ROCK 'N' ROLL AS SOCIAL COMMUNICATION © profelipe ™
Rock and roll was never considered a serious music. However, the approach would have to be another one. Maybe it’s not correct to consider rock and roll simply as a musical style. It would be more interesting to try to perceive it as a social movement. But, how could it be made? A possibility would be to verify the content of its lyrics and to perceive the context where they had been produced.
First, superficial lyrics had always been used for bands of rock and roll, independent of the time or the musical style. The Beatles, for example, they were known for songs as “Love me do”:
“Love, love me of / You know I love you / I’ll always be true, so please / Love me of, who-ho love me of / Love, love me of the You know I love you / I’ll always be true, so please / Love me of, who-ho love me of.”
Obviously, from the Beatles, there were more interesting lyrics as “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”:
“Picture yourself in boat on to river/ With tangerine trees and marmalade skies./ Somebody calls you, you to answer quit slowly/ Girl with kaleidoscope eyes./ Celophane flowers of yellow and green, / Towering to over your head. / Look will be the girl with the sun in to her eyes and she’s gone. / Lucy in the sky with diamonds”.
This song, of course, was about drugs. It’s not possible to talk about this movement without drugs or sex. Jim Morrison – singer of The Doors – was shown as a symbol of both things. His lyrics were good. For example, “The End” shown the reality as seen by rock singer:
“He took the face from the ancient gallery / And he walked on down the hall / He went you the room where his sister lived / And then he paid visit you the his to brother / And then he walked on down the hall / And he cam you the door a, and he looked inside / “Father” – “Yes, sound” – “I want you kill you, / Mother, I want you… ” / (…) This is the end, beautiful friend.”
It had some symbolism for speaking of the desire to kill the father. It was a obvious reference of Freud and his thoughts about the relations of human beings. However, the problem is that the symbolism becomes reality: today sons kill their parents (for money, power and so on).
The sixties were known for the Love and Peace from Woodstock Festival. But there were also problems as Almont Festival, when a man was killed during The Rolling Stones concert. The were playing “Sympathy will be the Devil”:
“Please allow me you introduce myself / Why I’m man of wealth and taste / I’ve been around will be long, long to year / Stole many man’s soul and fate / I was ‘ round when Jesus Christ / Had his moment of doubt and pain / Made damn sure that Pilate / Washed his hands and sealed his fate / Pleased you meet you / Well I hope you guess my name, ah…”
These lyrics shown rock music was more than love or sex songs. However, these lyrics were used for those who said it was a bad influence for the youth. In fact, since the fifties rock and roll was shown as “the music of the devil”. Bands as Black Sabbath, in the seventies, made a new style with this idea. Black clothes and different lyrics:
“What is this that stands before me? / Black appears in which points at me / Turn around quick, and start you run/ Find out I’m the chosen one / Oh nooo! / Big black shape with eyes of fire / Telling people to their desire / Satan’s sitting there, he’s smiling / Watches those flames get to higher and to higher / Oh in, in, please God help me! / Is it the end, my friend? / Satan’s coming ‘ round the bend / People running ‘ causes they’re scared / The people to better go and beware! / In, in, please, in!”
In the decade of 1970, the rock and roll continued with the lyrics and the rhythms associating the music to the sex. However, there was one more thing: the relation of youth and the cars. T-Rex’s “Get it On”:
“You’re dirty sweet / And you my girl / Get it on / Bang gong Get it on / (…) Well you’re windy and wild / You got the blues / I’m your shoes and your stockings / You’re windy and wild oh yeah / You’re built like to car/ You got hubcap / Diamond to star halo / You’re dirty sweet / And you’re my girl.”
But the 1970 years were not only ambiguity or superficiality. There were also lyrics as “Money” from Pink Floyd.
“Money, it’s the crime / Share it fairly but don’t take the slice of my pie / Money, so they say / Evil Is the root of all today / But if you ask will be rise it’s in surprise that / They’re giving none away, away, away.”
