The foundations of rock: from ''Blue suede shoes'' to ''Suite : Judy blue eyes''

442 Pages·2009·3.52 MB·English

by  Walter Everett

The Foundations of Rock
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The Foundations of Rock
From “Blue Suede Shoes” to “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes”
Walter Everett
1
2009
1
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Everett, Walter, 1954–
The foundations of rock : from Blue suede shoes to Suite : Judy blue eyes / Walter Everett.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references (p.) and index.
ISBN: 978-0-19-531023-8; 978-0-19-531024-5 (pbk.)
1. Rock music—Analysis, appreciation. I. Title.
MT146.E96 2009
781.66'09046–dc22 2008006415
Recorded audio tracks are available online at http://www.oup.com/us/thefoundationsofrock/
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
Preface
How does Hendrix get those sounds from his guitar in “The
Star Spangled Banner”? What is that weird instrument at
the beginning of “Strawberry Fields Forever”? How do both James Brown’s “I
Got the Feeling” and The Who’s “I’m Free” put me so far off balance? Why
are Brian Wilson, Frank Zappa, and Eric Clapton considered geniuses? What
is the fastest rock song of the 1960s? What makes Janis Ian’s “Society’s Child”
sound so profoundly sad? This book, which will address these sorts of ques-
tions and lead the reader to consider many more, was written to bring a richly
detailed understanding of popular music, particularly rock music, to every-
one who enjoys it, whether as a casual listener, a loyal fan, or a performing
musician. Even the professional composer, performer, or educator is bound to
improve their musical experience by reading this volume because even though
the book assumes no prior musical knowledge, it explores every domain of
rock and pop recordings in greater depth than experienced anywhere else.
Our focus is on the period 1955–69. This, after all, is the golden age of
rock music—of Elvis Presley, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Ray Charles, the
Beach Boys, the Supremes, the Temptations, Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin,
The Doors, the Grateful Dead, James Brown, Janis Joplin, Chuck Berry, the
vi preface
Mothers, the Platters, Buddy Holly, Sly and the Family Stone, The Who,
the Yardbirds, and the early Led Zeppelin. That this is considered the great-
est rock music of all time is argued in major polls and critics’ lists appearing
right to the present day. The actual music researched for this study occupies
a broad and deep range of popular and critically acclaimed recordings. Over
the better part of a year, I did little other than listen (really listen) to all 2,459
records that appeared among the top twenty positions of Billboard’s weekly
“Hot 100” singles chart, plus hundreds of notable lesser hits and more than
three hundred full albums released in the same fi fteen-year period, for a total
sample of well over sixty-fi ve hundred songs. (Modern jazz, existing in more
of a hermetic environment, while by most accounts a type of popular music,
had little impact on top album and single sales, and so is not a focus of this
study.) All of this music represents the cauldron out of which rock was born,
so this book is defi ned as covering the “Foundations of Rock Music” in refer-
ence to stylistic parentage, in reference to the embryonic nature of the era
of repertoire covered, and, most importantly, in reference to the elemental
materials—color, pitch, rhythm, form, lyrics, and engineering—that form
the building blocks of rock music. Although the surfaces have changed greatly
over the intervening years, right through the likes of the Red Hot Chili Pep-
pers, Radiohead, and Dr. Dre, the fundamentals have not.
The early history of rock unfolded in an era that witnessed an increas-
ing role of artistic experimentation in what had originally been a very direct
means of expression. Despite this once-direct connection between artist and
listener, the dominant method of musical reproduction—the transferring
of data from plastic disc to loudspeakers—has tended to dehumanize and
mystify the nature of musical sound. And because most of today’s listeners
are far less aware of the qualities of music’s elements than were preceding
generations, the most devoted and imaginative fan still misses out on a lot of
what is conveyed, even from a good seat at a live performance. Only when
listeners become consciously aware of their reactions to the despairing cry
of a wah-wah pedal, the acerbic bite of off-the-string bowing, the physical-
ity of the vocal purr, the tension underlying the anticipation of a returning
harmony, the emotional release of the consonant resolution of a phrase end-
ing, the dynamic nature of an altered scale degree, the expressive value of a
particular harmonic digression, the complacency or discomfort brought on
by contrasting rhythms, the intimacy or wide-open public space created by
the recording engineer, and the tone and phraseology of the lyric—only then
can the complete musical message come through; only then can one who
has heard a familiar song for perhaps the fi ve-hundredth time over a span of
several decades fully appreciate that experience once again as if for the fi rst
time. Thus, depending on musical preferences, the newly informed listener
will have a more vivid fantasy, a more exciting catharsis, a more compelling
preface vii
romance, a more successful rebellion—or simply a stronger distraction from
the pain of the Stairmaster—while at the same time rehumanizing all those
good vibrations.
