The forgotten decade
rethinking the popular music of the 1970s
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/pomh.v2i1.5Keywords:
1970s, popular music, glam, hard rock, electronic music, punkAbstract
This article revisits the popular music of the 1970s, reassessing its importance as a body of work and for the development of popular music in subsequent decades. The article begins by considering why much of the popular music of the 1970s has been virtually ignored by popular music theorists. Attention then focuses on several distinctive music genres of the 1970s—glam, hard rock and the emergent electronic music scene—and the connections between them and with punk (a music genre whose 1970s origins have been much more fully documented in academic work). Finally, it is argued that even rock, a staple of popular music scholarship during the 1970s and since, has been largely misrepresented—‘rock’ in the 1970s actually being an umbrella term for a highly experimental and eclectic musical field.
References
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Adorno, T., and M. Horkheimer. 1969. The Dialectic of Enlightenment. London: Allen Lane.
Auslander, P. 2006. Performing Glam Rock: Gender and Theatricality in Popular Music. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.
Bennett, A. 1997. ‘ “Village greens and terraced streets”: Representations of “Britishness” in Britpop’. Young: Nordic Journal of Youth Research 5/4: 20–33.
—2001. ‘Plug in and Play! UK Indie Guitar Culture’. In Guitar Cultures, eds Andy Bennett and Kevin Dawe, 45–61. Oxford: Berg.
—2004. ‘New Tales from Canterbury: The Making of a Virtual Music Scene’. In Music Scenes: Local, Trans-Local and Virtual, eds Andy Bennett and Richard A. Peterson, 205–20. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press.
—2005. Culture and Everyday Life. London: Sage.
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Chambers, I. 1985. Urban Rhythms: Pop Music and Popular Culture. London: Macmillan.
Charlesworth, C. 1983. ‘Ringing the Changes: The Trendsetting Style of David Bowie’. The History of Rock 7/82: 1621–31.
Cloonan, M. 1997. ‘State of the Nation: “Englishness”, Pop and Politics in the Mid-1990s’. Popular Music and Society 12/2: 47–70.
Cohn, N. 1992. ‘Phil Spector’. In The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock ’n’ Roll, eds Anthony DeCurtis and James Henke, 177–88. 3rd ed. New York: Random House.
Dyer, R. 1990 [1979]. ‘In Defense of Disco’. In On Record: Rock, Pop and the Written Word, eds Simon Frith and Andrew Goodwin, 410–18. London: Routledge.
Fast, S. 2001. In the Houses of the Holy: Led Zeppelin and the Power of Rock Music. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Fiske, J. 1989. Reading the Popular. London: Routledge.
Frith, S. 1978. The Sociology of Rock. London: Constable. —1983 Sound Effects: Youth, Leisure and the Politics of Rock. London: Constable.
—1988. Music for Pleasure: Essays in the Sociology of Pop. Cambridge: Polity.
Frith, S., and H. Horne. 1987. Art into Pop. London: Methuen.
Frith, S., and A. McRobbie. 1990 [1978]. ‘Rock and Sexuality’. In On Record: Rock, Pop and the Written Word, eds Simon Frith and Andrew Goodwin, 371–89. London: Routledge.
Geiling, H. 1995. ‘ “Chaos-Tage” in Hannover: Vom Ereignis zum Mythos’. Vorgänge: Zeitschrift für Bürgerrechte und Gesellschaftspolitik 4: 1–6.
—1996 Das andere Hannover: Jugendkultur zwischen Rebellion und Integration in der Großstadt, Hannover. Hanover: Offizin Verlag.
Gill, A. 1997. ‘We Can Be Heroes’. Mojo 41, April: 54–80.
—1998. ‘To Infinity and Beyond’. Mojo 55, June: 64–70.
Gramsci, A. 1971. Selections From the Prison Notebooks. London: Lawrence and Wishart.
