From Orpheus and his lyre to Liam Gallagher and his leer in 358 pages flat. Impressive? You betcha, but more significantly academic and poet, Ruth Padel, leaves you in no doubt that the ancient Greeks and modern rock stars did indeed emerge from the same primordial psycho-cultural swamp and have more in common as iconic entities than you dared think, even in your darkest Spinal Tap moments.
Padel's thesis is concise and devilishly simple. "Rock music began as phallus worship, it is one of the most male arts of all time and its stars embody the same cultural values as those espoused by the gods and heroes of Greek mythology." This, very neatly, gives us the academic reason why we refer to this particular genre of popular music as "cock rock".
To ease us into her enthralling and more-fun-than-it-sounds argument, Padel casually throws out a few obvious questions at the beginning: "Why the enormous stadia? Why the groupies, the screaming, the hysteria, crowd surfing and larger-than-life theatricality? Why are rock stars' faces reproduced everywhere, their divorces, pacemakers and one-night stands taking precedence in the tabloids over wars, massacres and peace treaties?"
The usual approach here - and that which dominates most academic readings of popular culture - is to contextualise and deconstruct, itemise external influences, allude to changing sociological dynamics, etc. Padel, though, bores her way down to find the underlying deep structure which is responsible for the slightly ludicrous situation of an Alpha man on stage, in front of 50,000 adoring fans (of both sexes), quite blatantly using his guitar as a fetish instrument. Jimmy Page, come on down - you've been sussed. And by a "chick" at that.
"I am not a rock buff, and not a man either," writes Padel before pointing out that from 500 BC to 1970 (the beginning of the women's liberation movement - the dates are rough) whenever women or female characters sang on stage about desire, the music and the words they sang were mostly written by men. And even today's female rock stars - Courtney Love, Shirley Manson et al, have to look and sound as "strong" and as "tough" as the men in order to gain entrance to the lads' world of rock music.
It would be a big mistake, though, to interpret this book as an exploration into the gender politics of a popular entertainment movement. By clearing up the role of women in rock early on, Padel frees herself up to hunt down her real quarry: the male rock star. It's important to understand that she is talking rock - not pop, not r 'n' b, not blues, not hip-hop and not dance. It has always been one of the fascinations of the music world that a rock band invariably attracts a 95 per cent, white, male adolescent audience.
In this regard, in a chapter called "Power, War and Creativity: The Male Gods Round Desire", Padel flits between centuries, referring to "the Divine (rock) Being whom groupies hope to bed; Royal power, Elvis as King; the creator working at fire, Bob Dylan; the young armed god, Eros as Mars: hyper macho-man Bon Jovi; Led Zeppelin or Aerosmith (`Godfathers of American Hard Rock`) in the armor of the rampant male".
If it all sounds a bit breathless and ever-so-clever in joining up the dots between Greek mythology and rock music, there's more to it than that. Padel is well able to cross-reference incidents between the two cultures - but she also develops her thesis, ironically, by showing just how constricted the attitudes and behaviour of rock stars are, as if they are all, en masse, enslavened to a Jungian-style collective unconscious where they are merely repeat-offenders of sagas/soap operas that were played out centuries previously.
Whether she is quoting from the Iliad or from Nick Hornby, or mentioning Hercules, Theseus and Bruce Springsteen in the same sentence, Padel has done both Greek mythology and rock music a great service by asking of herself the right questions and then providing the right answers.
You might think you don't want to know how rock music "deals in Greek mythical ideals of relationship, quest, triumph and danger, of exploring self through impersonating, of this sci-fi mix of ancient and primitive, male and female, ultra-sophisticated electronics and crazed rawness, all this theatre . . . " but after a few chapters of this you'll be sold. And you'll never look at Bryan Adams the same way again.
Brian Boyd is an Irish Times journalist
