2013’s Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame induction
ceremony was the greatest broadcast presentation I’d seen in years. There wasn’t any nominee, let alone inductee,
that I absolutely loved (though I am a fan of Albert King and Public Enemy),
but the live performances did give me cause to pause and reconsider my opinion
about some of them too. It was an
exhilarating broadcast overall
The only part that made me sad was Chuck D,
at least twice, justifying rap’s place in the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame. Public Enemy is the fourth rap act in. At this point, there’s really no need to
justify it. Also, rock and roll isn’t
defined by how artistic it is. Rap isn’t
truer to rock’s roots because it’s more artistic. In fact, in some ways it’s almost the
complete reverse. Both rap and rock ‘n’
roll’s histories have been fraught with the onus of being considered the least
artistic, the basest form of music known at the time. But neither of those reasons are the part
that saddens me. What does is the
constant focus on its blues roots. Yes,
rock and roll IS rooted in the blues, and we inducted Albert King this year to
celebrate that. And Freddie King the
year before, and many other blues players in the past.
But that’s not really even half the story
about the rise of rock ‘n’ roll music.
For starters, it neglects the roles of country, folk, gospel, and even
various forms of jazz. More to the point
of this entry, though, it also ignores a great section of the lore of rock ‘n’
roll, and even how the widely accepted as first #1 rock ‘n’ roll song came to
be a #1 hit. It ignores how Elvis became
the King Of Rock And Roll, how Bob Dylan became so prominent, how R E.M. found
their audience, and even to a more cynical extent, why NomCom members select
the acts they do for the ballot every year.
It’s the role of youth culture, and it’s almost inseparable from the
story of rock ‘n’ roll.
Much like rock ‘n’ roll music, it’s hard to
say where or when youth culture really began.
To be certain, hints of it have been around almost as long as recorded
history (the history of toys and games), even possibly including certain
passages of Scripture, depending upon your interpretation. But its rise as an almost self-actualized
entity, particularly in North America, is a little sketchy. The industrialization of the United States
and the subsequent urbanization (and later, the subsequent sub-urbanization)
may be the hugest factor. In the 1907
song “In The Evening By The Moonlight, Dear Louise”, there’s a line about how
after clearing the kitchen was “the only time we had to spare to have a little
fun.” Certainly, the rise of cities
drawing away from farm life freed up more time for some youth to have fun and
find things to do that adults didn’t have time to do; and the continued rise of
automation, where machines replaced jobs that young boys might have otherwise
held (because women generally didn’t work back then, and certainly not young
girls), coupled with child labor laws, definitely helped till the soil that
would be the bed for youth culture to spout. The seeds themselves though may
have been planted when Franklin Roosevelt signed the Selective Training And
Service Act in 1940. which allowed conscription even during peacetime, and
suddenly the young folks, men especially, were continuously worried about being
drafted. Of course, unlike some of the
wars that followed afterwards, there was virtual unanimity about the validity
of going to war during the 1940’s, especially after the bombing of Pearl
Harbor, so there wasn’t much division of thought between the generations at
that point. Following WWII, however, the
necessity of the draft became more questionable. Pop culture even took note of this at the
time. For example, towards the end of
the 1947 movie, The Bachelor And The Bobbysoxer, starring Cary Grant,
the young boy Jerry alerts the girl he loves, Susan, that he’s been drafted, to
which she replies along the lines of, “Drafted?
But the war is over!” And of
course, the less popular Korean and Vietnam Wars that followed also helped the
youth find their unity, their strength, and their voice as they fought against
the draft that haunted them.
But during the time of U.S. involvement in
Korea is also the time when rock ‘n’ roll began to coalesce. Early heroes of R&B who’d be known as
founding fathers of rock ‘n’ roll, such as Fats Domino, Ruth Brown, and Ray
Charles were making waves, but not much crossover to the pop market. Despite the anomalous popularity of
“Sixty-Minute Man” by the Dominoes in the 1950’s, rock ‘n’ roll hadn’t really
latched onto the fabric of society and incorporated itself into it. One of the first people to really understand
what was missing was Bill Haley.
