Rock and Roll and the Youth Tribes of Albion

That Totemic Year 

Again and again, 1955 is cited by cultural commentators as the year in which things started to change in America and the West. 
 When it comes to Britain, there seems to be no doubt that within the space of a mere two generations, a spectacular rise in criminal violence from the low rates of at least the previous two centuries, occurred from about 1955. This same rise coincided with increasingly large-scale denigration of such traditionally sanctified Christian institutions as marriage, pre-marital purity and the two-parent family, which had always been seen as the enemy by various revolutionary tendencies within art and politics, while being respected by the majority, and affected every industrial nation apart from Japan.
 The truth is that far from being a unique historical event devoid of precedents and precursors, the post-war cultural revolution, whose repercussions continue to be felt throughout a tragic broken West could boast historical roots reaching at least as far back as the European Enlightenment. Since that time, the Western World has been consistently assailed by tendencies hostile to its Judaeo-Christian moral fabric, and the Counterculture of the 1960s was simply the culmination of many decades of activity on the part of revolutionaries and avant-gardists, especially since the First World War.
 Thence by the time of the Hippie revolution, much of the groundwork had already been done, not least during the two immediate post-war decades. 
 During this brief 20-year period, the Existentialists, Lettrists and Beats became international icons of revolt...Britain's first major youth cult surfaced in the shape of the Edwardians or Teddy Boys...a cinema of youthful discontent flourished as never before, fuelling a desire among many young people to be identified as rebels and wild ones...and Rock and Roll took over the world with Elvis Presley as its first true superstar. 

Even the Beatles Themselves

In the still relatively innocent Britain of early 1963, seminal Pop groups such as the Searchers and the Dave Clark Five - even the Beatles themselves - were quaint and wholesome figures. They fitted in well in a nation of Norman Wisdom pictures and the well-spoken presenters of the BBC Home or Light Service, of coppers, tanners and ten bob notes, sweet shops and tuppeny chews. But it wouldn't be long before the Rolling Stones, the band with the outlaw image that contrasted so violently with that of the four lovable moptops, started threatening the Beatles' position as Britain's number one Pop Group.

Pop Transmuted into an Art Form

Rock was Pop transmuted into an art form, while somehow including Pop as its less intellectual counterpart. 
It included both Soft and Hard Rock, as well as the sophisticated Art Rock of acts and artists as diverse as the Beatles, Frank Zappa and the Doors, and the out and out Progressive Rock of Yes or Emerson, Lake and Palmer.
For Rock was split into two categories...Underground and Commercial. The latter being pure Pop, whose domain in the UK was the hit parade featured weekly on the long-running TV programme, Top of the Pops.
 The Underground, on the other hand, was composed of acts and artists who made music largely for the growing album market. And there were those among them, such as Led Zeppelin, who never graced the singles chart despite earning fortunes through concerts and album sales.
 But it was Frank Zappa (and the Mothers of Invention) who arguably more than any other artist
originated the genre; although the notion of Rock as art had evolved by degrees in both Britain and America, with both the Beatles and Bob Dylan being especially influential in this respect. 
 Yet while both Britain and America served as the cradles of Art Rock, Prog was characteristically British, with King Crimson, Emerson, Lake and Palmer, Yes, Gentle Giant and Genesis going to serve as early exemplars. And in keeping with its position within the rebel music of Rock, its lyrics often inclined to a darkness of tone which was characteristic of much of the musical Underground of the late 1960s.
 Speaking of which, from about 1972, Prog set about returning to the Underground whence it emerged. And from there, set about influencing acts and artists within a vast diversity of genres, including Glam, Jazz Rock, New Wave, Post-Punk, and Alternative, in fact, one might go so far as to say it's been ubiquitous ever since.
But a new Rock revolution was underway in the shape of a heterogeneous mix of Rock and Pop allied to an outrageous androgynous image. Ultimately known as Glam Rock, it had begun to infiltrate the British charts as early as '71, while making little impact on the US, despite the fact that several of its pioneers were American.

