Review of Rock Music Culture, Aesthetics, And Sociology

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Rock Music: Culture, Aesthetics, and Sociology by Peter Wicke; Rachel Fogg; Music Man:Ahmet Ertegun, Atlantic Records, and the Triumph of Rock 'n' Roll by Dorothy Wade;Justine PicardieReview by: Leslie C. Gay, Jr.Notes, Second Series, Vol. 49, No. 2 (Dec., 1992), pp. 621-623Published by: Music Library AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/897946 .Accessed: 01/12/2014 01:12

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Book Reviews 621

POPULAR MUSIC

Rock Music: Culture, Aesthetics, ndSociology. By Peter Wicke.Translatedby Rachel Fogg. Cambridge: Cam-bridge University ress, 1990. [xii,228p. ISBN 0-521-36555-4,$44.40; ISBN0-521-39914-9 (pbk.), $14.95.]Music Man: Ahmet Ertegun, AtlanticRecords, and the Triumph of Rock n'Roll. By Dorothy Wade and JustinePicardie. New York: W. W. Norton,1990. [303 p. ISBN 0-393-02635-3.$19-95.]

Peter Wicke's Rock Music: Culture, Aes-thetics, nd Sociologynd Dorothy Wade andJustine Picardie's MusicMan: Ahmet rteguntraverse ifferent iterary errains f pop-ular music: Wicke'swork manates romthe halls of academe, while Wade andPicardie roceedfrom journalist's eat.Whileboth have minor faults, ach rep-resents he best of its respective omain.

Wicke's ook akes ts ubtitle eriously-this s no generalhistory f rock. LikeSi-mon Frith's ound ffectsNewYork: Pan-theon ooks, 981),RockMusic eginswiththe premise hat ockmusic,musicians,ndtheirmaterial roducts re part f complexsocial,political, conomic, nd even tech-nological ontexts. or, as Wicke ays:

Records nd songs re not solated b-jects; they re the symptoms f an ex-tensive verall cultural ontext whichowes its existence n equal measure osocial nd political elations s well s tothe particular nvironment f its isten-ers. P. viii)

This important otion eparates hebookfrom more descriptive istorical r bio-graphical are hat merely elebrates rtistsand their ecordings.

The work sorganized s a series f nineessays, ach focusing n one topic; omeare detailed nalyses f particular omentsof rock's istory, nd others re delineated

by a cultural r an ideologicalssue.Theopening ssaymaybe the book'smost m-portant. artly hrough n analysis f thepolemicalChuck Berry ong Roll OverBeethoven, icke ituates ock music s aform distinct rom European art music,

rural American music, African-American

music, nd earlier popular forms. n doingthis he argues that new analytic roceduresmust be developed that are appropriate torock music, rather han applying aestheticcriteria nd musical models that are com-pletely lien to its cultural origins p. 2).Starting with Theodor Adorno, the misuseof methods, models, and aesthetic criteriahas plagued popular music studies. Whileothers hlave made similar points (see, forinstance, hapter 2 in Frith's ound Effects),Wicke uccessfully edssocialanalysis o anappropriate, if limited, musical analysis,something almost unheard of in popularmusic studies.

Other essays focus on significant ssuesrelevant o rock music. The topic of youthsubcultures nd rock music correlated withclass and cultural dentity s addressed, asis the notion of revolution as a centralprecept of rock ideology, along with theincongruity f the anticapitalist deology ofrock and its nherent ink with mass mediaindustries.

A few essayssituate mportant eriods ofrock within their sociohistorical ontexts.There is one on the British reception ofAmerican rock 'n' roll that ultimatelyyielded a structural hange within he mu-sic industry .. [and] a different oncep-tion of popular music, one which showedthe basic form of rock (p. 52). This essaymakes good use of Wicke's method of com-bining sociology with music analysisthrough a discussion of The Beatles' first

British ingle, Love Me Do. Another es-say, on how the ultraconservative isen-hower era shaped the experiences of manyteenagers in the United States and ulti-mately rock 'n' roll, illustrates ts salientpoints via an analysis of Elvis Presley's re-cording of That's All Right.

