The American Medical Association

Evil rock band up to no good in the The Illuminatus Trilogy, by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson. They appear throughout, including in the first novel, The Eye in the Pyramid (1975).

The band is made up of four German siblings and becomes the most popular band in the world.

Lineup:

• Winifred Saure, vocals
• Wolfgang Saure, drums
• Wilhelm Saure
• Werner Saure

They also made some films, including The Lotus Position.

Joe squinted at the design again. It could be a coincidence. But coincidence was just another word for synchronicity. "I think I'll go," he said. "And what's that?" he added as his eye fell upon a half- unfolded poster on his desk.

"Oh, that came with the latest American Medical Association album," said Peter. "I don't want it, and I thought you might. It's time you took those pictures of the Rolling Stones off your wall. This is the age of constantly accelerating change, and a man who displays old pictures of the Stones is liable to be labeled a reactionary."

Four owl-eyed faces stared at him. They were dressed in one-piece white suits, and three of them were joining extended hands to form a triangle, while the fourth, Wolfgang Saure, generally acknowledged to be the leader of the group, stood with his arms folded in the center. The picture was taken from above so that the most prominent elements were the four heads, while the outstretched arms clearly made the sides of the triangle, and the bodies seemed unimportant, dwindling away to nothing. The background was jet black. The three young men and the woman, with their smooth- shaven bony faces, their blond crew-cuts and their icy blue eyes seemed extremely sinister to Joe. If the Nazis had won the war and Heinrich Himmler had followed Hitler as ruler of the German Empire, kids like this would be running the world. And they almost were, in a different sense, because they had succeeded the Beatles and Stones as kings of music, which made them emperors among youth. Although long hair remained the general fashion, the kids had accepted the American Medical Association's antiseptic- clean appearance as a needed reaction against a style that had become too commonplace.

...

Behind the stage the four members of the American Medical Association stood apart and gazed out at the sunset. They were wearing iridescent black tunics and trousers. Members of other bands stood together and talked, many of the groups happy to be meeting each other for the first time. They even fraternized with a few intrepid kids who managed to infiltrate past the guards and make it to the back side of the stage hill. But white -suited attendants kept the public and fellow performers away from the American Medical Association. This was generally accepted as the AMA's privilege. They were, after all, universally acclaimed as the greatest rock group in the world. Their records sold the most. Their tours drew audiences that dwarfed even those of the Beatles. Their sound was everywhere. As the Beatles had, for a time, expressed the new freedom of the '60s, so the AMA seemed to epitomize the repressive spirit of the 70s. The secret of their popularity was that they were so appalling. They reminded their fans of all the evils that were being daily visited upon them, and thus hearing and seeing them was like scratching a very bad itch. They suggested that perhaps youth had captured its oppressors or identified with them, and they momentarily turned the pain of the whole scene into pleasure. To learn how to enjoy suffering, since suffering was their lot, kids by the millions flocked to hear the AMA.