So writes Carina Chocano (n a NYT piece titled "How ‘Rock Star’ Became a Business Buzzword."
I don't know how old Chocano is, but I've been around for the entire 60-plus-or-minus years of rock and roll and I can assure you that the term "rock star" never had the golden significance she imagines. The Byrds satirized the idea in 1967:
So you want to be a rock'n'roll starAnd don't get me started on The Mothers of Invention, "Live at the Fillmore East 1971."
Then listen now to what I say
Just get an electric guitar
And take some time and learn how to play
And when your hair's combed right and your pants fit tight
It's gonna be all right
Then it's time to go downtown
Where the agent men won't let you down
Sell your soul to the company
Who are waiting there to sell plastic ware
And in a week or two if you make the charts
The girls will tear you apart
What you pay for your riches and fame
Was it all a strange game
You're a little insane
The money that came and the public acclaim
Don't forget what you are
You're a rock'n'roll star
Posts
54 comments:
"Number One with a BULLET"
I remember the 1960s and 1970s too, but I don't think I agree with you, Prof. Althouse. "Rock star" was a pretty golden term. In particular, "rock star" meant "someone who gets laid whenever he wants."
(I suppose that's sexist; there were a few female "rock stars" (e.g., the Wilson sisters in Heart) and they also presumably got laid whenever they wanted to. But the term was mostly associated with male images.)
Also, with the Pill, the Dionysian part didn't include fertility, or wasn't supposed to, anyway.
Looks as though the Times is playing catch-up on this one. Here's a complaint about the changing meaning of the term from an on-line IT trade journal article from 2008.
http://www.cio.com/article/2374019/it-organization/the-changing-definition-of--rock-star-.html
Who are waiting there to sell plastic ware
When I heard that as a kid I thought of Tupperware.
People who sold lots of Tupperware were treated as some of the first business rock stars, weren't they?
And if there was ever a low threshold, "porn star" was it.
Anybody in a porn movie of any kind at any time could call themselves a porn star.
"Funny you should mention it:
Our new single just made the charts this week
With a bullet! With a bullet!
Just let me put a little more
Rancid Budweiser on my beard right now, Baby"
Thanks, Will.
A bullet and a mud shark.
Thanks, Clark.
And hello to all who know the Fillmore East album.
Rock Stars complainting about how hard it iwas to be them and get filthy rich for leading church services of pagans in service to whomever with drugs of choice sacraments while they lived out Janis Joplin's dream is the big joke.
To bad , so sad. They are not the real deal after all.
"I remember the 1960s and 1970s too, but I don't think I agree with you, Prof. Althouse. "Rock star" was a pretty golden term. In particular, "rock star" meant "someone who gets laid whenever he wants.""
It was a media term. You yourself are identifying it as a lifestyle term — "gets laid" — and nothing infused with spirit and art (as the words in the post title connote).
Those words most closely call to mind Jim Morrison, but I don't believe we called him a "rock star" at the time (not unless it was meant as a put down). He might have been called a "god" (or a "poet" or an "artist"), but "star" was an old-fashioned word that reeked of old Hollywood and had none of the youthful power that made rock and role feel like a new culture.
Rock and roll.
I don't know what made me write "role." It wasn't a typo. I stopped and thought about it. Weird.
The young women at our vet/kennel call our dog "Rockstar" because of the fall down over his eyes. (He's a wheaten terrier, and a sweetheart.) I think this term was always ironic.
I thought about the way the article said "rock star" not — as in The Byrds song — "rock and roll star." I don't know exactly when and how "and roll" got dropped. It was a 70s process, but The Rolling Stones "I Know It's Only Rock 'n' Roll" was 19 and Joan Jett's "I Love Rock 'n' Roll" was 1975.
Younger people will tell you that rock music was a different type of music from rock 'n' roll and I've gotten into at least one heated discussion of that.
Chocano, not Chocana, and the IMDb says she was born in 1968.
I think it's fine that "rock star" is used in a generic way to refer to people who are really good at something, because it was never a useful, serious term. In reference to musicians, it was only used to refer to the hype around someone who happened to get very popular. It wasn't about anything profound. There's nothing precious and worth preserving.
In the 70's, I could not admit to myself that the "bullet," Happy Together, was my favorite part of the album.
"Chocano, not Chocana, and the IMDb says she was born in 1968."
Thanks. My mind is in a weird place this morning! I'm doing gender agreement. I was reacting to the properly spelled name when I said "great name." I like the balance of the 2 o's in the last name. I liked the name because it made me think of chocolate.
