Rockin' in the Ivory Tower

Rock Music on Campus in the Sixties

James M. Carter

• Publisher: Rutgers University Press
• Year: 2023
• Print ISBN: 9781978829381, 9781978829398
• eBook ISBN: 9781978829404
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: North American History

Histories of American rock music and the 1960s counterculture typically focus on the same few places: Woodstock, Monterey, Altamont. Yet there was also a very active college circuit that brought edgy acts like the Jefferson Airplane and the Velvet Underground to different metropolitan regions and smaller towns all over the country. These campus concerts were often programmed, promoted, and reviewed by students themselves, and their diverse tastes challenged narrow definitions of rock music.  

Rockin' in the Ivory Tower takes a close look at two smaller universities, Drew in New Jersey and Stony Brook on Long Island, to see how the culture of rock music played an integral role in student life in the late 1960s. Analyzing campus archives and college newspapers, historian James Carter traces connections between rock fandom and the civil rights protests, free speech activism, radical ideas, lifestyle transformations, and anti-war movements that revolutionized universities in the 1960s. Furthermore, he finds that these progressive students refused to segregate genres like folk, R&B, hard rock, and pop. Rockin' in the Ivory Tower gives readers a front-row seat to a dynamic time for the music industry, countercultural politics, and youth culture.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface and Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1. Postwar America, the Revolution in Higher Education, and Popular Music
• 2. “The Sound of the Sixties”: Popular Music and College Campuses
• 3. “I Blundered My Way Through”: The College Impresario, Fall 1965–Fall 1967
• 4. “They’re Rockin’ in the Ivory Tower”: Fall 1967–Fall 1968
• 5. The “Americanization of Rock”: Spring 1969–Fall 1970
• Conclusion
• Appendix A: Bands/Artists at Drew University, 1967–1971
• Appendix B: Bands/Artists at Stony Brook University, 1967–1971
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• About the Author