Group Identity: Bands, Rock and Popular Music
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GROUP IDENTITY: BANDS, ROCK AND POPULAR MUSIC ADAM BEHR A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Film, Media and Journalism University of Stirling June 2010 i ABSTRACT Since rock became the subject of academic study, its attendant ideology has been scrutinised and its mythical and Romantic components exposed. Largely absent from this account has been a thorough analysis of the phenomenon of the ‘band’. The role of individual acts and the wider contexts in which they worked has been discussed at the expense of an examination of an important form of music-making. This thesis seeks to address that gap. Using a mixture of literary research and ethnography, I present an overall picture of the band as a modus operandum , charting its evolution during the emergence of rock and presenting evidence that it has become a key means by which people enter and engage with the field of popular music. I suggest that debates about ‘authenticity’ in rock, in seeking to see through industry rhetoric have overlooked the way in which creativity in bands is closely connected to social interaction. My historical analysis brings to light the way in which the group- identified band has become embedded into popular music practice through the power of narratives. Two case studies, contextualised with archival material and interviews, form the basis for a model for collective creativity. By demonstrating how social action and narrative myth feed into one another, I argue that the group identity of a band is the core of the industrially mediated texts to which audiences respond. Our understanding of how authenticity is ascribed in popular music, and rock in particular, has paid too much attention to genre-based arguments and ii not enough to musical and social methods. I propose a way of revising this to take better account of rock as an actual practice. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First of all I would like to thank my supervisor, Professor Simon Frith. His wisdom, patience and intellectual generosity made this thesis possible. The scope of his knowledge of music was eye opening and his facility to make connections across a range of topics profoundly helpful. I have attempted here to synthesize a number of strands of thought. Where I have succeeded I owe him a debt of gratitude. Failures on this front are, of course, all my own. I am also grateful to all my interviewees for their time and honesty. In particular, the members of Air-Fix— Matt, Mini, Chainey and Kenny— made the business of participant observation a pleasure. Their affability and openness were beyond what I could have hoped for from research subjects. Matt, Christine, Maggie, Mike, Mark and Pedro were The Distractions. They also fall into several of the other categories listed below. If they only get mentioned once, I nevertheless think of them throughout. Apart from being a significant part of my study and work at Stirling, and beyond, I have fond memories of making music with them. This thesis has been informed in no small way by the fact that above all, and in both the musical and non-musical uses of the term, they rock! Over the course of working on this thesis, I have also taught extensively at Stirling. My colleagues there in ways too numerous to mention have provided me with advice and help pertinent not only to this iii project but to a greater understanding of where it fits in with the world around it. Mark Brownrigg, Richard Haynes, Phil Drake, Jane Sillars and Stephanie Marriot in particular were a constant source of patient and good- humoured insight into how teaching is also learning and the value of knowledge as an end in itself. Louise Womersley and everyone else who kept J corridor functioning also made being in the department rewarding. Fellow travellers on the PhD trail have been a source of ideas and inspiration. Through engaging and stimulating conversations, and thoughtful comments, the popular music postgraduate community around Edinburgh and Stirling have been a rich source of encouragement- thanks in particular to Inez Templeton, Mary Fogarty, Szu-Wei Chen, also Luis Sanchez and Melissa Avdeef. Of course this would not have been possible without the support of my good friends from Edinburgh and London. There just isn’t space to describe properly how they all helped me through the writing of this but I should mention The Basement crew for, amongst much else, the plentiful supplies of free coffee and fruit juice in the pinch and tolerant ears for my tangential theories and IT related rants. Thanks also to Simon Barrie