Article Database

Cock Rock

The New Music Scene

Glitter Rock or Cock Rock — call it what you will. Normalcy is out and decadence is in. Many rock stars today can't expect to make it on talent alone, so they offer sex and insanity instead. Painted, glittery, rhinestoned musicians are now hallucinating onstage and in the concert halls, and they're haulting in millions!

As if rock music wasn't already drenched with sex and all the variables on the games of love that surround it, lately it has become confusingly so. It's one thing when an earthy guitar player steps up in front of a screaming crowd, wails a tune as gut-wrenching as a gritty tenor saxophone solo and shakes loose every emotional fiber in your body. Or, when a 24-carat home-spun hero like Elvis gets up there and belts out a raunchy lyric you've already lived or weaves a story about a two-timin' lady you know too well. Yes, that's one thing....

But what happens when a hip slinging transvestite or some babyfaced manchild takes the mike or comes through your stereo speakers like a boy soprano and cooing bubble-gun nonsense about the battle of the sexes? Guys with orange hair and eye shadow. Or bass players in leotards with rhinestones and sequins in their hair who mince around on stage like fag hags or fruit queens on Halloween. Then what?

It's sex, friend, pure and simple. Whether your musical hero is a shit-kicker like Johnny Cash, a bearded rebel like Waylon Jennings, a tortured soul-stirrer like Isaac Hayes, or even a mincing dandy like Mick Jagger or David Bowie — it's sex that they're wailing about. And while it's nothing new to hang a story or a song on the game of love or the adventures of a shady lady, it is revolutionary when the singer (instead of the song) is an advertisement for sex. It's downright rebellious.

"Cock Rock," it has come to be called. And the glittery, neon overcoat that the flashers of rock music have adopted has little or nothing to do with the genuine rock 'n roll that Chuck Berry, Fats Domino and Bill Haley sired in the early SO's. Cock Rock is another ball of wax entirely. It's about as real and legitimate as "Steve Austin" and the Bionic Woman. In other words, it is a sheer fabrication — bogus.

How did it happen? The British are largely responsible. That's right; those same wonderful people who brought us the Beatles, Tom Jones and so many other imported musical products that were little more than recycled American goods. And when American musical audiences had finally grown bored after Sergeant Pepper and the break-up of the Beatles, you could depend upon the British to come up with gaudy, ostentatious new window dressing to wrap the same old music in.

Enter Cock Rock!

We've all seen it. How can you avoid it? Whether it's on Midnight Special or In Concert on a Friday night or on the Sonny & Cher Show or one of the variety hours, it's there on your television set for all of the family to see. Only the networks aren't about to let it be called like it is. The show is everything. Some musicians wear clown makeup and prance around like deranged Nureyevs; while others teeter from atop their platform boots and wedgies in full drag, with flowing scarves, false eye-lashes and bare midriffs like spaced-out gazelles. But maybe you think we're being a little prejudiced. You decide.

Consider ...

A bounding, blurring figure that arrives at center stage (or the middle of your TV screen) with a graceful leap in tights and a checkered maxi­coat; a flowing red mane and beard outlined by clown makeup with a silvery flute in one hand and madness in his eyes. Hunched over, approaching the microphone like a Groucho puppet and, leering wickedly, he delicately fingers the flute like a man preparing to relieve himself into a urinal and speaks in a clipped, British accent:

"Like a phallus, isn't it? I wish mine were like this — long, shiny and cold."

The young girls circling the stage titter, giddily nudging one another. Meet Ian Anderson, the wacky leader of Jethro Tull, a blue chip British group with walls of gold records to their credit. Anderson covorts on stage as though he were stricken with Saint Vitus Dance and plays a mean flute when he isn't playing grab-ass and affecting lispy exchanges with the rest of the band. The fact that he's married and reasonably straight is hardly enough reason to shelve the charade and the outlandish theatrics. Not when it's packing auditoriums and makes for instant notoriety in rock music circles.

No matter how you slice it, talent or not — cock rock means big bucks.

Consider Alice Cooper (real name: Vincent Furnier) who; though a home-grown American, is among the most bizarre cock-rockers with the midas touch. According to Time, their recent twelve-week American tour grossed more than $4.5 million. That'll buy a lot of mascara and sequin-studded jock-straps. Tally that figure up with a half-dozen platinum-selling albums and joke­box and radio royalties and you begin to realize the enormity of it all. Not to mention the line of Alice Cooper unisex cosmetics and other items being merchandised. It's big biz and Cooper is the first to admit it.

