Art into Pop

by Simon Frith, Howard Horne

This book tells the intruiguing and culturally complex story of the art school influence on post-war British popular music.

"Following Romantic attitudes from Life Class to the Recording Studio, the authors focus on two key the early 1960's when art students like John Lennon and Eric Clapton began to play their own versions of American rock and blues and infected youth music with Bohemian dreams, and the late 1970's when punk musicians emerged from design courses and fashion departments to discrupt what were, by then, art-rock routines."

"...and so high pop theorists rub shoulders here with low pop practitioners, experimental musicians debate avant-garde ideas with corporate packagers, and artistic integrity becomes a matter of making oneself up...."

206 pp; b&w illustrations; end notes; index.

Genres: Music

208 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1987

Reviews

[Jared Colley · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book makes use of an interesting approach for understanding the innovative, progressive qualities of 1960s-1970s British rock music. Frith does a better job explaining 1960s mod & art rock than he does 1970s punk situationism. His theory is shakey, but his practical take on the origins of 1960s British rock remains insightful. I like the fact that he focuses so much on the art school factor. So many musicians (from the Beatles, Pink Floyd, the Who, Cream, etc.) of the era were art school graduates, freshly educated in the latest art theories. And it seems obvious that their education plays out in their innovative approaches to popular music. It is another case study example of how postmodern frameworks of discourse operate by way of breaking down (or at least re-ordering) barriers between high & low art. The book captivates its reader through such analysis. The treatment of punk rock, however, is lacking. Dick Hebdige (see my comments on his book) is the place to look for a promising, academic analysis of punk rock.