From Top of the Pops to Woodstock Mediatizations of Rock Music Liveness 1967-1973
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From Top of the Pops to Woodstock Mediatizations of Rock Music Liveness 1967-1973 Alec Plowman A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of East Anglia School of Art, Media and American Studies October 2016 This copy of the thesis has been supplied on condition that anyone who consults it is understood to recognise that its copyright rests with the author and that use of any information derived there from must be in accordance with current UK Copyright Law. In addition, any quotation or extract must include full attribution. Alec Plowman From Top of the Pops to Woodstock Abstract This thesis identifies the emerging conventions of rock music liveness in the late-1960s and early-1970s, and discusses them across media (records, film and television), to argue that these modes of representation were informed by key changes in rock music culture of the period. Using a cross-media, historical approach, supported by textual and contextual analysis, the thesis aims to move beyond discussions of liveness as myth, focusing instead on the ways in which it is constructed. To this end, the work analyses how producers navigated these attitude shifts and negotiated the specificities of each medium to convey liveness in a way that appealed to both rock fans and music critics. The work moreover identifies how this process established conventions of representing rock music liveness that continue to this day. The thesis is structured in four chapters. The first of these identifies the key shifts in rock music culture (and associated liveness) in the late-1960s, setting the scene for the next three chapters, which detail how these shifts were articulated in different media. Through this approach, the thesis provides a comprehensive view of the meanings of liveness in rock music cultures, highlighting its historical and contemporaneous centrality and thus adding to debates around popular music and liveness. 2 Alec Plowman From Top of the Pops to Woodstock Table of Contents Abstract ................................................................................................................................. 2 Introduction ........................................................................................................................ 6 Liveness: Ontology and Epistemology ............................................................................................ 8 Mediatized Liveness .............................................................................................................................. 12 Does liveness still exist? ...................................................................................................................... 16 Intervention ............................................................................................................................... 18 Why the late-1960s to early-1970s? .............................................................................................. 19 Why rock music? ....................................................................................................................... 21 Methodology ............................................................................................................................... 26 Chapter Breakdown .............................................................................................................................. 29 Terminology ............................................................................................................................... 32 Addressing livenesses .......................................................................................................................... 32 Classic Liveness ....................................................................................................................................... 32 Staged Liveness ....................................................................................................................................... 33 Mimed Liveness ...................................................................................................................................... 34 Live Recording ......................................................................................................................................... 34 Live Broadcast ......................................................................................................................................... 34 Broadcast of live recording ................................................................................................................ 35 Defining rock, rock ‘n’ roll, and pop ............................................................................................... 35 Rock or pop? ............................................................................................................................................. 35 Rock or rock ‘n’ roll? ............................................................................................................................. 38 Dominant, Residual, and Emergent ................................................................................................ 38 Chapter 1 “There’s something happening here”: Emerging values of live performance ..................................................................................................................... 40 “They’re just bloody tribal rituals”: Package tours and the mid-‘60s live scene41 The emergence of “rock-as-art” ....................................................................................................... 44 Frustrations of playing live ................................................................................................................ 46 Live rock in crisis ................................................................................................................................... 48 “Starting on a blues and just seeing where it takes us”: Improvisation and Spontaneity ................................................................................................................................. 49 Spontaneity vs. reproduction ............................................................................................................ 50 “Exploring, stretching and pushing” .............................................................................................. 53 “It takes real musicianship to improvise melody” ................................................................... 56 “We do anything we feel like”: Spectacle and Amplification of Personalities ...... 59 Introversion vs. exaggeration ........................................................................................................... 60 “An incredible personal thing.” ........................................................................................................ 61 “He's just doing what comes naturally.” ....................................................................................... 64 Communalism vs. Commercialism: Staging Rock Music Live Performance .......... 66 The package tour .................................................................................................................................... 67 “Music for music’s sake” ...................................................................................................................... 68 Communalism vs. Commercialism .................................................................................................. 70 “The revolution’s here”: rock concerts and politics ..................................................... 74 "For the reality of what's happening today… we must go to rock 'n' roll“ .................... 75 3 Alec Plowman From Top of the Pops to Woodstock “An artistic spin on the movement”: complicating rock’s countercultural credentials ........................................................................................................................................................................ 79 “That’s the relationship between music and politics”: Critics’ responses to Woodstock ................................................................................................................................................ 80 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................... 83 Chapter 2 “Crackling Noises O.K. Do Not Correct!”: Towards conventions of representation on the live rock album ................................................................... 86 Methodology ............................................................................................................................... 88 “[It] at least proves that you can do an excellent live recording of a rock and roll group”: Early live albums ....................................................................................................... 90 “[It] is almost unbelievable. It captures every thrill of the Stones live on stage”: The emergence of bootleg live recordings ....................................................................... 99 “This album is an actual live recording… to be played in sequence without interruption”: Towards conventions of representation .......................................... 105 Conclusion: “Crackling Noises Have Been Corrected.” .............................................. 113 Chapter 3 “Finally there is a movie about us”: The Emergence of the Concert Movie ...............................................................................................................................