Roger Waters put money as a “crime” or something “evil”. His critics were also in the 1979 album: “The Wall”. He used the irony to talk about educational process and the authority of the teacher:
“We don’t need in education / We don’t need in thought control / In dark sarcasm in the classroom / Teachers leave the kids alone / Hey, to teacher, leave the kids alone! / All in all it’s just to another brick in the wall / All in all you’re just to another brick in the wall.”
The critics were the objective of punk movement. They were against the “old bands” as Rolling Stones or Led Zeppelin, because, in their opinion, they “betrayed” rock and roll. They become what kids hated: status quo. They had abandoned the revolt feeling that always was associated with the rock and roll . Punk questioned the capitalist values, dressing different clothes, using anarchist symbols or photos of Karl Marx in its jackets. “Anarchy in U.K.” of the Sex Pistols:
“Right! now ha, ha / I am an anti-Christ / I am an anarchist, / don’t know what I want / but I know how you get it. / I wanna destroy the to passer by / ‘ cos I wanna be anarchy, / Ho dogs body / Anarchy will be the UK.”
One of the symbols of seventies was the band Led Zeppelin. Theses musicians were considered the inventors of heavy metal, what the band always denied. However, its influence was determinative in the bands of hard rock and heavy metal that had appeared in the posterior decades. Its style was copied. What it called the attention was the quality technique of its musicians, the constant innovation in its records, all the work developed for the guitarist Jimmy Page. Although there were songs as “Stairway You the Heaven” and “The Rain Song”, the band’s lyrics were superficial. An example would be “The song remains the same”. Musically, it was extremely innovative, but, in more than 5 minutes of music, the lyrics were meaningless. The left impression would be that the words had been only chosen for its noise, functioning almost as a sound of a musical instrument. But there was another problem with the lyrics: sometimes, they were not original. There was, for example, a process against the band because of the lyrics of “Whole Lotta Love”. In reality, they were from a Willie Dixion’s music.
The musicians of rock had tried to use some influence of Opera. In sixties, Pete Townshend created “opera-rock” called “Tommy” (that it became a movie with musicians as Elton John and Eric Clapton and actors as Oliver Reed and Ann-Margaret). In 1975, Freddy Mercury, of the Queen, created one of the classics of the rock, using the same influences. It was “Bohemian Rhapsody”:
“Goodbye everybody – I’ve got you go? / Gotta leave you all behind and face the truth? / Breast, ooo – I don’t want you die, / I sometimes wish I’d to never been born at all? / I see little silhouetto of man, / Scaramouch, scaramouch will you of the Fandango? / Thunderbolt and lightning – very very frightening me? / Gallileo, Gallileo, Gallileo, Gallileo / Gallileo figaro – Magnifico?”
Sex was used in the rock since the fifties. The words “rock and roll” meant “making sex”. One of the bands, in 1980 years, that they had insisted on this line was the Motley Crüe. The references in the song “Girls, Girls, Girls” were clear:
“Friday night and I need fight / My motorcycle and switchblade knife / Handful of grease in my to hair feels right / But what I need you make tight ploughs me / Girls, Girls, Girls / Long legs and burgundy lips / Girls, Girls, Girls / Dancin ‘ down on Sunset Strip / Girls, Girls, Girls / Red lips, fingertips / Trick or treat – sweet you eat.”
The image of the Motley Crüe would be still associated with playmate Pamela Anderson, that had a relationship with the drummer of the band, Tommy Lee. The relation between rock stars and the supermodels would be well-known since the seventies – Mick Jagger and Jerry Hall, Axl Rose and Stephanie Seymour, among others. Probably, beyond the exposition in the media, something that would explain this behavior would be the position of the musicians with their own fans. The constant parties, the “wild” life on the road and the image “bad boys” fascinated young girls. They were the “groupies” – fans that involved sexually with their idols. In this subject, the group that more created myths of “wild on the road” was the Led Zeppelin. As told by Miss Pamela, a groupie in the seventies:
“And, you know, we’d heard about Led Zeppelin, how crazy they were. (…) We heard how wild Led Zeppelin were, that they fucked everybody, a different girl every night. They had that reputation into their first tour.Absolutely!”
