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History 300 fall12 Final

The Power Behind Rock and Roll Journalism: The Teacher, The Fan, The Critic and The Rock star

A rock and roll journalist is a person who loves to believe that rock and roll* is an art form that should be cherished, criticized, remembered, and seen as historically relevant. At least, this seems to be the way that these Journalists define themselves. The fan’s interest in the genre fueled a power struggle over how the genre should be presented. I’ll use analytical writings that focus on the style and impact of four different journalists. James Henke, Who was a writer for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, and Rolling Stone Magazine see’s himself as and some kind of rock and roll educator/advocate. James Henke seems to represent the ideals that are found within each other journalists respective style. His perspective seems to showcase how all of the journalists see themselves as public advocates for rock and roll.[1] Jane Scott covered rock and roll to represent the love of the genre. She was the fan. Her perspective on rock and roll is important because - in what became a dominantly male profession - she was the first rock and roll journalist. She wrote for the Cleveland Plain Dealer.[2]Jann Wenner created Rolling Stone Magazine in 1967 because he had no place to publish his own writings. Born was a publication who’s goal was to be the voice of the generation that listened to rock and roll. Wenner wanted to create a powerful – critical voice in this emerging culture.[3] Lester Bangs really wanted to be a rock and roll star, he lived the life he wrote about, and felt as if his typewriter was his instrument. Often time’s people would read a Lester Bangs story for the same reason they would listen to improvisational music. Lester Wrote for Cream and Rolling Stone.[4]All of these writers share a common voice in that they all declare a love of rock and roll music, and the culture that it spawned. Where they differ is in how they choose to give power to this voice. This paper will explore four historical perspectives surrounding rock and roll journalism in order to understand how the creative ambitions of journalists can create a powerful voice in the public’s perception of rock and roll.

James Henke was chosen to be the curator of the Rock and Roll hall of fame & Museum. This was due in part to his involvement with Rolling Stone Magazine, even co-editing the publications version of rock and roll history. “Having had no prior experience as a curator, I approached the museum as if I were doing a book about the history of rock and roll, which, of course, I had done a few years earlier.”[5] The people who have a far reaching- powerful voice in how the public remembers rock and roll chose him to tell their story because he felt comfortable trying to represent the history of rock and roll; he had already done it. To do this he approached the museum as a place to hold multiple stories for people to interact with. He employed rock journalists and historians to tell these stories. The museum was being constructed in 1994, which meant he could look retrospectively at the material that was covered thus far. Henke, “I have spent the last thirty years involved in the study of rock and roll, as a writer, an editor, and now, a curator. And the products that result from that study—magazine articles, books, museum exhibits—go a long way toward educating people of all ages about the history and importance of rock and roll.”[6] The way in which Henke chose to curate the exhibits shows me that he saw the profession as able to speak to the public about the history of rock and roll. This is interesting because the ways in which the journalists wrote about rock and roll showcased a love for the genre, but were varied.

Jane Scott was the first rock and roll journalist in the United States of America. The Cleveland Plain Dealer hired as society writer, she had 2 pages. One was geared toward teen readers, and the other was meant for senior citizens. On September 15, 1964 she covered The Beatles concert in town. After that her teen page changed to the first rock and roll newspaper page in America. Elizabeth Weinstein claims that, “When Scott turned the Plain Dealer's "Teen Page" into a rock and roll page, she had little opposition; she was clearly onto something, but more importantly, she was onto something that few of her colleagues cared as deeply about as she did at the time.”[7] Jane Scott saw an opportunity to be a part of something she had come to love. In doing so she was able to attract the attention of the fans that loved the genre like she did. Her goal was to write for them. Weinstein then goes on to say that, “In many ways, Scott stood apart from other rock critics: she was an older female who had a distinctive fashion sense about her; even her interview technique differed from the hard-hitting, innately critical, and oftentimes cynical approaches of other rock critics such as Lester Bangs, Greil Marcus, Jon Landau, and Dave Marsh. Her approach, intentional or not, was often that of a caring mother or grandmother.” Her younger male contemporaries later criticized her for her journalistic style. This raises the Question: When the style Jane Scott created - the first style - was criticized in the 70’s by her male contemporaries, was it because of her gender or age? Weinstein says, “Scott, for her part, was adamant that her gender was never an issue, and she was treated fairly throughout her career. Further: more, such criticism of her work did not bother her because her job was first and foremost to report on what she saw and heard, sparing readers her personal views”[8] Scott felt as if her gender was a non issue. The love Scott was trying to portray crossed gender lines. Her goal was to create an objective story surrounding the night’s events that portrayed the love that she felt for the art. So then, why did her male contemporaries only view her as a piece of the story, and not a relevant journalist?

