More than any other art form, rock music needs its fans. Its power, its very raison d'etre, is dependent on fans. Poets can scribble away in their attics, painters can stand in a field alone and paint. Even movies and television, seemingly social art forms, put a screen between the art and the audience. But a rock musician without an audience might as well not exist.
On a basic level, fans created rock'n'roll—or at least midwifed it into existence. They heard the new sounds in the early '50s and responded, making it the most popular music of the era. Had it been up to the music business (or the parents), rock'n'roll might never have existed.
But it goes deeper than that. There is an unprecedented level of interaction between rock musicians and their fans. This interaction gives rock music its energy, its direction, even its meaning. It operates on many levels, from the communal experience of the rock concert, to fan clubs, to the level of identification which occurs between fans and their rock heroes.
I can think of no other art form which celebrates its fans so directly. Look at all the rock songs about rock fans, from Chuck Berry's "Sweet Little Sixteen," through Lou Reed's "Rock'n'Roll" to The Ramones' "Sheena is a Punk Rocker." Sure, there are lots of books about reading, but most of them are "How-To's", and even those that celebrate the joys of reading are written in the first person, ie: "I enjoy reading, and here's why," not, "Here's a portrait of a typical reading fan." There are plenty of movies about the magic of movies, but they are almost all about making movies, not watching them (with the exception of Woody Allen's ouevre).
Of course, there are also plenty of songs which—rather than celebrate the fan—disparage them, from The Who's "Sally Simpson" to the Beatles's "Glass Onion," to damn near the entirety of Pink Floyd's The Wall, but this just further proves my point. These songs are also about the importance of the fan.
The nexus of this interaction is, of course the rock concert. That is where the fans and the musicians interact most directly. Of course, musicians of all genres give concerts, but few of them rise to the level of communal participation of a rock show. From the early Allen Freed shows through the Fillmore and Woodstock, CBGBs and Lollapalooza, rock concerts have been communal events; at times the community actually takes precedent over the music (this is true, more or less, of all the examples I just gave). In any event, a rock concert joins the artist and the fans in a rite of Dionysian proportions (at least, when done right).
What I mean here is that the concert gives the audience a chance to, however briefly, step outside of themselves, lose themselves in the music. Of course, one can do this at home (some fine herb and a good set of headphones, and away you go), but at a concert you can lose yourself collectively. A mosh pit is a clear example of this, but it also includes the trips festivals of the '60s, and all those screaming teenyboppers at Beatles show. And even those are just familiar manifestations of a private, yet communal event. That may seem like a contradiction, but it happens more often than one might think, and it is the essence of Dionysian ritual—collective transcendence through external factors, whether drink or, in this case, music.
Then consider a phenomenon like Deadheads. Deadheads are probably the most extreme level of connection between fans and artists anywhere. (A similar phenomenon, in a different art form, does occur with Rocky Horror Picture Show. However, the behavior is so limited to that single movie that it stands out as an exception to how people normally appreciate movies. And I could argue that, since Rocky Horror has a rock soundtrack, it just supports my argument.) Deadheads define themselves, and direct their lives, based on a single band. But they really are different from other rock fans only in degree. Although they may not take it as far, many rock fans find direction and meaning in their favorite band.
This type of identification and interaction is what I mean when I say the fans are crucial to rock music. I can think of no other art form where the audience's interpretation of the art is considered as important.
To a certain extent, any appreciation of art is a selfish act, in that our appreciation is tied to our personal reaction to the art. For a variety of reasons, this is especially true of rock music. Partly, this is because rock is (or at least was for much of its history) young people's music. It didn't just appeal to young people, it claimed to speak for them. And the audience accepted this as true. Young people didn't just look for entertainment in rock music, they looked for themselves. The important question was not, "What does this song mean?" but "What does this song mean to ME?"
This level of identification explains a lot of rock's influence over the past fifty years. There has been a symbiotic relationship between rock music and the youth of this country. Rock musicians attempt to capture the thoughts of the youth, who then accept those lyrics as their own thoughts, and so on. Until rock music is the collective consciousness of youth. Again, I can think of no other art form where the level of interaction is as deep, or as important.
Now, it may well be the case that this was true in the fifties and sixties, and even as late as Kurt Cobain's suicide in 1993, but not anymore. And I don't just mean that hip-hop has replaced rock music as the message board of youth. I mean that message boards (as in YouTube and Facebook) have replaced music as the message board of youth. Why wait for some musician to capture how you feel, when you can broadcast it directly to the world yourself?
While, on one hand, that is a more direct and honest way of expression, the curmudgeon in me misses the communal spirit of the old way. To me, ten million people blogging about peace and love just doesn't have the impact of John Lennon singing "Imagine."
But then, I'm just an Aging Punk, and everything was better when I was young.
G. Murray Thomas writes and performs poetry because he can't sing. He can be found at myspace.com/gmurraythomas
