All right. I have a Staggering Number of powerpoint slides for this. Get your bets down now on whether i can get through them or not. I will even omit my customary lame professor humor, about the ncaa tournament, for example. Thats how serious this is. Lets think for a minute, though, about where were situated, what were working on here. In this last third of the course that we started last week, were dealing with the postrevolutionary era. Weve built this idea that something radical and transformative happened to music in the 1960s. Weve worked hard over the course of several weeks to establish those ideas. And we cant leave it, though, just as a kind of baby boomer nostalgia for the days that were. What weve been trying to deal with then, though, is this sense of pervasive disappointment, that the revolution somehow ended in the early 1970s. The popular music became a disappointment, aesthetically, politically. Thats the cliche. We saw plenty of evidence for it. What weve been trying to do is to say ok, maybe if we shift perspective, maybe if we dont simply buy the assumptions that went into the age of countercultural music, if we do that, we may well see music engaged in a different way. And the way i suggested, the way weve started out is by saying , isnt it the case that popular music in the u. S. In the 1970s was doing what popular music typically had done well before the 1960s . Which is to mediate relationships between men and women, to mediate notions of gender, to rethink sexuality. And thats where we started last time, with ideas about masculinity. And the way in which theres a radical transformation of ideas about masculinity tied up with the emergence of the Gay Liberation movement, bound up in music such as glam rock, david bowie, lou reed, bound up in disco. As we said, in a sense, that music was inherently political. Something that the really vicious antidisco campaign drove home. So it seems to me weve started building the idea that post1960s, American Music still is politicized, still is engaged but in a different way, a way that rejected, as we saw with david bowie or we saw with mott the hoople, that rejected countercultural rock. Thats where i want to go today in talking, as i promised, about issues of women in popular music in the 1970s. Weve already dealt with this before in thinking about the very limited place accorded to women in popular music as a business, as performers really with the idea that women play women could not play instruments, that they could only sing. Weve seen thats deeply embedded in western culture, western ideas. And yet this is a period in the 1970s of real change in thinking about women. So theres an opportunity for us to say just as there was this political agitation over gay rights and over the nature of masculinity, what can we do with the emergence of feminism, of new feminisms, liberal, radical and what musical implications did they have . So i want to do five things. As i said, you should get your bets down about me getting through this. But i will. I have not lost yet. First of all, i want to think a little bit about the context. Do you know this . Its familiar, but lets remind ourselves of the way in which american societys relationship to women, notions of women changed so radically with the emergence of what was then called womens liberation. We want to use that as a backdrop for looking specifically at music, four different settings here, two, three, four, five. First of all, with the thing thats the most stunning and yet we are ready for this the idea that, in fact, countercultural rock, acid rock, whatever you want to call it, was much less radical in terms of gender than we would have thought. That in fact, arguably it was quite conservative. It was in the terms of this famous essay ive given you to start your assignment that it was cock rock, that it was completely defined by the needs of masculinity and almost completely obliterated the place of women. I want to look at the debates that emerged from that, the radical shift of perspective on rock. It didnt really change either, as well see, the business hardly altered. And that sets the other three music genres that we want to talk about in a different perspective. Disco, again, subject of much contempt, nonetheless had a larger space, arguably, for women and the articulation of their concerns. Even though youll see once again theres a tendency to try to make that disappear, to explain it away. And then, stunning to me, but weve built on this, too, Country Music which is supposed to be so conservative, so anchored in older notions of family, as weve seen in talking about Country Music in the 1950s or in Merle Haggards music in the 1960s. Its country that has this surprising space to articulate a kind of conservative feminism or country feminism. And its summed up in that piece that gives this lecture its title your squaw is on the warpath, by loretta lynn, that i want to work through with you. Though im not going to sing it. [laughter] gerr again, no costumes, no singing. Thats my guarantee to you so were never fully embarrassed. And then last i want to think about where a more open kind of thenist politics emerges in 1970s. It does to a degree in disco as well see, but the real place is in mainstream popular music which you could argue is the least adventurous kind of music in the 1970s. In musical terms, its there that with helen reddys hit i am woman that you have a stunning kind of breakthrough whose history is really interesting and completes this picture of what is a very complicated response within music to the rise of the Womens Movement. And at the end im going to want to draw that together. But thats where i want to go here. And as i say, well start with what you know already but lets get a common point together from which to work here, which is the emergence of new ideas, new activism among women that would lead almost inevitably as i want to suggest to you to a new critique of popular music generally, and rock music in particular. All of womens liberation is not a preparation for journalism about rock music, but thats going to be the key linkage. You know this. And history of modern feminism is very complicated. You see that in those sources that i gave you, and i wont take time to work through them. But in very simple terms, were talking about a couple of basic sets of ideas here. And we can flesh them out as we go along. You know this. The first wave that emerges in the late 1950s, early 1960s, the socalled liberal feminism. Liberal in the sense that its a middleclass movement focused on demands for equality both in the workplace, equal pay, for example, for women. Equality in the workplace and also the idea that women should have full representation politically, should have power politically, not just the vote. Liberal feminism, too, because these are women who believe that activist liberalism of the kind that john f. Kennedy and even more so president Lyndon Johnson embodied, that activist liberalism Government Intervention could create equality just as it was doing in response to the black freedom struggle. The most famous founding figure you know is betty friedan, author of the feminine mystique, arguing how ideas of womens inequality get embedded in american society. Shes one of the key founders of the National Organization for women, now. Theres a sense of the urgency, now in 1966 that becomes the most important vehicle for liberal ideas. And one of the ultimate expressions of liberal feminism and one, of course, that would never be granted, an equal rights amendment to the constitution, the e. R. A. Changing government to promote equality. Almost as soon as that emerges and this is what makes