Introduction ee 66 Rock-and-roll will be around fora long, long time. Rock-and- roll is like hot molten lava that erupts when an angry volcano explodes, It’s scorching hot, burns fast and completely, leaving an eternal scar. Even when the echoes of the explosion subside, the ecstatic flames burn with vehement continuity, 99 —Don Robey, owner of Peacock and Duke Records, in Billboard, March 1957 This book is a social history of rock-and-roll. It places an ever-changing rock music in the context of American and, to some extent, British history from roughly 1940 to 2013. Rockin’ in Time tries to explain how rock-and-roll both reflected and influenced major social changes during the last eight decades. As Ice-T explained in 1997, “albums are meant to be put in a time capsule, sealed up, and sent into space so that when you look back you can say that’s the total reflection of that time.” This book deals with rock music within broad social and cultural settings. Rather than present an encyclopedic compilation of the thousands of well-known and obscure bands that have played throughout the years, it examines rock-and-rollers who have reflected and sometimes changed the social fabric at a certain point in history. It does not focus on the many artists, some of my favorites, who never gained general popu- larity or who achieved commercial success with a sound that either reinvigorated an older style or who did not encapsulate the times, Rockin’ in Time concentrates on rock musicians who most fully mirrored the world around them and helped define an era. Rockin’ in Time emphasizes several main themes, including the importance of African American culture in the origins and development of rock music. The blues, originating with American slaves, provided the foundation for rock-and-roll. During the early 1950s, southern African Americans who had migrated to Chicago created an urbanized, electric rhythm and blues that preceded rock-and-roll and served as the breeding ground for pioneer rock-and-rollers such ag Little Richard and Chuck Berry, African Americans continued to create new styles such as the Motown sound, thesoul explosion of the late 1960s, the disco beat in the next decade, and, most recently, hip-hop. ‘The new musical styles many times coincided with and reflected the African American struggle for equality. The electric blues of Muddy Waters became pop- ular amid the stirrings of the civil rights movement during the 1950s. During the carly 1960s, as the movement for civil rights gained momentum, folk protesters such as Bob Dylan and Joan Baez sang paeans about the cause. In 1964 and 1965, as Con- gress passed the most sweeping civil rights legislation since the Civil War, Motown artists topped the charts. When disgruntled, frustrated African Americans took to the streets later in the decade, soul artists such as Aretha Franklin gained respect. During the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s, hip-hoppers such as Public Enemy rapped about inequality and renewed an interest in an African American identity. As the civil rights struggle began to foster an awareness and acceptance of African American culture, rock-and-roll became accessible to white teenagers. Teens such as Elvis Presley listened to late-night, rhythm and blues radio shows that started to chal- lenge and break down racial barriers. During the 1960s, African American performers such as'the Ronettes, the Crystals, the ‘Temptations, and the Supremes achieved mass popularity among both African Americans and whites. By the 1980s, African American entertainers such as Michael Jackson achieved superstar status, and during the next decade rap filtered into the suburbs. Throughout the last eight decades, rock music has helped integrate white and black America. ‘The shifting population trends during the postwar era, the second theme of this book, provided the audience for an African American-inspired rock-and-roll. After World War IT, both the United States and Great Britain experienced a tremendous baby boom. By the mid-1950s, the baby boomers had become an army of youngsters who demanded their own music. Along with their older brothers and sisters who had been born during the war, they latched onto the new rock-and-roll, idolizing a young, virile Elvis Presley who attracted hordes of postwar youth. Rock music appealed to and reflected the interests of the baby-boom generation uuntil the early 1980s, The music of the Dick Clark era, the Brill Building songwriters, the Beach Boys, the Motown artists, and the early Beatles showed a preoccupation with dating, cars, high school, and teen love, As this generation matured and entered college or the workforce, the music scene became more serious and was dominated by the protest music of Bob Dylan and psychedelic bands that questioned basic tenets of American society, The music became harsh and violent when college-age baby boom- ers were threatened by the Vietnam War military draft and the prospect of fighting in an unpopular war. During the 1970s, after the war ended and when many of the col- lege rebels landed lucrative jobs, glitter rock and disco exemplified the excessive, self- centered behavior of the boomers. During the 1980s, artists such as Bruce Springsteen, who matured with his audience and celebrated his fortieth birthday by the end of the decade, reflected a yearning for the 1960s spirit of social change. The sons and daughters of the baby boom, born between 1965 and 1981 and called Generation X by the press, carried forward the rock-and-roll banner. Disaffected youths born on the cusp of the new generation created a stinging British punk rock and an American hardcore to vent their emotions. A few years later, the v ® Introductionfirst true Gen Xers found their music on a video-friendly medium called MTV. As they grew older, Generation X confronted