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Hebdige, D. 1976. ‘The Meaning of Mod’. In Resistance Through Rituals: Youth Subcultures in Post-War Britain, eds Stuart Hall and Tony Jefferson, 87–96. London: Hutchinson.
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Holm-Hudson, K. ed. 2002. Progressive Rock Reconsidered. New York: Routledge.
Kaplan, E. A. 1987. Rocking Around the Clock: Music Television, Postmodernism and Consumer Culture. London: Methuen.
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Laing, D. 1969. The Sound of our Times. Lanham, MD: Sheed and Ward.
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—1985. One Chord Wonders: Power and Meaning in Punk Rock. Milton Keynes: Open University Press.
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Malbon, B. 1999. Clubbing: Dancing, Ecstasy and Vitality. London: Routledge.
Martin, B. 1998. Listening to the Future: The Time of Progressive Rock. Chicago: Open Court.
Martin, G., and J. Hornsby. 1979. All You Need is Ears. London: Macmillan.
McRobbie, A. 1984. ‘Dance and Social Fantasy’. In Gender and Generation, eds Angela McRobbie and Mica Nava, 130–61. London: Macmillan.
—1994. Postmodernism and Popular Culture. London: Routledge.
McRobbie, A., and J. Garber. 1976. ‘Girls and Subcultures: An Exploration’. In Resistance Through Rituals: Youth Subcultures in Post-War Britain, eds Stuart Hall and Tony Jefferson, 209–22. London: Hutchinson.
Mellers, W. 1973. Twilight of the Gods: The Beatles in Retrospect. London: Faber and Faber.
Middleton, R. 1990. Studying Popular Music. Milton Keynes: Open University Press.
Murdock, G., and R. McCron. 1976. ‘Youth and Class: The Career of a Confusion’. In WorkingClass Youth Culture, eds Geoff Mungham and Geoff Pearson, 10–26. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Negus, K. 1996. Popular Music in Theory. Cambridge: Polity.
Palmer, T. 1976. All You Need is Love: The Story of Popular Music. London: Futura.
Petley, J. 1984. ‘Kraftwerk’. History of Rock 10/116: 2310–12.
Putterford, M. 1994. Philip Lynott: The Rocker. Chessington, Surrey: Castle Communications.
Regev, M. 2002. ‘The “Pop-Rockization” of Popular Music’. In Studies in Popular Music, eds Keith Negus and David Hesmondhalgh, 251–64. London: Arnold.
Reynolds, S. 2005. Rip It Up and Start Again: Postpunk 1978–1984. London: Faber and Faber.
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—1998. This Is Our House: House Music, Cultural Spaces and Technologies. Aldershot: Ashgate.
Rossi, F., R. Parfitt with M. Wall. 2004. XS All Eras: The Status Quo Autobiography. London: Sidgwick and Jackson.
Roszak, T. 1969. The Making of a Counter Culture: Reflections on the Technocratic Society and its Youthful Opposition. London: Faber and Faber.
Savage, J. 1991. England’s Dreaming: Sex Pistols and Punk Rock. London: Faber and Faber.
Shaar Murray, C. 1987. ‘Pure Essex Voodoo’. Q Magazine, August: 16–18.
Shuker, R. 2001. Understanding Popular Music. 2nd ed. London: Routledge.
Simmons, S. 1995. ‘Mike Mills Phones 10cc’. Mojo 20, July: 26–27.
Stratton, J. 1986. ‘Why Doesn’t Anybody Write Anything about Glam Rock’. Australian Journal of Cultural Studies 4/1: 15–38.
Street, J. 1986. Rebel Rock: The Politics of Popular Music. Oxford: Blackwell.
Swingewood, A. 1977. The Myth of Mass Culture. London: Macmillan.
Switchenberg, C. 1992. ‘Music Video: The Popular Pleasures of Visual Music’. In Popular Music and Communication, 2nd ed., ed. James Lull, 116–33. London: Sage.