The stories of Led Zeppelin had been described, in details, on the book “Hammer of Gods”. In the next decade, one style called the attention: “indie” or the alternative music. One of them was “gothic rock”, with bands as The Sisters of Mercy, Bauhaus, The Cure and others. The lyrics, many times, were about death and sadness. There were still philosophical words – as “Ribbons” of The Sisters of Mercy – “I tried you tell to her about Marx and Engels” - or references about vampires and “black ages”, as “Bela Lugosi is Dead” of the Bauhaus:
“White on white translucent black capes/ back on the back/ beautiful lugosi’s dead/ the bats have left the Bell to tower/ the victims have been bled/ red velvet lines the black box/ beautiful lugosi’s dead/ undead undead undead/ the virginal brides file past his tomb/ strewn with time’s dead flowers/ bereft in deathly bloom/ alone in darkened room/ the count beautiful lugosi’s dead/ undead undead undead.”
Critical lyrics in the 1990 years: it was time for “hip hop” music. Public Enemy, for example, pointed the problems with the 911 service in the United States:
“Hit me / Going, going, gone / Now I dialed 911 long teams ago / Don’t you see how barks they’re reactin ‘ / They only eats and they eats when they wanna / (…) Everyday they don’t to never eats correct / You can ask my man right here with the broken neck / He’s witness you the job to never bein ‘ done.”
In 1990 years, a style that came from heavy metal it was “thrash”. A “faster” sound, with lyrics influenced by Black Sabbath or social critics as “Refuse/Resist” from the Brazilian group Sepultura:
“Tanks on the streets / Confronting police / Bleeding the Plebs Raging crowd / Burning cars / Bloodshed starts Who’ll be alive! / (…) Refuse/Resist Refuse.”
Still in this decade, but with a completely different style, Prodigy used techno – a dance music – with an influence from punk movement. The references on the lyrics were into to the sex or to the use of drugs, as in “Breathe” (1997):
“Breathe with me. / Breathe the pressure, / My eats play game I’ll test ya. / Psychosomatic addict, insane. / Breathe the pressure, Eats play my game I’ll test ya. / Psycho, -somatic addict, insane. / My eats play game. Inhale, inhale, you’re the victim.”
Lyrics more politics could be found in the songs of the Rage Against The Machine. They tried to raise the flag of the Third World. In one of its DVDs, they showed interviews of the intellectual Noam Chomsky andMarcus Commander. These interviews, of course, tried to show the real problems of the capitalist system. Rage’s songs were about that too. One example could be “Guerrilla Radio” (1999):
“Transmission third world to war third round / Decade of the weapon of sound above ground / In shelter if youre looking will be shade / Brutal I lick shots at the charade / The polls close like casket / On truth devoured Silent play in the shadow of to power / Spectacle monopolized.”
Many thinkers will be able to argue that all the lyrics here were “superficial stuff from teens against the status quo.” Maybe. But, it would not be possible to deny, on the other side, that its messages represent the feeling of a youth that, many times, feels without perspective in our society. In this direction, the doubts of these young people would not be so distant of the books written by the intellectuals in the universities.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
BARA, Guillaume. La techno. Paris: E. J. L., 1999.
BYRNE, John. The story of Pop. London: Heinemann, 1977.
DAVIS, Stephen. Hammer of the Gods. London: Sidgwick & Jackson Limited, 1985.
DUCARY, François. Les Beatles. Paris: E. J. L., 1999.
GUILHEMINOT, Hervé & RAJON, Florence . Le rock des annés 70. Paris: Prelude e Fugue, 1997.
WEISSBROAD, Uli. Robert Plant: ein zeppelin kehrt zurürck.Bravo, 70-71, july 1982.