sobering social conditions with thrash, grunge, death metal, and rap. During a brief respite of their woes, they turned to Britpop and jam bands. By the late 1990s, a third generation of youth, born between 1982 and 2001 and referred to as the Baby Boom Echo, Generation Y, or the Millenials, demanded their own music. This group equaled the baby-boom in sheer numbers and buying power. In addition to the last strains of hip-hop, they flocked to hard sounds of metal as well as socially conscious singer-songwriters. By 2011, amid a conservative upheaval in the United States, many listened to the traditional message of a new country rock. ‘The roller-coaster economic times during the post-World War II era serve as a third focus of this book. A favorable economic climate initially allowed rock to flourish among the baby-boom generation. Compared to the preceding generation, which had been raised during the most severe economic depression of the twentieth century, the baby boomers in the United States lived in relative affluence. In the 1950s and early 1960s, many youths had allowances that enabled them to purchase the latest rock re- cords and buy tickets to see their favorite heartthrobs. During the next fifteen years, unparalleled prosperity allowed youths to consider the alternatives of hippiedom and led to cultural excesses and booming record sales during the 1970s. When the economic scene began to worsen during the mid-to-late 1970s in Britain, youths created the sneering protest of punk that reflected the harsh eco- nomic realities of the dole. At the same time and through the most of the 1980s and early 1990s, American youths, who had few career prospects and little family sta- bility, played shattering hardcore punk, a pounding industrial sound, bleak grunge music, a growling death metal, and a confrontational rap. In the mid-1990s, when the economy brightened for several years on both sides of the Atlantic, teens turned to a bouncy, danceable Britpop and jam bands. From 2008 to the present, as the worldwide economy settled into one of the worst recessions in 100 years, youths began to listen to a country rock that preached a conservative message of tractors, tailgate parties, and the American flag. Advances in technology shaped the sound of rock-and-roll and provide another framework for Rockin’ in Time. The solid-body electric guitar, developed and popular- ized during the 1950s by Les Paul and Leo Fender, gave rock its distinctive sound. Mass-produced electric guitars such as Fender’s Telecaster, appearing in 1951, and the Stratocaster, first marketed three years later, enabled blues musicians and later white teens to capture the electric sound of the city and the passion of youth. During the late 1960s and early 1970s, guitar gods plugged into a wide array of electronic de- vices such as the distortion box and the wah-wah pedal to deliver a slashing, menacing heavy metal. Later technologies such as the synthesizer, the sequencer, and the sampler allowed musicians to embellish and reshape rock-and-roll into different genres. Several technological breakthroughs helped popularize rock-and-roll; making it easily and inexpensively accessible. Television brought, and still brings, rack to teens in their homes—Elvis Presley and the Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show, Dick Clark’s American Bandstand, Shindig in the 1960s, and MTV. In Britain, television programs such as Thank Your Lucky Stars, Ready Steady Go!,and Juke Box Jury played the same Introduction @ xvTae een os a, Sato role. The portable transistor radio, the portable cassette tape player-recorder, the por- table CD player, and, most recently, the iPod provided teens the opportunity to listen | to their favorite songs in the privacy of their rooms, at school, or on the streets, The | inexpensive 45-rpm record, introduced in 1949 by RCA, allowed youths to purchase the latest hits and replaced the more brittle shellac 78-rpm record. Starting in the mid- 1960s, such rock music as the experimental psychedelic sound fully utilized the more extended format of the long-play, 12-inch, 33-1/3-rpm record, which Columbia had invented in 1948, The LP became the dominant medium for rock music until the laser- powered compact disc became commercially available in October 1982. Advances in the quality of sound, such as high fidelity, stereo, and component stereo systems, brought the immediacy of the performance to the home and enhanced the rock experience. By the 1990s, the Internet enabled youths to listen, trade, download, and burn their favorite music, and learn about new bands. ‘The increasing popularity of rock music has been entwined with the development of the music industry, another feature of this book. Rock-and-roll has always been a business, At first, small, independent companies such as Chess, Sun, Modern, and King recorded and delivered to the public a commercially untested rock. As it became more popular among teens, rock-and-roll began to interest major record companies such as RCA, Decca, and Capitol, which in the 1960s dominated the field. By the 1970s, the major companies aggressively marketed their product and consolidated ranks to increase profits and successfully create an industry more profitable than network tele- vision and professional sports. In 1978, as the majors experienced a decline in sales, independent labels again arose to release new rock styles such as punk, rap, grunge, and techno. At the end of the 1980s and 1990s, the major companies reasserted their domi- nance of the record industry, buoyed by the signing of new acts that had been tested by the independents and by the introduction of the compact disc, which lured many record buyers to purchase their favorite music in a different, more expensive format. As the new century unfolded, the major record labels confronted