No matter what the form, all art seems to produce a similar sensation — of timelessness, of implicit order, of connectedness. It is as if the work of art had sounded some deep note, and caused sympathetic vibration in a hidden string, a string whose one end is secured in the human heart, and from there ascends towards some unknowable summit, the existence of the termination point affirmed only by the tautness of this resonant connection.
The idea of writing this article is to give credit to rock music as a legitimate and autonomous art form. Because rock has been a tremendously popular form of music, because it is still relatively young, and because it has had such an effect on our society, there has been a tendency to look at the music primarily in other ways: as a cultural influence, as a sociological force, as a popularity contest, as a business, or as a set of stories about the often colorful personalities of its performers.
I am trying to focus on rock music as an independent art form. This is not to deny, of course, that it shares important elements with other musical forms. But just as film shares important elements with other narrative forms — yet also introduces important differences — I believe that rock music brings distinct elements into play: elements that have generally not been sufficiently recognized.
As I grew older, and discovered other art forms — literature, cinema and jazz, to name those most important to me — my interest in rock music abated accordingly. I became aware that every generation rebels against its predecessors in matters of taste and style, and suspected that the musical preferences of my youth would eventually join those that came before it: one more fad that seemed all-powerful when it first rolled up onto the shore, but then left little trace once it had receded.
The hard driving bass, the fast tempo, the drum kit and the additional drums (let's call them congas) create a rhythmic mix sounding like something about to explode. As the potential of the electric guitar was gradually realized, though, the approach to music shifted. Giving a rock musician an electric guitar is like handing a visual artist brushes and oils, when all he has before are crayons. Suddenly any possible hue could be mixed from the pigments, and the size and texture of the brush strokes could be varied almost infinitely. Similarly, whole new ranges of sounds are made possible with an electric guitar. Now the ability to record the exact sound made by a musician matters: there was no standard guitar sound, no standard way to play a series of notes written on paper. With the magnification offered by electronic amplification, what were before small variations in a guitarist's approach to a song, to playing a single chord, now become important artistic and stylistic elements. As with all great art, certain constraints are necessary to challenge the artist. Part of the beauty of art is the ability to overcome such restrictions. Rock music has a theme of liberation. Rock music's unit of artistic expression is the recording. Just as modern art confuses some viewers by abandoning strict representation, bringing background elements of form and color into the foreground, rock music confuses some listeners by bringing the beat into the foreground, to compete with melody and lyrics. In classical music, and in European music in general, the composition is the primary work of art, and performance is a matter of interpreting the work. In rock music, however, a specific performance, as recorded, edited and published, is the primary work of art, and the composition is only one element of the finished work. In this sense, rock is to music exactly as film is to theatre: in both of the earlier forms, the work of art was the composition as recorded on paper; in the later forms, the work of art was the edited performance as recorded on some more direct medium.
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