Lloyd deMause has illuminated the central role played by perinatal experiences in human behavior, particularly in group-fantasies.(3) Nearly two decades ago I found extensive birth imagery and events in UFO abduction yarns.(4) My perinatal explorations in time led me to Lloyd’s controversial writings. His insights about group-fantasies helped me immeasurably, and I have come to understand that, for whatever reasons, virtually every work of fantasy literature or art embodies significant amounts of (until now unrecognized) perinatal imagery and events.

Examples of birth imagery in works of fantasy are plentiful. For example, the creation myths of folk literature and belief; traditional epics, dramas, and tales such as The Odyssey, Beowulf, The Tempest, Alice in Wonderland; ancient and modern religious art; cinema fantasy, including cartoons, science fiction, and horror; and of course TV soap-operas—in endless cycles of pregnancies, abortions, miscarriages, paternity/maternity quests, or sterility (women’s major human problem in soaps).

 Those who have resisted deMause’s birth extrapolations should know not only that perinatal data are inherent in all human fantasizing and thus pandemic in culture and tradition; but also that the birth/fantasy connection is verifiable. When a personal fantasy such as a near-death event, a Marian vision, or an alien abduction is put into narrative form, say through hypnotic regression, the subject’s verbal transcript can be analyzed for birth imagery, then checked against his or her actual birth history. For example, I have confirmed with a group of subjects that the kind of birth (natural or cesarean) is correlated with particular alien abduction fantasies.(5)

 BIRTH IMAGERY IN MUSIC VIDEOS Recently I have found vast amounts of birth imagery in a seemingly unlikely source, "pop" and "rock" music videos. This situation perhaps should not be surprising, for there is a high fantasy content in both the videos and the concert performances on which they are based. American in origin but with key British groups often leading the way, modern pop/rock music has stirred millions and—despite the Cold War, periodic Third World hot wars, and other crises—become a cultural fixture worldwide.

 The birth-related dimensions of literary and cinematic fantasy have yet to be recognized by critics and scholars. This is also true of pop/rock commentators and even the musicians and filmmakers who create rock videos. A music video director’s challenge that I demonstrate to him that rock videos contain birth imagery led me to the research that resulted in this paper.

Rock critics often observe symbolic birth processes at rock concerts and they even employ perinatal metaphors in their reviews, but they do so without a trace of awareness or curiosity about the rich perinatal content of rock music. Recent random examples are many. One reviewer praised the late Germs singer Darby Crash because he "howls with all the—rage isn’t the word—the torment really of a 6-month-old baby plucked too soon from the breast..."(6); another wrote that the leader of Grant Lee Buffalo formed the group to "re-create the sensual joy he discovered...as a boy umbilically tied to the stereo"(7); and another found it "lifeless and pointless" when Duran Duran singer Simon Le Bon, recreating (in apparent incomprehension) an obvious birth scene in the "Too Much Information" video, was "hooked to thick ropes suspended from the rafters [then] slunk off, ropes and all into the sewer pipe" [sic] (vaginal tunnel) onstage.(8)

Rock musicians also employ birth imagery freely—for example, they call new rock groups "baby bands"—but with no more awareness than the critics. Steve Tyler of Aerosmith, commenting on a successful Midwest appearance: "...We were in our element...people right up in my face.... It’s like spawning—getting back to where you once came from."(9) Genesis guitarist Mike Rutherford on releasing a record: "It’s always hard when the record’s finished; you’ve got to kind of hand it over, and it’s your baby, and you know, you’re so close to it..."(10) And Tribe After Tribe’s singer Robbi Robb (with stunning perinatal innocence) unknowingly said it best: "Our music is the heartbeat of mother and child; it’s organic interplay. It’s stones, it’s bones, it’s a free creative force. It’s all about the freedom of living."(11)

I use the word "rock" herein generically, to refer to the many proliferating (and homogenizing) sub-categories of contemporary pop and rock music: new wave, power-pop, heavy metal (plus its supposed variants glam and thrash), punk, funk, rap, hip-hop, alternative, progressive, techno, college, grunge, industrial, garage, dance, etc. From a perinatal perspective, all these are one. I have coined still another term, "Birth Rock," to refer to that vast segment of rock music which is most obviously perinatal.

