The Analysis of Rock Music as a Genre. How It Occurred and Why It is Significant

Rock music began as “race music;” the white middle class teenager’s middle finger to his conservative parents by listening to music made by African Americans. It then moved on to be a key player in the countercultural revolution of America in the 1960s where the then-teenaged baby boomers once again used it to express their discontent with mainstream society as well as effort to retrieve their own identity apart from their parents’. It moved on to nihilistic punk rock to insouciant grunge to whiny pop punk to anything a teenager could use to forsake and complain about traditional values and attempt to develop values of their own.

Rock music has always been about rebellion, delinquency, transition, and angst. It has always been the music of youth. However, some rock musicians and their fans are not in their youth anymore. They’re aging. This paper is not to claim that these aging fans cannot still be fans of rock music, however this paper serves to question the value and significance rock music has on their lives while also proving that although fans and musicians age, the music does not. The cultural significance of rock is exclusive to youth.

To explain the cultural significance of rock music, I first had to ask myself what rock music is. What makes rock music, rock music? It’s about energy. It’s about the youthful energy that complains about not being able to get satisfaction while being sick and tired of the privileged white adults. The cultural significance of rock is what caused the FCC to sensor Elvis Presley’s lower half. It’s what caused angry teenagers to riot outside of Moondog’s Coronation Ball. It’s what caused Sid Vicious to cut himself onstage with beer bottles.

The cultural significance of rock music stems from people being able to identify with the music and letting it shape and change them as a forty-four-year-old male, self-identified punk described.

It dictates in a sense the rest of your life because the phenomenon, whatever happens, has such a fundamental effect on you that it actually changes the course of your life. So, whereas it could be if punk never happened or if, you know, I was ten years older I could have perhaps missed out, or would have been led down different avenues. But, ‘cause, you know, it did feel like yeah punk rock was a life changing thing.

Rock music was life changing to him. It was life changing because as a teenager, your life is in a constant state of change. The teen years are years of growth and transition, of forming an identity. The interviewee said he could have been led down different avenues if it weren’t for punk music. I am not claiming that adults cannot change their lives, however, they would have to change. Teenagers don’t have stable lives yet so they have the ability to be shaped which is what rock music tends to do.

To understand rock music’s significance on specifically Western culture and why it is exclusive to youth, the concept of youth must be explored (youth being mostly teenagers and possibly early twenties). First I looked into characteristics of adolescence that would be driving factors in their historically consistent consumption of rock music. I also looked into characteristics that allow youth to be susceptible to rock’s significance, which is identifying with rock in a greater sense than just music and allowing it to help shape their identity.

Psychologist Erik Erikson is known for his theory on psychosocial development where he divided up life into eight stages; each stage having an accompanying crisis. During the teenage years, the crisis is identity vs. role confusion. American psychologist and professor Richard Stevens called this stage “a time of radical change… the ability of the mind to search one's own intentions and the intentions of others, the suddenly sharpened awareness of the roles society has offered for later life.” Adolescents are pressured with dissociating from the identity their parents gave them, finding their own identity but also accepting or rejecting the identity society gives them. According to Erikson, teenagers are plagued with the existential question of “Who am I? Who can I be?”

Along with the cognitive transitions that teenagers go through, there are also biological, specifically neurological, aspects on why rock music affects youth more than it does adults. During the teen years, the brain is at its highest volume of gray matter, or the bundle of neuron bodies. Although the basic functions of the cortex, like interpreting information from senses, are formed by the teenage years, the areas responsible for impulse control and planning ahead have not been fully matured. However, what are heightened (relative to children and adults) are emotional responses as brain circuitry responsible for those emotional responses are changing in the brain as well.

Teenagers are in a very vulnerable, volatile yet pivotal stage in their lives. The need to find an identity paired with high emotions and poor decision making skills has teens as a target for accepting and embracing rock music. So, after looking deeper into the concept of youth I had to look at rock music as a concept to understand how both were connected.

Rock music was created through the influence of black jazz and gospel. The improvisational nature of jazz music and the energy that specifically the organ player conveys in black Pentecostal churches is emotionally and spiritually charged. However, it’s not just the nature of the music but also the idea of it. In the 1950s before rock and roll was born, blacks had their own music, their own music magazines, and their own radio stations. It wasn’t as if black music wasn’t popular among the whites, they still listened as long as it was a cleaner, simple version sung by a white artist. For example, Little Richard’s 1955 song “Tutti Frutti” is known for it’s raunchy lyrics and the artistic freedom he used with his voice and piano while performing it. Despite the song consistently being named one of the best rock songs by Rolling Stone and Mojo Music Magazine, it peaked at No. 17 behind Pat Boone’s toned-down cover that peaked at No. 12.

