The Deliberate Demise of Rock Music

“Hey hey, my my
Rock and roll can never die
There's more to the picture
Than meets the eye.

Hey hey, my my.”

– From “My My, Hey Hey (Out Of The Blue)" by Neil Young

“Long live rock!” In 2019, this may be more of a wish than a cry of strong defiance.

Many critics say rock music is dead because it has been eclipsed in all measures of popularity and profitability by pop, hip-hop, and EDM (electronic dance music). Even though there are a few glimmers of hope for the genre, demographics have changed and, for whatever reason, the music has lost its appeal to the masses.

None other than Bob Dylan proffers the most interesting reason for rock's decline. Dylan sees the death of rock as a forced commercial segregation. Dylan says …

“From its fused inception, rock ‘n’ roll was already a racially integrated American invention being blasted in teenage bedrooms as early as 1955, but as the Civil Rights Movement was gaining momentum going into 1960, the genre was being commercially segregated, on the sly, into white (British Invasion) and black (soul) music by the (WASPy) establishment.”

(Brent L. Smith. “Bob Dylan Lays Down What Really Killed Rock ’n’ Roll.” Cuepoint. April 13, 2016.)

Rock began as a rhythmic explosion of rebel artists – black and white – and ever since, the music has been both reviled as an agent of social destruction and hailed as a stimulant to Western artistic endeavor. Early rockers hit the market with the force of an testosterone-fueled F5 tornado. But, immediately, conservative white parents – looking for music that was square and “safe” with no sex appeal – objected to what they called black “race records.”

If you were a white teenager in the 50s, your parents might well prohibit you from buying these records produced by what they considered dangerously sexual black artists like Little Richard, Chuck Berry, and Fats Domino. However, they likely would not object to you purchasing watered-down covers by Pat Boone – a handsome, crooning throwback to their generation and an outspoken icon of middle-class morality. In the process, rock anthems like “Tutti Frutti” became maudlin and candy-coated for the masses.

Still, nothing stopped young people from buying the records, hiding them in a closet, and playing them when no adults were around. And, of course, wildly popular disc jockeys like Alan Freed were playing the uptempo black R&B records as early as 1951 on Cleveland radio station WJW. In addition, in 1952, Freed was one of the people who put together the Moondog Coronation Ball, a Cleveland concert that is now considered the first-ever rock and roll concert. Rock was flourishing all over the nation.

Dylan remembers …

“I was still an aspiring rock n roller. The descendant, if you will, of the first generation of guys who played rock ’n’ roll – who were thrown down. Buddy Holly, Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Carl Perkins, Gene Vincent, Jerry Lee Lewis. They played this type of music that was black and white. Extremely incendiary. Your clothes could catch fire. When I first heard Chuck Berry, I didn’t consider that he was black. I thought he was a hillbilly. Little did I know, he was a great poet, too. And there must have been some elitist power that had to get rid of all these guys, to strike down rock ’n’ roll for what it was and what it represented – not least of all being a black-and-white thing.”

What mainly disturbed and threatened the white establishment was the unabashed sexuality inherent in rock ’n’ roll – no doubt stemming from the sweaty gyrations of jazz and the gritty influences of the blues. This context of white fear and anxiety about African American sexuality, and about blacks' sexual access to white women and girls, had forever been ingrained in white culture.

Jack Hamilton, a professor of Media Studies at the University of Virginia, writes in his deep study Just Around Midnight: Rock and Roll and the Racial Imagination how rock and roll went from an art form pioneered by black musicians and rooted in rhythm and blues to being overly simplified as "rock," a genre symbolized by a white man with a guitar.

In his book, Hamilton points out how artists like Bob Dylan and Sam Cooke, or Aretha Franklin and Janis Joplin were put into different musical genres despite being rooted in the same influences. Hamilton claims …

"By the end of (the 1960s), rock and roll music, which was first seen as an interracial art form, had become viewed as almost exclusively white. There developed a total lack of understanding that a lot of music you listen to was created by black musicians. For instance, Led Zeppelin is great but they didn't invent rock and roll music."

Hamilton writes that since the 1960s, playing and consuming rock music has offered new ways into being a “real” white person – most often a white man – and in many quarters being a white man became a precondition for making “real” rock music. Rock essentially became the natural province of whites.

Bob Dylan puts it like this …

“Racial prejudice has been around awhile, so, yeah. And that was extremely threatening for the city fathers, I would think. When they finally recognized what it was, they had to dismantle it, which they did, starting with payola scandals. The black element was turned into soul music, and the white element was turned into English pop. They separated it … Well, it was apart of my DNA, so it never disappeared from me. I just incorporated it into other aspects of what I was doing.”

If this view of the evolution of the death of rock is accurate (And, I fear it is.), musical segregation is largely responsible for killing the popular genre. 

True rock fans understand the original form as being a melting pot of seemingly all musical forms including jazz, blues, R&B, gospel, folk, big band, and even country. They enjoy songs like “Mystery Train” by Junior Parker, “Saturday Night Fish Fry” by Louis Jordan, “Precious Memories” by Sister Rosetta Tharpe, and “Rocket 88” by Jackie Brenston (actually Ike Turner and his Kings of Rhythm). They understand “rock” is simply a moniker for “rock and roll” and a good recording is a rainbow of sound and color.

Rock should not be the domain of those who would further categorize and racially divide the music. That only serves to weaken its existence. If that all began by diluting the lyrics and the style of rebellious early artists like Little Richard, this slow and deliberate bloodletting is claiming the life of a truly American musical form.

Long Tall Sally

Little Richard

Gonna tell Aunt Mary 'bout Uncle John
He claim he has the misery but he's havin' a lot of fun
Oh baby, yeah baby, woo
Havin' me some fun tonight, yeah

Well long, tall Sally
She's built for speed, she got
Everything that Uncle John need, oh baby
Yeah baby, woo baby
Havin' me some fun tonight, yeah

Well, I saw Uncle John with long tall Sally
He saw Aunt Mary comin' and he ducked back in the alley oh baby
Yeah baby, woo baby
Havin' me some fun tonight, yeah, ow