During the Glam Rock Epoch

The mid to late sixties witnessed an extraordinary explosion of androgyny on the part of the Western male, which served to pave for the way for the Glam Rock movement, pioneers including the Rolling Stones, the band that effectively invented the genre, the Kinks, Barrett era Pink Floyd, early Soft Machine, and Alice Cooper.
While 1972 could be said to be the year in which the androgynous seventies really began, as the excitement surrounding the Alternative Society and its happenings and be-ins and love-ins and free festivals and so on started to fade into recent history. 

What a time it was, a time of constant, frenetic change in the wake of a social revolution that had been all but bloodlessly waged only a few years before.

In the UK, Glam swept a host of musicians who'd been striving for major success since the early '60s to fresh levels of stardom. Such as David Bowie, Elton John and Rod Stewart. For all three had first appeared on record as part of the British Blues Boom...Bowie and Stewart in '64, and John in '65; and despite being idolised at the height of Glam, they continued to be admired as serious album artists.

What a time it was, a time of constant, frenetic change in the wake of a social revolution that had been all but bloodlessly waged only a few years before.

For there were two major strands of Glam in its heyday of ca. 1971- 73, one being allied to the consciously artistic tradition of Progressive Rock, the other, to the purest pure Pop. And among those acts and artists affiliated to the former were David Bowie, Roxy Music, Mott the Hoople and the Sensational Alex Harvey Band; while the latter embraced T. Rex, the Sweet, Gary Glitter, Slade and Wizzard. While there were many more who either flirted with the genre from within the confines of Prog, such as the Strawbs, or existed on its fringes, such as Silverhead.

What a time it was, a time of constant, frenetic change in the wake of a social revolution that had been all but bloodlessly waged only a few years before.

As to stateside Glam, pioneered primarily by Alice Cooper, it went on to include such cult icons as Iggy Pop, Lou Reed, the New York Dolls, Jobriath and Brett Smiley; as well as singer-songwriter, Todd Rundgren, a serious candidate for the most gifted Rock artist of all time. While several major acts were briefly touched by it; such as Aerosmith and Kiss, but it would not be until the 1980s that Glam entered the American mainstream in the shape of Glam Metal.

What a time it was, a time of constant, frenetic change in the wake of a social revolution that had been all but bloodlessly waged only a few years before.

Glam had been carried into the UK mainstream by one Marc Bolan, ne Feld, who had been featured in 1962 in a magazine called Town, as one of the Faces, or leading Mods, of the Stamford Hill area of North East London. Although by then he'd moved with his family to a council house in Summerstown near Wimbledon. He went on to achieve major success as one half of the acoustic duo, Tyrannosaurus Rex; the other being multi-instrumentalist Steve Peregrin Took who, like Bolan, was a leading figure of London's Hippie Underground centred on Ladbroke Grove.

What a time it was, a time of constant, frenetic change in the wake of a social revolution that had been all but bloodlessly waged only a few years before.

But In 1970, Took was replaced by percussionist Mickey Finn, who shared Bolan's love of old-time Rock and Roll. And as T. Rex, they had their first top 5 hit in the shape of Ride a White Swan. And by the time of their first number one the following year, T. Rex were a four-piece band, with Bolan the biggest British teen sensation since the Beatles. While the Bolan phenomenon was dubbed T. Rextasy by the British press...and all throughout the land, bedroom walls were adorned with Bolan's fascinating elfin face.

What a time it was, a time of constant, frenetic change in the wake of a social revolution that had been all but bloodlessly waged only a few years before.

The cult of androgyny was a powerful force in Britain in the early '70s, having been incubated first by Mod and then Flower Child culture, as well as Rock acts such as the Stones, the Kinks, Alice Cooper, T. Rex and David Bowie. Furthermore, it was reinforced in the cinema by several movies featuring angelically beautiful men. And yet, you still took your life into your own hands if you chose to parade around like a Glam Rock star in the mean streets of London or any other major British city - to say nothing of the countryside - and therefore few did.

What a time it was, a time of constant, frenetic change in the wake of a social revolution that had been all but bloodlessly waged only a few years before.

There were popular songs by acts such as Slade and Gary Glitter that were like football chants set to a stomping beat; while even former skinheads were now sporting shoulder length hair. The golden age of the long-haired boot boy had lately come to pass. 
It was as if the spirit of Weimar Berlin with its unholy mix of violence and decadence had been resurrected in stuffy old England.

