Playlist from a Play—the music of Tom Stoppard’s "Rock ‘n’ Roll"

Playlist from a Play—the music of Tom Stoppard’s “Rock ‘n’ Roll”

By RYAN KINDEL
January 24, 2012 in Blogs, That's What We Said

Visions and Voices rocked students at Bovard auditorium last Thursday night with a concert reading of Tom Stoppard’s Rock ‘n’ Roll. The play is above all historical, examining protest movements in England and Czechoslovakia in the second half of the twentieth century, but (as you might expect based on its title) Rock ‘n’ Roll is about music, too. Indeed Stoppard is centrally arguing here that between 1968 and 1990, music and politics became irremediably interrelated. Music from the period reflects the societies’ attitudes, but also, by the same token, political progress in Europe would not have been possible without buffeting by popular music.

What follows is a list of the songs featured in Rock ‘n’ Roll, each cued by Tom Stoppard in the play’s text, and altogether comprising a delicious sampler of great music. Of perhaps especial note to those who attended the performance on Thursday: Syd Barrett’s “Golden Hair,” which opens the play and then continually asserts itself as a motif; Pink Floyd’s “Vera” (which itself alludes to Vera Lynn’s “We’ll Meet Again”), underlining the characters’ fondness for the past even as they revolt against old ways; and the Rolling Stone’s “You Got Me Rocking,” whose performance at the end of the play trumpets the victory of freedom over tyranny, of relentlessly rule-bending rock and roll over the stifling Soviet Union.

The Beach Boys

Wouldn’t It Be Nice (1966)

The Beatles

Rock and Roll Music (1964)

John Lennon

Give Peace a Chance (1969)

Bring It Home to Me (1973)

Grateful Dead

Chinatown Shuffle (1972)

Guns ‘n’ Roses

Don’t Cry (1991)

Pink Floyd