What was the first hit song about being a rock star?
Songs of stardom had been dreamed up by the earliest rock and rollers, but it took pop a while to actually grapple with the realities of having ‘made it’.
It’s an understandable trajectory. Naturally, many an ambitious, wide-eyed hopeful will know full well the yearning of seeing their name in lights from their humdrum corner of nowhere, long before fame comes calling. Whether ‘Johnny B Goode’, ‘Matchbox’, and ‘Mystery Train’s 1950s chase of rags-to-riches glory, the early days’ hungry optimism is a near universal for every artist gunning for their ‘big break’.
Then, there’s the demystifying thud of the industry. Finally winning the stature you’ve been craving, any young band can find themselves wading through a cesspool of stale hedonism, corporate vultures, inept management, commercial pressures, and marketing string-pullers sucking suddenly throwing you around the music world like a ragdoll.
“It used to be about the music,” to quote Milhouse Van Houten. Before long, a jadedness about your newfound fame can start guiding your lyrical pen. ‘Barracuda’s attack on sexism in the businesses, ‘This Note’s For You’s satirical swipe at the world of cash-grabbing sponsors, and in Pink Floyd’s case, much of their latter 1970s efforts channelling the soul-destroying trappings of ‘the machine’ and the many lives lost in its cigar-chomping maw.
So, what was the first hit about being a rock star?
It was during the Summer of Love’s flowering bloom that one of the West Coast’s biggest names decided to take a snarky potshot at the whole rock and roll gig.
Legend has it that The Byrds wrote ‘So You Want to Be a Rock ‘n’ Roll Star’ as a dig toward the day’s most popular manufactured group. Leading 1967’s Younger Than Yesterday, the single’s half-cynical jab at the poster boys caught in the centre of the “The money, the game and the public acclaim” has always been thought to refer to The Monkees, as they were dominating both the Billboard Hot 100 and 200 charts, as well as riding high from their NBC sitcom show.
Featuring genuine audio of screaming fans caught at The Byrds’ Bournemouth, UK show two years earlier, plus a piquant trumpet solo from South African jazzman Hugh Masekela, ‘So You Want to Be a Rock ‘n’ Roll Star’ reflects the adventurous spirit of the Younger Than Yesterday record, as well as marking a band slowly coming to terms with their own presence in the biz.
While The Monkees certainly feel propped up in the track’s shooting gallery, co-writer and Byrd frontman Jim McGuinn later confessed to standing as a more acerbic look at the pop industry in general.
“It isn’t as bitter as that,” McGuinn maintained to ZigZag in 1973. “We were thumbing through a teen magazine and looking at all the unfamiliar faces and we couldn’t help thinking: ‘Wow, what’s happening … all of a sudden here is everyone and his brother and his sister-in-law and his mother and even his pet bullfrog singing rock ‘n’ roll.’ So we wrote ‘So You Want to Be a Rock ‘n’ Roll Star’ to the audience of potential rock stars, those who were going to be, or who wanted to be, and those who actually did go on to realise their goals.”