Scott Walker, rock star.
Going to see Kenny Chesney at Giants Stadium today in the Meadowlands. You could say he's a Rock Star in Country Music. Here is a video of him and Tim McGraw doing "Feel Like a Rock Star."
I was side stage at the Magnolia Fest ten years or so ago talking surfing with Chris Hillman - he was/is a surfer. I mention that Roger (McGuinn) is due up in a set or two and maybe they'll do a walk on or jam later in the festival site. The Magnolia Fest is a sprawling small scale jam fest along the Suwannee river in North Florida and there's no telling who'll you'll bump instruments with in the myriad of acoustic jam sessions that sprout up. Hillman gives me a wry sideways glance, I bite and give him a wry dig back - "You guys could do "So You Want to be a Rock and Roll Star". He laughs, I laugh and he waves me off and disappears backstage. No Chris/Roger jam that Fest. Sigh - Had my 12 string all tuned up.
It was also a term in sailing referring to professional sailors who would crew for rich owners in big events. I knew a couple of them. Two that I knew dropped dead at fairly young ages. Just a coincidence. I'm not around big time sailing anymore and don't know if it is still in common use. There are now professional sailing teams like those in Round the World Races.
One who is still in huge demand is Stan Honey, who has been offered sums near $500,000 to navigate big races. He doesn't need the money as he invented the "yellow yardage marker" in NFL TV game coverage.
Live Aid killed the rock star in 1985.
Now rock stars were expected to show some form of altruism -- they wanted to transcend being mere rock stars.
Once they did this rock-and-roll began its slow decline into irrelevance; the 'get-mine-now' of Hip-Hop replaced the dark heart of the rock star.
I am looking at you, Bono.
And Sting.
And Bruce Springsteen.
I am Laslo.
Worked for a brief spell at a music store in the early 70s, where I learned the difference between what was, in the music industry, called "rock" and "rock and roll."
Basically, the rock and roll bins had pre-Beatles 50s and early 60s music. E.g., Bill Haley, Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Danny and the Juniors, etc. The kind of music you saw on American Bandstand, hop-and-bop stuff. By the early 70s it was considered oldies music, quaint, outdated, obsolete.
Rock music was post-Beatles.
Of course there were many branches, sub-branches, sub-sub branches, etc.
I think it's fine that "rock star" is used in a generic way to refer to people who are really good at something,
Well thank you kindly, ma'am. We appreciate the dispensation.
because it was never a useful, serious term.
At least not until it came to be used for the manager who can be put in charge of any failing project because he (it always seems to be a "he") will find a way to bring it home, or the software engineer everyone wants on their project, or, basically, the way it's used in business to refer to anyone so in demand by people inside the company and customers outside the company that they generate revenue just by their presence.
Calling someone a 'rock star' has been around business since the 90s at least.
It was meant to describe someone shooting up the ladder of success. It also indicates how 0people should treat them.
In the Silicon Valley a rock star would have a degree from Stanford and Cal, would jog or roller blade at lunch time, use phrases like 'new paradigm' that would impress the executive who just spent $2 million dollars to change the company's color palette while simultaneously RIFing hundreds of employees as a money-saving exercise , and would leave the company to take a newer, bigger job before the shit he/she created hits the fan. (Any resemblance to Sun Microsystems is just coincidental).
Rock and roll is designed as Dionysian background music. Accept that and let the good times roll.
The Professor's enjoyment of the art of romance can be a special part of rock and roll music, but most of us use it as Dionysian theater dedicated to sex.
Really good Pentacostal or Bapticostal worship music today is rock and roll roadhouse music today. It incorporates love of God with a beat. Check out Casting Crowns group music.
But theses churches also have a Traditional Service featuring good Episcopalin and Wesleyan favorites to keep us old timers happy.
So Althouse's argument boils down to "not in MY head, baby!"
Meanwhile, in my head, Led Zep were rock stars. So was Freddie Mercury.
The Stones? When? I don't think so.
A few years back, Nickleback solidified the idea in the culture with their hit song "Rock Star." The video was pretty hilarious and seemed to poke fun at the idea (Playboy bunnies, Dale Earnhardt Jr., one of the ZZ Toppers, boys and girls on the street, even a bowler-hatted fellow standing before the House of Parliament in London; really? All of them want to be rock stars).
I knew the group's reviled, but I got the CD and heard their other songs.
It was then I realized that Nickleback didn't mean that song to be satirical. They were effin' serious. All of their songs were meant to be taken seriously. They were really singing to people who wanted to be rock stars. Who want to live that life they imagine the real stars did.