it complicated you have slightly later in the 1960s what people very quickly called radical feminism. Middle class mostly, to be sure, but somewhat younger women with roots in the black freedom struggle, the push for civil rights and also campus activism, a good number of campus radicals. Radical feminists shared many goals with liberal feminists. Whats interesting are some of the emphases. An emphasis on both public life , which liberals cared a lot about, and the private life. The slogan the personal is the political sums that up. The idea that what happens in the intimate spaces of our lives, that thats political, too. As you can see from this course, that idea is one of the things that animates the idea that music matters. That music is political precisely because so often it is about intimate relationships that often werent traditionally considered political. Some of you in my 1960s class have heard me talk about this in another setting. But radical feminism is one of the most important intellectual developments in the modern world. Not simply for the arguments about power relationships between men and women, but by redefining whats important. Classes like this exist not just because aging allegedly hip baby boomers like me want to relive our youths. Though that does seem very important to me. But also because of the intellectual terrain opened up by radical feminism. Part of this focus on the personal includes issues about male violence, especially in the home, about womens control of their own bodies, concerns about rape, forms of abuse, about abortion, which is, of course, a liberal concern, too. Its radical feminists who also played more, argued more about the nature of feminine identities themselves and wanted a broader range asserted along the lines of the Gay Liberation movement that weve talked about, including a celebration of lesbianism thats relatively absent in liberal feminism. Radical feminism is especially important for us to for its focus on culture. Much many radical feminists zeroed in particularly on the importance of words and culture categories, ideas like beauty. The way people, mostly men, could use words to put people in their place. Words like whore, for example. Categories like beauty. This is, of course, a famous moment. Youve seen the pictures. This is the protest against the miss america beauty pageant in Atlantic City, a 1968 famous poster that parodies what you see in a butcher store where a piece of beef is sliced up so you know what the cuts are. Heres a woman presented that way. Welcome to the miss america cattle show, cattle auction. So the idea that women are sold in part through the world of beauty and, of course, preabs. That concern on culture immediately gets us, because it makes it very likely that in turn, radical feminists would focus on music. That they could see music as one more cultural area, one more set of categories that could be used either to denigrate or to celebrate women. Now, they dont monopolize everything. These are truly radical ideas that are disturbing to people on a whole bunch of levels. So theres a substantial backlash. You know this already by the late 1960s into the early 1970s. Theres an active antifeminism, also middle class but culturally different. Heres a big bestseller from 1973, marabel morgans the total woman. Its only when a woman surrenders her life to her husband, reveres and worships him and is willing to serve him that she becomes really beautiful to him. She becomes a priceless jewel, the glory of femininity, his queen. Antifeminism also produces a strong womanled movement against the equal rights constitution,he led almost paradoxically by an schlafly, an important conservative thinker. Stop the e. R. A. You get the point. This is a very rocky terrain in which to think about music and the place of women in music. Even arguably more than in response to the emergence of the gay rights movement. The First Response is here. Its from those radical feminists who, thinking over culture, thinking over words, thinking over the power of words to put people in their place. You know, in the same way, say, that the n word was a way of putting africanamericans in their place. Its feminists who first come to terms with music. And what they criticize is not so much say, Country Music, which you might have expected. Not even, say, disco, which you might have expected. It is mainstream rock n roll. Countercultural rock n roll. The biggest icons of 1960s rock n roll. I want to take some time to work through these sources that i gave to you. Theres three of them. Weve got three radical feminist critiques or almost radical, of countercultural rock as a form of male privilege. Thats obvious, and we want to work beyond it. In particular, i want to note a couple of points here. One, in line with what weve seen this sense of disappointment in the 1970s, you got these women saying, weve misunderstood the 1960s. We need to reinterpret the 1960s and not see it as some revolutionary liberating moment but instead as a continuation of the kinds of power relations of male domination that weve had in the past. And that ties, in turn, to their subverting the whole idea that the 1960s represented some kind of revolution. Instead, it becomes a way station toward the revolution that still needs to happen. So theres a very powerful set of ideas here and some real differences among them. But the question of how much impact is something were going to need to gauge. The first piece is this one from susan hiwatt. It appears in 1970 in rat magazine. A feminist publication that was also known here, you can see womens liberation with the rat highlighted. But the idea of working away against mainstream ideas. Anonymously and was anthologized not long after in a book. She took the name susan hiwatt, which is a musical joke. It was a British Company that produced amplifiers. The who used them, among others. So this is someone whos hiding her identity, but playing with already the rock n roll world produced amplifiers. But more than playing it cock rock even now is a stunning title. For her, she describes it, the personal is the political. Each one of these three pieces you see this personal journey that leads to a new set of ideas and a new set of attitudes. For susan hiwatt, its this idea that when shes growing up in school, in school, in college, rock n roll was a generational thing for her. She saw it in those terms. Not in gendered terms, not in social class terms, but as part of dealing with the gulf between young and older. It was the only thing we had of our own where the values werent set up by the famous wise professors. It was the way not to have to get old and deadened in white america. So thats a common sentiment. Weve heard that a bunch of times. But this is where she goes. It took a whole it took me a whole lot of going to the fillmore, the auditorium weve talked about whose demise is part of this whole nostalgia for the disappearing 1960s, and listening to records and reading before ittone even registered that what i was seeing and hearing was not all these different groups, but all these different groups of men. And once i noticed that, it was hard not to be constantly noticing all the names on the albums, all the people doing sound and lights, all the voices on the radio, even the deejays between the songs, they were all men. Powerful moment. And to her, in turn, that leads to the obvious conclusion. That rock represents the massive exclusion of women. It keeps them out. Because in the female 51 of because in the female 51 of Woodstock Nation that i belong to, there isnt any place to be creative in any way. Its a pretty exclusive world. She says there are no women