Rocks, stars and rock stars

Ratna Raman

GRANTING extraordinary status to an individual who has attained celebrity status in any field, the expression ‘rock star’ is now one of the many overused words in modern lexicon. Anyone who draws a crowd, be it Zuckerberg, Barack Obama, Vladimir Putin or Narendra Modi, is summarily  described as a rock star. Television chefs, media barons, famous sportspersons, political bigwigs are now  addressed  as rock stars. A multinational online video game company calls itself rock star games. Rock Star is also  a Bollywood film starring Ranbir Kapoor and it is now possible to  declare unabashedly that “my mother\father\husband\wife\brother\sister\is a rock star”.

In quieter times, the verb ‘to rock’ described the gentle swaying momentum set up by human hands, rocking babies in cradles or grandparents reading or knitting by the fire or on a sunlit porch, rocking themselves on rattan rocking chairs. The sinister  lullaby ‘rock-a-bye-baby on the tree top’ (1700), sung to infants, draws attention to how both music and movement  impact human lives.  

The word rock star came into being during the romantic period of classical music, a hundred years after the lullaby. Musical maestros such as Beethoven, Mozart, Listz, Stravinsky and others brought classical music out of the realms of private sponsorship into the public sphere and   enthralled large audiences through their performances. Their extraordinary musical compositions set new norms for music. These first-generation rock stars, ‘rocked’ audiences and towered above them through their virtuosity (great ability or skill shown by a musician). Performing over long hours, these iconic figures  generated adulation and near-hysterical responses from fans for whom they unleashed musical floods. 

Phenomenal individual talent and mass appeal has been a subsequent feature of innumerable rock and roll bands through the 20th century. Chuck Berry and The Beatles sang “Roll Over Beethoven” while creating rock band history. The Rolling Stones, Elvis Presley and Michael Jackson were other star performers  who  got people rocking and rolling to music. They had great mass appeal and from the height of the stage their music burst upon the crowd, sending listeners into raptures. The word rock star also  works as a double noun and a figure of speech when we recall that large pieces of hard stone visible on  Earth are termed as rock. Stars are shiny bits of distant rock that orbit  in space. The rock and the star, made similar and different by virtue of their location, are yoked together to form the composite word ‘rock star’. A rock star is in this sense deeply connected to his audience and separate from it. Rock stars get crowds rocking by pumping up the adrenalin through orchestrated music, sound, beat and rhythm. Elevated performing stages allow them a towering persona, as they loom above the crowd, reminiscent of the glittering stars in the firmament, viewed by humans. Historically, rock stars have led hedonistic, impassioned lives, and remained distant, inaccessible entities. 

Beethoven qualifies for the title of rock star because his stellar performance as a musician inspired astronomers to name the third  crater on Mercury and a main belt asteroid after him.

 It might be a good idea to restrict the use of the expression rock star to  musical prodigies, instead of applying it as a collective cliché to describe just about anyone and everyone with a specialisation.