When you strip away all the pomp and circumstance from rock ’n’ roll — the fashion and politics and drugs and groupies and stardom and burnout — what’s usually left is a few simple chords and a tune you can hum. In the 50-plus years since Chuck Berry, Little Richard, etc. created an art form, rock ’n’ roll music has morphed from a powerful expression of freedom and rebellion into a multi-billion-dollar commodity to be packaged and sold by record company soul-suckers that view artists as cattle and the audience as ignorant rabble worthy only of being led around by the nose or dragged to court. It didn’t used to be this way.
The new film Pirate Radio remembers a time when the music was king. Well, OK, the music and a small handful of outlaw DJs floating just off the coast of Britain, pumping their pirate signal to millions of the Queen’s subjects while royally pissing off the authorities in the process. Pirate Radio isn’t a true story, per se, but elements of it are inspired by real events in 1960s Britain, when a legal loophole allowed unlicensed broadcasters to drop anchor within spitting distance of the mainland and thrill the masses with records by The Kinks, The Rolling Stones and The Who.
This article appears in Nov 11-17, 2009.