Although this book’s subject matter—the elements of this music and their
meanings—is investigated in all possible thoroughness, there are several top-
ics and approaches that will not be found here. We are deeply interested in
what is heard from the record’s groove and the CD’s track, but not so much in
the personalities or the creative procedures by which that material got there—
that’s all great stuff, but it’s covered elsewhere. So for convenience’s sake, we
will often refer to the singer or guitarist as the song’s agent of communica-
tion without acknowledging that it could well have been a faceless composer,
producer, arranger, or even a bass player who was responsible for creating the
effect of interest to us at any given time. We’ll refer to Judy Collins’s “Both
Sides Now,” with full unspoken knowledge that Joni Mitchell wrote the song,
Joshua Rifkin arranged it, and Mark Abramson produced it, simply for the
sake of the reader who needs only to know what recording we’re discussing.
Similarly, although we may seem to be ignoring the larger intertextual picture
by which the listener contextualizes any given passage of a song into a life rich
with potential personal, cultural, and literary references, we wish to make no
claims here as to the musical or other life experiences held by the average or
even the ideal reader-listener—that is for every individual to work through
on their own. Nor are we here interested in the potential place of this or
that musical phrase within this or any other society’s cultural experience—we
thank sociologists for addressing this as they wish. There’s enough on our
plate—plenty happens within a song and many are the potential meanings of
its structures. We’ll happily leave it to others to explain how best to muse on
its social, political, and cultural contexts.
I have kept terminology as jargon-free as possible. Whereas music schol-
ars have labored in the opposite direction, developing a rich vocabulary for
achieving maximum clarity, I have sacrifi ced a great many academically useful
words and approaches in hopes of satisfying a general audience with a more
streamlined text. This will not be the place, for instance, for the reader to
discover the differences among the concepts of pitch, pitch class, and note.
It is hoped that the context of the discussion, despite any informality of
language, will at all times contribute suffi ciently to a clear understanding,
and that little if any nuance of thought has been sacrifi ced in such a direct
approach. Needless to say, concepts that have no bearing on this music will
not be referred to here, no matter how central they may be to Beethoven or
Brahms. Rest assured that if a topic commonly discussed in regard to other
repertoires does not appear in these pages, it probably doesn’t happen in this
music. Otherwise, for example, complexes such as the German and French
sixths so key to eighteenth- and nineteenth-century voice leading have their
viii preface
analogues in our repertoire, but they function here so differently, these terms
never need appear again. Perhaps a reader who discovers here the joys that can
be had in focused listening will then go on to more formal reading in music
theory and musicology as well as to a broader listening and thinking experi-
ence with many styles of music, ultimately learning about the German sixth
while studying Mozart or Tchaikovsky. Those interested in continuing their
reading but in a rock-only context are directed to the list of further readings
found on the other side of the book’s chapters.