What a time it was, a time of constant, frenetic change in the wake of a social revolution that had been all but bloodlessly waged only a few years before.

As the '70s proceeded apace, Glam receded in terms of influence, although it would be revived in the '80s through American Glam Metal, and the British Goth and New Romantic movements; and still exists to this day. However, given the extent to which the West has become inured to outrage, its power to shock has been reduced to zero.

What a time it was, a time of constant, frenetic change in the wake of a social revolution that had been all but bloodlessly waged only a few years before. 

A Languid Cafe and Cabaret Culture

When such Glam acts and artists as David Bowie and the Sweet had first appeared on British television in full make up around 1972, doubtless there were those undilutedly masculine British males who were moved to revulsion and rage. Yet by about '74, Glam could be said to have shed much of its revolutionary potency. But by the time it had done so, it had effectuated a minor sexual upheaval by making male androgyny more acceptable than ever before. And it did so in defiance of the Bible's strict delineation of the sexual roles, and prohibition of any form of cross dressing.
 But while it had entered the mainstream as Teenybop Pop, an avant-garde form persisted, and there were those artists around 1974–76 who appeared to share a love affair with the languid cafe and cabaret culture of the continent's immediate past.
 Among these were established acts such as David Bowie and Roxy Music, and newer stars such as Steve Harley of Cockney Rebel; and Ron and Russell Mael of strikingly original LA Band, Sparks. 
Some of Roxy's followers even went so far as to sport the kind of nostalgic apparel favoured by Ferry himself, but they were rare creatures indeed in mid-seventies London. 
And the persona Bowie adopted in 1976, and which he enigmatically dubbed The Thin White Duke could be said to have been the apotheosis of this romantic Europhilia. 

The Legacy of the Soul Boys

The Soul Boys' love of black dance music was a legacy of the Mods and Skins that preceded them. 
While the Soul Boys themselves were largely working class dandies, some were in fact not Soul Boys at all, so much as elegant trendies with a penchant for floppy college boy fringes, plaid shirts worn over white tee-shirts, straight leg jeans, and winklepickers.
 And these were the kind to be found at such sumptuous places as the Sombrero on Kensington High Street ca. 1977.
 The Soul Boys also favoured the wedge haircut, which could be worn with streaks of blond or red or even green, brightly-coloured peg-top trousers and winklepickers or plastic beach sandals. Speaking of the wedge, it was taken up at some point in the late 1970s by a faction of Liverpool football fans who'd developed a taste for European designer sportswear while travelling on the continent for away matches. Thence, the Casual subculture was spawned, and the passion for designer sports and casual wear that was characteristic of its eighties adherents persists to this day among British working class youth in urban areas and towns and shopping malls large and small all throughout the land.

The Violent Irruption of Punk 

1977 was marked by the violent irruption into the British cultural mainstream of Punk. From its London axis, it spread like a raging plague throughout that landmark year, even infecting the most genteel suburbs with an extreme and often horrifying sartorial eccentricity, which, fused with a defiant DIY ethic and brutal back-to-basics Rock produced something utterly unique even by the standards of the time.
 It was genuinely dangerous being a Punk in the late '70s, and you lived in constant fear of attack or abuse if you chose to dress like one. After all, Punk's culture of insolence and outrage was extreme even by the standards of previous British youth cults such as the Teds, the Rockers, the Mods, the Greasers, the Skins, the Suedeheads and the Smoothies. 
 Britain in those days was a country still dominated to some degree by pre-war moral values which were Victorian in essence; and so that in the year of Punk, some kind of cultural war was fought for the soul of the nation that Punks constituted a cultural avant-garde in a way that would be impossible today; and that this fact goes some way towards explaining the incredible hostility Punks attracted from some members of the general public throughout '77.
 However, no sooner had Punk taken off, than it was slyly supplemented with those very elements it was reacting against; as a generation of musicians sought to fuse the attitude of Punk with the artistry of Prog. And so the New Wave was born in the shape of a vast variety of acts and artists who while progressive in the truest sense, were content to ride the Punk bandwagon all the way into the Pop charts.
 While New Wave threatened to supplant Punk at its crudest, other genres competed with it for the hearts and souls of the sybaritic young. Such as Reggae, which was Punk's most serious rival as the music of choice for Punks themselves; and Electronica, which had been pioneered all throughout the 70s mainly by so-called Kraut Rock acts such as Can, Kraftwerk and Tangerine Dream. But that Soul mutation, Disco, was its true competitor. 

