This book argues for the centrality of pop to postwar English history through providing an examination of the relationship between young working-class people and popular music from the early days of rock ‘n’ roll to the advent of punk. It explores intersections and disruptions of class, gender and race in the music and lyrics of the bands, in the trajectories of particular musicians and in the ways that this music was experienced, claimed and interpreted by fans. Using Raymond William's concept of ‘structure of feeling’, Gildart argues that these relationships to music (as written, lived, related to) are political. The political here is used not just in relation to organised labour or political parties but also includes ‘thought processes, emotions and sense of self’ (p. 10). The adoption of this framework allows the author to examine classed identity beyond rigid ideas of class-consciousness; instead the book examines the influence of music on the subtle reworkings of a sense of one's (classed) place and possibilities, as well as on shifts in ideas about gender, sexuality and race.
The work and trajectories of a selection of male rock ‘n’ roll stars, including Georgie Fame, Ray Davies, Pete Townshend and David Bowie, structure the book's narrative. However, an opening vignette describes the ‘Lemon Drop Kid’ performing on the billiard table in a Lancashire miners' club, dreaming of Buddy Holly. By foregrounding the book with this wonderfully rendered portrait, Gildart signals that it is not just about the classed trajectories of the stars but of those who – if not quite in the gutter – were certainly looking up at them. Thus, while influenced by the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, the book avoids the criticisms often levelled at more semiotic readings of youth and music cultures, such as Hebdige (Reference Hebdige1979), by making the lived experiences of music fans central to the analysis. Here fans aren't cast as cultural dopes or as objects to be merely read, but as having agency and creativity of their own. This presentation of female fans negotiating and co-opting pop culture on their own terms is particularly notable. In the chapters that follow, Gildart draws on interviews with fans and secondary sources such as the letters pages of magazines – the letters pages of Jackie and Mod magazines emerge as treasure troves for historians of pop culture – alongside an examination of the music and musicians who shaped their imaginations and sense of identity.
The chapter on the arrival of rock ‘n’ roll in the towns of the North of England disputes the narrative that rock ‘n’ roll's arrival entailed a sweeping away of the old attachments but rather ‘it gave youth a further tool to make sense of their social situation and to both mentally and in some cases physically escape from the boundaries that such a milieu had created’ (p. 43). While there was moral panic about Americanisation, a fusion of variety culture and the new cultural forms took place in the concert halls in the North of England, as can be seen in the mix of acts on the bill in the concert described in the opening vignette, Buddy Holly, Big Band and Des O'Connor. This theme resonates throughout the book.
Race and sexuality are brought keenly into focus as the book follows the progression of one musician, Clive Powell/Georgie Fame, from Lancashire to Soho. The evolution of the line-up of the Blue Flames as a multiracial group is used to tell the story of how Soho's atmosphere of jazz, West Indian migrants, African American GIs and gay culture fused with rock ‘n’ roll to create the beat sound and the beginnings of mod culture. From Soho we move back to Liverpool for a chapter on The Beatles, Liverpool, race and class. This moving backwards and forwards between London and other cities is useful in exploring regional variation and the movement and reworking of pop culture between and across places (‘Mods in Glasgow might be wearing for the first time what that those in Cardiff buried weeks ago’ – McGowan, quoted on p. 97).
While dialogues between music and left-wing politics are highlighted, more importance is put on the role of music and musicians in both challenging the status quo or indeed offering ‘temporary escape from the rigidities of class’ (p. 72), whether that be through the promise of other planets (David Bowie) or hedonism (Slade). Gildart argues that key musicians acted as organic intellectuals, documenting and challenging the class relations of the day (a particular focus in Chapters 4 and 6 on The Who and The Kinks). The relationship between pop and established politics is presented as troubled but regionally and socially complex and ranging from communist criticisms of rock ‘n’ roll as Americanisation through to the endorsing of musicians by politicians up to The Kinks playing The Young Communist League's Trend '67 Festival at Derbyshire's Miners' Holiday Camp. This relationship seems to fragment further at the time of punk, when union organisers came together with religious leaders to picket Sex Pistols gigs. It is at this point of divergence, where pop music is no longer speaking a language that politics understands, where the book's analysis closes.
The book's nuanced treatment of the relationship between currents of race, sexuality, gender and class identity in popular music, and the combination of a reading of the music/ians of the period and music as lived experience make this book an important piece of cultural history. It also has contemporary resonance. Given the present UK context of debates about whether pop has ‘gone posh’ due to the dominance of the charts by the privileged, the book brings to mind questions about how class is working in and through music now. What structures of feeling are embedded in music cultures and how do they intervene in the formation of classed and gendered subjectivities? As such this book is recommended reading for those working on contemporary class and youth cultures as well as music historians.
