ABSTRACT
Rock has gradually ceded its popularity on the charts to hip-hop and pop acts, it has seemed that the rock star is becoming a vanishing breed. This chapter argues that rock stars contributed to the changes that we associate with the 1960s: the breaking down of hierarchies of race and gender; the new patterns of courtship, love, and marriage; the reintroduction of leftist political perspectives into popular consciousness. The rise of rock stardom was enabled by the allied media. The mass-print media, which had provided movie stars their primary off-screen connection to the audience, also gave rock fans the most detailed information about the stars’ lives offstage. Popular music never equalled the mass reach of movies or television, but it may have had its peak mass audience later, in the 1980s, with megaselling albums such as Michael Jackson’s Thriller.
