2. Bill Haley and his CometsRock Around The Clock
Bill Haley was a weird figure because he was older than most of the rock people at the time. Now, he doesn’t seem old as a performer, but he was 29 which was older than most of the people that were really cool at the time, and he didn’t look particularly rock & roll. He was definitely not competition to Elvis, as far as image goes. But the song ‘Rock Around The Clock’, it’s hard to convey just what that would have meant at the time even if it sounds kinda tame now. As far as I know it was the first time that a rock song was used in the opening credits of a film, Blackboard Jungle, and I went to see that film. Every film I’d seen had started with this mushy music, and then there’s a rock song! It just kind of shakes your whole world! And the movie was about juvenile delinquency, an issue which seems quaint now but that was important at the time. So the opening of the film set off this explosion within me that was kind of amazing.
Didn’t it cause a spate of seat slashing in cinemas across America?
I think it did, and in the UK as well. It was a pretty universal experience for people at that time that this was not normal. But not normal in a good way.