and protested against the Internet, which created a fundamentally new business model for the music industry by allowing musicians to release and distribute their music inexpensively to a worldwide audience without an intermediary. ‘Though a business, rock music has engendered and has been defined by rebel- lion, which manifested itself through a series of overlapping subcultures, Youths used rock-and-roll as a way to band together and feel part of a shared experience, As Bruce Springsteen mentioned about his own background, rock music “provided me with a community, filled with people, and brothers and sisters who I didn’t know, but who I knew were out there. We had this enormous thing in common, this ‘thing’ that initially felt like a secret. Music always provided that home for me, a home where my spirit could wander.” “Rock provides a family life that is missing in America and England,” agreed David Bowie. “It provides a sense of community. During the last eight decades, identifiable rock-and-roll communities took on specific characteristics and styles. Fueled by uncontrolled hormones, rockabilly greas- ers in the 1950s and early 1960s challenged their parents by wearing sideburns and long greased-back hair and driving fast hot rods. Their girlfriends sported tight sweat- ers, ratted hair, pedal-pusher slacks, and screamed to the hip-shaking gyrations of i © IntroductionElvis Presley. In the 1960s, serious clean-cut, smartly dressed, college-aged folkniks directed their frustration and anger at racial and social injustice, taking freedom rides to the South and protesting against nuclear arms. A few years later, the hippies flaunted wild, vibrant clothing, the mind-expanding possibilities of LSD, sexual freedom, and a disdain for a warmongering capitalism, which they expressed in their swirling psyche- delic poster art. In the next decade, the rock lifestyle changed once again, as some baby boomers crammed into stadium concerts to collectively celebrate sexually ambiguous, theatrical, and extravagant superstars. A few years later, women wore flowing, revealing dresses and men favored gold medallions and unbuttoned silk shirts as they discoed to the steady beats of deejays. During the late 1970s, angry rock subcultures emerged. Sncering British punks grew spiked hair, wore ripped, safety-pinned ‘T-shirts, and pogoed straight up and down, lashing out against economic, gender, and racial inequities. In America, some youths created a slam-dancing, Mohawked hardcore punk. Around the same time, a hip-hop subculture started that unabashedly condemned racial prejudice and its effects on African Americans in the inner cities, highlighting the racial injustice that the civil rights movement of the sixties had not erased. Within a decade and into the new century, the inner-city b-boy subculture had spread to the white suburbs, where gun-toting teens looked for ho’s and wore Adidas, saggy pants, baseball caps (preferably New York Yankees) turned backward, loose‘I-shirts, and, depending upon the year, gold chains, In the 1980s and 1990s, Generation X youth voiced a passionate frustration and despair through a series of subcultures that included a gothic-looking industrial style; a long-haired, leather-jacketed thrash and death metal; and the self-described “loser” community of grunge, which adopted the idealized look of the working class: longish, uncombed hair, faded blue jeans, Doc Marten boots, and ‘T-shirts. Other Generation Xers faced their problems differently by refashioning the hippie lifestyle for the nine- ties. Joining together at updated love-ins called raves, they favored Ecstasy over LSD, put on their smiley faces, and hugged their fellow techno-travelers as demonstrations of peace in a war-filled, terrorist-riddled world. Though less confrontational than its grunge counterpart, the techno subculture directly challenged and shocked mainstream society as nearly each rock subculture has done during the last eighty years before being subverted and incorporated into the mainstream by fashion designers, Hollywood, and big business. By the start of the new century, rock-and-roll took on different cultural forms. Confronted by a seemingly never-ending war in Iraq and the prospects of rapid climate change, collegiate-styled youths listened to socially conscious singer-songwriters. Others rocked to black metal, espousing a pagan sentiment and wearing facial corpse paint, studded black leather outfits, and long hair to demonstrate their disgust with current cultural mores. With only a few exceptions, rock-and-rollers have coalesced into distinct subcultures to rebel against the dominant social norms. History seldom can be separated into neat packages. Many of the different rock genres and their accompanying subcultures overlapped with one another, For example, from 1961 to the advent of the British invasion in 1964, the Brill Building songwriters, surf music, and Bob Dylan coexisted on the charts. Though sometimes intersecting and Introduction © xviicross-pollinating, the different subcultures of rock-and-roll have been divided into dis- tinct chapters in this book to clearly distinguish the motivating factors behind each one. Rockin’ in Time attempts to be as impartial as possible. Even though a book cannot be wrenched from the biases of its social setting, I have tried to present the music in a historical rather than a personal context and to avoid any effusive praise or disparaging remarks about any type of rock. As Sting, lead singer of the Police, once said, “there is no bad music, only bad musicians.” ‘These pages explore the social history of rock-and-roll. During the last eight decades that it has been an important and essential part of American and British culture, rock-and-roll has reflected and sometimes changed the lives of several generations. i ® Introduction