ABSTRACT

Studying the development of popular music culture requires an engagement with its history, to better situate and understand its contemporary status. How do we ‘remember’ the past and what influences and informs our memories of ‘what happened’ and the relative significance of individual events, participants, and musical texts? This musical ‘popular memory’ is constructed through the interaction of a number of ‘sites’, which mediate and represent popular music history. These include written accounts, books, and journal articles; film and television documentaries and biopics; the wider music press, especially music magazines and music biography; the recording industry’s repackaging of its past, through reissues and box sets representative of particular styles and periods of music; and heritage sites, notably museums devoted to popular/rock music, which have become increasingly important. Combined, these various forms of history create public and individual popular memories about the musical past, establishing particular dominant narratives.