It wasn’t until the mid 1950s when DJ Alan “Moondog” Freed began playing race music as well as white music on this radio show that rock and roll (a term coined by Freed himself) took off. The realization that their kids were listening to raucous music played by African-Americans scared middle-class white parents. Thus, in an act of white kids rebelling against mainstream society by listening to black music, rock and roll was born.

Rock and roll was to blame for widespread fear of juvenile delinquency. Parents of the 1950s thought their post-World War II children were lazy and spoiled and disrespectful. These teenagers didn’t have to work anymore and everyone had a little pocket money and free time. So, these teenagers, who by their nature were already going through an identity crisis, were now bored with money had nothing to do but go buy rock and roll records.

This was the start of rock’s cultural significance and it started with teenagers. It started with the youth and it was for the youth. Adults felt attacked and were fearful because they could not relate. Because teenagers are so focused on finding an identity they are relatively open to new things. The middle-class white youth was open to black music, they were open to a new way to spend time, a new attitude.

Adults, on the contrary, are not generally open to new attitudes. In the adult stage of Erikson’s psychosocial development, the crisis is generativity vs. stagnation. They are concerned with guiding the next generation and express it through socially valued work and discipline. They want to contribute to the greater good and feel like productive members of society. They feel as if their lives mean something bigger than themselves. According to Erikson, “A person does best at this time to put aside thoughts of death and balance its certainty with the only happiness that is lasting: to increase, by whatever is yours to give, the goodwill and higher order in your sector of the world.”Whereas teens are trying to be selfish and figure out themselves, adults are trying to be selfless and figure out how to help the next generation.

Does the cultural significance of rock music have to do with it being selfish or selfless? Daryl Hall of Hall and Oates said, “The main purpose of rock and roll is a celebration of the self.” There are countless lyrics from rock songs that are along the lines of “do what you want.” However, those are just lyrics. The cultural significance of rock music must be explored through more than just how it began and more than just understanding why teenagers loved it so much. The next question becomes then, why is it exclusive to youth?

I stress again: adults can love rock music. I interviewed adult fans of rock music. However, Johnny Thunders of the New York Dolls put it best when he said, “rock and roll is simply an attitude.” The cultural significance of rock music is that attitude and that aforementioned energy. What heightens attitude and energy is a physical touch and togetherness. Live music plays an extremely important role because it explains rock music’s cultural significance by portraying how people use music.

It started in Cleveland, Ohio. March 21, 1952. Moondog’s Coronation Ball had sold 20,000 tickets to a venue that could barely hold 10,000. The lineup was racially mixed, as well as the audience. Audience members were actually surprised to see that Alan Freed, who hosted the event, was white. Black and white teenagers crowded into the venue, and those who couldn’t fit in rioted. The police came. A man was stabbed. The world saw its first rock and roll concert. The teenagers who attended wanted something more out of what they heard on their records and on Alan Freed’s radio show. They wanted to feel the energy of live music and feel it with other people; even those outside their race.

Although French sociologist Emile Durkheim wrote The Elementary Forms of Religious Life about religion and primitive religious rituals, those ideas can easily be put in the context of rock concerts. In fact, Jefferson Airplane guitarist once said, “Rock concerts are the churches of today. Music puts [concertgoers] on a spiritual plane.” The energy concertgoers experience on that “spiritual plane” is what Durkheim called “collective effervescence.” Durkheim explains how individuals participating in religious rituals (which in this case would be a rock concert) forgot their individuality because the group provided them with an identity. Collective effervescence is the energy that flows through those attending rock concerts. It’s a shared experience that elicits strong emotions, usually euphoria.

I have already stressed how finding an identity is specific to youth so the component of eliciting strong emotions in a group setting (again, a rock concert) must be examined. I talked with an eighteen-year-old African-American female who says she’s been to over fifty concerts starting when she was “about twelve” about her rock concert experiences and why she continues to go to so many.