You Knew New Wave

You knew you were part of the '80s when you knew Punk was no longer at the vanguard when it came to epater le bourgeois, and you were scouting around for something to replace it.

Perhaps you became a Rockabilly Rebel for a time, inspired by some contemporary Hep Cat act such as the Stray Cats, who fused classic Rockabilly with a New Wave attitude, or embraced the Mod Revival pioneered by Franc Roddam's film version of the Who's concept album Quadrophenia.

You knew you were part of the '80s when you knew Punk was no longer at the vanguard when it came to epater le bourgeois, and you were scouting around for something to replace it.

However, seminal New Wave band the Jam continued to fly the flag for the Mod Revival until 1982, when chief songwriter Paul Weller formed The Style Council, who would not have been seen as New Wave in the UK, although they would have done in the US, but what precisely does it mean?

You knew you were part of the '80s when you knew Punk was no longer at the vanguard when it came to epater le bourgeois, and you were scouting around for something to replace it.

Well in Britain, it was used to describe a form of music which while flaunting a Punk Rock attitude was marked by a relative virtuosity perhaps intended to ensure its longevity.

You knew you were part of the '80s when you knew Punk was no longer at the vanguard when it came to epater le bourgeois, and you were scouting around for something to replace it.

And given that such New Wave acts and artists as Paul Weller, Elvis Costello, Joe Jackson, XTC and the Police enjoy classic status, it was a canny development. 

You knew you were part of the '80s when you knew that Punk was no longer at the vanguard when it came to epater le bourgeois, and you were scouting around for something to replace it.

The New Romantics - Post-Punk Dandies

The New Romantics were an initially nameless youth movement whose origins lay in the late 1970s, largely among discontented ex-Punks, but who were eventually dubbed Futurists; although it was the New Romantic tag that stuck. Their music of preference included the kind of synthesized Art Rock pioneered by German collectives such as Kraftwerk and Can, as well as the highbrow Glam of David Bowie and Roxy Music. All of these elements went on to inform the music of Spandau Ballet and Visage, who emerged from the original scene at the Blitz Club in Covent Garden, and Ultravox, a former New Wave band of some renown whose fortunes revived with the coming of the New Romantics.
 The name probably arose as a result of their impassioned devotion to past eras perceived to be romantic, whether relatively recent ones such as the '20s or '40s, or more distant historical ones such as the Medieval or Elizabethan. Ruffs, veils, frills, kilts and so on were common among them, but then so were forties-style suits. 
Several of the cult's more outlandish trendsetters went on to become famous names within the worlds of art and fashion. They stood in some contrast to more harder-edged young dandies such as the Kemp Brothers from working class Islington. Their Spandau Ballet began life as the hippest band in London, famously introduced as such at the Scala cinema by writer and broadcaster Robert Elms in May 1980. In time, though, they mutated into a chart-friendly band with a penchant for soulful Pop songs such as the international smash hit, True. 
 Yet, despite its florid decadence, it was always far more mainstream than several other musical movements which arose at the same time in the wake of Punk, such as Post-Punk and Goth. For this reason, several of its keys acts went on to become part of the New Wave, whose mixture of complex tunes and telegenic Glam image partly inspired the Second British Invasion of the American charts. This occurred thanks largely to a desperate need on the part of the newly arrived Music Television for striking videos, and went on to exert a colossal influence on the development of music and fashion throughout the eighties. 

The New Bohemianism of the 1990s 

The new bohemianism of the 1990s was simply a revival of the adversary values of the sixties. For far from vanishing around '73, these values had merely gone back underground, where they set about fertilising new anti-establishment clans such as the Anarcho-Punks and the New Age Travellers, who quietly flourished throughout the '80s. And around '92, some kind of amalgam between these tribes and the growing Rave-Dance movement could be said to have taken place.