electric guitarists, there are no women drummers, there are no Women Leaders of big rock bands, nothing. There are women singers, but as she says, they have to be twice as good just to be acceptable. Just to play this traditional role that women have fulfilled in music. Its strongly argued, but it rests in reality. Its the reality that we started to talk about in discussing girl groups back in the 1960s. As she says, to become the top of the heap in black music, Aretha Franklin soul sister number one, she says better by far than anybody else, and there are not that many others of them. In rock, janis joplin. And of course, what precipitates this piece is the death of janis joplin, which weve mentioned before. And she sees joplins demise as this sad acknowledgement of what music does to you. She says, joplin for audiences was an incredible sex object, a cunt with an out of sight voice, easy to fuck and easy to dismiss when shes dead. Thats what drives underneath, this anger in the reality of the narrow space that women can occupy. As she says, what you can do to be a woman is strum an acoustic guitar. Nothing powerful, no highwatt amplifier, strum an acoustic guitar, be like Joni Mitchell folk musician over here judy collins. But you cant electrify, you cant get out of line, you cant get out of the line the way janis joplin did. Again, borne out. She says that people who play guitars, the people who get to use the power of electricity through highwatt amps, are men. Male guitar gods like jimi hendrix also dead by this point jimmy page, do we really have to interpret this here . I didnt think so. Again, as i said before, arguably the best female electric guitar players in the 1970s is in the 1960s, the bass player carol kay, whos a studio musician. Nobody knows she even exists. Shes on all of these hit records, no one knows who she is, no one even knows that a woman is playing bass on those records. Thats susan hiwatts point. Deejays, i gave you the opening for this, deejays as weve seen have been a basic phenomenon mediating rock music from the 1960s forward, and theyre overwhelmingly men. The first almost sole famous woman deejay emerges just in this period in new york city on wnew fm, allison steele, known as the nightbird. Theres her famous opening. The flutter of wings, the shadow across the moon, the sounds of night as the nightbird spreads her wings and soars above the earth into another level of comprehension where we exist only to feel. Come fly with me. Shes on in the middle of the night. Daytime, when lots of people listen, its all men. Thats susan hiwatts point about the world of rock. Women are invisible. But its more than that. She argues rock is fundamentally nasty, its misogynist. Heres truly where the edge comes in again. You feel when it she talks about what happens to the janis joplin, the flip side of it is when she describes the underlying attitudes of men. Men who sing songs, men who write the lyrics. Because when you get to listening to male rock lyrics, the message to women is devastating. We are cunts, sometimes ridiculous, 20th century fox, sometimes mysterious, ruby tuesday, sometimes bitchy, get a job, sometimes just plain cunts. Not common language at the time. Radical language opened up paradoxically by the Counter Culture. Heres susan hiwatt occupying this new space of language and blowing up words and the way theyre used to put people down. And all that Sexual Energy that seems to be in the essence of of rock is really energy that climaxes in fucking over women, a million Different Levels of womanhating. Again, after all the groovy of rock musicion at the end of the 1960s, the spirit of woodstock, even the kind of despair over altamont, this represents a really stunning shift in perspective. Really radical. She also finally makes a point. She says, women are excluded but theyre necessary. They still do have a role to play in music. Women are required at rock events to pay homage to the rock world. A world made up of thousands of men. Homage paid by offering sexual accessibility, orgiastic applause, group worship, gang bangs at altamont. Women are there to be worshippers of men and provide them with what they need. So drawing it all together, susan hiwatt ends with the really striking point. That revolutionary as the Counter Culture seems to be, as much as it represented a blowing up of old values, as much as it represented an attack on capitalism, as much as it rested on the idea that property should be communal, think of the diggers and their ideal of a free city in san francisco. The exception is women. And so women remain the last legitimate form of property that the brothers can share in a communal world. Cant have a tribal gathering without music and dope and beautiful groovy chicks. For the musicians themselves, there is their own special property, groupies, which particularly enrages her. So you get the point. There is a powerful set of arguments. And shes not alone. Theres a whole proliferation of this line of thinking which is why ive given you a couple more examples. The next one, a year later, is from marian meade, a little older, a feminist, northwestern journalism graduate. She wrote a wellknown book a year later called bitching, a summary of womens conversations about men, still really interesting. Its very susan hiwattish, but its the New York Times folks. No fourletter words, much more buttoneddown. But she drives home the same analysis with a couple of really interesting points. One of them, again, with this project of rethinking the 1960s, changing our understanding, her jumpingoff point is woodstock. She says, you know, it finally dawned on me, not at the concert, it dawned on me when i saw the film a couple of years later, she says, finally dawned on me that this is a fantasy land that welcomed only men. How about the women . Barefooted, sometimes barebreasted, they sprawled erotically in the grass, looked after their babies, dished up hot meals. And of course, it is interesting to see again how women are portrayed at woodstock. Theres the admiration. Thats michael lang again on his motorcycle, one of the two key organizers of the woodstock festival. Look at him soaking it in there. Nudity, though, its interesting. Most of it is shared nudity. Meades point seems kind of selective to me. Whats not selective, the thing you see over and over, is women and babies. You look everywhere for signs of men taking care of children and you dont see it. Womens basic role is have sex, conceive, and then maybe some nudity there. But taking care of children. Meades point is really well taken. And you can see why it would sink in. The other thing that she does is really build on this idea that the 1960s revolution wasnt real. Just like woodstock is a fantasy land. She says we were told that the 1960s was about the reconfiguration of masculinity. Youve heard me talk about it. Shes saying, nuhuh, dont be fooled by unisex clothes, dont be fooled by long hair, dont be fooled by the beatles. Nothing really changed. All those things, she says, are just hip camouflage for the same old sexism, the same set of power relations that existed before. Style changed. Culture may have changed. But underneath, power didnt. In fact, she says, the 1960s are worse than the 1950s, and here, you really see how this feminist critique blows up conventional rock history. Instead of it being this history of progress, musically, culturally, politically from the 1950s to the 1960s, instead she says, look, earlier rock didnt at least treat women in such a nasty way, misogynist way, such a false way. Women were passive sexual partners, to be sure. But not that passive. Bitchy emasculators, thats counter cultural music. Thats