The Women of Rock

While 70s music may be known for splintering off an incredibly diverse number of styles and interpretations of rock and roll, it should be known for the decade when women rockers came into their own. Well okay maybe recognition of them didn’t really happen until a bit later… but that is when late boomer women took up the anthem, heard the call, and sisters started “doing it for themselves.”I have always contended (but do not believe anything you hear about me being contentious though) that the sweeping societal changes usually traced to “the 60s” did not really take root and embed themselves in our societal psyche until “the 70s,” thus impacting the Later Boomers far more than the Hippie Boomers. I climb out even further on a limb when I say that later born Boomer women absorbed the majority of the shock waves from the impact of these changes.

A great place to view the extent of the type of change of which I speak is in the world of popular music. Rock splintered into so many genres, by the early ’70s that I find I must use the generic term “rock” for contemporary music in general in this article, although it might rankle folks who know the difference between adult contemporary, pop, folk, rock, soft rock, country rock, ad infinitum. I firmly believe that the marketing of distinctions between musicians vary far more than the orientations of the artists themselves. But then there are two type of people in the world, lumpers and splitters, I’m a lumper. I prefer to see commonality not difference, and I’ll be dog gone dogged if I can figure out the difference between most contemporary pop and folk singers other than the circuit they play and tour.

Anyway, moving on, I will not belabor the old, now well established, argument that Rock ‘N Roll is a sexist industry. That isn’t news to anyone. But when you think of the world of contemporary rock, across the board and across genres, you will find that many, many of the women whose names come up are later born Baby Boomers: So how did these women manage to survive a sexist industry and claim a niche for themselves? What niche? Well, it is a niche, but it isn’t a named one. I mean the niche is filled with women, and why would you want to bother naming something like that? (I’m being sarcastic here!) I’m talking about the Indigo Girls, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Tracy Chapman, Shawn Colvin, Joan Osborne, Carrie Newcomer, Joan Jett, Melissa Etheridge, KD Lang, Natalie Merchant, Sheryl Crow, and Kate Bush. What these women do could not have been done in the 60s. They are filling a niche they created themselves. In essence these are the ladies of rock who took advantage (long, slow, steady advantage) of a juvenile system that was the mid-20th century music industry, and created the land of women’s rock. I think you have to go back to early jazz and blues singers to really find the breadth and depth of women in music that late booming women display. Info at the end of this article will help you keep current with these booming women of rock, pop, and a few more celtic and country folks too. (Another of my articles “Systems theory, semiotics, and deconstructing post-modernist bull” will get you up to speed on the systemic elements of social change.) But let’s continue to look at a smattering of what makes these ladies so special before you go flittering off to their sites.

Of course some great amount of gratitude goes to the Grandmothers, Mothers, and Aunties of Rock who are leading edge Boomers or even a bit older. We daughters and sisters should lay alms at their feet, even as our brothers and husbands hurl themselves prostrate and drooling at their feet them hoping for a kind word or smile. (Yes, there are male groupies…ask any male Boomer about Stevie Nicks if you don’t believe me… and watch his eyes glaze over, but it is a different sort of scene.)

Who would these grandmothers be? Bonnie Rait, who personifies tough and whom I often see playing a benefit concert in Sedona that has also hosted Shawn Colvin and Mary Chapin carpenter and Trisha Yearwood. These strong women of rock stick together, huh? Joan Armatrading has to be mentioned, even though she is pretty hoity toity with the Queen now, but she certainly taught more than a few late booming women how to lay it on the line lyrically. And we cannot forget Patti Smith and Chrissie Hynde, lest the gods of rock strike us dead. I am enchanted with a writer friend’s description of Patti in concert in Ljubljana a few months back, “At times she broke the frenzied rock anthem pace by donning a pair of half-glasses and reading from one of her books, one of her poems or one of William Blake’s, aging in an instant into a rude bohemian grandma, then shucking the props and transforming back into the ageless rock-poet avatar in blue jeans.” Geesh, such poetry! I wanna grow up to be a rude bohemian grandma… I wanna never compromise the essential core… at least half of late boomer women do, I’m sure. But there are multiple styles of expression and there are some of us who at times still like to listen to (or perform) songs about love and lacy thoughts and owe a great deal to Stevie Nicks for showing us all that you can keep your identity and autonomy while being one of the most well recognized sex symbols of an era. Then there are Linda Rondstat and Joni Mitchell who showed us that you can be successful but that it is more important, ultimately, to do your own thing whether it be jazz or mariachi.