"Sex and violence sells," says Alice/Vincent. "Five years ago if there was just the slightest hint that you were a fag, you were in real trouble. But we wore turquoise jewelry and makeup anyway. There were nights that we had to fight our way out of the joint — in Detroit and midwestern towns like that. But not anymore."

Alice offers this explanation for the recent phenomena: "People are both male and female biologically. The typical American male thinks he's all male — 100 percent. But what he has to realize is that he has a female side too." Alice credits this attitude to treatment from a Phoenix hypnotist he retains.

But perhaps some of Alice Cooper's fan mail, published in Rolling Stone, gives a truer perspective of both Cock Rock and the growing decadence of America's rock audience.

"People call you faggy, but I think you're pretty. How could you be a homo when you turn so many people on?"

"All we want to know is, are you guys homosexuals? We don't mean to put you down, but, like, we were wondering if it was phony or not. If you are, don't feel weird about telling us. We're fans. We aren't lesbians or anything."

"I have all your albums. I also sing in a band called Randy Slut."

"My dad hates you because he thinks you're a fag. Shit on him!"

How is that for a few testimonials?

Naturally, we're all aware of Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones. Mick's sassy strut and gay pirouettes in black leotards would seem to qualify him for the ladies' room. The incident at Altamont, where 400,000 kids turned out for a rock festival and witnessed a senseless killing at ringside was deplorable. An impotent Jagger was unable to control his private police force for the occasion — the Oakland chapter of the Hells Angels. The Angels looked at Jagger more like he was something to sodomize, rather than the funky symbol of rock 'n roll.

Rod Stewart is almost ballsy by comparison. A street-wise little bantam rooster from Scotland, he gives the impression that he's just going along with the tide and taking the line of least resistance. Apparently Stewart has some heterosexual inclinations despite his swishy ways. He has the delectable Scandinavian actress Britt Ecklund for a roommate and even wrote an epic tune on the subject of tits: "Silicone Grown."

Says Stewart: "Some nights I don't know if I'm male or female out there. It's a weird feeling. Sometimes people will yell: 'Take your trousers off!" and I suppose one of these nights some singer will. But it won't be me. I might feel like a stripper at times but I'm a singer! No matter how sexual an outlet it is, I like to think it's the singing that people come to hear — not just the glitter. I mean, I get a rush out there. Dancing my ass off and strutting around — that's part of it, sure — but there's more to me than glitter." And there is. But Rod Stewart can hardly escape such comparisons.

Bands like the New York Dolls don't even try. Capitalizing upon today's confused new sexual distinctions, lead and principal songwriter of the Dolls, David Johansen, makes little effort fo defend against the label "transsexual" that has been identified with the band. "My mother read an article describing me as a 'transsexual' and I had a hard time explaining to her what it meant too.

"I always thought it meant having your sex changed, and neither I nor any of the Dolls have any intention of doing that. Just because we wear women's clothes and makeup on stage doesn't make us fags. I don't see that much difference between us (meaning men and women) and if our audiences get off on the unisex trip and exploiting Cock Rock, what's wrong with that?"

Arthur Kane, the Dolls' bass guitarist, defends his on-stage masquerade this way: "What difference does it make what sex you are? The world is changing. I don't think of people that way and certainly not myself. I've always wanted to be in a band that was good-looking and sexy, and could play good hard-rock music that could whip kids into a frenzy.

"We ought to tell everybody that we all just came back from Copenhagen. Tell them all that we were chicks six months ago and just decided to go butch for while. I'll bet we'd sell more records, man."

Obviously the kid knows what he's talking aboµt. Rock music is undeniably a freak show today, so why not let everything hang out? Not long ago the Dolls played a club date in Long Island and had to hang a "No Girls Allowed" sign on the dressing room.

"It was in Glen Cove and all the kids had motorcycles and GTO's and we couldn't believe that this shit was still going on," explained Johansen. "It was like 1962. We had to put a sign on the dressing room door because we have so much trouble with girls. And when we came on that stage we felt this insane vibration. Most of the guys were ex-GI's, real spaced-out Nam vets, not just punk kids. And the girls were enraptured, crowding around us. and throwing hankies and flowers at us.

"Before long it got violent, guys and girls alike brawling and throwing people around. You couldn't prove to me there was any difference between the sexes there. It was the same way in the parking lot. Chicks leaving in their own cars and guys in theirs, maybe meeting later but doing their own thing."

