Mitchell Hennings
Rock and Roll
Led Zeppelin, Misty Mountain Hop, circa 1971. This one song captures the intensity of the counterculture that was the late 60’s early 70’s. You can hear the hard guitar riffs, accompanied by the hard drums knocking the floorboards of your bedroom while your mother screams from the kitchen to turn it down. Rock and Roll music changed the landscape of America, from how families acted with one another, and how the youth of america grew up and developed much different from their parents upbringing. From movies, Television shows and even the way people dressed was all influenced by Rock and Roll and how the music affected the landscape. Rock and Roll galvanized the population as it wasn’t a singular, one dimensional art form it had multiple different avenues of creativity from folk rock with Bob Dylan and Willie Nelson, to western rock and roll with Elvis, and Buddy Holly and what was progressive and psychedelic rock with Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd and Rush. This drew in a lot of different people, attracting different people from different niches all agreeing that Rock and Roll brings people together.
With the turn of the 50’s-60’s the family model was to be a proper center for morals and the centerpiece of the nation. It has been said over and over again, to have a strong nation a nation must first have a strong family to carry the weight of the nation. The white house released a statement in June of 1960, giving the United States “recommendations” on how to raise a proper family. It highlights how families should “develop strong values, freedom, initiative and a strong sense of self discipline”. The government at the time felt so strongly about having a strong core that it recommends the children be enrolled in a family life education course that taught children the importance of preparing for marriage and parenthood. The government suggest that the families aren’t fully responsible for their child’s destiny that’s why they suggest the class to ready the children for all that they may face in the real world. Another main focus for the family in the 1960’s was the importance of religion in the home, multiple times in the pamphlet religion is mentioned about how the “religious and communities agencies give increasing emphasis to family recreation and study the role of recreation in developing moral and spiritual values”. The beginning of the 1960’s was a time of emphasizing how important the family was, how important being a christian strong family especially at a time when the very way of life that Americans had come to know and love was under attack by the communists to the east. Being a strong center piece to a nation was more important than ever in this trying time.
But this also forced a rebellion within the youth galvanized through the uprising of rock and roll pop culture, that showed the youth that they could be their own people apart from their parents and create their own values. Children growing up in the 1960’s saw that they had far less power in decision making when it came to family events and large choices. The father figure in the family held a major portion of the decision making when it came too seeing friends and relatives. This could be found to be overly oppressive, especially to the female counterparts of the family with their own part in the decision making which was incredibly low. The daughters of families only held 14% of the decision making power within the family hierarchy. Rock and roll freed some of these children giving them an outlet and the courage to rise against the mainstream family life. The rebellion started even earlier in the 1950’s with the rise of Elvis and his sexually freeing music and message he had drove society into a craze at something they have never seen before. Also with the growing popularity of the idea of love, the beatles took advantage of this hippy ideal that really was about self expression and love of oneself and others around them. The counterculture movement was a movement that was meant to be “anti-establishment” and that meant rallying against all forms of conformity. Rock and roll was a type of music that almost romanticized being crazy and supported being different and strange. Parts of the counterculture movement went as far to not get psychiatric help because even that was taking part in mainstream culture. Even in works of literature during this movement supported the claim that insanity was actually a benefit. “Literary works of the era upended the typical dichotomy of sanity and insanity by positing that it was the mad who better comprehended what was really happening in their society.” A moment in time when tripping on acid and taking spiritual journeys were encouraged, claiming that you would gain a better understanding of the society you lived in. Rock and roll encouraged this greatly during the year 1968, the year woodstock was held in woodstock, New York. This festival was the festival to end all, it had nearly every important figure in music there, Jimi Hendrix who was a large influencer on the psychedelic culture. The people there probably took more drugs and tripped longer than they actually watched any of the performances yet that wasn’t the point. The point was that music was transforming the cultural landscape so much that thousands of people were meeting to join together in the same event at the same time. A powerful cultural event that would shape music and culture for years to come.
The way rock and roll impacted the pop culture landscape was incredible and like nothing any of us have seen so far. Rock and roll brought forth a new age of sexuality and allowed people to move and dance as how they’ve always wanted to. For example, Ian Dury was the front man for nearly 4 bands in his tenure as a rockstar. He encouraged the sexual freedom movement with having songs titled “Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll,” “What a Waste,” and “Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick.”. These titles are just a microcosm of how the rock and roll movement led a sexual revolution. Led Zeppelin’s hit song, “lemon song”, had lyrics like “Squeeze me baby, ’till the juice runs down my legSqueeze me baby, ’till the juice runs down my leg The way you squeeze my lemon, I, I’m gonna fall right out of bed, bed, bed, bed, yeah”. What these lyrics are suggesting is that, Robert Plant, the lead singer for Led Zeppelin is having a sexual encounter with a woman. This would have never been acceptable in the immediate post war society that was America. But slowly, with more and more freedom due to technology like the tape player, people were able to have a more personal experience than before. Before the age of wearable, personal technology the whole family was forced to listen to the same thing at the same time. Usually the father of the house was the one buying records and choosing when the family listened to music. This limited the children to what they could be exposed to forcing them to look elsewhere for ways to express themselves. Rock and roll offers an outlet for the youth of America. But Rock and roll was not just a creatively and emotionally oppressed youth it was also for the adults and the many different creed within the United States. The genres differ primarily by geography and the cultures within those areas. For example if you lived in california during the 60’s and 70’s you probably listened to The Doors with Jim Morrison or The Grateful Dead, following the band from city to city and self titling yourself a “dead head”. If you were from the midwest you might have listened to Bob Dylan or Willie Nelson which were two folk rock musicians whose music would have inspired tales of the wild west. The new rise in music that had different subcultures was a huge turning point for American culture and the rise of new individuality.