Rock and roll was never considered a serious music. However, the approach would have to be another one. Maybe it’s not correct to consider rock and roll simply as a musical style. It would be more interesting to try to perceive it as a social movement. But, how could it be made? A possibility would be to verify the content of its lyrics and to perceive the context where they had been produced.
First, superficial lyrics had always been used for bands of rock and roll, independent of the time or the musical style. The Beatles, for example, they were known for songs as “Love me do”:
“Love, love me of / You know I love you / I’ll always be true, so please / Love me of, who-ho love me of / Love, love me of the You know I love you / I’ll always be true, so please / Love me of, who-ho love me of.”
Obviously, from the Beatles, there were more interesting lyrics as “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”:
“Picture yourself in boat on to river/ With tangerine trees and marmalade skies./ Somebody calls you, you to answer quit slowly/ Girl with kaleidoscope eyes./ Celophane flowers of yellow and green, / Towering to over your head. / Look will be the girl with the sun in to her eyes and she’s gone. / Lucy in the sky with diamonds”.
This song, of course, was about drugs. It’s not possible to talk about this movement without drugs or sex. Jim Morrison – singer of The Doors – was shown as a symbol of both things. His lyrics were good. For example, “The End” shown the reality as seen by rock singer:
“He took the face from the ancient gallery / And he walked on down the hall / He went you the room where his sister lived / And then he paid visit you the his to brother / And then he walked on down the hall / And he cam you the door a, and he looked inside / “Father” – “Yes, sound” – “I want you kill you, / Mother, I want you… ” / (…) This is the end, beautiful friend.”
It had some symbolism for speaking of the desire to kill the father. It was a obvious reference of Freud and his thoughts about the relations of human beings. However, the problem is that the symbolism becomes reality: today sons kill their parents (for money, power and so on).
The sixties were known for the Love and Peace from Woodstock Festival. But there were also problems as Almont Festival, when a man was killed during The Rolling Stones concert. The were playing “Sympathy will be the Devil”:
“Please allow me you introduce myself / Why I’m man of wealth and taste / I’ve been around will be long, long to year / Stole many man’s soul and fate / I was ‘ round when Jesus Christ / Had his moment of doubt and pain / Made damn sure that Pilate / Washed his hands and sealed his fate / Pleased you meet you / Well I hope you guess my name, ah…”
These lyrics shown rock music was more than love or sex songs. However, these lyrics were used for those who said it was a bad influence for the youth. In fact, since the fifties rock and roll was shown as “the music of the devil”. Bands as Black Sabbath, in the seventies, made a new style with this idea. Black clothes and different lyrics:
“What is this that stands before me? / Black appears in which points at me / Turn around quick, and start you run/ Find out I’m the chosen one / Oh nooo! / Big black shape with eyes of fire / Telling people to their desire / Satan’s sitting there, he’s smiling / Watches those flames get to higher and to higher / Oh in, in, please God help me! / Is it the end, my friend? / Satan’s coming ‘ round the bend / People running ‘ causes they’re scared / The people to better go and beware! / In, in, please, in!”
In the decade of 1970, the rock and roll continued with the lyrics and the rhythms associating the music to the sex. However, there was one more thing: the relation of youth and the cars. T-Rex’s “Get it On”:
“You’re dirty sweet / And you my girl / Get it on / Bang gong Get it on / (…) Well you’re windy and wild / You got the blues / I’m your shoes and your stockings / You’re windy and wild oh yeah / You’re built like to car/ You got hubcap / Diamond to star halo / You’re dirty sweet / And you’re my girl.”
But the 1970 years were not only ambiguity or superficiality. There were also lyrics as “Money” from Pink Floyd.
“Money, it’s the crime / Share it fairly but don’t take the slice of my pie / Money, so they say / Evil Is the root of all today / But if you ask will be rise it’s in surprise that / They’re giving none away, away, away.”