THE ROOTS OF BIRTH ROCK Birth Rock has affinities with jazz, gospel music, and rhythm and blues (RB), and also with gospel-inspired urban black dance forms—from the early New Orleans jazz funeral marches to jitterbugging, the twist, break-dancing, and a hundred others—and also with the first great white rock star, Elvis Presley. The independent 1992 film documentary Twist by Ron Mann says that the twist not only influenced rock music decisively but also changed American pop culture in major ways: "...pulling dancers apart from each other and allowing them to swing their hips literally changed the way people lived."(12)

The nature of the black dance tradition now such a central part of rock music is outlined by Robin D.G. Kelley in an review of Michael Eric Dyson’s Reflecting Black: African-American Cultural Criticism(13) that discusses Michael Jackson and other black performers:(14)

Religious experiences of spiritual possession and bodily ecstasy are fantasies and have a significant perinatal component. Enraptured parishioners in a gospel church setting may seem to "get the Holy Ghost" each Sunday morning, but actually they are physically reliving their personal birth experiences: the late-stage mood swings; the life-or-death vaginal struggle; deliverance; bonding, etc. Similarities with struggling fetal rock artists are obvious.

Elvis Presley’s religious upbringing in Mississippi and Tennessee was a white version of the black gospel experience. Presley’s sensual body movements shocked 1950s parents (the media dubbed him "Elvis Pelvis" early on), but his gyrations originated, like Michael Jackson’s, in Christian fundamentalist fantasies rather than sexuality alone. Though black artists such as Chuck Berry, James Brown, Jackson, and others developed and refined the genre, Elvis’ pop infamy paved the way for generations of other white rock singer-performers, and he may be considered the foster father of all struggling fetal rockers.

Incidentally, the enduring popularity in all human societies of musical forms based on heavy rhythms and passionate body movement—from martial parades to ballet to the overwrought gestures of orchestra conductors—suggests that deep and intense perinatal responses are involved there as well.

RELIVING BIRTH MEMORIES: Psychotherapist Arthur Janov, like deMause a perinatal theorist who has been marginalized by Establishment social scientists, asserts that a person can therapeutically be freed from birth-related neuroses through the revivification of his or her own birth memories.(15) Janov believes individuals who relive perinatal memories in fantasy thus confront (and presumably begin to resolve) their birth neuroses. Though he does not emphasize it, Janov’s thesis does not preclude the possibility that reliving one’s birth memories can be so transporting (or just plain fun) that one might desire the experience repeatedly, even if the original event was traumatic.

It is my position that a typical Birth Rock concert stimulates a rock fan (sometimes called a "headbanger") to revivify his or her own unconscious but deeply felt birth experiences in a therapeutic (i.e., emotionally rewarding) context. In recent Los Angeles Times reviews, one critic concluded that a Peter Gabriel performance had been a "catharsis,"(16) and another described a Sting/Grateful Dead concert as a "communion."(17) Such terms suggest that a typical rock concert experience is a therapeutic group birth fantasy for its audience, and helps explain rock music’s deeply passionate, soul-stirring effect on fans. In the intense sensory overkill of a concert, it is understandable if the audience revivifies powerful emotions once evoked by personal perinatal events and then credits the music alone for the emotional impact.

The national media seemed puzzled by the 1990s "renaissance" of 50-ish rock stars such as Paul McCartney, Mick Jaggar, Peter Townshend, and others.(18) Yet the recurrent or persistent popularity of veteran rockers supports Janov’s theory. Baby-boomers who cut their teeth on Elvis, the Beatles, and Woodstock understandably seek to revivify their first Birth Rock epiphany repeatedly with the original stars.

The verbal simplicity of rock songs is well established. Lyrics are sometimes merely catch-phrases or fragments that may be repeated rhythmically dozens of times (see Guns N’Roses, "Paradise City" and "The Gates of Heaven"), a process that has strong parallels in religious liturgy. The rock audience often responds to a singer by chanting the words like a litany. Participating in such a ritualistic group communication may lead fans into a trance or other suggestive state of consciousness. This situation would encourage individual and/or group-fantasies even without the drugs and alcohol that are doubtless plentiful at concerts.

