ABSTRACT
This chapter has three purposes: to document historically the link between rock music and social deviance in the 1950s and 1960s; to examine the role of mass media and other groups in the presentation and interpretation of this link; and to outline the early sociocultural changes in rock and roll based on this initial and continued association with socially deviant behavior and values in the emerging youth subculture. Before examining the historical links between rock and roll and social deviance, it is necessary to define the latter term more precisely. Sociologists have long and passionately argued for one or another definition of social deviance. The second view is what Howard S. Becker calls the "medical analogy". The emergence of rock and roll coincided with the demographic and sociocultural development of a white middle class youth subculture. The music and its increasingly visible performers were the most important media elements in the evolution of the youth subculture during the late 1960s.
