this subject.6 My aim here, however, is not to rehearse every one of these issues, but instead to show that the possibility of rock music being something truly important—as opposed to simply being something like the music of our adolescence, whenever that was—does face some real difficulties. And these difficulties do not just come from Adorno, for whom there are at least three shortcomings in his approach to the questions that are relevant here.
First, Adorno undoubtedly was simply too “European,” too steeped in the idea of “high culture,” to have appreciated any music outside of the Western classical canon. In other words, he had a human failing and prejudice here; part of his reaction to jazz, blues, and rock music was merely visceral, and it is unfortunate that he elevated this reaction to the level of a system.
Second, the category of “popular” music is too sweeping, especially when it comes to the role played by the culture industry. Here is where there remains a fundamental difference between the Hollywood film industry, which is at the core of the culture industry, and the making of music: to be a part of the former, one has to move in very big money circles and through a system of “connections” (this is just the tip of the iceberg); to make music, on the other hand, it is still possible to “find yourself an electric guitar, and take some time, and learn how to play.” Undoubtedly, at the “star performer” level, the interconnections between music and the Hollywood core become more concentrated, and this has certainly been driven even further in recent years by the formation of massive entertainment conglomerates and distribution networks. Still, despite the fact that the distinction cannot be made hard and fast, and despite the way that monopoly capital in the entertainment industry continues to erode the distinction, we might all the same make a distinction between “mass culture” and “popular culture.” “Mass culture” has its point of origin and initiation in the culture industry itself—the Hollywood film would be the prime example. “Popular culture” at least begins somewhere closer to the streets—-rap and hip-hop would be examples, but so would early rock and roll. (More on this in a moment.)
Third, and relatedly, Adorno seemingly had blinders on when it came to actual outbreaks of protest and rebellion, and he didn’t see the possibility of experimental music linking up with a real assault on the existing system. Therefore, the idea of a “popular avant-garde” would never have occurred to him.
Again, most of these arguments (and many more) have been made by others—but not this last argument. Allow me to reconnect with my opening claim, from the introduction to this book: this brief, shining moment, where there was the possibility, completely unprecedented, of a “popular avant-garde,” simply came and went so quickly, and with so many forces arrayed against it, that we simply have not taken stock of its significance to this day.
There is an interesting dynamic that shapes this failure to see this particular possibility. I agree with Adorno that there are many factors that make it very, very unlikely that expressions of rock music will transcend what seem to be basic limitations and compromises. In fairness to Adorno, and against some of his interpreters, he never argues that this transcendence is simply impossible. But there is a larger historical issue. Every kind of music emerges and develops against the background of a larger history, society, and culture, and every music stands in some relation (“affirmative,” “negative,” or, more likely, some very complex mixture of these attitudes) to these things. With the development of capitalism into imperialist and postmodern forms, however, the argument might be made that the “background” assumes an especially resilient character, and that those genres of art (for example, rock music) that are especially tied in with the economic and technological structures of this very background face tremendous and unprecedented difficulties when it comes to inspiring critical consciousness. When I said, earlier, that in more recent years it has become even easier to agree with Adorno, I assume the reader knows the sort of thing I have in mind: the contemporary prevalence of rock artists and “music” that, from the veritable get-go, are thoroughly shaped by commercial imperatives, where the making of music is fundamentally a corporate process, where there are no real musical decisions but instead business decisions, and where the planned outcome is marketable and interchangeable product.
Anyone who cares about the possibility of important music has already thought and worried about this state of things endlessly, so I won’t go a great deal further into the issue here. What I want to highlight, instead, is the fact that the mainstream of rock music “criticism” is complicit in this affair by its disavowal of the episode of progressive rock. So, by way of reconnecting with the more specifically musical developments in rock music, I want to argue that, whereas it is admittedly a one-sided approach to the history of rock music to understand it as precursor to progressive rock, the cancellation of the period of progressive rock is also an assault on the idea of rock music having any greater significance than as simply entertainment for adolescents (or preadolescents or those remembering adolescence). In other words, progressive rock presents a challenge, but this is a challenge implicit in the history of rock music up through the late sixties. In order to show the possibilities that progressive rock music (or any other rock music during or after the time of progressive rock) might have for either a radical negativity or a radically utopian stance, it is necessary to show that the form (rock music) has always carried within it the seeds of these capacities and that these seeds have not been snuffed out by the overwhelming force of the culture industry and postmodern capitalism.
At the origins of rock music we find a minimal adherence to song form, distilled through a lot of energy, banging, and noise. Rock music has roots in folk and country music, but especially in rhythm and blues. This latter itself has roots in jazz, gospel, blues, the tradition of American popular song that we associate with such greats as Cole Porter, the Gershwin brothers, and Tin Pan Alley, and, of course, more generally in that untotalizable wellspring known as the African American Experience. It is not inappropriate to see a single individual, namely Ray Charles, as the “midwife” of rock and roll. Charles especially forms a link between jazz and rock, in the form of rhythm and blues. When one thinks of his piano style, both energetic and yet tightly controlled, then one also sees the influence of honky-tonk and boogie-woogie music in the process by which a new synthesis emerged. (Of the progressive musicians, Keith Emerson is almost alone in occasionally putting this style in the forefront of the mix.) Another tendril reaches out to ragtime music. Another key transitional figure was Louis Jordan, singer and alto saxophonist whose use of horns along with a raw, rocking sound formed a transition between swing-era big-band music and rock.
What’s most interesting, then, is the way that this complex set of ingredients led to, at first, what seemed to be a rather simple style. Put this way, however, perhaps we should acknowledge that early rock was not as simple and straightforward as it first appeared to be. My own preference, in terms of the early rockers, is for a well-known triumvirate, namely Chuck Berry (b. 1926), Little Richard (b. 1932), and Jerry Lee Lewis (b. 1939). It boggles the mind to think that Chuck Berry, the oldest of the three, is now over seventy years old! This triumvirate represents an interesting mix: two black, one white—specifically “white trash”; one from the industrial north (well, St. Louis at any rate), the other two from the Deep South. At least two of them had serious church backgrounds, and have spent parts of their lives on fire with religion. All three have had skirmishes with the law, on and off. All three represent the synthesis of simplicity and complexity, on musical as well as more general social or cultural levels, that made for early rock. Indeed, and not to run this word into the ground, what gives their music such power is the way that it distills complex musical and social experience into a very direct and raw form.
The best music of each is entirely expressible with just three instruments: either piano or electric guitar, and a rhythm section of bass and drums. And perhaps another key moment occurred when the piano was displaced from center stage by the electric guitar—“Move over rover, let Jimi take over!” Although it is difficult to displace talents with the intensity of Little Richard or Jerry Lee Lewis (“they don’t call me ‘the killer’ for nothin’”), in a sense