Aspects of the Rock Revolution 

As of the early 2010s, Rock and Roll, once universally seen as a music of youth, can, at some sixty years old, be enjoyed by all ages, from those who witnessed its birth and rise to prominence in the mid 1950s, and on into the '60s and '70s, embracing Beat, Blues, Acid, Heavy, Progressive, Glam, Punk and so on, onwards.

But then is that not its final victory?

Today in Britain as well as every other nation on earth, aspects of the Rock revolution can be seen and heard at any time by anyone of any age on the internet. And Rock...surely the most revolutionary music form in history, could be said it has been tamed at long last. And quietly taken its place alongside Classical, Jazz and Folk as just another facet of the teeming Babel that is the entertainment industry, provoking no more resistance from an exhausted culture than old film footage of Sesame Street.

But then is that not its final victory?

Whatever the truth, Rock no longer represents the dark side of popular music, being just one of its many faces with very little ability left to shock. 
Yet, Western society has been irrevocably altered by the socio-sexual revolution it led. 

But then is that not its final victory?

Rock and Roll as a Religion

Young people still worship at the altar of romantic rebellion as they've done since time immemorial, but not to the same extent as the generation that came to maturity to a frenetic Rock soundtrack in the tail-spinning nineteen sixties, and who can say what effect it had on them, this music...tailor-made to inspire a generation scornful of deferred gratification. 

Some cultural critics have even gone so far as to describe Rock and Roll as a religion.

Rock was ever more than another mere music form to them…being a total art involving poetry, theatre, fashion, but even more than that…a way of life with a strong spiritual foundation.

Some cultural critics have even gone so far as to describe Rock and Roll as a religion.

Clearly more than just another form of Pop, Rock was a way of life of life almost from the outset, a philosophy, an immensely influential international subculture of varying artistic and intellectual substance, one of whose prime components was rebellion against the traditional Christian moral values of the West. 

Some cultural critics have even gone so far as to describe Rock and Roll as a religion.

Yet, in the modern sense of the word, Pop is intrinsically tied to Rock, or rather was...until about 20 years ago, when the latter started to decline as the leading voice of youthful rebellion, to be slowly replaced as such by other forms of popular music such as Hip Hop, Contemporary R&B, and more recently, the incursion into the American mainstream of Electronic Dance Music. 
 Has this Electronica replaced Rock as the supreme music of youth? Or is it itself just another form of Rock?

Some cultural critics have even gone so far as to describe Rock and Roll as a religion.

What is certain is that rock has possessed an intellectual dimension since the 1960s. And many would point to one-time Folk singer Bob Dylan as the artist who more than any other helped to invest mere Pop music with genuine intellectual substance. 
 And since Dylan lent his poetic genius to a Rock scene that had been significantly reinvigorated by the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, certain artists operating within Rock and Roll have looked for inspiration beyond the confines of contemporary Pop to past movements within the sphere of artistic Modernism, such as Romanticism, Symbolism, Dadaism, Surrealism, Beat, Situationism, and so on, as well as the zeitgeists which birthed them. 

Some cultural critics have even gone so far as to describe Rock and Roll as a religion.

It could be said that Rock has been the principle repository of the avant garde impulse in the West since the late sixties, with all concomitant rebelliousness and negativity, although it would be false to say that rock has been uniformly negative, when much of it has been positive and uplifting, as well as artistically exalted. 
 And yet the fact remains that rock has helped to disseminate a culture of instant gratification throughout the Western World in the last fifty years thereby significantly contributing to the alteration of its moral fabric, for in addition to an intellectual dimension, Rock is also distinguished by a powerful spiritual one. And there are those who'd consider it to be a religion, nothing less.
 For all its wonders, no art form in history has been quite so associated as Rock with rebellion, transgression, licentiousness, intoxication and death-worship, nor been so influential as such. 

Some cultural critics have even gone so far as to describe Rock and Roll as a religion.

There are those who who'd insist that far fewer young people are enthralled by the time-honoured avant gardist exaltation of self-destructive genius than in previous rock eras. How true this is it is difficult to say, but what is certain is the worldview still exists, and may be set to explode once again, as it has done periodically since the late '60s by which time the golden age of youth and pop and had started to reveal a far more solemn visage with hard rock as its new soundtrack.

Some cultural critics have even gone so far as to describe Rock and Roll as a religion...

...a religion, nothing less.