Szemere, A. 1992. ‘The Politics of Marginality: A Rock Musical Subculture in Socialist Hungary in the Early 1980s’. In Rockin’ the Boat: Mass Music and Mass Movements, ed. Reebee Garofalo, 93–114. Boston, MA: Southend Press.
Taylor, I., and D. Wall. 1976. ‘Beyond the Skinheads: Comments on the Emergence and Significance of the Glamrock Cult’. In Working Class Youth Culture, eds Geoff Mungham and Geoff Pearson, 105–23. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Toop, D. 1995. Ocean of Sound: Aether Talk, Ambient Sound and Imaginary Worlds. London: Serpent’s Tail.
Waksman, S. 1999. Instruments of Desire: The Electric Guitar and the Shaping of Musical Experience. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Walser, R. 1993. Running With the Devil: Power, Gender and Madness in Heavy Metal Music. London: Wesleyan University Press.
Weinstein, D. 1991. Heavy Metal: A Cultural Sociology. New York: Lexington.
—2000. Heavy Metal: The Music and its Culture, 2nd ed. New York: Da Capo Press.
Whiteley, S. 2004. ‘ “1, 2, 3 What are we fighting 4?” Music and Meaning in the “Star Spangeled Banner” ’. In Remembering Woodstock, ed. Andy Bennett, 18–28. Aldershot: Ashgate.
Willis, P. 1978. Profane Culture. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Zak III, A. J. 2001. The Poetics of Rock, Cutting Tracks, Making Records. Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press.
Websites accessed
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock_and_Roll_%28Gary_Glitter_song%29 Accessed April 20, 2006.
Adorno, T., and M. Horkheimer. 1969. The Dialectic of Enlightenment. London: Allen Lane.
Auslander, P. 2006. Performing Glam Rock: Gender and Theatricality in Popular Music. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.
Bennett, A. 1997. ‘ “Village greens and terraced streets”: Representations of “Britishness” in Britpop’. Young: Nordic Journal of Youth Research 5/4: 20–33.
—2001. ‘Plug in and Play! UK Indie Guitar Culture’. In Guitar Cultures, eds Andy Bennett and Kevin Dawe, 45–61. Oxford: Berg.
—2004. ‘New Tales from Canterbury: The Making of a Virtual Music Scene’. In Music Scenes: Local, Trans-Local and Virtual, eds Andy Bennett and Richard A. Peterson, 205–20. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press.
—2005. Culture and Everyday Life. London: Sage.
Bennett, T. 1986. ‘The Politics of the “Popular” and Popular Culture’. In Popular Culture and Social Relations, eds Tony Bennett, Colin Mercer and Janet Woolacott, 6–21. Milton Keynes: Open University Press.
Chambers, I. 1985. Urban Rhythms: Pop Music and Popular Culture. London: Macmillan.
Charlesworth, C. 1983. ‘Ringing the Changes: The Trendsetting Style of David Bowie’. The History of Rock 7/82: 1621–31.
Cloonan, M. 1997. ‘State of the Nation: “Englishness”, Pop and Politics in the Mid-1990s’. Popular Music and Society 12/2: 47–70.
Cohn, N. 1992. ‘Phil Spector’. In The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock ’n’ Roll, eds Anthony DeCurtis and James Henke, 177–88. 3rd ed. New York: Random House.
Dyer, R. 1990 [1979]. ‘In Defense of Disco’. In On Record: Rock, Pop and the Written Word, eds Simon Frith and Andrew Goodwin, 410–18. London: Routledge.
Fast, S. 2001. In the Houses of the Holy: Led Zeppelin and the Power of Rock Music. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Fiske, J. 1989. Reading the Popular. London: Routledge.
Frith, S. 1978. The Sociology of Rock. London: Constable. —1983 Sound Effects: Youth, Leisure and the Politics of Rock. London: Constable.
—1988. Music for Pleasure: Essays in the Sociology of Pop. Cambridge: Polity.
