Borne Ceaselessly Backwards: Classic Rock Magazines

ABSTRACT

Music titles in the “classic rock” genre are one of the few still-thriving examples of the print magazine format. For old and new fans alike, they provide constant reinforcement of the rock canon and its recognized standard bearers from the 1960s and 1970s. The value of these magazines as cultural criticism is considered by way of three examples focusing on the history of Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, and the Beatles, respectively. Notwithstanding ongoing concerns as to the limited (white, male, Anglo-American) focus of classic rock narratives, this essay argues that the best of these magazines can provide a useful model for music writing that balances intellectualizing and sensation.

KEYWORDS:

• Rock canon
• music magazines
• classic rock
• music criticism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. “Masterpieces of the Century” appeared across three editions of Commentary between April and June of 1999, “Masterpieces of Jazz” between November 1999 and January 2000, and “The Great American Songbook” across four editions between February and May of 2002.

2. Fifteen years ago, Gary Burns referred to Uncut and Mojo as “must reading for rock scholars of all varieties,” while also identifying British rock magazines as “generally better” than their US counterparts (201). Nonetheless, something of the limited purview of this type of publication can be sensed from Uncut founding editor Allan Jones’s assertion that “the greatest stories tend to be from the sixties and seventies because the shape of the music business has changed so much” (qtd. in “If You Ask Me”).

3. Adding to the confusion around dates, the 1973 album Houses of the Holy is said to have appeared “forty years ago” (50), yet 1975’s Physical Graffiti is described as “thirty-five years gone” (60).

4. For an in-depth, thoughtful assessment of Page’s various appropriations/enhancements, see Gracyk, “The Song Remains the Same, But Not Always.”

5. Along the same lines, Rosalind Brunt expresses doubts about academic researchers too easily aligning themselves with everyday enthusiasts: “… what worries me more are academics who go on about being fans. I’m deeply suspicious of that, and I think it’s more honest to say that yes I’m a fan but also I am differently located, and that has certain implications and responsibilities” (80).

6. None of this is to deny that there has been plenty of fine scholarly writing on the Beatles. Yet even when reading an especially good example, such as Marcus Collins’s survey of Beatles research from the 1960s to the present day, one is again left asking, why the Beatles? In particular, one might ponder the relatively marginal status in scholarly writing of the Rolling Stones, once identified by Frederic Jameson as standing alongside the Beatles as “the high modernist moment” in popular music (54).

7. One of the best things about popular music studies is that those contributing to the field come to it from such a wide range of backgrounds – musicology, literature, cultural studies, journalism, sociology, history, and many more. My paying gig has always been in criminology and justice studies, with music and film as sidelights – though I will always see myself as an academic outsider, having been a police detective for much of my working life. All this presumably renders my authority/credibility in this context dubious, which is surely no bad thing: can there really be “experts” in a field as both extensive and indefinable as popular music?.

8. With a majority of the contributors “mere” journalists, their work also helps thwart the unfortunate myth, perpetuated by certain scholar-critics, to the effect that those “trained in music or who have received musical educations provide more informed and therefore credible interpretations … than those without such training” (Weber, 124).

9. 100 Greatest Albums You Should Own on Vinyl, produced by the same publisher (Future PLC) responsible for Led Zeppelin: Classic Rock Special Edition, is a curious case where there is no information whatsoever provided as to the author/s of the various entries. Not coincidentally, I suspect, the writing in that example is uniformly bland and peppered with inaccuracies.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Dean Biron

Dean Biron holds a PhD from the University of New England, Australia. His thesis was titled Contemporary Music and Its Audiences. His articles and reviews have been appeared in such publications as Popular Music & Society; PORTAL Journal of International Multidisciplinary Studies; These Eleven; Participations: International Journal of Audience Research; Child Abuse & Neglect; Meanjin Quarterly; and Overland Literary Journal. Dr. Biron currently teaches justice studies at the Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia.