ABSTRACT
In the course of gathering my thoughts about this panel, I reread parts of Elias Canetti’s Crowds and Power. It occurred to me that a book about the relationship of rock ’n’ roll to its audience would have to be called Crowds and Freedom-which is to say that the power of rock ’n’ roll as a musical and social force has always been intimately connected with the paradoxical possibilities of mass freedom or collective individuality.