not the 1950s, thats the 1960s. And the people who are most guilty of it are the biggest male heroes of the 1960s. Bob dylan, the beatles, the rolling stones. So all of it blown up, including this idea that rock is a history of progress. The last one is ellen willis. Youve probably had enough. Im getting looks. But work with me. Because these ideas, those of you who had to do this assignment, analyzing these sources, you know what im talking about. These are a little more complicated. So its worth being careful and laying the foundation. Ellen willis, 1941. Pioneering rock critic. Heres a woman at the center of rock culture, she was the rock critic of the new yorker magazine for a number of years. Also a feminist activist. She was a member of two founding radical feminist groups. The new york radical women, who helped organize that Atlantic City protest against miss america, and then a followup group, the red stockings. Willis was a creative and original thinker across a range of areas. Shes really interesting for us because she liked rock music. Theres much more struggle within the piece i gave you than there is in, say, cock rock or marian meades piece. She is more positive. She says, before we succumb to another set of stereotypes in place of the old ones, she says, think about what rock did. Insofar as the music expressed the revolt of black against white, working class against middle class, youth against parental domination and sexual puritanism, it spoke for both sexes. Insofar as it pitted girls inchoate energies against all their conscious and unconscious frustrations. It spoke implicitly for female liberation. Implicitly, which is a big concession. For all its limitations, rock was the best thing going. So her stance is different. Shes not as ready to give up on what rock was. But, like meade, she believes its gone wrong. She believes that its gotten worse. There is an alarming difference between the naive sexism that disfigured rock before 1967 and the much more calculated, almost ideological sexism that has flourished since. What had been a music of oppression became in many respects a music of pseudoliberation. So its an attempt to fool people, to fool women into believing that theyre living a kind of freedom, when in fact their circumstances are the same as before. She also does, willis does one other really interesting thing thats striking given our own interest in the degree to which popular music tends to reflect outsider culture, outsider values, the way its a music of people on the peripheries, on the complete outside of power. Africanamericans, White Working Class americans in particular. Willis says, look, mainstream rock in the 1960s, counterculture rock, is middle class music. It is the product of middle class people. And not even just any middle class people, but an educated middle class elitist. She says something interesting. She says certainly men are contemptuous of women, yeah. But these men, these men, the elites who lead rock n roll, theyre contemptuous of everybody. They hate everybody. They look down on everybody. Their attitude toward women is a part of that, is a product of their class and educational position. And she says also, they use women as scapegoats. They dont want to admit that middleclass culture they are rebelling against, that middleclass culture was a male product. Men were in charge. They created that culture. So how is it they blame women . Somehow as being the people who represent those values . So she says, the misogyny of rock is based on class forces, too, as well as these fundamental issues between men and women. The last difference, and you can see it rooted in her section of rock music, the belief that it somehow could be progressive, she says in 1971, things are changing, things are going to change. She believes that rock will open up to women, that the same kinds of expressive power it has had for men could be used for more politicallyliberated reasons for women. Says there are more female rock musicians, openly feminist ones. She notes one example in particular, the group joy of cooking, which is really a pun. You realize joy of cooking, the bestselling cookbook in history in the United States, everybody had joy of cooking. So there is that domestic image of women, but joy of cooking, cooking in musical terms, playing hard, playing fast, swinging, rocking. So this idea that traditional domesticity has crossed over into a male preserve, cooking with women, cooking with men in music. The leaders were two women, toni brown and terry garthwaite, who also played as ruby brown. She was an electric guitarist. So to hear it from willis standpoint, here is a woman breaking into maledominated rock on capitol records, one of the Biggest Record labels in the u. S. And they made two more albums. So she says see . Things are changing. Now, i wanted to give you the other side to this. There is actually not so much. The neatest piece is from this priest of all people, who writes to the New York Times after he read marion meades piece, and he says, wait a minute. Look, you are over rating the rolling stones, they are not as important as you think, you are misinterpreting bob dylan by picking his most misogynist songs and ignoring the times when he has a much more redemptive view of women, and he says you are misinterpreting the beatles, too. They are not so bad. And in an interesting point, he says you are contemptuous of eleanor rigby, a song we have spent a good bit of time on. If you are rejecting the song, why are you rejecting her . If you are about sisterhood, why why is it that feminist critiques of rock would condemn songs about female subjects . Interesting, but not much of an answer to these powerful critiques. But the real answer is here, in impact. These feminist critics achieve a lot on an intellectual level. They subvert the history of rock as rebellion. They force you to rethink what exactly we mean by the revolutionary nature of the music, but in the process there is a curious thing. This is a final exam question waiting to happen. I realize this, actually. There is something very similar about their condemnations of rock in the early 1970s to the condemnations of rock and roll in the 1950s, the idea that it is inherently corrupting music, that it turns people into degenerates or outcasts. Though the terms are shifted here, again, here is the ideal that male rock turns you into bad people. So it is rather curious that in the end this radical set of ideas is so close to the conservative critique we had in the 1950s, something to think about. We will build on that. But all that said, as we will see in the weeks to come, very little changed. For all of the optimism of ellen willis, women do not emerge as a major force in rock n roll in the 1970s, not really, especially not really when you think about comparisons to other genres, which is what i want to do the rest of the way. This is really surprising to me, but on reflection it shouldnt be. The first area is disco. Disco, which we have analyzed in terms of its relationship to race, the influence of latinos in music, discotheques, africanamericans like van mccoy and the hussle who talked about it in terms of male sexuality and its relationship to the gay rights movement. It is interesting to come back to countercultural rock and consider it in terms of gender. What you have are a much larger role of female performers in disco. We want to work through them, what were known as disco divas. Arguably the biggest star of disco, donna summer, born in boston, 1948, younger than the critics we have been discussing. Changed her name to ladonna ofnes, summer was a version her married name. She was the lead singer for a psychedelic