Frith, S., and H. Horne. 1987. Art into Pop. London: Methuen.
Frith, S., and A. McRobbie. 1990 [1978]. ‘Rock and Sexuality’. In On Record: Rock, Pop and the Written Word, eds Simon Frith and Andrew Goodwin, 371–89. London: Routledge.
Geiling, H. 1995. ‘ “Chaos-Tage” in Hannover: Vom Ereignis zum Mythos’. Vorgänge: Zeitschrift für Bürgerrechte und Gesellschaftspolitik 4: 1–6.
—1996 Das andere Hannover: Jugendkultur zwischen Rebellion und Integration in der Großstadt, Hannover. Hanover: Offizin Verlag.
Gill, A. 1997. ‘We Can Be Heroes’. Mojo 41, April: 54–80.
—1998. ‘To Infinity and Beyond’. Mojo 55, June: 64–70.
Gramsci, A. 1971. Selections From the Prison Notebooks. London: Lawrence and Wishart.
Hall, S., and T. Jefferson, eds. 1976. Resistance Through Rituals: Youth Subcultures in Post-War Britain. London: Hutchinson.
Hebdige, D. 1976. ‘The Meaning of Mod’. In Resistance Through Rituals: Youth Subcultures in Post-War Britain, eds Stuart Hall and Tony Jefferson, 87–96. London: Hutchinson.
—1979. Subculture: The Meaning of Style. London: Routledge.
Holm-Hudson, K. ed. 2002. Progressive Rock Reconsidered. New York: Routledge.
Kaplan, E. A. 1987. Rocking Around the Clock: Music Television, Postmodernism and Consumer Culture. London: Methuen.
Kerrang Files, The. 2001. AC/DC: The Definitive Story. 2nd ed. London: Virgin.
Laing, D. 1969. The Sound of our Times. Lanham, MD: Sheed and Ward.
—1971. Buddy Holly. London: Vista.
—1985. One Chord Wonders: Power and Meaning in Punk Rock. Milton Keynes: Open University Press.
—1986. ‘The Music Industry and the “Cultural Imperialism” Thesis’. Media Culture and Society 8: 331–41.
Macan, E. 1997 Rocking the Classics: English Progressive Rock and the Counterculture. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
MacDonald, D. 1957 [1953]. ‘A Theory of Mass Culture’. In Mass Culture: The Popular Arts in America, eds Boernard Rosenberg and David M. White, 59–73. Glencoe, IL: The Free Press.
Malbon, B. 1999. Clubbing: Dancing, Ecstasy and Vitality. London: Routledge.
Martin, B. 1998. Listening to the Future: The Time of Progressive Rock. Chicago: Open Court.
Martin, G., and J. Hornsby. 1979. All You Need is Ears. London: Macmillan.
McRobbie, A. 1984. ‘Dance and Social Fantasy’. In Gender and Generation, eds Angela McRobbie and Mica Nava, 130–61. London: Macmillan.
—1994. Postmodernism and Popular Culture. London: Routledge.
McRobbie, A., and J. Garber. 1976. ‘Girls and Subcultures: An Exploration’. In Resistance Through Rituals: Youth Subcultures in Post-War Britain, eds Stuart Hall and Tony Jefferson, 209–22. London: Hutchinson.
Mellers, W. 1973. Twilight of the Gods: The Beatles in Retrospect. London: Faber and Faber.
Middleton, R. 1990. Studying Popular Music. Milton Keynes: Open University Press.
Murdock, G., and R. McCron. 1976. ‘Youth and Class: The Career of a Confusion’. In WorkingClass Youth Culture, eds Geoff Mungham and Geoff Pearson, 10–26. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Negus, K. 1996. Popular Music in Theory. Cambridge: Polity.
Palmer, T. 1976. All You Need is Love: The Story of Popular Music. London: Futura.
Petley, J. 1984. ‘Kraftwerk’. History of Rock 10/116: 2310–12.
