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to Popular Music
by PETER WICKE
characteristic of rock 'n' roll than any musically defined criterion: the
keyboard acrobatics of a Little Richard, the 'duck walk' of a Chuck
Berry squat-strutting across the stage with his guitar, Bill Haley's
saxophonist toppling over backwards till his head touched the floor,
and, of course, Elvis Presley's 'animal hip gyrations', which one
Chubby Checker, a singing idol now long forgotten, converted in 1960-1
into a new mass sports activity for dancers of all ages - the twist. One
feature of the original rock 'n' roll, actually, was a novelty in music-
historical terms: its disreputable aura as a generational symbol for
young people (and, still, a multiracial one). Rock 'n' roll represented a
common way of thinking and feeling on the part of a whole generation
of middle-class American youth: it served as the epitome of their sense
of life. Nevertheless, it was not their 'medium of expression', as was
made out all too readily after the event (see, for instance, Kaiser 1972,
pp. 322ff.), but rather a kind of youth status symbol. This, though, had
to do less with the concrete nature of the music than with the social
environment into which (unintentionally, without a doubt) it entered
it was a question of the social situation of post-war youth in the USA
These young people grew up, to be sure, in an atmosphere of relativ
material well-being, since war production had brought the America
economy into a phase of stable prosperity; but as a result they felt a
the more sharply and oppressively the mechanistic soullessness o
work-and-consumption, consumption-and-work, of the America
'way of life', especially against the cold-war background of recurren
stirrings of anxiety about ultimate, pointless nuclear self-destruction
A conflict between the hopes and wishes of young people, with a ro
largely outside the social division of labour and the power structure
and their future form of existence as a depersonalised mass labo
force is, in fact, all the more profoundly grasped and experienc
within the context of relative freedom from immediate material need
or, indeed, of a certain level of middle-class luxury. All the expecta-
tions of happiness perceived by this generation - apparently going
beyond material well-being but for the most part all too closely bound
up with it - were projected by them onto a kind of music, rock 'n' roll,
which they claimed as their own and in which, given the overt presence
of black rhythm and blues influences, within an atmosphere pregnant
* The weakness of the causal link between this music and the social environment it
entered is shown by the way in which it reached public consciousness. This goes bac
to a commercial radio programme on the station WJW/Cleveland which disc-jocke
Alan Freed started in 1953 and named 'The Moon Dog Rock 'n' Roll House Party'. Th
show was widely transmitted and taken up by stations in other American state
Freed's selections, kinds of music which had all been around for a long time, proved to
have such an effect on sales that they were eventually marketed under the tag 'rock'n'
roll', which Freed had introduced. See also Gillett 1970, pp. 15ff.
with militant racism, dissent from the dominant culture industry was
already pre-programmed. How little rock 'n' roll was really 'their'
music, rather than the shrewd commercial exploitation of their pur-
chasing power, within the context of a polarisation of generations -
propelled, as this was, by the textile, clothing and cosmetics indus-
tries, as well as the music industry, in order to give some body to the
emerging consumer image of 'youth' - all this would require separate
study (for which see Wicke 1980, pp. 144ff.).
Nonetheless, the aura that attached itself to American rock 'n' roll
was reason enough, in Britain, for it to be met with mistrust and,
eventually, prohibitions. The very name 'rock 'n' roll' - a euphemism
for the sexual act borrowed from blues language - was enough to cause
genuine shock among a British public already proverbial for its puri-
tanism. Two additional distinguishing features marked the British
reception of the music. The first was an eventually unsuccessful
attempt, especially in the industrial agglomerations where great social
tensions prevailed (Miller 1978, pp. 9ff.), to stave off American rock 'n'
roll with bans and sanctions and to replace it with the slick dilutions
represented by the stereotyped hits of home-grown stars such as Cliff
Richard or Tommy Steele.* Behind this move, to be sure, lay deeply
entrenched interests in the British record industry which did not wish
to lose significant market shares to foreign imports (ibid. p. 7). The
second feature is connected with the skiffle revival, seen and fostered
in Britain as a regeneration of commercial big-band jazz.t In this
revival young people, particularly, took to their instruments in posi-
tively epidemic proportions. Rock 'n' roll fever found itself a base here
among young amateur performing musicians, using typical skiffle-
group forces (quickly simplified down to three guitars and percus-
sion), who tried without more ado to play for themselves the music
that the official media had withheld from them (ibid. p. 16). In the
process the model was adapted: the original musical numbers were
reduced, essentially, to harmonised melody and a basic metrical-
* 'Of the 8i British rock 'n' roll hits of 1959, only three had a close affinity to the kind of
music that had crossed the Atlantic four years earlier in the form of rock 'n' roll:
"Chantilly Lace" by Big Bopper, "High School Confidential" by Jerry Lee Lewis, and
"Stagger Lee" by Lloyd Price' (ibid. p. 21).
t Revival jazz bands had sprung up in England in the 1940s. They took their bearings
from what were seen as the 'authentic' classic bands of early New Orleans jazz. Skiffle
groups first developed within these bands as small formations adopting the repertoire
of American folk music, which had become known in England in the early 1950s,
notably thanks to the ethnologist Alan Lomax; the typical forces of these groups
were banjos, guitars, washboard (substituting for percussion) and bass (or its home-
made imitation, a box, broomstick and piece of wire). In conjunction with CND, in
which skiffle groups took part, bringing their music up to date with appropriate new
texts, this style of music became extraordinarily popular.
* This milieu has been described in great detail. The streets and pubs of Liverpool saw
encounters between folk-music styles, skiffle, the musical products of the mass media
and musical styles of differing ethnic origins; and even pop-art events had a firm hold
here. See Griffin 1964, Seuss, Donnermuth and Maier, 1965, especially pp. 38ff.
halls and disco palaces. The musical content is reduced entirely to the formulaic
padding-out of the stereotype; it is limited to the uninterrupted and unending repeti-
tion of a few scraps of phrases.
* Marx speaks of capitalist production as production which takes place '. . only in
relation to circulation', as '. . . production that makes exchange values its exclusive
content' (Marx 1974, p. 168). Elsewhere he refers, in connection with capital, to the
. universality with which it irresistibly drives forward' (ibid. p. 314).
people within the Liverpool club scene, acquired its own distinctive
kind of meaning: the perceptual intensity of sound, often so heavily
amplified as to suggest physical tangibility,* became the direct expres-
sion of their hopes, wishes, demands and expectations of happiness.
This in turn frequently extended into an unrestrained demonstration
of mastery of techniques of sound production and manipulation, self-
validated through their sheer scale, and often directed revealingly
outwards in the form of stage and show-business gestures, which
compensated for conflict-filled experiences of reality, and which were
heavily stylised in order to emphasise a quasi-ritualistic employment
of technology.t The perceptual character of the sound, together with
the imaginative delight in physicality that was both experience and
effect of this music, were seen as bringing to life everything that in the
everyday world had to be subordinated to the rationalised demands of
school and work. Ultimately, however, the music gives vent with
unprecedented clarity to a conflict of a general nature which the
capitalist social system has produced and regularly reproduces, in the
* Amplification systems with an effective output of between seven and ten thousand
watts (as compared with maximum outputs of fifty watts in amplification systems in
domestic radio equipment) are no rarity in this music. See Souster 1975, pp. 155ff. This
has given rise to accusations by medical writers that the noise levels may be de-
trimental to health. See Psychologische Fragen der Ldrmforschung 1964. Although warn-
ings of this sort are to be taken seriously, in view of the constant increase in environ-
mental stresses on mankind, the physical and perceptually immediate presence of
sound through loudness is an aesthetic component of this kind of music which cannot
be got around by means of administratively determined decibel levels (as has been
occasionally attempted in the GDR). In addition, the figures for amplification outputs
are often incorrectly interpreted. That is, the huge growth in amplification potential
that has been seen during, say, the past ten to fifteen years in no sense means that yet
higher loudness levels are being aimed at. The reason for this is technical. Amplifiers
that have been modulated up to their output limits produce considerable sound
distortions. It is the attempt to eliminate this factor and to retain a clean, transparent
sound quality, by employing as high an output reserve as possible in the electro-
acoustic system, that underlies the introduction of these amplification outputs.
t 'Not just with the sequencer, but with the general application of synthesisers, a
strange technology cult has - unfortunately - been gradually gaining in significance.