Jan Wenner wanted to create a paper that could lend a power to his voice by using creative criticism, and arguing perspectives on every aspect of the rock and roll genre. He accomplished this by using journalists who he felt could best place themselves somewhere in between the trivialized perspectives of the teen magazines, which Scott represented; the negative perspective of “Mainstream” press; and the over- complimentary views (comparing the artists to Greek philosophers) of other early music magazines such as Crawdaddy![9]Scott’s perspective was now seen as too trivial, so it had to be questioned like everything else. Robert Draper writes, “Wenner’s mentor and Rolling stone’s co-founder, Ralph Gleason, often said, “Don’t analyze it. Dig it.” But Gleason, a brilliant man of a thousand opinions, also subscribed to the corollary: Something not worth arguing about was not worth digging.”[10] This is the essence of what Rolling Stone was founded on. Wenner urged his writers to express their love of rock and roll by creating arguments around, and questioning their subject matter. They were presenting their unique perspectives in order to get the public to interact with the subject matter in the same manner as they were. This created a more powerful perspective for the public to latch onto because they were now interacting with the literature surrounding the their favorite music the same way they interacted with music it was covering. It’s as if Jan Wenner was, intentional or not, creating rock star journalists to cover rock and roll artists.

“As a music writer myself, I’ve heard that when they’re at their best, they don’t create music so much as music passes through them and out their instrument. Having shared an office with Lester, I can remember sitting there in awe, watching him write, literally, as fast as he could type.”[11] John Morthland who worked with Lester Bangs chose to remember Lester the same way he remembered the musicians he had covered. The way Lester wrote explains how he could often criticize an album in a negative way and then later describe it in a positive light. Morthland continues, “ It explains how he could write such a delightfully scathing put down of an album, such as the Mc5 review that appears in this book, only to decide later that the same LP is an all- time classic, and be equally credible both times.”[12] The style Lester Bangs created has power because his erratic writings allowed for personal imagination and speculation within the genre, adding even another perspective for the public to ponder. “And certainly nobody in his right mind could minimize the former Lester; he was there for everybody to see”, said Morthland.[13] Lester is an example of an art form coming full circle, he was a rock star like figure, that covered rock and roll artists, and in doing so, inadvertently or not, he allowed his readers to adopt that same mentality into their analysis of the art of rock and roll. Lester Bangs died of a drug overdose in 1982, the kind of death he would probably call cliché’ - at one time or another.

Morthland also uses Lester’s style as a lens to analyze the kind of power the current state of the profession might be remembered as having. When piecing together Mainlines, Blood Feasts, and Bad Taste: a Lester Bangs Reader he noticed something in Lester’s writings, he noticed fanaticism. Morthaland says, “The subject is debated virtually any time two or more rock critics wind up in the same room” with the arguments usually surrounding saturation of the job market, and the hand that American Capitalism plays in the sales and marketing of the art form. He continues, “These are all good and true insights, and I’ve made them myself at various times, but the single factor that strikes me the most after months of immersion in Lester’s work is that rock writers don’t fantasize these days. Period. ‘Nuff said.”[14] Morthland is contesting that the voice of todays rock and roll journalist has less power than before because they have lost their extreme and uncritical enthusiasm or zeal that rock writers and editors like Henke, Scott, Wenner and Bangs had. It is this uncritical enthusiasm or zeal that allowed them to create a voice as powerful as they did because their brand of objectivity lives in the elusive world of fanaticism. This very fanaticism is merely just an echo of the larger public feelings surrounding rock and roll music.