So much as we wish otherwise, the culture outvoted you.
Basically, the rock and roll bins had pre-Beatles 50s and early 60s music. E.g., Bill Haley, Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Danny and the Juniors, etc.
I hate it when someone calls late 50s doo-wop "rock and roll." It was too mellow and sentimental to rock.
Looking at you, "Dr." Savage, (with the side eye).
Nowadays, "Rock Star" is a beverage sold by Pepsi.
Nowadays, I look upon Jim Morrison as a damn fool. He threw away fifty years of private jets, supermodels, and getting up at noon for some stuporous, slobbering high. Mama Cass made a better bargain. A really good ham sandwich is worth dying for. But back then we all thought that Jim Morrison was knowledgeable about the dark mysteries of the universe.......,In the Dionysian mystery cults, they used to get drunk, tear apart a lamb, drink its blood, and then have orgies. Jim Morrison was our sacrificial lamb. Total crap, but that was the feeling.......Morrison even more than Elvis was the paradigm for the mythic rock star. He never got publicly fat or made bad movies, and his best songs had a kind of Wagnerian vibe for the tragic quest of a brave life.......As noted above, total crap. What I'm driving at here is that not even rock stars are rocks stars any more. Their depravity is as much a pose as the parson's piety. The term rock star can only be used in an ironic, mocking way. I would want to be described as a rock star.
@William T'wasnt a ham sandwich that killed Mamma Cass - It was a heart attack. The Ham sandwich is urban legend.
You school these young girls about what the 60's really meant, Althouse.
"Money for nothing, chicks for free."
Chuck Berry quaint and outdated, Roughcoat? I don't think so. It takes a real rock star to go on tour (even if it's just down to Kansas City) with no band.
Steve Jobs was the only businessperson that ever had anything close to the charisma of an actual rock star.
There aren't any Rock Stars anymore. It wasn't Live Aid that killed them though - as Laslo speculates. John Lennon had already tried to change the world and George Harrison had already tried to save Kampuchea. It was really only the '70s rock stars who had that heroin addled, child molesting 'dark heart'. It was an organic ending. As a female who came up just post-classic rock, I was happy about their demise (despite my acknowledgement of the charisma.) This is why Bono is so resented - pretending to be a Rock Star after their natural death.
Rock Stars were assholes. Hip hop/rap guys are assholes in a more pure form. See Kanye.
Blogger David said...
Chuck Berry quaint and outdated, Roughcoat? I don't think so. It takes a real rock star to go on tour (even if it's just down to Kansas City) with no band.
Amen, David. And he is how old now?
(Going to look it up)
89 and still rocking audiences.
That is what being a rock star is all about.
John Henry
Chuck Berry quaint and outdated, Roughcoat? I don't think so.
Read my post again. I didn't say I thought Berry was quaint and outdated. Rather, that was the attitude of record stores and the music industry vis-a-vis consigning Berry's music to the "rock and roll" (rather than the "rock")bins. That was the industry/retail consensus in c. mid-1970s. I didn't have any feelings about it one way or the other.
You seem to think that since you grew up in that era that you are ipso facto an authority on the pop culture of the time. In addition to your vast Sociological credentials, you apparently also think you're an authority in Linguistics. Your personal, provencial experiences are not, however, dispositive. I like these pop culture topics you choose but your opinions about them are often simply wrong. But the conviction with which you express them is what's most annoying. Many of us were also there, you know.
Of course the term "rock star" was not originally intended or taken to be ironic. It was adapted quite logically from "movie star" to denote the same sort of social phenomenon occurring in mass/popular culture. It was coined to differentiate between other types of stardom, e.g., movie stars, country stars, opera stars, rodeo stars, TV stars, etc. It was only hippies trying to signal their being too cool for mass culture, bourgois sensibilities, and striving/success in general who tacked on the ironic twist later after the term had already been coined (irony being, of course, the primary color of "cool"). But everyone else still knows what a "star" is. And it's mere "hype" to be a rock star? Huh! No perks? Who knew?
Zappa was indeed too cool to be a real rock star; didn't even do drugs. The Turtles were just out front dilletantes, spoofing everyone including their selves. Fun album still (compare to Lennon's Live Fillmore album for extra credit).
Meanwhile, the Byrds... Meh. Nothin but derivatives, except for a couple of covers of true "folk stars". And McGuinn's not talking about the hype, he's whining about those who think being a rock star is easy, "money fer nothin and chicks for free"--a much better song by a much better musician, btw. And they begat the Eagles who did meh even better, tho even they eventually got tired of their meh and added real "rock star" guitarists.