I’ve gone to a lot of those concerts by myself… but I never feel alone really. I’m with a lot of different people and we have different lives but we’re singing the same song. They just remind me that I’m not alone and everyone is young and I don’t know what I’m doing and I don’t think anyone else does either… I saw this band called Catfish and the Bottlemen back in like February I think and their songs aren’t very heavy like they’re pissed off at stuff and girls make them crazy but they still like them they’re still trying to fuck and they’re drinking and getting high and I guess I just really identify that like boys make me crazy and I’m not really trying to fall in love yet but I like liking people and being angsty and just messing around... I remember this one dude, he was British and drunk out of his mind… yelling, “Catfish and the Bottlemen!” and he wrapped his arm around me and started swaying so I joined in and we were just yelling and holding each other and when Catfish and the Bottlemen finally came on we were yelling the lyrics together and his friends had came sic and we all danced and jumped around with each other it was just really dumb... Like, that’s why I go to concerts. I feel like it’s okay to be dumb because everyone around me is dumb… especially rock concerts because the lyrics aren’t serious and it’s easy to head-bang or jump to the beat. It’s just everything about it just seems easy like everyone is your friend and stuff I love it. That’s why I go to so many concerts like that’s the best feeling in the world just where nothing matters but the moment like that dude holding me close while we were both waiting for our favorite band like THAT mattered to me like the feeling of being understood matters a lot to me.

This interview reiterates what I have previously stated about teenagers and their identity crises as well as their heightened responses to emotional situations. The collective effervescence of concerts would affect emotional teenagers more than it would an adult. This interview also explains the significance of rock through music and beyond the music. Generally, rock music has a 4/4-drum beat, emphasizing the “on” beat and is centered on the electric guitar. It’s simple and energetic, something my interviewee recognized by saying how easy it is to jump to. She also commented on the lyrics and how they were easily relatable. However, she related to something more. She felt not only understood by the lyrics and the band but the people around her.

Since this paper is on aging and cultural significance, I had to interview an older generation. The information from both interviews would not only show the differences between young fans and aging fans, but when rock music has similar effects on people in different generations, that historical consistency gives a clue as to what rock music’s cultural significance is and why it’s exclusive to youth. So, I also interviewed a sixty-nine-year-old African American male who grew up in Detroit, Michigan about his experiences with live music.

We’d go to concerts and uh and gosh. You liked the records and you saw the entertainers. It was a lot of fun. When I was coming up I liked The Temptations… Good solid harmony. Nice smooth beats. The songs told a story... I went to probably about five Temptations concerts. I grew up in the Motown era and Motown had a lot of good performers. We got to see all those artists perform. It was very entertaining and it was a lot of fun. Whenever there was a Motown Revue I would go. Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, The Marvelettes, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, Martha and the Vandellas… People were just vibing to the music and dancing. Everybody was just chillin'. Nothing real wild. Everybody just really really enjoyed it. The person next to you, you didn’t know them but they knew the songs. They were like your brother or sister, you know?”

Though this interviewee is over fifty years older than my last one, his concert experience is relatively the same. He enjoyed the music yet there was something more. He felt like complete strangers were his family because of the music. This interviewee has not been to a concert in forty years yet he still remembers the feeling of togetherness.

Although my eighteen-year-old interviewee might have been an extreme case with seeing over fifty concerts, all of the teenagers I interviewed about rock music mentioned an artist’s or a band’s live performance that they’ve witnessed and why it was significant to them and how much it heightened their feelings for the music. However, since my older fan had not been to a concert in forty years yet still considers himself a fan of Motown I had to ask how he listens to music.

I listen to the records. You can sit at home and relax. I still play CDs and um DVDs.

Similarly, a male, Caucasian thirty-nine-year-old Grateful Dead fan (or Deadhead) explained his listening habits and commitment to his favorite band.

I have a kid and a wife. We own a house. We have a car and all that stuff… I certainly don’t go out and follow the band around the country all the time, but when they come to town I try to go.

Adults listen to and use rock music differently than teenagers. Adults listen to the music for the music. They may still like rock music, however they do not contribute to its cultural significance. They do not embody that teenage rebellious attitude. They don’t go to concerts anymore. While observing the patterns of how adults listen to music versus youth, sociologist Simon Frith noticed “people’s heaviest investment in popular music is when they are teenagers and young adults… people use music less, and less intently as they grow up.”

From the older fans that were interviewed, most of them don’t still go to concerts. For those that do, like the Deadhead quoted above, they are not very invested in it. When sociologist Andy Bennett interviewed fans at his local venue, he found that private, at home listening was the preferred method of experiencing music among the adult fans. However, just because adults may not listen to music as frequently or as intensely as teenagers does not mean that the value of rock is exclusive to youth. Rather, you must look at how and for what reason they are listening to the music. They are not identifying with the angst, they are feeling nostalgia for it. And as author and cultural commentator John Strausbaugh put it simply, “nostalgia is the death of rock.”