Putterford, M. 1994. Philip Lynott: The Rocker. Chessington, Surrey: Castle Communications.
Regev, M. 2002. ‘The “Pop-Rockization” of Popular Music’. In Studies in Popular Music, eds Keith Negus and David Hesmondhalgh, 251–64. London: Arnold.
Reynolds, S. 2005. Rip It Up and Start Again: Postpunk 1978–1984. London: Faber and Faber.
Rietveld, H. 1997. ‘The House Sound of Chicago’. In The Clubcultures Reader: Readings in Popular Cultural Studies, eds Steve Redhead, Derek Wynne and Justin O’Connor, 124–36. Oxford: Blackwell.
—1998. This Is Our House: House Music, Cultural Spaces and Technologies. Aldershot: Ashgate.
Rossi, F., R. Parfitt with M. Wall. 2004. XS All Eras: The Status Quo Autobiography. London: Sidgwick and Jackson.
Roszak, T. 1969. The Making of a Counter Culture: Reflections on the Technocratic Society and its Youthful Opposition. London: Faber and Faber.
Savage, J. 1991. England’s Dreaming: Sex Pistols and Punk Rock. London: Faber and Faber.
Shaar Murray, C. 1987. ‘Pure Essex Voodoo’. Q Magazine, August: 16–18.
Shuker, R. 2001. Understanding Popular Music. 2nd ed. London: Routledge.
Simmons, S. 1995. ‘Mike Mills Phones 10cc’. Mojo 20, July: 26–27.
Stratton, J. 1986. ‘Why Doesn’t Anybody Write Anything about Glam Rock’. Australian Journal of Cultural Studies 4/1: 15–38.
Street, J. 1986. Rebel Rock: The Politics of Popular Music. Oxford: Blackwell.
Swingewood, A. 1977. The Myth of Mass Culture. London: Macmillan.
Switchenberg, C. 1992. ‘Music Video: The Popular Pleasures of Visual Music’. In Popular Music and Communication, 2nd ed., ed. James Lull, 116–33. London: Sage.
Szemere, A. 1992. ‘The Politics of Marginality: A Rock Musical Subculture in Socialist Hungary in the Early 1980s’. In Rockin’ the Boat: Mass Music and Mass Movements, ed. Reebee Garofalo, 93–114. Boston, MA: Southend Press.
Taylor, I., and D. Wall. 1976. ‘Beyond the Skinheads: Comments on the Emergence and Significance of the Glamrock Cult’. In Working Class Youth Culture, eds Geoff Mungham and Geoff Pearson, 105–23. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Toop, D. 1995. Ocean of Sound: Aether Talk, Ambient Sound and Imaginary Worlds. London: Serpent’s Tail.
Waksman, S. 1999. Instruments of Desire: The Electric Guitar and the Shaping of Musical Experience. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Walser, R. 1993. Running With the Devil: Power, Gender and Madness in Heavy Metal Music. London: Wesleyan University Press.
Weinstein, D. 1991. Heavy Metal: A Cultural Sociology. New York: Lexington.
—2000. Heavy Metal: The Music and its Culture, 2nd ed. New York: Da Capo Press.
Whiteley, S. 2004. ‘ “1, 2, 3 What are we fighting 4?” Music and Meaning in the “Star Spangeled Banner” ’. In Remembering Woodstock, ed. Andy Bennett, 18–28. Aldershot: Ashgate.
Willis, P. 1978. Profane Culture. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Zak III, A. J. 2001. The Poetics of Rock, Cutting Tracks, Making Records. Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press.
Websites accessed
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock_and_Roll_%28Gary_Glitter_song%29 Accessed April 20, 2006.
Published
2007-04-01
Issue
Section
Articles
How to Cite
Bennett, A. (2007). The forgotten decade: rethinking the popular music of the 1970s. Popular Music History, 2(1), 5-24. https://doi.org/10.1558/pomh.v2i1.5