At every rock concert, people in the closely packed "mosh pit" (the standing-room-only area down front) are overwhelmed or lose consciousness in the excitement and fall. Then in a kind of symbolic group birthing gesture they are lifted up and "delivered" to safety on the hands of the crowd. One critic called this process "a ritual of male bonding," but ignored the many females in concert mosh pits (see for instance the concert video of Michael Jackson’s "Dangerous" tour) and missed the perinatal connection.(19) Conversely, rock artists at climactic moments in their performances often leap into the pit (sometimes from risky heights), and are caught and delivered—terms familiar to midwives—by eager fans (or well-trained attendants in the pit). Mosh pits are a favorite subject for media photographers, and several rock videos focus extensively on activities there, which include "crowd surfing," and a kind of roughhouse dancing-in-place called moshing.(20) (See Bon Jovi’s "In These Arms"; R.E.M.’s "Drive"; Onyx’s "Slam"; Megadeth’s, "In My Darkest Hour"; and especially Pearl Jam’s Evenflow").

THE BIRTH OF BIRTH ROCK's MATERNAL ROCK-BEAT Musicologist Robert Walser in his 1993 study of heavy metal, Running With the Devil, points out that there was a significant change in rock drumming about 1970: drummers "hit their drums very hard, resulting in a sound that was not only louder but heavier, more emphatic. Their drum sets grew ever larger and more complicated, along with the expansion of concert amplification...."(21) At that point of amplified thunder, Birth Rock's Maternal Rock-Beat was born!

It can be argued that rock music’s beat is sending an irresistibly positive message to American youth: boom-boom...yes-yes.... But do rock’s hammering affirmations beat children into subservience to the booming mechanisms of an impersonal society, or do they instill youthful feelings of self-worth and spiritual idealism? Most likely something in between. The fact remains that rock music is almost always upbeat and deeply optimistic—more so, probably, than any preceding American musical genre. I believe that the music’s perinatal connections, especially that booming heartbeat, help make it life-affirming and intensely positive. It is not insignificant that the words yes (or uh-huh) and baby (with its unrecognized birth connotations) are arguably the most frequently used words in rock lyrics.

Rock’s sound seems built for joy and other positive emotions, and along with its videos’ consistently youthful themes (child characters, childhood memories, and initiatory situations), these are characteristic qualities of its essentially naive romanticism. Rock may not be incapable of a tragic sense—its lyrics run the gamut of emotions—but the music’s usual thudding beat and sky-splitting decibels obliterate subtlety and make emotional states darker than sentimentality or nostalgia difficult to achieve or sustain. When rock wants to get truly serious, it tends to soften the thunder and slow things down, in effect becoming another kind of music. (See R.E.M., "Everybody Hurts"; also the MTV Unplugged or non-amplified series with Eric Clapton, Neil Young, and others. This tempo transformation is true for Rap and RB groups also: see D.R.S., "Gangsta Lean" and Boyz II Men, "It’s So Hard To Say Goodbye," for two literally funereal hymns to the departed.)

There are basically two kinds of rock music productions on TV, "concert" and "concept" videos—though because of the rapidly evolving nature of the genre most contain elements of both types. Concert videos focus on a group’s actual concert performance and often exhibit spectacular lighting and other stage and cinematic effects. Concept videos use a story line and sometimes very elaborate visual effects or other fantasy devices involving hi-tech graphics. Both kinds of videos employ so many literal or symbolic perinatal parallels that their birth content is beyond question.

Concert videos will be discussed first, with references to specific performances exemplifying perinatal echoes.(22)

MATERNAL HEARTBEAT TEMPO I believe that the worldwide appeal of Birth Rock’s thumping beat originates in unconscious prenatal memories of the maternal heartbeat. Nothing is more characteristic of rock music than its thunderingly mechanical but ultimately life-affirming rhythmic booms. Birth connections are surely also suggested by the dozens of maternal and perinatal rock music group names: Genesis; Madonna; The Mamas the Papas; The Breeders; The New Birth; Babes in Toyland, etc. Song or album titles likewise: "Sowing the Seeds of Love"; "In Utero"; "Mothership Connection"; "Born in the USA"; "Mother’s Milk"; "Learning to Crawl"; "We Are the World, (We Are the Children)," etc.

Rock music’s rhythm is less simple than it seems. The tempo of much rock at first appears to be a rapid 100 to 160 beats per minute or more (a few staccato riffs approach 300 bpms!). But these fast tempos are deceptive because rock drummers usually emphasize alternate beats (often counts 2 and 4 or what in effect are the upbeats), so that the perceived thumping pulse is slower by half. Thus most rock tempos effectively fall into the 60-80 bpm range, about the same as the human heart at rest. Rap rock usually employs comparable tempos, probably also because they suit rap’s usual chanting pace.

