"The sound of the Stones and The Animals-hard rock-gave signals about the apparent social commitments of the people who made the music, put them on the hard left socially no matter what they may have felt as individuals. If The Monkees had sounded like the Stones or The Animals no one would have given a thought to whether or not they wrote and played on their own songs."
I'm confused about the phrase "hard left." It's probably obvious, and I'm just not getting it, but do you mean "left" as in "left of the dial" (i.e., social outcasts)? You do say "socially," but I guess I'm saying I'm not really sure what social left is exactly. Or maybe it's just that I keep bumping up against this word choice as carrying a political context (in which case "hard left" definitely seems problematic... but I don't think this is what you're saying).
This is getting away from the "class" point entirely, but wasn't the TV context of the Monkees just as big a deal--if not a bigger deal--than the songwriting issue? Or wasn't it the two issues combined (plus other things I'm not considering) that cast a pall over the Monkees (among Stones fans, etc.) as being not real? Further to your point about the songwriting thing being a red herring, I find it hard to imagine that as early as '66 or '67 the songwriting issue was that entrenched as a big deal (it had only BEEN two or three years by that point that bands were writing their own songs, and some still weren't; also, I assume it was well known that most of the soul greats of the period didn't write their own songs). I guess I just think the TV thing *was* probably a big deal, and not a total red herring (and maybe it even has something to do with "class," or anyway, "access" or privilege, but now I'm just stabbing at words in the dark).
The '60s social change and the political left were perceived to be mixed up together (whether or not the right-left axis is a good way to think about politics and society, this way of thinking was there), and freaks were assumed to be on the political left even when they were fundamentally nonactivist (Berkeley free speech movement morphed from concern with political rights and the right to solicit money for civil rights causes to a general rebellion against in loco parentis and in favor of wilder lifestyles, free speech meaning "fuck" as well as SNCC and CORE). The relationship between the radicals and the freaks was actually often tenuous, even if they looked the same to outsiders, and in 1966 "freaks" hadn't coalesced as a group yet and the Vietnam War wasn't quite the dividing line it was to become in a couple of years. But the rebel hoods and greasers who'd have been naturally attracted to the Stones' and Animals' toughness were ambivalent about the long hair, and hard rock definitely had connotations of taking you to some social extreme, even if this social extreme was only a vague feeling of extremity.
So "left" was where the Stones and Animals (and Yardbirds, if I'd have heard them) seemed to be going, which somewhat differentiated them from the hoods and greasers, not all of whom were going to be moved socially to follow the Stones. Of course this map with hard rock on the left didn't hold much beyond 1969, and heavy metal came along to allow kids to go hard without going left.
I'm confused about the phrase "hard left." It's probably obvious, and I'm just not getting it, but do you mean "left" as in "left of the dial" (i.e., social outcasts)? You do say "socially," but I guess I'm saying I'm not really sure what social left is exactly. Or maybe it's just that I keep bumping up against this word choice as carrying a political context (in which case "hard left" definitely seems problematic... but I don't think this is what you're saying).
This is getting away from the "class" point entirely, but wasn't the TV context of the Monkees just as big a deal--if not a bigger deal--than the songwriting issue? Or wasn't it the two issues combined (plus other things I'm not considering) that cast a pall over the Monkees (among Stones fans, etc.) as being not real? Further to your point about the songwriting thing being a red herring, I find it hard to imagine that as early as '66 or '67 the songwriting issue was that entrenched as a big deal (it had only BEEN two or three years by that point that bands were writing their own songs, and some still weren't; also, I assume it was well known that most of the soul greats of the period didn't write their own songs). I guess I just think the TV thing *was* probably a big deal, and not a total red herring (and maybe it even has something to do with "class," or anyway, "access" or privilege, but now I'm just stabbing at words in the dark).
scott
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