Robert PlantofLed Zeppelin, considered one of the key acts in the development of cock rock, onstage in New York in 1973
Cock rock is a description of rock music that emphasizes an aggressive form of male sexuality. The style developed in the later 1950s, came to prominence in the 1960s and 1970s, and continues into the present day.
[C]ock-rock performance means an explicit, crude, 'masterful' expression of sexuality ... Cock-rock performers are aggressive, boastful, constantly drawing audience attention to their prowess and control. Their bodies are on display ... mikes and guitars are phallic symbols (or else caressed like female bodies), the music is loud, rhythmically insistent, built around techniques of arousal and release. Lyrics are assertive and arrogant, but the exact words are less significant than the vocal styles involved, the shrill shouting and screaming.[4]
The meaning of the term cock rock has changed over time. It was first mentioned by an anonymous author in the New York–based underground feminist publication Rat in 1970[5] to describe the male-dominated music industry, and became a synonym for hard rock, emphasizing the aggressive expression of male sexuality, often misogynist lyrics and use of phallic imagery.[6] The term was used by sociologists Simon Frith and Angela McRobbie in 1978 to point to the contrast between the male-dominated subculture of cock rock which was "aggressive, dominating and boastful" and the more feminized teenybop stars of pop music.[7]Led Zeppelin have been described as "the quintessential purveyors of 'cock rock'".[8] Other formative acts include the Rolling Stones, The Who and Jim MorrisonofThe Doors.[9]
In 1981, Frith described the characteristics of cock rock in a way that could apply to female performers, not just male ones.[4] In 2004, Auslander used this description of cock-rock characteristics to show that Suzi Quatro (the first female bass player to become a major rockstar) is a female cock-rocker.[10]
^T. Cateforis, The Rock History Reader (CRC Press, 2007), ISBN0-415-97501-8, p. 125.
^R. Shuker, Popular Music: the Key Concepts (Abingdon: Routledge, 2005, 2nd edn., 2005), ISBN0-415-28425-2, pp. 130-1.
^M. Leonard, Gender in the Music Industry: Rock, Discourse and Girl Power (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, 2007), ISBN0-7546-3862-6, pp. 24-6.
^S. Waksman, Instruments of Desire: the Electric Guitar and the Shaping of Musical Experience (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001), ISBN0-674-00547-3, pp. 238-9.
^P. Auslander, Performing Glam Rock: Gender and Theatricality in Popular Music (University of Michigan Press, 2006), ISBN0-472-06868-7, p. 201.
^C. Klosterman, Fargo Rock City: a Heavy Metal Odyssey in Rural Nörth Daköta (Simon and Schuster, 2001), ISBN0-7434-0656-7, pp. 100-1.
^"Hair metal", Allmusic retrieved December 30, 2010.
^R. Moore, Sells Like Teen Spirit: Music, Youth Culture, and Social Crisis (New York, NY: New York University Press, 2009), ISBN0-8147-5748-0, pp. 109-110.
^J. Gottlieb and G. Wald, "Smells like teen spirit: riot girls, revolution and independent women in rock", in A. Ross and T. Rose, eds, Microphone Fiends: Youth Music & Youth Culture (London: Routledge, 1994), ISBN0-415-90908-2, p. 259.
