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unstoppable—national fact.

    WITH THE IMPORTANT exception of Martin Luther King, Jr., no other activist or popular hero has better defined the meaning, potential, and shortcomings of the modern American birthright—no other figure has mixed the ambitions and risks of American myth so promisingly—as Elvis Presley. He defined revolt, aspiration, opulence, humility, pettiness, generosity, frivolity, significance, prodigy, waste, renewal, corruption, dissolution, and a kind posthumous transcendence. He did it all without design, with little more than intuition and nerve, and interestingly, he accomplished it with only the assertive mix of his own raw talent and provoking personality. He did not perform as a “creative” force
per se—
a songwriter or pop philosopher—but as a man of deeds, action, and experience.
    This may not seem so much when compared with the work of such musical figures as Louis Armstrong, Robert Johnson, Billie Holiday, Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, Hank Williams, Miles Davis, Ornette Coleman, Bob Dylan, Jerry Garcia, Duane Allman, Sly Stone, Marvin Gaye, Randy Newman, or Bruce Springsteen. One could claim that all of these artists made lasting legacies out of personal vision and defined themselves as much by their thought and work—their creative invention—as their personality. In a certain way, perhaps all are greater artists than Presley. That is, they are all folks who wrestled with the meaning of their place in American society with uncommon self-awareness, who expressed their discoveries, doubts, and inventions with exceptional (if only sometimes instinctive) understandings of the state of the culture around them, who could apply a full-fledged sense of history and tradition to modern styles and predicaments—which is something that Presley only managed occasionally. For that matter, one might infer that whatever sense of culture, history and politics the singer did possess was, as often as not, depressingly uninformed—and one might even be right.
    And yet Elvis opened more doors, bounded into the unknown with a greater will to adventure than those other artists, and that is why, all these years later, we still remember him with a special thrill. Without Presley as an exemplar, rock & roll may have proved less of a lasting force because it may also have proved less alluring: It was the idea that any of us could grow up to be like Presley—rather than we could grow up to be like James Dean, Marlon Brando, J. D. Salinger, Norman Mailer, John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, a soldier or an astronaut—that made rock the most vital of our national assets this last near-half century. Better than anybody but Martin Luther King, Jr., Presley personified and stylized the modern American quest for freedom, experience, and opportunity. Chances are, we will be enjoying (or recoiling from) the aftereffect of his exploits for many years to come.
    If one accepts Elvis Presley as the definitional American modernizer, and rock & roll as the primary postwar art form, then it is interesting to examine rock (and not just American rock) for how well its successors have made good on Presley’s promise: That is, after the call to freedom has been sounded, what’s next? How does one raise the stakes, expand the territory? In some ways, that is the main question that the rest of this book will try to explore, though no volume can yet be close to providing final answers.

PART 2
setting out for the territories

beatles then, beatles now
    BEATLES THEN
    I n the 1950s, rock & roll meant disruption: It was the clamor of young people, kicking hard against the Eisenhower era’s public ethos of vapid repression. By the outset of the 1960s, that spirit had been largely tamed, or simply impeded by numerous misfortunes, including Elvis Presley’s film and army careers; the death of Buddy Holly; the blacklisting of Jerry Lee Lewis and Chuck Berry; and the persecution of D.J. Alan Freed, who had been stigmatized on payola