences; Sandoval answered mostly in silence, and Roback filled the gap by explaining he had spent years deliberately not listening to new music. "I prefer the Rip Van Winkle approach to art," he told the Los Angeles Times. Mazzy Star had formed in Santa Monica in 1988, growing out of Roback's band Opal after singer Kendra Smith left and Sandoval took her place. His slow-motion guitar and her hushed, unhurried voice became 1993's "Fade Into You," the hit that outlasted the band's near-total silence in interviews. Roback died in 2020; what he left behind was built almost entirely on refusing whatever was current.
the sound in question
1993
Fade Into YouMazzy Star
walk the tributaries ↓
The Rolling Stones1960s-70s · Rock / Blues rock / Hard rock
Asked point-blank about influences in 1990, Sandoval gave the most direct on-record answer either member of Mazzy Star ever offered: not the Rolling Stones' showier reputation, Hilburn reported, but the soulful ache of "Love in Vain," a song she had first heard on a live album as a young teenager and had prized ever since. The same conversation traced the debt further back: she picked up a guitar herself, she said, because she admired Keith Richards' playing so much she wanted to make that sound too.
listen: upstream & here
1970
Love in VainThe Rolling Stones
1993
Fade Into YouMazzy Star
listen forCue the Stones' live "Love in Vain" — the vocal dragging just behind a loose, weeping slide guitar, unwilling to rush toward the beat — then "Fade Into You": the same unhurried, behind-the-beat phrasing carries a plainspoken ache that neither recording hurries to resolve, the mournful blues shape a teenage Sandoval heard on a live album and never let go of.
The Velvet Underground1960s · Art rock / Proto-punk / Experimental rock
When Robert Hilburn traced the band's roots for the Los Angeles Times in 1990, he called Opal — Roback's group just before Mazzy Star — "a link between the Velvet Underground and Mazzy Star": his own critical judgment, not a claim either musician made. Sandoval confirmed the debt on different terms in 2009, and credited someone else with it: "He knew more about the Velvet Underground; I didn't really know their music," she told the Quietus of Roback. "Sylvia was really into them and I was always saying: 'Turn that off: it's too noisy.' But when I started working with David, he turned me on to them."
listen: upstream & heresource: The Quietus — "The Mother Of Warm Invention" (Sandoval on the Velvet Underground and Syd Barrett) ↗
1967
Venus in FursThe Velvet Underground
1990
She Hangs BrightlyMazzy Star
listen forPut the Velvet Underground's title track "Venus in Furs" beside Mazzy Star's own title track, "She Hangs Brightly": both circle a single droning, minor-key riff for minutes at a stretch, guitar noise doing the heavy work while the vocal stays flat and unbothered on top. It is the sound Sandoval once told a bandmate to turn off — before Roback folded it into the band's own hypnosis.
Syd Barrett1960s · Psychedelic rock / Folk rock / Outsider music
Roback named him twice in the same 1990 interview, unprompted. Explaining why he had once retreated to Berkeley to make music alone, he said, "It didn't seem all that radical because my heroes had done it — people like John Lennon and Syd Barrett — at certain points in their lives." Sandoval, who rarely discusses her own listening, raised Barrett independently nineteen years later, naming him among the artists she liked before she had even met Roback: "I liked modern stuff like Soul II Soul, along with Syd Barrett and the Rolling Stones." Neither musician ever named a specific Barrett song.
listen: upstream & heresource: Los Angeles Times — "Mazzy Star ↗
1970
Golden HairSyd Barrett
1993
Into DustMazzy Star
listen forPlay Barrett's "Golden Hair" — just a fragile vocal and an acoustic guitar left nearly bare — then Mazzy Star's "Into Dust": both singers drop close to a whisper and let the quiet around the voice carry as much weight as the words. No song or technique was ever named by either member; the kinship here is a shared hush, not a documented borrowing.