Many readers will have some literacy in music, and can perhaps even read
musical notation. Some may play an instrument. Some may know what is
meant by the key of B-fl at, or a G-minor scale, or an E-major chord, or “an
F-sharp in the bass.” These designations are necessary for the professional
musician, and are used by all sorts of practicing players, but they are unneces-
sary for those who just listen to music—particularly the vast majority who do
not know what key a song may be in. Instead of referring to pitches by name,
all pitch relations discussed in this book will be in terms of scale degree, and
therefore reliance only on the numbers from 1 to 7 will simplify the reader’s
task in learning what is essentially for many a new language. Scale degrees
will be expressed as Arabic numbers (1, 2, 3 . . . ) when referring to individual
pitches and as Roman numerals (I, ii, iii . . . ) when referring to chords. For
those familiar with letter-name pitch spelling, initial discussion will relate
briefl y to this system through the depiction of a piano keyboard, and the
Appendix will provide note-name spellings of every single chord mentioned
in the book. This might be a good place to explain the slash notation that is
used later in the book to indicate interactions of melodic and chordal mate-
rials: the label 5/I/3, for instance, indicates that the main melody features
the fi fth scale degree, which is supported by the I chord with the third scale
degree in the bass, owing to the ordering of Arabic and Roman numerals as
separated by slashes. From a different label, 4/V, the reader should infer that
the melody has 4 over the V chord, which is presented with its root in the
bass (the default position that need not be routinely indicated as 4/V/5). All
of these concepts will be explained in due course, but the system’s mechanics
are introduced here for ease of reference.
Musical events in a particular song will often be cued for the reader by
keying them to timings programmed into digital recordings, whether taken
from commercial compact discs or downloaded from online fi les. At other
times, brief quotations of lyrics will allow the reader to identify the exact
spot at which a musical event appears. For instance, read the following cue,
taken from Neil Sedaka’s “Calendar Girl”: “[IV] yeah, yeah, my [i°7] heart’s
in a whirl, I [I] love, I love, I love my little [VIm7] calendar girl every [IIm7]
day (every day), every [Vm7] day (every day) of the [I] year (every) [IV] (day
of the) [I] (year).” The lead vocal line is given within quotations, and b acking
preface ix
vocal lyrics are parenthesized. This quote focuses on harmonic events, so that
the IV chord is seen as sustaining through the words “yeah, yeah, my,” at
which point the chord changes to i°7. The Appendix shows that the IV chord
contains scale degrees 4, 6, and 1 (a fact that will be covered in many ways
through the course of the book), and that in the key of C such a chord is
made by combining F, A, and C.
Instead of relying on musical notation, we will illustrate many concepts
with recorded examples. Callouts in the text marked “Web audio example”
refer to specifi c examples among some 285 tracks found at the book’s accom-
panying Web site that will enable the reader to focus on exactly the sound
under discussion, whether a vocal effect, an obscure percussion instrument,
a scale pattern, a harmonic relationship, or a particular rhythmic device.
(Bracketed callouts labeled “Web photo” refer to photographs at the same
site.) Whereas licensing issues prevent the quotation of signifi cant portions
of the lyrics of the songs under analysis, it is hoped that (1) the range of titles
suggested as exemplifying any given technique will permit the reader to rec-
ognize at least one familiar song for every given case and that (2) if necessary,
the convenient, legal, and inexpensive downloading of the examples referred
to here will circumvent any need to purchase a greater number of record-
ings than desired in order to get full value from this text. In many cases, a
lo-fi recording accessed without cost on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com)
would serve the intended illustrative purpose.
Some compromises in presentation were necessary in keeping to one vol-
ume a text aimed at the novice that delves into its topics in great depth.
Clear communication is this writer’s goal, and hopefully it has been achieved
by streamlining vocabulary and providing all the references that might be
deemed helpful, without the use of cumbersome footnotes. Nevertheless, the
book’s ideas are tightly packed and the reader should not hope to absorb them
quickly or in large doses. In fact, the abundance of materials in this book are
offered in order that, carefully examined and considered, they may continue
to reward quite a deliberate study if desired. The book’s contributions will be
found most enriching when the text, Web audio examples and photographs,
and the cited recordings from 1955–1969 are consulted together, fully com-
pared back and forth. It is hoped that the reader’s patience and the invest-
ment of time required by some of the more involved discussions will be well
repaid. And whereas I have labored for years now to refi ne this book, errors
have undoubtedly escaped my notice, and I would be grateful to readers who
might inform me of necessary corrections.
The book is organized so as to cover all fundamental aspects of rock music
and its popular cousins in a sequence that will best help the reader grow in
knowledge and confi dence. We begin with fi ve chapters focusing mostly on
uses of instrumentation and voice, as most of these sounds—guitars, bass,