rock band and left it, and you would think for some of the same reasons that animate the anger of feminist critics. There is a very narrow space for her. She becomes a disco singer, the queen of disco, as she is billed. Breakthrough hit, love to love you baby, there is the cover. She has numerous hits into the 1980s, including hot stuff, which you may have encountered. Another one is gloria gaynor, a year younger, born in new work, new york, another africanamerican, had the first big hit disco album, never can say goodbye. We talked about the importance of dance. Never can say goodbye, the lp is famous for the first side, there are only three songs, not three minutes like traditional pop records, we are talking long songs. In clubs, the djs would play the whole side of the first album, so you are talking 19, 20 minutes of essentially uninterrupted music and dancing featuring three big pieces from gloria gaynor. Two years later, the big hit, i will survive. If you havent heard it, we will not do this as a group number. First, this side of the room. The last one makes the point finally, grace jones, notice the narrow age band in here. 1948, like donna summer, jamaican, and we talk about the importance of rap and hiphop in the bronx, what you see now is the importance of caribbean and the caribbean migrants to the United States in creating this culture. Grace jones had a hit in 1975 with i need a man. Here it is. There you go. She was billed as the queen of the gay discos. There she is. Famous picture, notice the collar on the other guy. A famous sequence of photographs of her includes this one with the whip. There is another of her biting the whip. You get the point. A very popular figure. A lot of women, we could extend this list more, and especially in comparative terms, a far more visible presence of women in disco than in rock. This has given you another primary source, a piece by music critic from the New York TimesJohn Rockwell, who says, why are there so many women in disco . What is up with that, is his attitude. And he says a number of striking things. First, a high, piping sound like the voice of women suits the silly, partying mood and bounciness of many disco songs. In other words, unimportant music, like we talked about so far. Unimportant people to sing it. Natch. He also says women singers suit the National Mood of the National Mood of sentimental escapism. Says, when the country doesnt want to deal with reality, it turns to the voices of women. It is really astonishing. You get the drift again. He says women play such a big role in disco precisely because they are really so unimportant. So useless. And then, his third act of dismissal focuses on the importance of gay culture within disco. Without wishing to generalize too loosely about gay sensibility, the fact remains many women, especially ones with exaggerated feminine characteristics or particularly aggressive ones, have become cult figures for homosexuals. And his prime example, as you see, is grace jones. Ny there is a fun page goingip on, where he is starting off with the idea, women are so important to disco. And you lurch your way through the article, and women gradually become less important and disappear. And in the way he draws it shut. He says look, after all, lets face it men run the world of disco. Men run the business of the music, just as they have the labels, they run the production facilities, they control all of it. Disco music is ultimately a producers music, which means mens music, which means the exploitation of women to suit mail fantasies, be they suit male fantasies, be they homosexual or heterosexual. So instead of seeing the emergence of Gay Liberation poststonewall as a liberating thing, he is saying no, men are men are men. At first, it is a puppetlike actingout of a male fantasy of women as objects or as slightly grotesque figures of exaggerated lust and dominance. You are thinking, this is not good. It is almost really too simple. I mean, its a very weird piece. Its smart, but it is this disappearing act, like a magic act. You are looking here is the rabbit, it is going to be gone. Here are women, they are gone, they dont matter. It effectively erases all these very visible disco divas, summer, gaynor and jones, it is as if they have no identity of their own. And it is really striking because of the intensity with which these women portrayed and particularembodied a kind of identity. So John Rockwell is light years away from the antidisco movement we talked about the other day, but he is engaged in the same kind of enterprise of making it disappear, in this case for Different Reasons that have to do with women. Also, it is too simple in the sense that he is making identity be one thing or another thing, art serves one purpose or another, a song is this or that, which is striking for us because we have seen how, in the world of glam rock, for example, identity becomes this mercurial thing that shifts and takes new forms, just as david bowie would take on a new appearance from album to album and tour to tour. Gloria gaynors i will survive was simultaneously known as a gay anthem for gay men, but also as a feminist anthem. It at the same time spoke to men and to women. Werent you the one that tried to crush me with goodbye . Do you think i would crumble, do you think i would lay down and die . Oh, no, not i. I will survive. Different people could see in that something different, and they could find a kind of community. The 1970s is in part about breaking down these iron barriers between categories. It is if rockwell wants to deny that. Wants to make it go away. It can only be gay music, only be mens music. You get the point. For women to occupy a visible, powerful space in music in the 1970s, just as before, was very difficult. Almost close to impossible. And then you hit this truly strange thing, which is to say by now we have come to expect, that Country Music is different, that if you want to contrast to rock, it is different, if you want a contrast to the way power works, it is different. Country music had lots of women in it, mostly singers, but werent they conservative in politics . Well, lets see. Theres a paradox here, country conservatism. Countrywomen had more women star singers. There were fulltime, working women. They were women who balanced career with motherhood. They were women who made music they were women who in a time where the personal was the political, made music that was personal, but the message they conveyed about gender when they focused so much on women and womens identities like dolly parton here, seems very conservative. About are going to think what is the music for Maribel Morgan and Phyllis Shapley you wonder why i put them in a lecture at the beginning, this is why. This is the background music for Maribel Morgans total woman, Country Music, which is reacting with Merle Haggard against change in the 1960s not that simple. Two really good cases for you. I have given you these i will not play the music for you now, but first, tammy when at Tammy Wynette, born in mississippi in 1942, older than talkedisco divas we have about. She did songs that, just the title, you go, really . You make me want to be a mother. Some of you are grimacing. You make me want to be a mother. Make me your kind of woman, which is sung to a man, by the way. It is not what you think. And of course, dont liberate me, love me. You get the Maribel Morgan is point. Going, yes, this is great. She is singing, i was visited by a delegation of women, women liberationists who wanted me to change, wanted me to see you in a different way. She said i didnt want to do it, i didnt want to do it, i know my job is to support you and care for