Classic Rock Fantasies and the Musical Imagination of Neoliberalism Mickey Vallee Published Online: 31 Jul 2014
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This article was downloaded by: [University of Lethbridge] On: 23 October 2014, At: 13:36 Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK Culture, Theory and Critique Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rctc20 ‘More than a feeling’: Classic Rock Fantasies and the Musical Imagination of Neoliberalism Mickey Vallee Published online: 31 Jul 2014. To cite this article: Mickey Vallee (2014): ‘More than a feeling’: Classic Rock Fantasies and the Musical Imagination of Neoliberalism, Culture, Theory and Critique, DOI: 10.1080/14735784.2014.941509 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14735784.2014.941509 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. 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Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms- and-conditions Culture, Theory and Critique, 2014 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14735784.2014.941509 ‘More than a feeling’: Classic Rock Fantasies and the Musical Imagination of Neoliberalism Mickey Vallee Abstract This essay demonstrates how Classic Rock is a master signifier for the fantasy of the neoliberal autonomy of individualism. The argument presented is that Classic Rock is conducive with the seven cornerstones of Lacanian fantasy as postulated by Slavoj Zˇ izˇek (schema of wholeness, occlusion of antagonism, intersubjectivity, immersion in Law, gaze of the Other, inherent transgression, and the empty gesture), as coordinated by a select multitude of its subgenres that stand in as objects of desire for the Master Signifier of ‘Classic Rock’: soft rock, hard rock, glam rock, art rock, and punk rock. By analysing Classic Rock through the trope of the Master Signifier, the ideological coordinates of neoliberal fantasy could potentially weaken the transparency of free trade, realising a possi- bility of radical autonomy that denies the injunction to desire. This essay thus contributes to our understanding of the political significance of Classic Rock. Introduction: The unconscious fantasy of classic rock The standardized products of today’s variety shows, hit parades, and show business are pathetic and prophetic caricatures of future forms of the repressive channelling of desire. (Attali 1985: 31) With its emphasis on romantic fantasies of individualism, ‘Classic Rock’ pro- vides an ideological anticipation for the neoliberal policies and positions that dominated Western capitalist society in the last quarter of the 20th century. Classic Rock describes a musical genre that prominently featured album- oriented rock from the 1960s into the 1980s, with particular emphasis on music from the 1970s. Much Classic Rock can be identified in its ideal type by several stylistic features: ensembles of guitars, electric bass, drums, vocals Downloaded by [University of Lethbridge] at 13:36 23 October 2014 (sometimes keyboards); romanticist and confessional lyrics obsessed with various narratives regarding individual freedom; anthemic and highly mem- orable choruses including epic dramatic musical climaxes; and, with some exceptions, a predominantly white masculine heterosexual perspective on the topic of interpersonal relationships and the sovereignty of the individual. Classic Rock is not necessarily a coherent entity, but a master signifier: a signifier of identity, but one that can only be identified with by way of its symptoms. Indeed, while in its historical context, Stevie Wonder and the Sex Pistols # 2014 Taylor & Francis 2 Mickey Vallee could hardly be aligned with the Album-Oriented Rock adopted by main- stream industry, for ideological reasons they are aligned with a new discourse of individualistic emancipation under a heterogeneous veil. Adorno may have called this the ongoing ‘pseudo-individuality’ or ‘interchangeability’ of the popular music culture industry: a mode of thinking that subsequent cultural studies and popular music studies scholars charged with hard determinism. The Zˇ izˇekian perspective I adopt here is conducive with Adorno’s original treatise, On Popular Music, yet is subtler by using the tropes of fantasy and sinthome in place of pseudo-individualism. Although Classic Rock connotes a timeless designation, its thematic of autonomous freedom is a political expression limited by ties to a set of histori- cal developments in recording technology, political movements, and social (in)equality. But the freedom that Classic Rock espouses, though proclaimed as universal, is stained with questions regarding its universality. In relation to technological development, recording technology and overdubbing had become such standard practice in the late 1960s that rock musicians were able to elevate sound to the status of a sublime aesthetic in the 1970s. The intro- duction of the LP record likewise allowed for more expansive (read: expens- ive) work, resulting in musicians who increasingly referred to themselves as artistic visionaries, breaching the boundaries of the pop mentality regime – though it was an autonomy afforded by the far reaching and most profitable revenue generating decade for the music industry in the 20th century. These technological parameters combined with the socially progressive attitudes towards sexuality and individual freedom constituted a genre of music that was a particularly escapist philosophy, one that was particular to a set of emer- ging ethics that would eventually lay the foundations for neoliberal ideologies of self-determination. While the ideological edifice of such music has been handled by a variety of scholars, no such systematic criticism has yet been operationalised at the level specific to the decade that preceded what we know now as the fantasy of neoliberal freedom. My objective in this article is to identify new diagnostic targets for Classic Rock by analysing various texts using Zˇ izˇek’s concept of fantasy, a concept with which the thematic material of Classic Rock is strikingly aligned: the pro- tagonist is liberated through the sacrifice of his interpersonal relations by telling the truth in an act of faith to the self. In Lacanian fantasy, one searches relentlessly for self-gratification, achieves it momentarily, yet is returned to the Downloaded by [University of Lethbridge] at 13:36 23 October 2014 same place where one initially wanted more ...‘more than a feeling’ (to quote Boston’s rock anthem). Classic Rock, in its relentless repetition of fantasy, enforces a feedback loop upon the listening subject that entraps him in the eternal return of always-wanting-more (or, always in pursuit of it). In this essay, I briefly examine various subgenres of Classic Rock as positions of neo- liberal ideology in the autonomous subject, the conquering subject, and the spectacular subject, all of whom are guided through their own personal poli- tics by the market forces of the post-counterculture music industry. The 1970s music industry introduced a novel aesthetic framework within which musicians could dwell in the time and space necessary to accommodate forms of reflective expression (Walser 1993). The studio was less a mode of capturing a live event than an instrument of sonic manipulation; transductions were stored for later manoeuvring and sculpting (Hodgson 2010). And if the Classic Rock Fantasies and the Musical Imagination of Neoliberalism 3 studio could be realised as the space of inner exploration, aligned with the psychic realignments that were so central to the counterculture of the 1960s, the festival became its radical opposite: a space where the social experimen- tation of communal living could couple with the anarchic space of psychic self-regulation, where the politics of inward self-formation could be found within everyday interaction (Echard 2011). The 1970s music industry fully endorsed the rebellious nature of rock, whereas in the 1950s rebellious music constituted an anti-conservative backlash and, in the 1960s, a counter- cultural war of position (Donnelly 2005). In the 1970s, the music industry as a whole profited by trusting the profanity that would sell, anticipating a minor moral backlash from conservative and religious groups, and benefiting from the unintended publicity that moral panics were known for producing. Grossing $2 billion per year, earning more than the film and sports industries combined, the music industry