That Other Richard

David Hepworth begins his book Uncommon People: The Rise and Fall of the Rock Stars with the statement, “The day of the rock star, like the day of the cowboy, has passed.” Just as reenactors strap on replica holsters to stage the gunfight at the OK Corral, wannabes continue to strap on guitars to play the part of rock stars, he says, but one struggles to take them seriously. “Rock star” doesn’t even mean “rock star” much of the time, he tells us; it’s apt to be a metaphor as in a rock star money manager or a rock star chef.

Hepworth overstates his case, but he does have a case. For one thing, rock is over as the dominant popular music genre. A straight-up rock-and-roll song hasn’t broken the top ten chart in the US in a decade. It’s a pop and hip hop world. There are still rock fans, of course, but they are now a niche market – a largish niche but still a niche. It’s hard to be a star when your altitude maxes out in the troposphere. But it’s not just preferred musical styles that have changed. So have the musicians and their fans. Play-on-demand used to be costlier both to produce and buy: records and tapes vs. streams and downloads. People literally had more invested in their music 40 years ago; today for the consumer content most often is free and there is a lot more of it. This very much has changed the consumer’s relationship to it and to the creators of it – many of the latter being (in an era of electronic music) unknown programmers. As for the modern pop celebrities, they find it nearly impossible to emulate the classic rock star lifestyle in a world with zero presumption of privacy: cell phones, drones, and security cameras record everything.

Rock had a good run though: 40 years on top, more or less. There are countless books on the history of rock – some general and some specific to a subgenre, band, or person – but Hepworth gives a pretty good overview: readable and informative without getting too lost in the weeds. He tells us, “In the pages that follow I’ve profiled one rock star per year over each of the forty years from 1955 to 1994, and listed ten records, either singles or albums, that were made, were released, or were hits that year in order to give a flavor of the time.” And that’s exactly what he does.

But for a timing fluke, this might have been one of the numerous books I read recreationally and then set aside without comment here or elsewhere. However, the coincidence of picking up the book so soon after Little Richard’s death last month evoked memories that inspire a mention, for Hepworth’s very first profile is of Little Richard (Richard Wayne Penniman), whom he identifies as the archetype of rock stars who followed. I think Hepworth is right about that. Little Richard wasn’t the biggest rock star of the 1950s but he set the standard in every other way. His “I don’t give a crap if you think I’m crazy” flamboyance and his pulse rousing music outshone his better-selling contemporaries (Presley, Vincent, Lewis, et al). Even Bobby Zimmerman (Bob Dylan) put in his 1959 high school Yearbook as his ambition, “to join Little Richard.”

I remember Top 40 radio broadcasts in the late 1950s and early 60s when my age was still in single digits. I was no prodigy in music or anything else, so my tastes were … well … childlike. I was aware of Little Richard and liked him, but my primary reason for doing so was that he was named Richard. Hey, I said I was no prodigy. Purely by chance nomenclature, however, I had chosen well, as I began to realize as adolescence neared. I was still an utter unsophisticate at that point, of course, but I had the advantage of a sister 2½ years older (the ½ makes a difference at that age), so I always was exposed to musical trends well before I would have found them myself. By then Little Richard's star already had dimmed from its brightness in the 1950s when he had 18 hit singles. (By the way, did the socially powerful prudes of the 1950s simply not listen to his lyrics, which played without remark on the air: e.g. “Good golly Miss Molly/Sure like to ball”?) Yet, Little Richard continued to perform and in the process jumpstarted the careers of massive ‘60s stars. Jimi Hendrix and James Brown both got their start with Little Richard. The fledgling Beatles opened for Little Richard who helped them hone their sound. The Rolling Stones also toured with Little Richard in the early 1960s. Mick Jagger called him “the biggest inspiration” and added “he was always so generous with advice to me.”

By the 1970s the first round of nostalgia was kicking in (that always happens after 20 years, hence Grease) and Little Richard was back in demand as a top billed act. By the 1990s, when he himself was in his 60s, he was pulling bigger audiences than he did in his first wave of popularity in the 1950s. I’ll still take his music over the uninspiring pop sounds that dominate the charts today. So, silly as my motive may have been for initially becoming a fan, it worked out pretty well in the long run. If only my other early life choices (regardless of sense or motive) had been as good.

Little Richard – Good Golly Miss Molly.  The song was first recorded in 1958 but the vid is from a 1969 performance.