you and you are reading this and going, this is conservative, isnt it . And then at the end she suggests that it is because you basically need all the help you can get. And that is when you realize something is going on in Country Music, as usual, that underneath the hairspray and apparent convention, something is going on. It reminds me a lot of patsy montana, the cowboy sweetheart that we talked about in the 1930s, i want to be a cowboy sweetheart, i want to learn to rope and ride, you are thinking to define herself in terms of a man and it turns out no, she wants to learn how to rope and ride and live an independent existence. Country is complicated, Tammy Wynette is complicated. There is kind of a resistance on part for traditional women. It is not radical politics or proliberation, nothing at all. Your good girl is going to go bad. That is a song that says, keep behaving the way you do my husband keep doing what you do and what you are going to end up with is me copying you. Your good girl is going to want to go bad. You supposedly want women to be like this . Well, you think you really want me to be this way . And of course the answer is no, driving home the argument in the end that what men really want is different from what they think they want and that they better behave. Complicated. Your good girl is going to go bad. And then the ultimate one, stand by your man, number one billboard country hit. Big, big record. Number 19 on the billboard hot 100. So again, the list that tracks sales across all kinds of popular music. A huge hit. Supposedly the ultimate in female submission. You know boy, this is going to date me, talk about age. Hillary clinton famously paints herself into a bad corner by saying that shes not going to be like Tammy Wynette and stand by her man. Says, of course, the most famous standbyhermaner in modern American History. [laughter] dr. Mcgerr you wonder if she knew the lyrics, which are really fascinating. I want to go through them with you. Tammy wynette cowrote this. Billy cheryl. Sometimes its hard to be a woman, giving all your love to just one man. Youll have bad times and hell have good times doing things that you dont understand. But if you love him, you will forgive him, even though he his even though he is hard to understand, and if you love him, oh be proud of him. Youre thinking, oh, god, really . Youre going to put up with him doing what you dont understand . Because after all the most famous putdown hes just a man. Its a stunning song. So its saying, ok, stand by your man, but not because youre so inferior to men. Stand by him because hes just a man. Thats how Country Music works. So its weird. Tammy wynette said, im not a radical here, im not a womens liberationist. But over and over, her songs are about pushing men toward a uniform standard of behavior and theyre framed by this idea, not at all Maribel Morgan that men are so wonderful, but rather, that they are so pathetically limited that youve got to make the best of it that you can. And shes not alone. The other great example that gives us the title of this lecture is loretta lynn. Again, a beautiful example of outsiders music, the way in which Country Music remained, deep into the 1960s and beyond, music of the White Working Class. She was billed as the coalminers daughter, born in kentucky in the 1930s in the depression, because thats what she was, her father was a coal miner. Cultivated a very traditional image. Heres an early publicity picture of her. Shes canning. Shes selling music by putting up preserves in ball jars. Thats how far they go in packaging loretta lynn as conventional. She married in 1948. Do the math. Pretty damn young. Six children. So heres a woman defined by marriage and family. But as she says, because her husband urged her to do it not she herself her husband urged her, she becomes a singer, a fulltime professional. Someone with a career and who still has marriage and family life. She is enormously successful, because shes talented but also because she taps into the same vein that Tammy Wynette did. Of taking what is seemingly a conservative world and a conservative stance and inside it saying, ok, im accepting these ground rules, but i will push for change within it. Early example of this is, dont come home adrinking with loving on your mind. Numberone country hit for her in 1966. I was so excited i threw in another quotation mark, extra value for you. Number one hit, we dont have to do the lyric, you get the point from the title. Here again, negotiation. You want to carry on, you want that much freedom . No sex for you. Look how conventional the cover is. That does not scream womens liberation ala the 1960s. And yet the personal is the political. Then you have your squaws on the warpath. What an album cover, by the way, again what an astonishing thing, front and back. Here she in a whole series of squaw scenes. When you download this youre going to get a look at it. Also the way they write about her. Here she is taking on still more of an outsider identity. In racial terms, you can cringe. But shes actually doing the squaw thing, as youll see, to do something fairly radical. Very much in the performance of this, which i gave you, im not going to play it for you here today, the performance, shes standing there smiling. Its like Merle Haggard doing a kind of passive, ironic grin while performing okie from muskogee. Youre going, this is safe, even bland, kind of dull. And then you listen to the words. And again, thats a reminder for us. Country music as weve seen has been more wordcentered than most of popular music. Again, in an age when radical feminists are arguing, Pay Attention to words, its Country Musicians like Tammy Wynette and loretta lynn and the songs theyre writing that are playing around with words and categories in new ways. These words are just stunning. Well, your pet name for me is squaw. When you come home adrinking and can barely crawl, and all that loving on me wont make things right. You leave me at home to keep the teepee clean, six papooses to break and wean. Remember, six children is exactly what shes got your squaw is on the war path tonight. So far, nice novelty song, you get the point now. Hes using the native american language to reduce her, supposedly to a greater level of subjugation. Well, i found out a big brave chief the game youre hunting for aint beef, get off my hunting grounds and get out of my sight. Do i have to do it, hunting grounds for you . Youre supposed to be hip, come on. This war dance im doing means im fighting mad, you need no more what was youve already had. In other words, youve committed adultery, which was a constant theme through these songs. Your squaw is on the warpath tonight. All pretty good. And that she goes where, as far as i know, no popular song, certainly no number one hit in the u. S. Had gone before. Really just shes smiling. You saw it in the video i gave you. She smiles along and says, well, that firewater that youve been drinking makes you feel bigger, but chief, youre shrinking. [laughter] youre with me there . We could break up into small groups and discuss what that means. [laughter] but i am going to trust you on this. Makes you feel bigger, but chief, youre shrinking since youve been on that lovemaking diet. Dont hand me that old peace pipe. Come on, come work with me. Dont hand me that old peace pipe, this aint no pipe can settle this fight. Your squaw is on the war path tonight. Well, i found out a big brave chief, yeah, your squaw is on the warpath tonight. That is a stunning piece of work. And again, this is the way you push the envelope. She looks so conventional. Shes dressed in this very sedate, middleclass, Phyllis Schlafly