On the History of Rock Music

162 Pages·2014·4.7 MB·English

by  Yvetta Kajanová

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Yvetta Kajanová
Yvetta Kajanová
On the History of Rock Music
On the History of Rock Music follows the development of rock music from its origins up c On the History
to the present time. It focuses on the relationship between the sound, improvisations si
and rhythms in particular styles, and gives specific attention to the development of u
M
rhythm. The beat-offbeat principle, polyrhythms and poly-metrics are fundamental to
of Rock Music
rock rhythm patterns, which serve as archetypes for specific rhythms. An archetype is k
a prototype, a model, or an innate experience of a species. Using more than 250 score c
o
examples, the author identifies the characteristic rhythmic patterns in rock styles, R
ranging from rock and roll, hard rock and punk rock to alternative rock, indie rock and f
grind core. o

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r
o
The Author st
Yvetta Kajanová is a Professor of Musicology at Comenius University in Bratislava i
H
(Slovakia). She is the author of eight monographs on aesthetics and sociology of music,
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jazz, rock, pop music and gospel music.
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ISBN 978-3-631-65556-6 www.peterlang.com
á
v
o
n
a
j
a
K
Yvetta Kajanová
Yvetta Kajanová
On the History of Rock Music
On the History of Rock Music follows the development of rock music from its origins up c On the History
to the present time. It focuses on the relationship between the sound, improvisations si
and rhythms in particular styles, and gives specific attention to the development of u
M
rhythm. The beat-offbeat principle, polyrhythms and poly-metrics are fundamental to
of Rock Music
rock rhythm patterns, which serve as archetypes for specific rhythms. An archetype is k
a prototype, a model, or an innate experience of a species. Using more than 250 score c
o
examples, the author identifies the characteristic rhythmic patterns in rock styles, R
ranging from rock and roll, hard rock and punk rock to alternative rock, indie rock and f
grind core. o

y
r
o
The Author st
Yvetta Kajanová is a Professor of Musicology at Comenius University in Bratislava i
H
(Slovakia). She is the author of eight monographs on aesthetics and sociology of music,
e
jazz, rock, pop music and gospel music.
h
t

n
O
www.peterlang.com
On the History of Rock Music
Yvetta Kajanová

On the History of Rock Music
Bibliographic Information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek
The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in
the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic
data is available in the internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Kajanová, Yvetta.
[K dejinám rocku. English]
On the history of rock music / Yvetta Kajanová ; translated by Lea & Geoffrey Duffell.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-3-631-65556-6
1. Rock music--History and criticism. 2. Rock music--Analysis, appreciation. I.
Duffell, Lea translator. II. Duffell, Geoffrey translator. III. Title.
ML3534.K28613 2014
781.6609--dc23
2014022564

Cover image: © Oliver Solga

Gratefully acknowledging the financial support of Vedecká grantová agentúra
in publishing this book (VEGA Research Agency grant 1/0728/11)

Translated from the Slovakian original: Yvetta Kajanová: K dejinám rocku,
Bratislava, CoolArt 2010
Translated by Lea & Geoffrey Duffell

