A Rock ’n’ Roll Revolution: Music and the Counterculture
Guest post by Findlay Stronach, Second Year Student, BA History and American Studies at the University of Manchester
One could be forgiven for thinking that the music of the late 1960s and early 1970s was a minor influence on America’s Counterculture, given the absence of scholarship on this subject. Yet in fact music was significant in establishing the power of America’s underground and avant-garde scenes. In spite of the lack of scholarship on this topic, America’s grassroot, regional music scenes played a major role in shaping the country’s civil rights activism and its anti-Vietnam War protests. Furthermore, music was a direct form of political messaging, and encouraged the psychedelic and spiritual nature of the country’s Counterculture.
Take the city of Cleveland, Ohio, which had been crucial in the emergence of ‘Rock ’n’ Roll’ in the early 1950s and which once more in the late 1960s became a vibrant centre of America’s Counterculture. The Dave Cunliffe collection, recently acquired by the John Rylands Library, contains a large collection of underground newspapers, including what is likely one of the largest runs outside of North America of Cleveland’s Great Swamp Erie da da Boom.
The Great Swamp Erie was produced in Cleveland from c1970 to c1972 by editor Steve Ferguson. The newspaper held close ties to the city’s underground radio and local concert organisers, and issues regularly included interviews with globally-significant musicians such as John Lennon as well as the city’s own icons, such as DJ Billy Bass.
Cleveland’s notoriety among Counterculture members was largely the result of the underground scene. The term ‘underground’ refers to how certain cultural forms stray away from the mainstream tide, while drawing a smaller, more diverse crowd. Issues of Great Swamp Erie confirm that music fuelled Cleveland’s underground scene during the late 1960s and early ‘70s-, empowering its press, its radio station, and its radical politics.
In 1970, WNCR was headed by DJ Billy Bass, who would later serve as vice-president of marketing at Chrysalis Records and work with artists such as Blondie and Luther Vandross. As Cleveland’s first African American DJ, Bass was heralded as a ‘newly found idol’ by Cleveland’s Counterculture supporters, and he transformed WNCR by playing psychedelic, progressive rock. On July 6, 1970, Bass introduced a full-time rock show to the station, further encouraging participation in the counterculture.
WNCR was also a notable supporter of Cleveland’s free clinics, which offered medical treatment for anyone and was particularly active in assisting those suffering from drug-related issues. In a similar lane to the underground radio, the underground press was significant in expanding anti-establishment cultural politics. Underground newspapers often featured reviews of contemporary, progressive albums, as well as local concerts. Such reviews frequently commented not only on the music played but also the presence of police at such venues. At the Mountain-Black Sabbath concert in the city in March 1971, for example, fifty policemen searched attendees for ‘guns or wine’, entirely robbing them of their dignity and self-respect.
Music ultimately played a key role in unifying members of America’s counterculture movement. The inter-connections and influence that underground media possessed in these years, as seen in the Great Swamp Erie, makes music’s importance to Cleveland, and to the general US, all the more visible and crucial to examine.
Additional Reading and Sources
Dave Cunliffe Collection at the John Rylands Library, Manchester
Blog post featuring the Dave Cunliffe Collection