sort of way, smiling, strumming a guitar. And yet she just completely undid him. The worlds first mainstream reference to shrinkage ever. [laughter] all conservative. Two years later, by now with an enormous constituency of female fans, she does one of the first songs about birth control. The pill. Look at the cover for the sense of this very kind of wistful thing. All these years ive stayed at home while you had all your fun, and every year thats gone by another babys come. Again, her fan base knows, six children for her. Theres going to be some changes made right here on nursery hill. And then in a really stunning image, youve set this chicken your last time, because now ive got the pill. And the song goes on, kind of angry. And again, the song thats saying, all right, im not going to walk out of this relationship, but the balance of power within it has to shift, has to change. Nobody in american popular music, mainstream, major hits, was dealing with this set of issues as continuously as loretta lynn. And of course shes seen as conservative, dowdy, all the rest him by mainstream by mainstreamt commentary. I couldnt even give you much discussion in primary sources of loretta lynn, because its not there. John rockwell doesnt even bother with that. Its those country people, what could they possibly know . Now, of course, to add to all of this, naturally, loretta lynn says feminist, womens liberation . Absolutely not. In the piece ive given you, you see this, too. Im not a big fan of the womens liberation. The womens liberation. But maybe it will help women stand up for the respect theyre due. Neat, very nice politicians remark. Im not in favor of this, though it might be a good thing. Thats how you do it. Thats how you push the culture while seeming to be conservative. Weve seen this before. The beatles, as we have said, if you smile and youre dressed in suits, you can get away with a lot. Well, loretta lynn, same thing. So you get you know where im going with this. What weve seen is, then, astonishingly difficult, how astonishingly difficult it is for women to open up space within popular music to raise the sets of issues that are raised by liberal and radical feminism in the 1960s and 70s. As i say, ironically but not really ironically, because we now understand the mechanism, ironically its Country Music and disco that in certain ways advance womens issues more aggressively than rock ever did. And finally, to complete this, the most successful womens song, the most successful form of womens message music to go with the kinds of message songs weve seen, whether its eve of destruction or say it loud, im black and im proud, Merle Haggards im proud to be an okie from muskogee. The most powerful message song comes not from rock, but mainstream popular music. Helen reddy, i am woman. I gave you her performing that song. That is very conventional pop music. It is not hardedged at all. In fact, the Critical Response to that as music is pretty negative. Reddy, again, a bit older. Born in 1941. Australian. Who interesting case of rebellion. She came from a show business family. She hated that. Her rebellion, as she said, was, i wanted to be a wife and a mother, instead of a performer like her parents. Thats how she starts out. But eventually she realizes what she wants to do is to perform, and that she wants to make it in the u. S. , where she arrives in 1966, 25 years old, she arrives divorced, a single mother with a threeyearold child. So making balancing the things that loretta lynn was balancing, Tammy Wynette was balancing. She gradually made it as a singer. Worked through a series of different styles. She remarries to a man who becomes her manager. They move to l. A. In 1971, she has a number of 13 billboard hot 100 hits so across all genres. I believe in music. But much as shes glad to have succeeded, shes become involved in the womens liberation movement. As she says, i was part of a consciousnessraising group. A group of women who get so together to raise one anothers consciences by talking about the realities of their lives as women, building a notion of sisterhood. And out of that experience, reddy said, i realized i wanted to do something musical about that. The result of this reflection beginning in 1971 is i am woman. And she says, you know, at first i didnt think of writing a song. I would have performed somebody elses song. I wasnt confident in myself yet as a songwriter. And she says, when i looked around, i found only total doormat songs for women, that in pop music thats all you find, that theres not really anything there that expresses what she wants. So, she writes her own statement instead. Neat history. She writes i am woman. Radio stations wont play it. And we have seen in the system of popular music, the business of popular music, you needed radio play, you needed airplay to get people to buy the record. Radio stations think it is awful. Remember, a completely maledominated world. Not just awful. They think it is sickening, this song, just sickening. So reddy comes up with an interesting idea, to grassroots build this record. What they do is go around to afternoon talkshows in different cities in the u. S. , where there were talkshows for stayathome women. Talk shows it is out of this world that, say, Oprah Winfreys show would grow. Heres reddy with one of the most famous ones, a show in philadelphia, mike douglas. A smooth, pleasant man. And reddy would go on these shows, talk about her life, talk a bit about what led to the song, shed perform it, and what she had hoped would happen happened. That women viewers would hear this and then phone the radio stations and say, why arent you playing this song . I heard this incredible record, play it. Well, the volume of calls is enough that gradually i am woman gets attention and it gets played and it takes off. The lyric just like your squaw is on the warpath. It is interesting. Its worth taking it apart. Because its a very subtle song, actually. It does a couple of very and of very interesting things. I am woman, hear me roar in numbers too big to ignore and i know too much to go back and pretend because ive heard it all before and ive been down there on the floor no one is ever going to keep me down again, a reference to violence against women. I have been down there on the floor, no one is ever going to keep me down again. So it starts off with this issue, yes i am wise, but it is wisdom from pain, yes, i paid the price, but look out much i gained if i have to i can do anything i anything i am strong i am invincible i am woman and i come back even stronger, not a novice any longer because you deepen the conviction in my soul. Really fascinating. So she started with this subtle image of the sexes and between the sexes and implicitly a heterosexual relationship between sexes, i am woman watch me grow see me standing toe to toe, so growth being confrontational. As i spread my loving arms across the land. So woman is love, nurturing, growing. But i am still an embryo, with a long long way to go, until i make my brother understand. So a song that begins implicitly with a male as a romantic opposite end a perpetrator of violence will end with the idea that a relationship between men and women is that of sister and brother, so not necessarily sexual. It is a complicated song, whether you like the rhymes or the background, which is an interesting stylistic mix of pop music, the guitar backing is interesting, but what is going on ideologically is striking, this notion of pride and that pain is translated into strength, and again, that violence is an issue and that ultimately, the relationship between men and women needs to be understood differently and in different