The public perception of rock and roll is influenced by the creative fanaticism of writers who covered the genre. This allowed these writers to have a powerful voice in explaining an art form. Bringing creativity into a profession - that’s goal is to be the bearer of news to the public - destroys any sort of stable basis for judgment from the public. Lester Bangs was tired of the fans accepting all aspects of the genre; he wanted you to react to the music in any way. Jan Wenner felt that rock and roll music was important enough to question merely because the public was fanatic about the genre. Jane Scott wanted to fairly describe to her teenage readers what was happening at these wonderful events, and she captured the heart of her subject and readers both. Henke would say that there in no problem at all with journalists being keepers of rock and roll history, he even encourages it. All of these journalists are one hundred percent right. They are covering something that has always been hard to define. These writers knew trying to define it would be hard, so instead they defined the feelings surrounding rock and roll. The public seemed to enjoy all of these writers strange analysis. I gathered most of my information from journalists writing about Wenner, Scott, and Bangs. This information exists because all of them are now celebrated public figures. These people really blew the door open to objectivity; everybody is open to approach the subject any way they please. There is power in that. There is no longer a right way to do rock and roll journalism.

*Soundtrack to the paper:

Justin Townes Earl – Nothings going to change the way you feel about me now.

Whiskeytown – Strangers Almanac, and Faithless Street

The Beatles – Rubber soul

The Rolling Stones- Out of Our Heads (uk); Hot Rocks 1964-1971

Mc5: The Anthology 1965-1971

Cloud Nothings – Cloud Nothings

Bibliography

Bangs, Lester, and John Morthland. Mainlines, Blood Feasts, and Bad Taste: a Lester Bangs Reader. New York: Anchor Books, 2003.

Draper, Robert. Rolling stone magazine: the uncensored history. New York, NY : HarperPerennial, 1991.

Henke, James. “From Journalism to Exhibits: The Public Classroom of Rock and Roll.” Journal of Popular Music Studies 21, no. 1 (Apr2009): 102–107. doi:10.1111/j.1533-1598.2009.01173.x.

Weinstein, Elizabeth M. “Married to Rock and Roll.” Journalism History 32, no. 3. Communication & Mass Media Complete (Fall2006): 147–155.

* Rock and Roll is the hard to define term used in this paper to describe the popular form of music and culture that emerged out of various art forms being practiced globally in the middle of the twentieth century

[1] Henke, James, “From Journalism to Exhibits: The Public Classroom of Rock and Roll.”

[2] Weinstein, Elizabeth M., “Married to Rock and Roll.”

[3] Draper, Robert, Rolling stone magazine: the uncensored history.

[4] Bangs, Lester, and John Morthland, Mainlines, Blood Feasts, and Bad Taste: a Lester Bangs Reader.

[5] Henke, James, “From Journalism to Exhibits: The Public Classroom of Rock and Roll,” 3.

[6] Ibid., 1.

[7] Weinstein, Elizabeth M., “Married to Rock and Roll,” 4.

[8] Ibid., 6.

[9] Draper, Robert, Rolling stone magazine: the uncensored history, 9.

[10] Ibid.

[11] Bangs, Lester, and John Morthland, Mainlines, Blood Feasts, and Bad Taste: a Lester Bangs Reader, xiii–xiv.

[12] Ibid., xiv.

[13] Ibid., xvi.

[14] Ibid, xiv–xv.

#Rolling Stone #Jan Wenner #Jane scott #Lester Bangs #Rock and Roll Journalism

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