You might wonder how a group of so-called heterosexuals could arrive at a name like the New York Dolls. Says Sylvain, the Egyptian-born guitar player: "One day I said wouldn't it be great to have a band called the Dolls — because that's what we are. It takes a man like me to know a woman like me." Which explains nothing. But it's doubtful that most Cock Rockers would sensibly explain where they are coming from. But the Dolls' leader Johansen made an attempt.

"My sex life is rampant," he explained. "Sex is different things to different people, so how can there be any consistency on-stage? It's not for a guy to say he's heterosexual or homosexual or bisexual — because none of these classifications are real. People are just plain sexual! We have all kinds of personalities within us and, fortunately for our act, we have a chance to act them all out. If Sybil (the subject of a recent best-selling novel on multi-personality) had as many personalities as they said — well then we all have at least a few. And by venting them all, it adds something to the music, I think."

David Bowie, of the orange hair, cavorts like an "extra" out of the spaced-out, and violent movie, Clockwork Orange, and has probably influenced bi-sexuality on­stage more than any other performer. As dean of the glitter-rock scene, he seems more intent on being counter-sexual than sexual per se. By making a travesty of America's middle-class sexual mores, his songs have made devotees of Cock Rock view normal sexuality as passe.

While he started out in London as a parody of Anthony Newley, he soon learned that normalcy was out and decadence was in. Pansexuality had arrived. If you wanted to appear on-stage in snakeskin or a loin cloth, who was going to stop you?

"Genders are obsolete," he told one interviewer. "People are what count. Everyone knows there are more than just two sexes. Why not admit it?" And the studio audience of a recent Midnight Special taping would seem to verify his position. It was an assortment of intersexual faces and bodies, glittering and gleaming in their Frederick's of Hollywood bodices and exposed underwear and spiked heels. If they could, they would appear half-nude and try to emulate their on-stage heroes. The thinking seems to run: "If you look and act like a star, you are a star."

One rock star that none of the kids seem to be imitating is Johnny Winter, an albino from Texas who resembles the in-bred banjo pickin' freak in the movie Deliverance. His album covers portray him as part­Frankenstein, part-bleached-out­Granny with snow-white hair, pink eyes and glitter. Even the kids have to draw the line somewhere. They buy Winters' records but his get-up just isn't functional enough for everyday freaking. Even if they emulated his platinum-colored hair, who'd be willing to try and imitate the pink-eyed albino look? Probably someone, but not to our knowledge.

What is surprising is that no one in the country or western music genres has produced a Cock Rocker of sorts. Since Elvis was one of the first, long before they had a name for it, you would think that a latter-day bad boy would emerge. At least by the 70's. But the Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson-like country rock kings are too down-home to engage in bogus, crowd-titillating tactics. They project another brand of sex appeal. And the Johnny Cash variety of cowboy sex object is too drenched in God, country and a secure, across-the-board image. Cash is enough of a businessman and Christian to keep those periodic albums of hymns coming at us.

So it's left to the pretenders, those marginal musicians and performers who need a gimmick in order to succeed in music's savagely competitive game today. One can't expect to make it on talent alone. So it seems to make sense to sell sex and insanity. And what better framework is there for today's rock and rollers than the zany, theatrical world of hard rock?

Perhaps Cock Rock can best be explained by an examination of the phenomenon of decadence in today's society. Somehow Frank (The Voice) Sinatra and Lana (Sweater Girl) Turner seem as institutionalized as "mom" and apple pie in reflection. While they once also aroused controversy, as did Elvis a generation later, the very morality that they once threatened today seems archaic.

What do we see on the tube and on record album covers today? Painted, glittery, androgynous, rhinestoned "new" people, with their arms wrapped around themselves. Drag is "in" and decadence is "it." We're living in an age of boredom. It's chic to look silly and ugly. We're into letting it all hang-out. Is it any wonder that something like Cock Rock should be in vogue?

What is lamentable is that there are few attractive women on the scene. The whole stage seems to be set for men enticing women. Oh, there are a few leather-wearing, blues-belters, like Suzy Quatro, just as there once was a raw dynamo named Janis Joplin. Wouldn't it be intriguing if the weird world of Cock Rock were invaded by a few rock goddesses resembling Ursula Andress and Pam Grier? Now that would be something for a cock to really crow about.