terms. That is what pop music does, that is a conventional thing, but this is a less conventional form of that message. The male reaction was striking. Helen reddy was beneath contempt, the purveyor of all in the womens lib movement that is silly. Boom. Done. A music writer in cleveland, on the eve of helen reddy turning up to perform in cleveland, he writes, as an admitted male chauvinist pig in the water to one or two areas in which my wife has not beaten me into submission, i must admit that this staff labors anthem of sorts would normally raise my hackles. But miss reddy sings it so well that her modicum of breastbeating, or should i call it chestbeating, for the cause on the one song is fair enough. So one time. Just this once. I will let you sing i am woman. I wont puke, just this once, that is the reaction. Helen reddy was used to it and she said, for a lot of men, thinking about the Womens Movement makes them grab their groins. What can i say . I didnt say they were going to cut their dicks off or anything. Talk about images of violence. And now a commercial from dove soap. You do not find many pictures of helen reddy like this where she is looking at you going, i owe yeah . But that is underneath all of this oh yeah . But that is underneath all of this. Number one billboard top 100 hit. Here is a song radio would not play, many men considered not in thelting sense of the womens wear loose revolution, but being sickening, and in spite of all of that, a number one hit in the United States. The following year she wins the grammy for best female vocal performance and it is another fabulous, controversial moment she gets up and she says, i want to thank god because she makes everything possible. She gets a ton of letters and she says one of her favorite ones begins, you skinny, blasphemous bitch. Abbreviated, usbb. And radical feminism argues that notion of beauty is used to discipline women, so to be skinny here is clearly to be somehow unfeminine as part of being a bitch. The history of this song is stunning. There she is accepting it, her husband behind her, you skinny, blasphemous bitch. She goes from there. The u. N. Has International Womens year in 1975, which settled all issues about womens equality. They also have a symbol and a theme song, which is i am woman. The song becomes international. The reaction by now is not so much men going, my wife likes it, a number of feminist activists do not think she is radical enough. I was going to give you one more source, but ellen willis writes a review of helen reddys work for the new yorker. It is this convoluted thing saying, i dont really like the music but her values are the right values, but i dont like it and i cap really quite and i cant really quite explain why i dont like it, and you are on page three of this going, ellen, just say it, but what is striking is it gets us to questions we have dealt with all along, how music can be politically effective. I am woman is much of a piece with kinds of music we have dealt with before. There are no policy prescriptions. Verse two isnt about the equal rights amendment. There is nothing about that, nothing technical there at all. It is common denominator music, not a put down, which we have seen. Working on collective identity, and a sense of pride, we have seen this before. That is what is revolutionary about rock music and Country Music and aspects of soul in the 1960s, this avocation of pride, saying this is what unites us. And this is striking because even though it is by a woman and seems subjective, it is a collective song. It is about the group pride of women. It is a very familiar kind of music. It has driven message music across several genres. We have seen repeatedly that is the that it is the political act of outsiders, that rebellion begins with a sense of pride, taking a put down and turning around and saying, it is a basis for my strength, i have been put down before, and that pride in myself in turn is what begins to unite us collectively. Say it loud, i am black and i am proud, as james brown puts it. Merle haggard does it, james brown does it, all you need is love, the beatles song for that first Global Television in 1967 functions as the same kind of lowest common denominator value, drawing together a group of people. What helen reddy does is very old in one sense and quite conventional in many ways, but what is different is it is done in the service of politicizing women. Helen reddys reaction is, i gave you this material, i am not defined by that. I dont do womens lib songs all the time. I do lots of other things, like bob dylan she doesnt want to be imprisoned in one identity and no she doesnt have to do it all the time. I will let you do this just once, she knows to do it just once is to do a great deal, it is to begin to change things. So that draws us together to this point. If we are trying to build an argument about postrevolutionary popular music, that after the suppose it rock, the place we end up looking is not in rock itself, it is among people who consciously pulled away from mainstream, countercultural rock and roll, the counterculture had become mainstream, and instead it was farmed to new kinds of people who responded to the ways in which the status of gay men has risen, the status of women, lesbian, heterosexual, have emerged, and they respond using these musical tools we have seen emerge in the 1960s, rejecting the politics of 1960s music in many ways, but appropriating the kinds of tools, weapons, the cultural musical weapons that had been forged in this musical culture they were rejecting. You get the paradox there. Very, very effective. The third element in this, we have already seen this time represents an intensified sense of economic decline. We have seen that in the music of Merle Haggard, workingclass centered music which was already registering, what the Industrial Revolution would mean, what stagflation would mean, the strange, slowing down of the u. S. Economy, including hyperinflation. There is another line of transformation and one we have lived with these developing notions and sexual identities that we have discussed, so the next pathway i want to take has here has to do with the economy, transformation of capitalism, limiting of opportunities that once seemed so limitless that you could dream of a free city entry music entry rock n roll, but if there is a u. S. That can no longer afford to have everything be free, that is what i want to do next. And we will see how that builds on, even as it opposes earlier rock culture. And with that, we are done. Enjoy the day. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] this weekend on American History tv, at 6 00 p. M. , american artifacts takes you to the Virginia Museum of history and culture for an exhibit on africanAmerican History from reconstruction through civil rights, explore our nations passed on American History tv, every weekend on cspan3. Monday not on the communicators, cnbc cybersecurity reporter kate on her book about the world of cybercrime. If we want to understand why all of these things are happening, there it is the algorithmsn of the that are on twitter and facebook the russianhelp Intelligence Agency influence an election or the ransomware that has now taking down big cities like baltimore and atlanta, we have to understand the people who are behind these things and all of them are different. Monday night at 8 00 eastern on cspan two. This year, cspan is touring cities around the country, exploring American History. Next, a look at the recent visit to bozeman montana. You are watching American History tv, all weekend, every weekend on cspan3. Crystal we are here in the extreme history project offices ic