Roger Waters put money as a “crime” or something “evil”. His critics were also in the 1979 album: “The Wall”. He used the irony to talk about educational process and the authority of the teacher:
“We don’t need in education / We don’t need in thought control / In dark sarcasm in the classroom / Teachers leave the kids alone / Hey, to teacher, leave the kids alone! / All in all it’s just to another brick in the wall / All in all you’re just to another brick in the wall.”
The critics were the objective of punk movement. They were against the “old bands” as Rolling Stones or Led Zeppelin, because, in their opinion, they “betrayed” rock and roll. They become what kids hated: status quo. They had abandoned the revolt feeling that always was associated with the rock and roll . Punk questioned the capitalist values, dressing different clothes, using anarchist symbols or photos of Karl Marx in its jackets. “Anarchy in U.K.” of the Sex Pistols:
“Right! now ha, ha / I am an anti-Christ / I am an anarchist, / don’t know what I want / but I know how you get it. / I wanna destroy the to passer by / ‘ cos I wanna be anarchy, / Ho dogs body / Anarchy will be the UK.”
One of the symbols of seventies was the band Led Zeppelin. Theses musicians were considered the inventors of heavy metal, what the band always denied. However, its influence was determinative in the bands of hard rock and heavy metal that had appeared in the posterior decades. Its style was copied. What it called the attention was the quality technique of its musicians, the constant innovation in its records, all the work developed for the guitarist Jimmy Page. Although there were songs as “Stairway You the Heaven” and “The Rain Song”, the band’s lyrics were superficial. An example would be “The song remains the same”. Musically, it was extremely innovative, but, in more than 5 minutes of music, the lyrics were meaningless. The left impression would be that the words had been only chosen for its noise, functioning almost as a sound of a musical instrument. But there was another problem with the lyrics: sometimes, they were not original. There was, for example, a process against the band because of the lyrics of “Whole Lotta Love”. In reality, they were from a Willie Dixion’s music.
The musicians of rock had tried to use some influence of Opera. In sixties, Pete Townshend created “opera-rock” called “Tommy” (that it became a movie with musicians as Elton John and Eric Clapton and actors as Oliver Reed and Ann-Margaret). In 1975, Freddy Mercury, of the Queen, created one of the classics of the rock, using the same influences. It was “Bohemian Rhapsody”:
“Goodbye everybody – I’ve got you go? / Gotta leave you all behind and face the truth? / Breast, ooo – I don’t want you die, / I sometimes wish I’d to never been born at all? / I see little silhouetto of man, / Scaramouch, scaramouch will you of the Fandango? / Thunderbolt and lightning – very very frightening me? / Gallileo, Gallileo, Gallileo, Gallileo / Gallileo figaro – Magnifico?”
Sex was used in the rock since the fifties. The words “rock and roll” meant “making sex”. One of the bands, in 1980 years, that they had insisted on this line was the Motley Crüe. The references in the song “Girls, Girls, Girls” were clear:
“Friday night and I need fight / My motorcycle and switchblade knife / Handful of grease in my to hair feels right / But what I need you make tight ploughs me / Girls, Girls, Girls / Long legs and burgundy lips / Girls, Girls, Girls / Dancin ‘ down on Sunset Strip / Girls, Girls, Girls / Red lips, fingertips / Trick or treat – sweet you eat.”
The image of the Motley Crüe would be still associated with playmate Pamela Anderson, that had a relationship with the drummer of the band, Tommy Lee. The relation between rock stars and the supermodels would be well-known since the seventies – Mick Jagger and Jerry Hall, Axl Rose and Stephanie Seymour, among others. Probably, beyond the exposition in the media, something that would explain this behavior would be the position of the musicians with their own fans. The constant parties, the “wild” life on the road and the image “bad boys” fascinated young girls. They were the “groupies” – fans that involved sexually with their idols. In this subject, the group that more created myths of “wild on the road” was the Led Zeppelin. As told by Miss Pamela, a groupie in the seventies:
“And, you know, we’d heard about Led Zeppelin, how crazy they were. (…) We heard how wild Led Zeppelin were, that they fucked everybody, a different girl every night. They had that reputation into their first tour.Absolutely!”