Nostalgia is the death of rock because it is not rock. Professor and sociologist Joseph A. Kotarba conducted research on oldies stations. He noticed that those stations played 1950s rockabilly and early 1960s surf rock and Motown although their primary audience grew up with psychedelic and protest music. The aging fans don’t listen to the music of their youth because it’s too harsh. When they long for their youth, of course they are not longing for a time of hating their parents and not understanding their feelings while being in a country at war that they didn’t believe in. When aging fans listen to music of their youth, they’re attempting to relive a time of innocence; a time when all of their lives were ahead of them. However, rock music was not, is not, and will never be innocent. Therefore, “the oldies” is a simulacrum, in the words of French sociologist Jean Baudrillard. They never originally existed the same way they are consumed. When rock music loses its authenticity, it loses its significance.

There are other ways older fans listen to and use rock music besides nostalgia. They use it in an act of teenage rebellion and I’ve witnessed it firsthand. My dad, a rock fan who only goes to concerts because I drag him, is a typical adult who sticks to private listening at home. However, when he is angry with my mom I have often heard Blind Melon, Green Day and Third Eye Blind vibrate the house from his stereo. My mom does not care for rock music, even in her youth she was a rap and hip-hop fan but now, music is not a big part of her life. To my dad, she is the boring adult who just doesn’t understand. Although my dad has aged, rock music and its importance have not. He still blasts the same 90s rock for the same reason. It’s still a middle finger to the adults in his life.

Though the fans have aged, the concept of rock has not. Baby boomers and journalist James Miller will say that rock is dead. In his book Flowers in the Dustbin, Miller claims he did not write about rock music past 1977 because it was dead to him after that. However, he prefaced his book stating, “If I’m honest, the most thrilling moments [of rock music] all came early, in the Fifties and Sixties, when the music was a primary focus of my energy, shaping my desires, coloring my memory and producing the wild fantasy, widely shared, that my generation was… part of a new world dawning.” In 1969, Miller was twenty-two years old. He had left his teenage stage. The best rock music got, to him, was when he was a teenager. It was when he could still be shaped by the music and the culture because he had no identity. By the time 1977 rolled around, Miller was a real adult and rock music no longer affected him the way it did in his youth and he refused to write about something that didn’t speak to him. Rock music speaks to youth.

It is not just the fans that are aging either; the rock stars themselves are growing up and growing out of the youthful energy that they have built a career on. Ozzy Osbourne built his career on being the Prince of Darkness. Ozzy Osbourne, the former lead singer of Black Sabbath who has abused drugs and alcohol since the 1970s and bit the head off a dove is sixty-seven years old. He is an adult. The reason his “reality” show The Osbournes was so entertaining because it showed The Prince of Darkness being an adult with a nagging wife and daughter who’s obsessed with fashion and a son who sleeps in too late. The show’s theme song is even a toned-down, jazzy, Pat Boone-esque cover of Osbourne’s “Crazy Train.” The show is ironic and people find humor in irony. Ozzy Osbourne spent his career being the face of heavy metal and the person parents blamed when their kids rebelled, and now he is a parent. He had to leave his Prince of Darkness persona behind because he’s an adult now.

However, some rockers don’t leave that behind. The bad boys of the 1960s are now the not-that-bad, half-deceased men of the 2010s. Despite their fame and the fact they still sell out tours, the Rolling Stones are known as that band that will not grow up. On June 9, 1975 Mick Jagger told People magazine, “I only meant to do it for two years... I would continue to write and sing, but I’d rather be dead than sing ‘Satisfaction’ when I’m 45.” I believe that at that time, he meant it.

Why would Mick Jagger sing “Satisfaction” when he’s 45? It’s no longer relatable to him or his fans that grew up with that song. It wouldn’t be authentic and raw and what’s the point of rock music if it’s not authentic and raw? In my interviews with young fans, that aspect of rock is because it’s real to them. “It’s as angsty and horny as they are.” However, Mick Jagger is now seventy-two years old and still singing “Satisfaction.” He’s not going to sing about what seventy-two year olds are going through because that’s not rock. Rock isn’t arthritis and settling down. Rock isn’t nostalgia. It cannot be played by rich, successful, old white men for rich, successful, old white men.

Through my analysis of my interviews and research on previous literature, I realized I couldn’t separate rock culture from youth culture. They are both about rebellion. Just as rock music started as shaking off the identity of what music should be (that is, clean and racially segregated), teenagers are busy trying to shake off the identity their parents gave them. They both lament about never being understood. Rock music finally put sound to the confused feelings and unnamable energy of youth.