Week Two: Mourning the 60s and Reviving the Corpses of Rock

The rock n’ roll of the 1960s veered away from the capitalist approach to society, where musicians were playing music to play and to share that experience with their audience. Rather than sticking with straight mainstream society, musicians in the 60s wanted to go back to nature and away from the industrial and capitalist frameworks that had ben constructed in society. However, this ideology shifted back when arena rock came along. I noticed this primarily in the following excerpt (Waksman, p. 31):

‘Rock and roll had started in the clubs and the streets and the parks. Then it became a game of supple and demand. As the market price went up, the negotiations got heavier. It wasn’t just who had the better amps or piano or stage crew. it got to the point where bands were earning money beyond their wildest dreams. Musicians realized, “God, I have a second car. I can have a home in the country. I can have a sailboat. I can have everything I want.” What else did they need? The time to enjoy all these things. Because the road was always the same, the conclusion they reached was, “I want to make more money in less time.” Result? Stadiums.’

This merely capitalist approach to the musical career shifted the role and status of musicians drastically between the 60s and 70s, ultimately changing their ideology and creating what may be argued as the “inauthentic” rockstar. Other bands, such as Grand Funk Railroad, however, maintained their authentic nature, which has ultimately led them to being less well known than bands such as Led Zeppelin. “Rock festivals rather than clubs or ballrooms were Grand Funk’s proving ground, affording them access to crowds of thousands without having the bear the burden of headliner status” (p. 33).

Along with this shift of bigger and better rock shows came theatricality through artists such as Iggy Pop and Alice Cooper, which I find most interesting. By not only wearing makeup and costumes during his performance, Alice Cooper conducted a mini rock theatre performance during every show, thus tinkering with this sense of authenticity. Cooper “oscillated between entrapment and freedom, self-immolation and empowerment” which “formed the crux of Alice Copper’s persona and proved a significant mechanism through which the singer sought to produce a specific series o effects and experiences for his audience” (p. 79). Cooper took all authenticity and stood it on its head, creating an experiences not only through his music but through his appearances and actions unlike any other artist of the time had done. As we know metal has played with the concepts of death, here I believe Cooper was playing with the concept of watching a person die and that being an experience that many people don’t have nor want to have necessarily. This theatrical manner of showing the audience this (apparently) realistic guillotine scene of his death takes singing and thinking about death to a whole ‘nother level for the audience.

Beyond the concepts and appearances of death, Cooper meddled with sexual concepts, drawing in necrophilia in Love It to Death and songs such as “I’m Eighteen,” which Waksman examines in depth. “He was not corrupting young minds so much as he was expressing the fundamental sensibilities of young Americans” (p. 84). Waksmans’ take on this is particularly interesting since he goes on to say that Cooper acknowledged that sex was still a mystery for many young adults and for that reason he wanted to essentially scare them and tease out their longings for such desires. I’m sure at the time critics of the past generations fully believed Cooper was corrupting young people through his theatrical performances of death and his lyricism of necrophilia, as well as through his ability to shift back and forth, the previously mentioned oscillation, between concepts, making him hard to follow, but none the less an unmistakable act.

Iggy Pop on the other hand represented the dominancy and masculinity of rock music during this time through his performances. Often removing his shirt while wearing tight pants, intentionally harming himself with glass and commanding the attention of the audience, Pop symbolized the ideal masculine rockstar of the 70s.