Some groups, particularly heavy metal bands, use faster straightforward tempos (without alternate-beat emphases), from 80 to 160 or beyond (like many marching bands), rates that may reflect memories of the accelerated maternal heartbeat during labor and delivery (c. 100 bpm). Careful studies might confirm this kind of specific beats-per-minute differentiation (and correspondingly different fantasy imagery) among mainstream and/or alternative rock genres.

But the matter does not end there. Robert Walser’s observations on heavy metal rock are relevant. Responding to criticism that rock’s "oppressive 4/4 beat" is as mindless as a military band’s, he points out that the military’s object is not mindlessness but "single-mindedness," implying that rock rhythm causes a similar focus. He adds, "Although most metal [music] is in 4/4 time, the rhythmic framework is organized more basically around a pulse than a meter." Later in reference to a specific performance, he defines that pulse explicitly: "Near the end, the bass line finally changes, moving to a heartbeat pattern."(23) (Perinatally speaking, Walser writes truer than he knows.)

I believe that the rhythmic model of much rock music is a heart-pulse. Many bands devise (consciously or otherwise) ingenious rhythmic echoes of the heartbeat sound—for example, three or four quick beats followed by a pause (often played on higher-pitched drums, but also by unison guitars or keyboards). The effect simulates an actual pulsing heart, and the sound often accompanies rock’s 2/4 alternate-beat mode, or may substitute for it. These various heart-pulse rhythmic patterns not only support the birth/rock music correlations under discussion, but they also imply that the sonic omnipresence of the maternal heartbeat is more significant than its bpms. Remember that fetal ears are a mere 4 to 6 inches from the booming maternal rock-beat for most of their first nine months of life—all but a few hours of which pulse along 60-80 times a minute. (For examples of Birth Rock’s simulated heart pulse rhythm, see Onyx, "Slam"; Cypress Hill, "Insane in the Brain"; significantly, the theme rhythms for the MTV rock dance program, "The Grind"; and of course many others.)

THE PLACENTAL GUITAR Given the rich perinatal context of the typical rock concert, almost everything about the music is richly suggestive of birth events. Consider rock’s central instrumental symbol, the guitar. Because of its abdominal position and the typically frenzied musician’s alternately loving and destructive interactions with it, the guitar’s sound box or body can be seen as a placenta. The guitar’s neck is umbilical (and of course also clearly phallic; my perinatal emphases here in no way deny the heavily charged sexuality of rock performances). As with fetuses and their ambivalently nurturant/poisonous placentas, rock artists seem to have a love-hate relationship with their guitars. Sixties rock star Jimi Hendrix used to smash and burn his guitar violently onstage, thus acting out the fetus’ anger that the overworked placenta in the weeks before birth is depriving it of fresh (oxygenated and waste-free) blood.(24) Many rockers still destroy their guitars (see Nirvana, "Lithium"; Toad the Wet Sprocket, "Walk On the Ocean"; Pearl Jam’s 1993 MTV awards show; and many others.)

THE UMBILICAL MIKE Rock artists cling to their microphone stand and its (umbilical) cord so desperately that they often seem connected to it, although modern sensitive mikes make this unnecessary. (See Peter Gabriel’s video album "P.O.V." for his wrestling match with the mike cord/umbilical, after which he collapses onstage in fetal position). To help rouse the crowd, many performers swing the mike by its cord (Pearl Jam, "Evenflow"), or twirl the mike stand and even recklessly hurl it offstage (Guns N’Roses, "Welcome To the Jungle"). The rockers are re-enacting their fetal love affair with the umbilical cord. Fetuses evidently find emotional security in their umbilical: they have been photographed clinging to the cord when startled as if for comfort,(25) and frequently observed (by ultrasound) apparently "playing" with it!(26)

VAGINAL SPOTLIGHTS Onstage spotlights, with the aid of artificial fog machines, direct sharply defined vaginal tunnels of light down on the frenzied and struggling rock singer/fetus. The birth-related implications of the rockers’ sweating, straining efforts inside brilliant vaginal tunnels of light cannot be lost on the already suggestible audience. Adding to the perinatal context, the hazy lighting and darkened theater often give the stage a womblike compactness and isolation, while the comparatively huge concert auditorium can be seen as a stereotypical "big room"—i.e., the hospital delivery room usually described in birth revivifications after the prolonged compression of vaginal birth. Note that rock groups often choose to film their videos in "big rooms," huge empty structures such as airplane hangars and warehouses.