Haley, of course, had been a country
singer, known as the Silver Yodeler, and his band was first known as the
Saddlemen. But even before that, Haley
had absorbed some of the music of Black culture in his vocations prior to
singing country. But when he and his
band started fusing that sound with their established sound, it wasn’t instant
magic. The story goes that the nightclub
audiences were rather unreceptive to it, and that was when the band realized
that the people who wanted to hear this sound weren’t in the nightclubs, they
were in the high schools. After taking
the chance by testing their sound by playing free shows at high schools, they
noticed the style was a hit with the teenagers, and that eventually altered the
course of their career, and music in general.
Haley even penned, “Crazy, Man, Crazy”, using the teens’ usage of the
word “crazy” at the time, similar to how “radical” was used in the ‘80s, as a
way of giving back to those teens. And
that was in 1953 (they had also made waves with their rendition of “Rock The
Joint” the previous year, but that didn’t chart). Haley continued with “Fractured,” “Live It
Up,” his cover of “Shake, Rattle, And Roll”, the underrated “Dim, Dim The
Lights (I Want Some Atmosphere)”, the double sided hits “Birth Of The Boogie”
and “Mambo Rock”, then of course landed the first #1 rock ‘n’ roll hit in 1955
with “(We’re Gonna) Rock Around The Clock”, which had flopped the year before
but gained popularity after its inclusion in the movie The Blackboard Jungle,
the title of course, referring to school, where the youth were.
Now what caused what is of course hard to
say, since 1954 also saw pop chart entries from R&B groups like the Crows,
the Spaniels, and the Drifters, but soon the youth and rock ‘n’ roll bonded
together in a way that still exists.
Chuck Berry was soon tailoring his lyrics to the teenagers, Little
Richard was electrifying youngsters with his wild vinyl performances, and let’s
not forget the sheer sexual energy of Elvis Presley that influenced boys and
mesmerized girls…all speaking to a youth culture. In a telephone conference call with a forum
at Michigan State University back in the early 2000’s, the never-to-be-inducted
Pat Boone talked about the role that rock ‘n’ roll played in racial
unification, and when asked, he concurred with the notion that rock ‘n’ roll
bridged the racial gap at the risk of expanding the generation gap, noting that
prior to rock ‘n’ roll, kids and adults listened to the same artists, for the
most part. Rock and roll is the first
musical style that is uniquely of the young generation. It’s this youth culture that saw the rise of
the teen idols, popularized the dance records of the early ‘60s, absorbed the
Beach Boys’ message of fun times and young philosophy, embraced the raucous
British Invasion acts, latched onto the messages of Bob Dylan when their turn
to be drafted loomed nigh, aurally devoured the bubblegum music of the late 60s
and danced to disco through the late ‘70s and early ‘80s. It’s the slightly older but still very much a
part of youth culture nature of the college scene where acts like R.E.M. and U2 found
their audiences, and where music snobs still say is the place to find the music
that we should be listening to and will be the acts worth inducting into the
RnRHoF in the future. It’s the youth
culture of the block parties where hip-hop found its origins in the ‘70s, and
it was the youth culture of the early 90’s where grunge’s discontent resonated,
thus also befuddling yuppie suburban parents.
And whether they admit it or not, it’s the place where the memories are
stored for NomCom members, thus impelling them to nominate the acts associated
with those memories (see Little Steven’s induction speech for the Rascals, and
to a lesser extent the Hollies).
And it’s not like the two worlds of rhythm
and blues music and youth culture are mutually exclusive either. If one was to choose one record label that
was the quintessential “rock ‘n’ roll record label”, chances are that choice
would either be Atlantic or Motown, both of whom were powerhouses of R&B,
and both of whom regularly released music with wide appeal to the younger
crowds. Instead, it seems the
powers-that-be would have us believe that Chess would be the end-all-be-all
label. Nothing against Chess Records,
they did indeed put out some phenomenal music, and Leonard Chess was absolutely
deserving of his induction, but outside of Chuck Berry, their artists didn’t
pay much attention to the teenage scene, and no surprise, Chuck Berry was the
runaway biggest artist from that label.