Wade and Picardie's Music Man is of adifferent lk, falling omewhere between ahistory f Atlantic Records and a biographyof Ahmet Ertegun, he company's founder,who helped make Atlantic, arguably,

America's most important record label.This blend makes some sense, as Ertegun'slife and the institution f Atlantic Recordsare bound tightly ogether.

From first earing the likes of Cab Cal-loway and Duke Ellington at London's

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622 NOTES, December 1992

Palladium as a child, Ertegun wasdrawn tothe music of African-Americans. ater, asa Turkish diplomat's on in Washington, e

became an avid and knowledgeable collec-tor of azz and blues records. And thanksto the sovereignty f the Turkish embassy,he and his brother, Nesuhi, avoided Wash-ington's segregation laws and sponsoredimpromptu jazz sessions that includedmembers of Ellington's nd Benny Good-man's bands. These early musical and en-trepreneurial experiences with African-American music and musicians defined thedirection of Ertegun's life as he enteredadulthood.

This was a time-the post-World War IIera-when changes in recording technol-ogy profoundly affected popular music.The end of the war alleviated a scarcity fshellac. Thus, 78 rpm record productionwas no longer restrained by a shortageof its primary omponent, and companiesrushed to make and sell records. Butequally important-and not mentioned inthe book-is the development of less ex-pensive magnetic ape recording. This newtechnology opened the industry o a newentrepreneurial lass of music business per-sons selling to local or specialized markets.It was into this milieu that Ertegunlaunched Atlantic Records with an invest-ment from the family dentist and with apartner, Herb Abramson, a record pro-ducer from the Chicago label, NationalRecords. Ertegun's knowledge of African-American music idioms made him uniqueamong the new class of business persons,who were for the most part small-scale

manufacturers with little background inmusic.It is in telling he story f Atlantic where

the book shines brightest. rom the 1950sas a small New York label specializing nblack music, to defining (with BarryGordy's Motown Records) 1960s soul mu-sic, through and beyond, as a subsidiary)its sale to the multinational onglomerateWarner Seven-Arts in 1967, AtlanticRecords recorded some of the most sig-nificant rtists f American popular music.

So many mportant musicians-from RuthBrown, Ray Charles, and Aretha Franklinto Led Zeppelin, the Rolling Stones, andAC/DC-have been part of the history fAtlantic, hat it is impossible to weave alltheir tories nto one book. The company's

dealings with he Stones get the most com-plete coverage.

But this s not the story f Atlantic mu-

sicians o much as that of company nsiders.We read of conflicts mong Herb Abram-son, Atlantic's first record producer, hiswife and company business manager, Mir-iam Abramson later Bienstock), nd JerryWexler, Herb's replacement while he wasin the Army. Here too is Wexler's vid sup-port of maintaining he company's lliancewith African-American music, and his dis-illusionment with Ertegun's move towardwhite rock in the 1960s, which culminatedwith his leaving the company n 1975 aftera twenty-two ear partnership. There isalso the story of Jerry Lieber and MikeStoller's trained working elationship withPhil Spector, three of the most importantcomposers and record producers in pop-ular music.

Some of the most compelling tories on-cern characters and controversies withinAtlantic's arger sphere of influence. Forinstance, we find n the book Morris Levy,the always controversial owner of NewYork's Birdland, occasional music pub-lisher, nd record company nvestor. evy,who is closely ied to the Mafia n the book,once boasted that he had a bigger salarythan any major record company executive.In 1988, when he left the music business,he wasworth probably 75 million p. 252).And there s Alan Freed's story, he personwho first pplied the term rock n' roll toAfrican-American popular music. As aPied Piper introducing white Americanyouth to black music, Freed had a spec-

tacular rise in the broadcasting industry,becoming the country's most nfluential a-dio deejay. His fall was ust as spectacularwith his implication n a widespread payolascandal.