ISBN 978-3-631-65556-6 (Print)
E-ISBN 978-3-653-04793-6 (E-Book)
DOI 10.3726/978-3-653-04793-6
© Peter Lang GmbH
Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften
Frankfurt am Main 2014
All rights reserved.
PL Academic Research is an Imprint of Peter Lang GmbH.
Peter Lang – Frankfurt am Main ∙ Bern ∙ Bruxelles ∙ New York ∙
Oxford ∙ Warszawa ∙ Wien
All parts of this publication are protected by copyright. Any
utilisation outside the strict limits of the copyright law, without
the permission of the publisher, is forbidden and liable to
prosecution. This applies in particular to reproductions,
translations, microfilming, and storage and processing in
electronic retrieval systems.
This publication has been peer reviewed.
www.peterlang.com
Contents
Introduction ............................................................................................................7
The Rhythm of Rock ............................................................................................13
Rock and Roll ......................................................................................................15
Hard Rock – the First Era 1960 – 1967 ...............................................................29
Experimental Rock ..............................................................................................43
Hard Rock – the Second Era 1967 – 1979 ...........................................................51
Art Rock ..............................................................................................................63
Electronic Rock ....................................................................................................71
Punk Rock ...........................................................................................................77
New Wave ............................................................................................................87
Heavy Metal .........................................................................................................93
Hard Core ...........................................................................................................107
Speed Metal and Thrash Metal ..........................................................................111
Death Metal, Black Metal and Grind Core ........................................................119
The 1980s Synthesis and Polystylistic Rock Music ..........................................125
Conclusion .........................................................................................................141
Summary ............................................................................................................151
Discography .......................................................................................................153
Bibliography ......................................................................................................155
Notes from the author ........................................................................................161
5