The stories of Led Zeppelin had been described, in details, on the book “Hammer of Gods”. In the next decade, one style called the attention: “indie” or the alternative music. One of them was “gothic rock”, with bands as The Sisters of Mercy, Bauhaus, The Cure and others. The lyrics, many times, were about death and sadness. There were still philosophical words – as “Ribbons” of The Sisters of Mercy – “I tried you tell to her about Marx and Engels” - or references about vampires and “black ages”, as “Bela Lugosi is Dead” of the Bauhaus:
“White on white translucent black capes/ back on the back/ beautiful lugosi’s dead/ the bats have left the Bell to tower/ the victims have been bled/ red velvet lines the black box/ beautiful lugosi’s dead/ undead undead undead/ the virginal brides file past his tomb/ strewn with time’s dead flowers/ bereft in deathly bloom/ alone in darkened room/ the count beautiful lugosi’s dead/ undead undead undead.”
Critical lyrics in the 1990 years: it was time for “hip hop” music. Public Enemy, for example, pointed the problems with the 911 service in the United States:
“Hit me / Going, going, gone / Now I dialed 911 long teams ago / Don’t you see how barks they’re reactin ‘ / They only eats and they eats when they wanna / (…) Everyday they don’t to never eats correct / You can ask my man right here with the broken neck / He’s witness you the job to never bein ‘ done.”
In 1990 years, a style that came from heavy metal it was “thrash”. A “faster” sound, with lyrics influenced by Black Sabbath or social critics as “Refuse/Resist” from the Brazilian group Sepultura:
“Tanks on the streets / Confronting police / Bleeding the Plebs Raging crowd / Burning cars / Bloodshed starts Who’ll be alive! / (…) Refuse/Resist Refuse.”
Still in this decade, but with a completely different style, Prodigy used techno – a dance music – with an influence from punk movement. The references on the lyrics were into to the sex or to the use of drugs, as in “Breathe” (1997):
“Breathe with me. / Breathe the pressure, / My eats play game I’ll test ya. / Psychosomatic addict, insane. / Breathe the pressure, Eats play my game I’ll test ya. / Psycho, -somatic addict, insane. / My eats play game. Inhale, inhale, you’re the victim.”
Lyrics more politics could be found in the songs of the Rage Against The Machine. They tried to raise the flag of the Third World. In one of its DVDs, they showed interviews of the intellectual Noam Chomsky andMarcus Commander. These interviews, of course, tried to show the real problems of the capitalist system. Rage’s songs were about that too. One example could be “Guerrilla Radio” (1999):
“Transmission third world to war third round / Decade of the weapon of sound above ground / In shelter if youre looking will be shade / Brutal I lick shots at the charade / The polls close like casket / On truth devoured Silent play in the shadow of to power / Spectacle monopolized.”
Many thinkers will be able to argue that all the lyrics here were “superficial stuff from teens against the status quo.” Maybe. But, it would not be possible to deny, on the other side, that its messages represent the feeling of a youth that, many times, feels without perspective in our society. In this direction, the doubts of these young people would not be so distant of the books written by the intellectuals in the universities.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
BARA, Guillaume. La techno. Paris: E. J. L., 1999.
BYRNE, John. The story of Pop. London: Heinemann, 1977.
DAVIS, Stephen. Hammer of the Gods. London: Sidgwick & Jackson Limited, 1985.
DUCARY, François. Les Beatles. Paris: E. J. L., 1999.
GUILHEMINOT, Hervé & RAJON, Florence . Le rock des annés 70. Paris: Prelude e Fugue, 1997.
WEISSBROAD, Uli. Robert Plant: ein zeppelin kehrt zurürck.Bravo, 70-71, july 1982.