The strength of Wade and Picardie'sbook is its use of interviews with the manypersons who shaped the history f Atlantic.While further study based on the com-pany's archives would add to what is pre-sented here, this account of AtlanticRecords is presented nicely, rich with in-

formation, nd full of engaging anecdotes.Record companies are not cybernetic n-stitutions; hey re populated with people,and this book gives a real sense of them.Oddly, however, he weakest spects of thebook are with the more biographical por-



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Book Reviews 623

tions on Ahmet Ertegun himself. Perhapsthe authors were taken by Ertegun's ob-vious charisma. Throughout the book he isfavored with only the most positive andsometimes pointless terms. For instance,the book begins by establishing hat Erte-gun is fabulously rich, a good dancer, agracious benefactor, and preeminent so-cialite: He is all things oall men: a caring,cultured, urbane, debonair connoisseur ofjazz and the blues (p. 27). This accountingappears incredible when read against theaccounts of others in the book.

One can quibble with a few aspectsof Wicke's RockMusic,too. There are cer-tain omissions owing, perhaps, to his Eu-ropean point of view. For instance, thereis no mention of the influence of NewYork's folk-revival movement on rock'snew self-consciousness f the 1960s. More-over, at times Wicke draws uncriticallyon a vast array of scholarship. His argu-ments on youth subcultures, for instance,are supported primarily y Dick Hebdige'sSubculture: he Meaning of Style London:Methuen, 1979), but they avoid importantcritiques f this work, uch as Gary Clarke'sDefending Ski-Jumpers: A Critique of

Theories of Youth Subcultures reprintedin On Record: Rock, Pop, and the WrittenWord, d. Simon Frith and Andrew Good-win [New York: Pantheon Books, 1990]:81-96).

Yet Wicke's book still deserves praise.These are thoughtful nd often challeng-ing essays that give important nsights ntothe music and cultural ontexts f rock. Hisgood use of music analysis to illustrate his

sociologicalarguments s an especiallywel-come addition to popular music scholar-ship. This approach should be refined ndexpanded.

LESLIE C. GAY, JR.TexasA&M University

Popular Music Perspectives: Ideas,Themes, and Patterns in Contempo-rary Lyrics. By B. Lee Cooper. Bowl-ing Green: Bowling Green State Uni-

versity Popular Press, 1991. [213 p.ISBN 0-87972-506-0 (pbk.). $19.95.]The End of the Century Party: Youthand Pop Towards 2000. BySteve Red-head. Manchester: Manchester Uni-

versity ress, 1990; distributed by St.Martin's Press, New York. [124 p.ISBN 0-7190-2826-4. $59.95.]

In the pastdecade, he number f booksdevoted xclusivelyo popular musichasgrown exponentially. Most editions ofAmerican opularmusic exts eal with hehistorical evelopment f American luesand other vernacular dioms, especiallyearly ock, sually nding with he musicof the 1970s.Heavymetal, or example,had its roots n the ate 1960sbut s gen-erally nly mentioned n passing, f at all.Someof the newest ooks on the subject,however, re beginning o treat popularmusic (both inside and outside of theUnited tates) s an evolving etof genresthat re only aptured n print t one par-ticular tageof their volution. his rec-ognition f musical volution s an impor-tant development n the literature npopularmusic.Both of thesebooksfit, osomedegree, within his ategory.

B. Lee Cooper's PopularMusicPerspectivesisdivided nto hree arge ections, ntitledIdeas,

Themes, nd Patterns. ithineach of these ections re smaller haptersdealingwith pecific opics, uch as Rail-roads (chapter ), Death chapter ),and Nursery Rhymes nd Fairy Tales(chapter 2). One unifying eature f eachchapter s an introductory ection thatplaces heprimary opic n questionwithinthe context f sociopoliticalommentary.The bulkof eachchapter, owever, s de-voted o ong ists f ong itles, ivided ntovery mall categories e.g., SocialCom-

mentary n Christmas ongs, and AChronological ist f Selected ommercialRecordingsWhichFeatureCommentarieson Death,1953-1988 )with hecompleterecording ata for very ong.The end ofeachchapter ncludes list f works ited,someof which re duplicated n the electbibliography t the end of the book.

Asa reference ork, his ook will roveuseful o American ociologists,ultural n-thropologists,nd scholars f popularmu-sicology. owever, eaders f this ookwillalreadyneed to be familiar ith many fnot most f the ongs eferred o,becausethe actual ongs' yrics re rarely r onlypartially rovided; he titles re intendedto speak for themselves. t is one thingfor an American cademic or popular


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Review of Rock Music Culture, Aesthetics, And Sociology