The language of rock

Modern pop began with rock’n’roll in the middle fifties and, basically, it was a mixture of two traditions – Negro rhythm’n’blues and white romantic crooning, coloured beat and white sentiment.

What was new about it was its aggression, its sexuality, its sheer noise and most of all this came from its beat. This was bigger and louder than any beat before it, simply because it was amplified. Mostly pop boiled down to electric guitars.

Rock’n’roll was a very simple music. All that mattered was the noise it made, its drive, its aggression, its newness. All that was boredom.

The lyrics were mostly non-existent, simple slogans one step away from gibberish. This wasn’t just stupidity, simple inability to write anything better. It was a kind of teen code, almost a sign language, that would make rock entirely incomprehensible to adults.

For instance, the first record I ever bought was by Little Richard and, at one throw, it taught me everything I ever need to know about pop.

The message went: “Tutti frutti all rootie, tutti frutti all rootie, tutti frutti all rootie, awopbopadooboop, adopbamboom!” As a summing up of what rock’n’roll was really about, this was nothing but mastery.

(Nick Cohen, novelist)

I like pop as I like Coca-Cola or wrapped bread or fish fingers. They are instant and they give an illusion of nourishment. But I get very frightened when intellectuals start elevating pop to the level of important art. When they say such and such a record is great, I have to say, well, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony is great. Tristan and Isolde is great, Mahler’s song of the Earth is great; do they mean great in the same way? I presume they must. They must be making out that pop contains the same element of emotional satisfaction and intellectual complexity as Beethoven, Brahms, or Wagner. This doesn’t seem to be possible.

(Anthony Burgess, novelist, composer, critic)

Was one to believe, for example, that the technical virtuosity of a guitarist such as Jimi Hendrix and the musical illiteracy of a group like “The Love Affair” should both be described as “pop music”? They are totally different not only in degree but in kind. Was one to say that a singer with the spine-chilling anger of Bob Dylan was in the same world, let alone the same league, as a singer with the raucous, tear-jerking tastelessness of Vikki Carr? Yet, for better or worse, all four are categorized as “pop music’.

Pop is more misunderstood, misquoted, misrepresented and maligned than any other comparable phenomenon today. Its products are often inflated out of existence through self-important and overzealous praise, or else unnecessarily brought down by the adolescent and gossip-laden gruntings of many of those involved. The result has been that what is known as pop music has become confused and confusing. That some pop music may have ceased to be popular and become music, is a possibility hardly given its proper chance to be heard.

(Tony Palmer, film director)