The the wake of the passing of singer/songwriter Ed Masters, formerly frontman for the proto-punk pub rockers Eddie and the Hot Rods, LouderSound decided to look at how Aleister Crowley helped inspire their evergreen “Do Anything You Wanna Do.” Part of the article states:
“Although Aleister Crowley – satanist, sex magician, drug fiend, the self-styled ‘most evil man in Britain’ – had died in 1947, he had already made his impression on rock culture. He was one of the figures on the cover of Sgt Pepper, and was hailed as ‘the unsung hero of the hippies’ by ‘underground’ magazine International Times.
“Jimmy Page took his fascination seriously enough to buy Crowley’s former residence on the banks of Loch Ness. But there is no more potent use of Crowley’s influence in rock than [the band’s manager and lyricist] Ed Hollis’s lyric for Do Anything You Wanna Do.
“Taking Crowley’s dictum ‘Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law’ as his starting point, Hollis wrote one of the great anthems of youthful autonomy (‘Tired of doing day job/With no thanks for what I do/Gonna be someone now I’m gonna find out who’). ”
I’ve heard this song 100’s of times — I never made this connection!
Not only did I make the connection, I bought the single when it was released….