Some Place near Despairsville

ROCK 'N' ROLL

The psychodynamics of the rock 'n' roller has long been a fertile field of motivational researchers. In the primitive Blue Suede Shoes era eight years ago, Elvis was first explained as father of a faintly menacing breed of children's crusaders marshaling the anti-parent instinct into a kind of teen-age Viet Cong. Later the diagnosis changed; the real rock addict was pronounced a "rhythmic obedient" whose craving for the big beat was only the expression of his frustrated wish to obey mother. Such findings were hardly helpful to the record industry in its search for a solid money-making groove. And then a new type of rock song began to climb the charts. Now it is the rock fan's wish to die that is supposed to account for the success of hot-rod and surfin' songs, a great tonic to the industry for all of a year now.

Not Today. How ingenious such theorizing. But death has no dominion in rock 'n' roll. Songs that hint of a teenage demise do so with a bright insouciance, as if the singer imagines death to be only the flip side of life. In surfin' music--which is just rock 'n' roll dressed for the beach--sudden death is treated as a nuisance hardly worse than rain:

Angry sea

Took my love from me.

No surfin' today.

And as for hot-rod music--rock 'n' roll with a straight stick and no muffler--death emerges only in traffic safety parables:

The last thing I remember, doc,

I started to swerve.

You won't come back from

Dead Man's Curve.

Many of the most popular songs simply crawl around under the hood admiring the engine without so much as a mention of speed and danger.

Sure They Fight. It does seem a bit bizarre, though, that music intended for nine-to 16-year-olds should speak of death at all--or even of life. But rock 'n' roll has lately acquired an engaging relevance to life that is found nowhere else in pop music. Says B.M.I.'s Russell Sanjek, whose firm represents battalions of teen music composers: "Who ever flew to the moon on gossamer wings or began a beguine? These songs reflect the times and the audience, and they're closer than they've ever been to their ultimate audience."

That ultimate audience dwells some where between Malibu Beach and Despairsville, a spot where life is cursed by school trouble, girl and boy trouble and car trouble. When they climb out of the surf, the songs are addressed to such matters as poverty, suspicion, ill health and the Oedipus complex. Such numbers as Six Months with My Mother (Six Months with My Dad) are willing to go right into court in pursuit of genuine grief:

Please, judge, bring them back together.

Sure they fight, but all parents do. A sharp comment, considering the source. Elsewhere parents appear with stunning accuracy as the oddly permissive disciplinarian:

She'll have fun, fun, fun,

Till her daddy takes her T-Bird away.

Dark Message. Today the kids seem to want to listen to a message with their music. But some of the record companies still seem to be listening to the dark message of their social scientists. They are still on the prowl for another salable demonstration of the death wish, and the latest candidate is skateboarding. A skateboard is a surfboard scarcely larger than a steak plate, mounted on roller-skate wheels, and a skateboarder is anyone daring enough to careen over the concrete while aboard one. David Kapralik, a music publisher for Columbia Records, has high hopes for the fad. "It's another thing that reflects the adolescent's self-destructive tendencies," he says eagerly. "Columbia is bringing out a record on it this month."

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