Part I:  The Birth of Rock ‘n’ Roll

In 1957 Jerry Lee Lewis sang, “You shake my nerves and you rattle my brain. Too much love drives a man insane. You broke my will, but what a thrill. Goodness, gracious, great balls of fire.”

Rock ‘n’ roll was split the atom and shattered the American ego: a nuclear explosion releasing vast quantities of heat and libidinal energy. We live today in the aftermath of a blast that occurred 70 years ago. The great ball of fire still simmers. Today's world is hotter, and we have barely come to terms with the radioactive fallout.

In the not-so-distant past—seems like so long ago—America was dominated by ideas of restraint and self-control. People took it for granted that a fundamental role of society was to establish and enforce moral norms. Psychology texts in the Fifties in chapters on “Socialization” described the process whereby people "learned to want to do what they had to do."

It was assumed that the requirements of society opposed the desires of individuals. To become a civilized human being one had to internalize these requirements. First and foremost was  to “postpone gratification:” defer fulfillment of one’s desires in the present.

If one obeyed the rules and did what one was expected to do, at some time in the future one might be rewarded with success, pleasure and happiness. This message—that it was necessary to defer or postpone gratification—was the essence of the middle-class morality that dominated the Fifties and early Sixties.

Psychoanalysis in those days drew a clear distinction between the pleasure principle and reality principles. The pleasure principle represented the wish to gratify one’s desires and impulses; whereas the reality principle stood for society, which opposed gratification of desires and impulses. The reality principle compelled people to abandon gratification in order to fulfilling cultural obligations.

Rock ‘n’ roll grew out of an austere world of middle-class morality. putting forth the idea that it was necessary to wait. In opposition to the principle of deferral of gratification—keeping one’s shoulder to the grindstone in anticipation of rewards in the future—rock ‘n’ roll introduced the radical idea that pleasure and gratification were available now.

Bill Haley’s “Rock Around the Clock” (1955) was the foundational song, articulating the idea of a world of pleasure and joy outside society and the reality principle.

“One, two, three o’clock, four o’clock rock,” Haley sang. “Five, six, seven o’clock, eight o’clock rock. We’re gonna rock around the clock tonight.” With this song, the ideology of rock ‘n’ roll came into being, articulating a new concept of reality

The music continued to play—and people continued to dance—throughout the evening and till “broad daylight.” If the band slowed down, dancers would “yell for more.” The rock ‘n’ roll dream appeared full-blown with the appearance of this song.

What was proposed was a world of perpetual bodily movement and excitement (i. e., “rocking”) stimulated or generated by “the beat” of the music.

Alan Freed was the disc jockey who brought rock ‘n’ roll to New York City and gave the music its name. He called his radio station—1010 WINS—the “home of the big beat.” It was the beat of Rock ‘n’ roll that stimulated peoples’ bodies, driving them onward and forward. Filled with energy, the human body would attain to a condition of perpetual, never-ending excitement.

In the new world of Rock ‘n’ roll, self-control and the postponement of gratification would no longer be necessary. Self-control worked in opposition to the state-of-being that rock ‘n’ roll sought to achieve. Happiness or pleasure required letting go, giving in to the music—getting up and dancing. By giving in to the music—dancing to the big beat—one would come into touch with and experience exciting sensations coursing through one’s body.