The ... alleged need to have available as large a repertoire of sounds and effects as
possible inevitably leads to an enormous accumulation of electronic equipment ...
Awe-inspiring technology ... becomes a calculated visual effect and part of the
musician's image. Tangerine Dream have also been experimenting with gigantic
technical effects, and in a publicity photo they have built them into a kind of "electro-
nic altar" ' (Behrendsen and Rilsenberg 1978, p. 147; see also pp. 136ff.).
The symbolic content of musicians' stage gestures is a subject worthy of separate
study. There are many different expressions of the ritualisation of technology here: the
accumulation of electronic systems that the performers can in most cases scarcely
master any longer (a synthesiser usually has several million different possible sounds,
of which a dozen are used at the outside - and yet every self-respecting group has
several such pieces of equipment at a given time); the commonly seen self-
surrendering and ritualistic solemnity with which keyboard players, especially, use
their instruments; the sexually symbolic gestures of guitarists.
CIA. (Information following Lippincott 1970, pp. 124ff., Chapple and Garofalo 1977,
pp. 226ff., CBS Annual Report 1973 and 1975.)
Similar information could be provided for all the big record companies. They are
corporate groups in which the production and distribution of records forms only one
branch of the total enterprise, and which attempt to control internationally the whole
social process of communication. Moreover, these corporate groups are also intricately
connected with one another in terms of the owners of capital (quite remote from
music) who lie behind them. To put it in a nutshell, but without exaggeration: the
production and distribution of music is, in regard to turnover, one of the most
important economic branches of the capitalist social system.
* In this connection a closer examination of lyrics would be necessary. See Urban 1979, a
brilliant study which succeeds convincingly in showing that rock lyrics are a clear
expression of their age and a social reflection of the people's wishes, hopes, moods
and feelings. Urban isolates those features which go beyond the individual particular-
ities of their authors and represent something general: social experience that has
entered the language.
Greetings and welcome Rolling Stones, our comrades in the desperate battle
against the maniacs who hold power. The revolutionary youth of the world
hears your music and is inspired to even more deadly acts. We fight in guerrilla
bands against the invading imperialists in Asia and South America, we riot at
rock'n' roll concerts everywhere ... Comrades, you will return to this country
when it is free from the tyranny of the State and you will play your splendid
music in factories run by the workers, in the domes of emptied city halls, on the
rubble of police stations, under the hanging corpses of priests, under a million
red flags waving over a million anarchist communities ... ROLLING STONES -
THE YOUTH OF CALIFORNIA HEARS YOUR MESSAGE! LONG LIVE THE REVOLUTION!!
(Quoted in Eisen 1969, p. 72)
This politicisation of rock music was to leave deep traces. The recep-
tion of the music became converted into a mystical ritual of emancipa-
tion: it was ritualised into a symbolic act of self-liberation and self-
realisation in which reality and musical experience were fused into a
single point around which the individual, in a world full of social
disintegration and superstitious technology-fetishism, could find a
way back to the self as a value and a potentiality - and this was equated
with social revolution. Rock music was thus seen as a social force, as a
power for change, as revolutionary potential. As a world view and
life-style it acquired a socio-utopian dimension through a fetish-like
References
Baacke, D. 1969. 'Beat. Ein Versuch', Merkur. Deutsche Zeitung fiir europiisches
Denken, 23:253, pp. 431ff-