Rock Personified
I was born in 1954, on a Sun-drenched Union Avenue in Memphis, Tennessee. I was christened by Alan Freed, barking disc jockey banter into the nebulous, New York night. A bi-racial rebel, I brought White energy and Black energy together in an orgasmic howl of rhythm, rebellion, and soul, better articulated by the quivering of a Tupelo boy’s leg than an Aristotelian scholar. I would shake, rattle, and roll my way through sock hops and bandstands. My siren song would beckon teenage boys to drop coins in jukeboxes and teenage girls to drop their inhibitions in the back seats of cars. Some would try to pray me out of existence. Others would see my fury tamed by fabricating clean cut teen idols meant to steal my thunder. They failed. I endured.
I’ve heard the claims, first whispered in grieving huddles of the heart-wrenched and the hurt and later immortalized in verse, that the music died in a desolate, Iowa cornfield, on a frigid February morning when the stars fell from the sky and came crashing back to Earth. It is true, I was wounded, and Buddy Holly, J.P. Richardson, Ritchie Valens, you left a void. Yet, I chose to focus on your eternal youth and everlasting voices, not the magic you never had the chance to create. It would not be the last time I made that choice.
The decade turned and the torch was passed. A new generation of parameter pushers and myth makers was on the ascent. I would serve as the soundtrack of their lives. I would visit the cavernous clubs of London, and then return to my own country with the force of foreign accents and mop-tops, so strong and all-encompassing, it felt like an invasion.
I would build a Wall Of Sound, dance in Motown, scream in Shea. I would grow my hair, combat conformity, separate the generations, revolutionize sex, inspire a counter culture to rebel against the advance of the all mighty dollar for, in the end, “all we need is love.” I would attend sit-ins and hang out with the best activists and artists. I would build my communes, tear down the barriers that kept my people from the joy, which existence was always meant to be, and I would do it all with a power chord and a smile. Remember Woodstock — then you weren’t there (rim shot, take a beat.)
I ran through the jungles of Southeast Asia with American soldiers while I worked tirelessly to bring them home. I marched in Chicago, while the whole world watched. I stumbled at Altamont, and, for that, I am truly sorry.
Now, firmly entrenched as a recognized force of cultural influence and political change, I flirted with androgyny. I produced cross-dressing rock stars from outer space, sprinkling Stardust on their adoring fans. I watched as arenas across the globe began to explode in a flash pot frenzy of fire and blood, makeup and theatricality. I brought brothers and sisters together to march for equality and I welcomed female artists who had the Heart of lions. I devised concept albums, complete narratives told in song, whose tracks would pack the playlists of radio stations across the FM dial.
And then…the dark days came. I found myself seemingly losing ground to a mindless, repetitive, producer-driven dance groove. Initially, I was too stunned to respond. It seemed unfathomable that I, and all I had accomplished, could be pushed aside for a falsetto driven falsehood which suggested that to “boogie” was to live. Disco, the ultimate expression of escapist, Me-Decade narcissism had descended like a musical Anti-Christ, leading people astray with its unchanging beat and questionable quality.
I clung to my disciples and they to me. We spent two, two and a half, years simply “riding the storm out,” but we held on to our convictions because, deep down, we knew we had The Knack. And in 1980, I returned, pushing back the darkness with a whole New Wave of converts, and welcoming back those who had strayed. Discotheques turned into tanning salons and I rolled on.
I combined the subtly of the piano with the ferocious nature of a Fender guitar and produced ballads which powered their way back to the top of the charts and filled concert halls with butane fireflies. I saw the atrocity of famine in a time when governments had turned a conservative, cold shoulder to philanthropy, and I intervened. First, with recordings, and then with a live spectacle that spanned two continents and wrestled the spotlight away from the warlords of the day. I would bang my head, tease my hair, and inspire cable television, then but an infant itself, to spread my message like a technological evangelist.
Then, after all I had accomplished, all I had endured, all the expansion I had done as I cultivated pieces of differing genres and styles and molded them into a musical mosaic — Seattle called. The times they were a-changing, and regression was required. I became simpler, unadorned, but I maintained my aggressive spirit and revolutionary attitude. I just returned to articulating it with three chords.
And what about today? Well, “even children get older.” With age, I find myself beginning sentences with “remember when…” far more often than I used to. The open-air amphitheaters still rally to my call, but, on radio, I seem to be regulated to a fifty-song playlist of “classics.” Some have even proclaimed me, dead. If so, my epitaph should read like a Righteous Brothers song, ‘if there’s a Rock & Roll heaven, you know they’ve gotta hell of a band.”
Me, I guess I’m overconfident, as usual. I prefer to bet on reincarnation. Because, right now, in Memphis or Liverpool, or Peoria, there could be a ten-year-old kid picking up a guitar for the very first time, running his or her fingers across the strings, feeling the quake of the reverb and the power of the sound and beginning a journey that will change the world…again.
Discount me if you want, but be advised. I may Rock you yet.
John Limeberry is an Associate Professor of Popular Culture and Communication at Jefferson Community and Technical College in Louisville, Ky. He is the author of a personal essay, “Child of the Sixties” included in The Boom Project: Voices of a Generation.