Introduction
Thorough research and analyses on the theory and history of rock music have not
been published until recently. The reason for this stems from the relatively short
history of rock music as a genre, which does not allow an adequate analytical
perspective on the historical and artistic values of rock. Furthermore, the existing
methodologies used in other areas of musicology cannot be directly applied to
rock music, since rock has its own specific characteristics that differentiate it from
other genres of music. The issue is further complicated because much previous
research has coupled its analysis with non-musical disciplines such as sociology
and other social sciences, business management, economics and aesthetics. With
those aspects being perhaps the most commonly researched, rock encyclopae-
dias and dictionaries have mainly focused on the most successful bands and their
songs, financial earnings, the songs’ highest rating in British and American charts
and how many weeks they stayed there. Aesthetic and sociological works on rock
music have tried to illuminate the importance of rock personalities, and their appeal
to the listener, by examining both the musical subcultures and the social milieu of
the listener. For example, Dieter Baacke, one of the first rock theoreticians, in
Beat – die sprachlose Opposition1 identifies “criminals, and counter- cultural and
rebellious group movements” as being associated with 1960s beat music. They
organised protests without a clear purpose. Amongst the “criminals”, Baacke saw
groups of “politically radical” students who based their ideas on theory and or-
ganized collective protests. The “beatniks” included bands, along with hippies,
drop-outs and other social non-conformists; some consciously adopting aesthetic
values which had previously been the preserve of the middle and upper classes.
There were also the instances of the beat as a medium of expression that was not
tied to a specific social class; and we certainly acknowledge that the beat move-
ment is classless.
Using Baacke’s analysis of rock’s social environment, we can make some
conclusions about late 1960s rock music:
1. Beat is an unconscious form of protest, an opposition without a clear purpose.
2. Although aggression is beyond the core of the beat itself, rock, however, is
not an amiable expression of art towards the wider society, as it has created
1 München: Juventa Verlag, 1968.
7
“narcissistic boundaries within the listener”. Beat began because of the power-
ful institutional influences, such as schools, teachers, and parents, who forced
individuals to socialise.
3. Beat is a culture with its own symbolic characteristics including clothing, hair-
styles, make-up, image and social context. All these components can result in
a synaesthetic effect.
4. It is also a subculture that reflects the conflict between generations. Rock pro-
jects new ideas onto life and society from its increasing adoption of socio-
political criticism.
Richard Meltzer, in his book The Aesthetics of Rock2, investigates the semantic
meanings in rock compositions though, at the same time, he is aware of the extent
to which their lyrics reflect the banality and triviality of the world. The lyrics of
rock songs are influenced by the social and environmental conditions in which
people live including sexuality, “ritualised chaos”, “games on convention”, reli-
gion and technology.
Meltzer confronts the aesthetics of rock with a comparison of symbolic mean-
ings across other forms of art including fine art (Marcel Duchamp), literature
and film. Meltzer was one of the first rock theoreticians as well as a critic. He
studied philosophy at Yale University, was a proponent of performance art and
a student of Allan Kaprow3. He later wrote lyrics for the heavy metal band Blue
Öyster Cult.
As punk or heavy metal4 are superficially manifested as juvenile delinquency,
the subsequent studies seek a deeper insight into rock’s subcultures and try to
2 New York: Da Capo Press, 1970, second edition 1987.
3 Allan Kaprow (1927-2006) was an American painter and one of the creators of per-
formance art. Performance art was followed by the expansion into the production
of intermedia compositions, conceptualism and happenings. Fujak, Július: Musical
Correla(c)tivity. Notes on Unconventional Music Aesthetic. Nitra: ILAC Faculty of
Arts, UCP, 2005; Podpera, Rastislav: Quo vadis musica: premeny sociálnych funkcií
hudby. Bratislava: Veda, 2006.
4 Epstein S. Jonathon & Pratto, J. David: “Juvenile Deliquency and Satanic Identifica-
tion”. In Popular Music and Society. Bowling Green University Popular Press, Winter
1990, pp. 67-75; Epstein, S. Jonathon, Pratto, J. David & Skipper, K.J.: “Teenagers,
Behavioral Problems and Preferences for Heavy Metal and Rap Music: A Case Study
of a Southern Middle School”. In Deviant Behavior, No.11, 1990, p. 381-394; Gross,
L. Robert: “Heavy Metal Music: A New Subculture in American Society”. In The
Journal of Popular Culture, 1990, No. 24, pp. 119-130.
8
discover their essence. Dieter Baacke’s original characterisation of rock subcul-
tures has not changed. What have changed are the symbols of the subcultures and
their related social issues, ideas and solutions.
One of the most comprehensive books on rock history is Rock of Ages, The
Rolling Stone History of Rock and Roll5 by Ed Ward, Geoffrey Stokes and Ken
Tucker, who deal with the differing aesthetic, philosophical, managerial and eco-
nomic aspects of rock. The authors look at the development of the different styles
of rock music and focus on all the above aspects. The problematic issue is, how-
ever, the inability of theoreticians to agree on basic musical principles that would
give a definition to hard rock, art rock, progressive rock, industrial rock, alterna-
tive rock or indie rock. Consequently, there is still a myriad of definitions applied
to the different styles of rock. For example, it has not yet been resolved whether
Pink Floyd, Yes, Emerson, Lake and Palmer (ELP) and Genesis belong to art rock,
progressive rock or classical rock. Which groups these terms actually refer to is
also contentious. Sometimes, these categories include King Crimson, Tangerine
Dream, David Bowie and Queen (some books classify the band King Crimson as
experimental rock, others define Tangerine Dream as electronic or industrial rock,
David Bowie as glam rock and Queen as pop rock).6 In Central Europe especially,
the term art rock is more common, whilst western cultures prefer the term “pro-
gressive rock”.
Arnold Shaw in his books Von den Anfangen des Blues zu den Hits aus Mem-
phis und Philadelphia7 and Rock’n’ Roll, Die Stars, die Musik und die Mythen der
50er Jahre8 uses recognised historical methods in rock music research and, at the
same time, he accepts non-musical analyses of rock. A similar approach has been
comprehensively used in the study of medieval, renaissance and classical music,
and the application of such methods to rock music has also been made by the
Czech musicologist Aleš Opekar.9
In rock music literature there is an absence of studies that explain its musi-
cal theory or analyse compositions and various parameters of music, such as
5 New York: Rolling Stone Press, 1986.
6 Blüml, Jan: “Art rock: Definition of the Term with Regard to the Development of
Czech Designating Practice”. In Acta Universitatis Palackianae Olomucensis. Mu-
sicologica Olomucensia XI. Olomouc: Facultas Philosophica-Aestthetica 24, 2010,
pp. 9-22.
7 Hamburg: 1980.
8 Hamburg: 1978.
9 Opekar, Aleš: “Towards the History of Czech Rock Music: Turtle – the First LP by a
Czech Rock Group”. In Central European Popular Music. Praha: 1994, pp. 66-72.
9