To forget about the youth culture would be to forget about the fun music
from labels like the Cameo-Parkway empire, and fellow monitors know my belief
that founder Bernie Lowe is one of the biggest snubs for the Non-Performer
category/Ahmet Ertegun Award, and that the Hall has yet to recognize any of the
artists that were key to that legacy.
And not just Cameo-Parkway, but also labels like Swan, Vee-Jay, and even
a share of the artists on Imperial.
So why does the Hall Of Fame downplay the
importance of youth culture in its rhetoric and nomination choices? Well, to be fair, they don’t outright ignore
it. There’s some acknowledgment of it
whenever a newly eligible artist is nominated much to the chagrin of people who
think they shouldn’t be inducting ‘80s acts until they’ve inducted every act
they deem worthy from the ‘50s, ‘60s, and ‘70s (and again, we’re all guilty of
that one at some point or another).
There’s acknowledgment of it when they nominate and induct acts like
ABBA, Madonna, and the Dave Clark Five, who were at some point pop chart
powerhouses, the pop charts decided most heavily by the youth culture. They do it when they finally lift the stigmas
and nominate bands like Rush and Deep Purple, who still influence young
guitarists to this day. And they even
acknowledged it with the very induction of Dick Clark, nicknamed “The World’s
Oldest Teenager”, who hosted a show about the music that teens were listening
and dancing to, and who often referred to rock ‘n’ roll as the music that keeps
us young. And even Seymour Stein, when
inducted, sang a song that he supposedly sang at his bar mitzvah, asking why
shouldn’t he sing, since it keeps him feeling young. So the Rock Hall does acknowledge the
importance of the younger generations’ contributions to the ongoing evolution
of rock ‘n’ roll, but they do it rather subtly.
But why downplay it at all? One possibility may simply be the same reason
we have the 25-year rule in the first place: the test of time. Youth culture, for all the power it holds, is
not renowned for being discerning, and unquestionable musical excellence is
still the overarching criterion for induction into the Hall Of Fame. The 25 years it takes for an artist to become
eligible is designed to acknowledge overall excellence as opposed to
recognizing music we’re now ashamed of, or heralding some meaningless
Guinness-type world record whose existence is little more than a curio for a
cabinet. It’s designed to ensure Nirvana
and Green Day’s inductions and keep Milli Vanilli and the New Kids On The Block
out. Consequently, they latently define
blues music and music of the youth as being antonymous to each other, which is
simply not true.
Similarly, it may even be as innocuous as
defining a genre of music by its musical structure, instead of by its target
demographic. “Youth” isn’t a genre of
music, but “blues”. “country”, “folk”, “gospel”, and “jazz” all most definitely
are. If the Foundation is about saluting
the music, then they should talk about it in the language of musicology.
Another possible explanation for the
downplay that we see is because of who is in charge of the Foundation. I don’t necessarily mean Jann S. Wenner, or
Terry Stewart or any one person. But the
various members of the powers-that-be do for the most part come from the same
generation. And that generation is not
the current one or even a fairly recent brood of spring chickens. They might prove to eventually stop being
receptive of the up and coming generations’ message and means of conveying that
message. So they don’t want to be like
Patti Smith and salute the up and coming generations, and so as not to stir up
the claims of hypocrisy, they downplay the important role of the youth culture from
their own generation as well.
Lastly, as with so many other conspiracy
theories regarding the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame, there’s the claim that it’s
political. Politically correct in this
case. In addition to being from the same
generation, most of the members of the powers-that-be are from the same race,
and that race isn’t the one that they claim rock ‘n’ roll’s music is most
heavily rooted in. So, out of political
correctness, they heavily emphasize the bluesy beginnings, and ignore what made
it thrive, made it lucrative.
Whatever the reasons, the rise of youth
culture as a catalyst for rock ‘n’ roll, both in terms of popularity and in
terms of artistic creativity, mustn’t be stifled or ignored. And when Chuck D boasts about hip-hop being
“true to what rock ‘n’ roll is really all about”, not only does it sound
cliché, but it also lengthens the wait of many deserving artists for induction
into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame, from Teen Queen Lesley Gore to
college-rock standouts Sonic Youth, simply because they also stayed true to
what rock ‘n roll has been about for almost 60 years now: letting the youth
express themselves.