The terms "rock" and "rock and roll" became different when "rock and roll" bifurcated (multi-cated?)/merged into sub-genres of folk rock, hard rock, country rock, soft rock, blues rock, etc. "Rock and roll" then came to stand for pre-Beatles stuff of Elvis, Chuck, Little R, etc. The old guys, like the Stones, for example, still felt affection for the term though and used it nostalgically--unless perhaps they were being ironic. Maybe.
Lastly, the use of the term "rock star" for non rock stars is just a way of saying one is really, REALLY respected in their field. Normally, one would just use the word "star", but that doesn't somehow seem to be enough anymore, does it? Hey, nerds wanna be cool too. They just don't get irony without an accompanying wink
BN,
For someone annoyed by the conviction with which Althouse expresses her opinions you surely do have an annoying way of expressing your opinions with conviction.
Rock Star loses any remnant luster when compared to Rock Superstar, but that isn't the main reason I pasted the lyrics below.
The fact is Sony played this song for months and months as background/midground music for its commercials. To not acknowledge this subtle cultural shift is a flaw easy to make if you don't (didn't) watch TV where the inundation was most profound.
"I remember the days when I was a young kid growin' up
Lookin' in the mirror, dreamin' about blowin' up
The rock crowds, make money, chill with the honeys
Sign autographs and whatever the people want from me
It's funny how impossible dreams manifest
And the games that be comin' with it
Nevertheless, you got to go for the gusto
But you don't know about the blood, sweat
And tears and losin' some of your peers
And losin' some of yourself to the years past, gone by
Hopefully it don't manifest for the wrong guy
Egomaniac and the Brainiac don't know how to act
Just deep 48 track
Studio gangsta mack sign the deal
Think he's gonna make a mil but never will
'Til he crosses over, still
Fillin' your head with fantasies, come with me
Show the sacrifice it takes to make the G's
(Chorus)
You wanna be a rock superstar in the biz
And take shit* from people who don't know what it is
I wish it was all fun and games
But the price of fame is high
And some can't pay the way"
Read more: Cypress Hill - Rock Superstar Lyrics | MetroLyrics
*I added that word as that's how I remember it, but it wasn't in the Metrolyrics copy/paste
Re Money for Nothing by Dire Straits:
Are we even allowed to play that tune these day, much less talk about it?
o/~o/~See the little faggot with the earring and the makeup
Yeah buddy that's his own hair
That little faggot got his own jet airplane
That little faggot he's a millionaire o/~o/~
John Henry
Or as Bill Wyman put it in 1981:
Je suis un rock star
Je avais un residence
Je habiter la
A la south de France
Voulez vous
Partir with me?
And come and rester la
With me in France
Haha @GuildofCannonballs, I was thinking of Cypress Hill too. My favorite line of that song is the spoken, "Save your money, man. Save your money."
@ John Henry
I still hear "Money for Nothing" on the radio occasionally and every time I do, I'm surprised. Such a good song.
Surfed chided William: T'wasnt a ham sandwich that killed Mamma Cass - It was a heart attack. The Ham sandwich is urban legend.
But the ham sandwich story is better. That and the broken jar of mayo left on her kitchen floor.
Rough,
Lol. Good point.
This is my addition:
Hang on to your Ego
But I prefer the Frank Black version,
because when Frank Black sings it, there's no cognitive dissonance.
George Harrison raised awareness for Bangladesh during its civil war to secede from Pakistan around 1971.concerts for Kampuchea were in the 80's featured the Pretenders among others.
Interesting, as I google that Frank Black cover, I come across a Kim Deal interview in which she says, "the Pixies were a well rehearsed band." The context is the breakup of the Pixies and the idea that in a band with that many egos, the breakup was inevitable. For example, Kim Deal could never be the lead singer. No, says Kim Deal, Frank left, I don't know why. "The Pixies were a well rehearsed band."
I can imagine Buddy Holly saying that about the Crickets, or maybe one of the Crickets saying that about Buddy Holly.
Among us programmers, this is a thing:
https://twitter.com/khepin/status/578341083647590400
"And hello to all who know the Fillmore East album."
I know it only because in my senior year in high school someone or other played it many times on the school record player in the art room during art class. It's awful: snide, condescending, and puerile. And the music's no good.
Icertainly didn't expect that particular piece of Zappa from you
Icertainly didn't expect that particular piece of Zappa from you
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