History of Rock-n-Roll - Colleen May
In the beginning of “The History of Rock-n-Roll,� George Clinton says that “most kids hate their parent’s artists… they want to get away from that more that anything,� but the phenomena of artists like Elvis and the Beatles is the manifestation of kids wanting to get away from a lot more that just their parents’ music. Kids, particularly women, wanted to get away from their parents’ whole way of life.
“The vision of the suburban split-level, which had guided a generation of girls chastely through high school, was beginning to lose its luster� (Ehrenreich, Hess, & Jacobs, 1992). Young women and girls, exhausted of the constant struggle to “be universally attractive and still have an unblemished ‘reputation,’� were liberating themselves of “the pragmatic sexual repressions of teenage life� through their public advertising of hopeless love (Ehrenreich, Hess, & Jacobs, 1992).
A combination of things contributed the phenomena of these artists, one of the most important being their timing in history; a sexual revolution and feminism were in order. In addition, the Beatles had the advantage of arriving in America full of baby-boomer teenagers in desperate need of “the first good news� following the Kennedy assassination (Stark, 2005).
Another reason for the success was androgeny of the artists; as many girls were “still a little frightened of the idea of sex,� and it felt “safer worshipping idols who don’t seem too masculine� (Ehrenreich, Hess, & Jacobs, 1992). In addition, the Beatles caused even more hysteria than Elvis because their music was separated from the rhythm and blues rock-n-roll of “race music.� As Randall Kennedy said, it was “yet another instance of white people finding they could only identify with other white people.�
What made the hysteria so interesting and different from that of other fan worship (i.e. Frank Sinatra) was its intensity. It was so intense because it was about so much more than teenagers’ rebellion against their parents; it was an outlet for suppressed sexuality and the need to riot, the beginning of a revolution for women.