for swift but considered responses to random queries on any number of subjects, at just about any time. At the bottom of the list, but not my thoughts, are my family, especially my parents. Apart from all of the opportunities they have given me throughout my life, this simply would not have been possible without their love and belief. For precious advice and support in the closing stages iv of this thesis, right back to my first books and records (and first guitar), this is for them. Oh, and to the person who left that tape of Back In Black for me to find on the Northern Line many years ago- thanks. v Table of Contents ABSTRACT i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii INTRODUCTION 1 Aims and Context 3 Subject Parameters 8 Genre Nomenclature 11 Defining the band. What’s in a name (which one’s pink)? 13 Overview of the thesis 19 1. HISTORY 24 1.1. Problems of History 24 1.1.1. Theoretical Parameters 24 1.1.2. Temporal Parameters 27 1.2. The ‘Received Account’ 29 1.3. ‘Personality’ vs ‘Process’: 1955 and all that 33 1.4. ‘Revolution’ vs ‘Evolution’ 36 1.4.1. An ‘interregnum’? 36 1.4.2. Surf, doo-wop and girl groups 39 1.4.3. Back in the U.K 42 1.5. Canons and Contexts: How the band was embedded into popular music myths 46 1.5.1. ’Places I Remember’: The Beatles and Narratives 46 1.5.2. ’You’re Such A Lovely Audience’: Art, ‘The People’ and the album 51 1.5.3. ‘Come Together’: The combination of functions in the band 56 1.6. Surviving the (ever) changing of the guard: How the band remained intrinsic to popular music production 60 1.7 Conclusion 66 2. CASE STUDIES 71 2.1. Air-Fix 71 2.1.1. ‘Hometown’: The formation of the band 71 2.1.2. ’Promises’: In rehearsal 78 2.1.3. ’Shine’: Gigs and the invocation of ‘bandness’ 83 2.1.4. ’Hey, Gotta Go’: Dissolution 87 2.1.5. ’Fading’: Coda 91 2.2. The Distractions 94 2.2.1. ’Rocks’: The band sound 97 2.2.2. ’Mamma Mia’: Song selection and creative contribution 99 2.2.3. ’One Way or Another’: The changing nature of the band 104 2.2.4. ’Let the train blow the whistle’: Dissolution 107 3.CREATIVITY 110 3.1. Institutional autonomy and the radius of creativity 112 vi 3.2. The Creative ‘Edifice’ 119 3.3. Creativity in groups: the ‘negotiated centre’ 123 3.3.1. Technique 126 3.3.2. Experience 133 3.3.3. Innovation and originality 137 3.3.4. Personality 145 3.4. ‘Micro-fields’ and creative capital 150 3.5. Conclusion 156 4.DYNAMICS 158 4.1. The creative ‘centrifuge’ 158 4.1.1. External forces 163 4.2.Porous Borders 170 4.2.1. External and internal borders 172 4.2.2. The problems of differentiation 176 4.3. Molecules and atoms: the conjoined creative and social dynamic 180 4.4. Creative differences 191 4.5.Endings 194 4.6.Conclusion 198 5. AUTHENTICITY 202 5.1. Critiques of discourses and assumptions 205 5.2. Models of authenticity 208 5.3.’Collective/first person plural’ authenticity 214 5.3.1. ’Collective/first person plural’ authenticity in theory 214 5.3.2. ’Collective/first person plural’ authenticity in practice 216 5.3.3. ‘Collective/first person plural’ authenticity in context 221 5.4. Conclusion 225 CONCLUSION 229 ‘Rock’ as a method 233 The Interstices 236 Group identity, authenticity and practice 239 APPENDIX: NOTES ON METHODOLOGY 244 LIST OF INTERVIEWS 248 BIBLIOGRAPHY 250 FILMOGRAPHY 262 SELECT DISCOGRAPHY 262 1 INTRODUCTION This project evolved out of an intersection between a long held personal interest and a growing academic curiosity. Like most of my contemporaries, I had spent the best part of a lifetime spent listening to popular music in its many forms. This intensified when I picked up a guitar and attempted to recreate what I was hearing, and even adapt it and create original music for myself. Still, if I was more engaged with the music than average , this hardly marked me out as especially distinct. As people do, I gravitated towards the like-minded and a good proportion of my everyday reading and conversations revolved around the subject. Throughout, however, the different components of my rather haphazard experience of fandom and listening didn’t fit together. One of the TV programmes that our family could all agree to watch was the BBC’s The Rock 'n' Roll Years —one year was covered every week, featuring archive news footage soundtracked by the hits of that year. There was a series of compilation albums to accompany the series, covering the periods 1955-59, 1960-63, 1964-7 and 1968-71. We had tapes of a couple of these, which were on heavy Walkman rotation on one family holiday. One of the standout tracks from the early sixties tape (the one with the red Stratocaster on the front, anyway) was Johnny Kid and The Pirates’ ‘Shakin’ All Over’.