THE ROCK ARTIST AS FETUS From umbilical mikes and tubes of light to the deafening maternal rock-beat, the concert hall’s birth environment encourages delirious fans to identify perinatally with the rock artists. The typical rock singer’s barbaric yawps, grotesque physical movements, and overall emotional frenzy may lead headbangers to revivify in fantasy their own unconsciously remembered struggles in the late-stage womb, and so see the singer as a fetus—pressured by contractions, squeezing through the cervical vise, and fighting to breathe.

Still another insistent birth reminder onstage is the typical rock guitarist’s sweaty, straining, spread-eagled stance—an unconscious duplication of the maternal body in birthing position. (Deena Weinstein’s 1991 book, Heavy Metal, celebrates this stereotypical sweat-and-spread’em position merely as evidence of rock’s "blue-collar" appeal.)(27) Interestingly, both male and female participants on MTV rock dance programs routinely adopt this same wide-legged posture. The MTV camera repeatedly emphasizes the significance of the stance by pulling back from long shots of other dancers so that several are framed by a girl’s widespread legs; then it moves up for a close-up of her thrusting crotch. The shot is voyeuristic of course but also perinatal: we are being shown the intimate connection between groups of rock music dancers and female reproductive anatomy. (Typical examples of rock video fetal screamers include AC/DC, "Thunderstruck"; Aerosmith, "What It Takes"; Radiohead, "Anyone Can Play Guitar"; Motley Crue, "Primal Scream"; KISS, "I Love It Loud"; but see also lead singers with Metallica, Guns N’Roses, Pearl Jam, and dozens more.)

GENDER AMBIVALENCE There are possible homoerotic reasons why most rock musicians strive for an androgynous or gender-ambivalent appearance: long hair, facial makeup, and skintight, leather, or "topless" clothing. But such behavior may also have perinatal relevance, originating in a need to identify or bond in fantasy with the seemingly genderless fetus. (Examples: Black Crowes, "Bad Luck Blue Eyes"; Queen, Bohemian Rhapsody"; any KISS video; many others.) Rock star Prince recently changed his professional name to a symbol made of the traditional male and female gender signs—behavior which goes beyond "political correctness" or mere fashion to a compulsive attempt to merge identities with a being whose gender is indeterminate until almost fifteen weeks of life. One Prince concept video, titled simply "7," contains many perinatal echoes including a transparent amniotic cylinder with a symbolic gender-ambiguous fetus, Prince, inside.

VIDEO SPECTACLES AND BIRTH EMOTIONS Most rock concerts offer

headbangers like Beavis and Butthead a truly sensational theatrical experience, in addition to the rock artists and their music. There are flames, smoke, explosions, starbursts, fluttering strobes, arrays of thundering speakers and wandering spotlights, and other spectacular events onstage and accompanying the music. These elaborate visuals are now routine in both concert and concept videos—especially open flames, explosive lighting, and strobes. (While awaiting encores, rock audiences often patiently hold their flaming cigarette lighters aloft in a kind of muted mass tribute to their rockers.)

The prevalence of circus-like stage effects for a musical event is difficult to explain except on perinatal grounds, and I believe such effects have meaning beyond mere spectacle. In fact, they have many parallels with the volcanic emotional states described by subjects in psychiatrist Stanislav Grof’s drug-induced revivifications of birth memories.(28) Thus they play an important role in initiating and sustaining birth fantasies in rock music audiences.

These rock concert special effects are analogous to the violent climax of fantasy films when the evil scientist, his genetic (or whatever) experiments, and deadly island laboratory are consumed by a volcanic explosion, fire, earthquake, or other disaster. Such films are perinatal allegories that end with the intense emotional and physical upheaval of a symbolic birth. I believe that cinematic fantasies’ litany of symbolic and real pregnancies, fetuses, problem births, anatomical trauma, deliveries, and so on affect audiences more deeply than their story lines. Their often violent endings provide a satisfying catharsis because—like rock concerts’ theatrical effects—they help revivify in spectators’ fantasy the perinatal catharsis of being born. (Any concert video by KISS, Metallica, or AC/DC makes the point.)

 

(Continued in Part Two)

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