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Saved by Rock ‘n’ Roll: Lou Reed, His Fans, and the Becoming of the (Marginal) Self

Symbolic Interactionist Takes on Music

ISBN: 978-1-78635-048-0, eISBN: 978-1-78635-047-3

Publication date: 1 October 2016

Abstract

My focus in this paper is on the meaning that rock music has for fans of Lou Reed. I use the comments following his death as my primary data. These data were posted on the New York Times website in the comments section following the report “Outsider Whose Dark, Lyrical Vision Helped Shape Rock ‘n’ Roll.” From these data I develop what I call “the marginal self” in reference to how rock music helps self-identified marginalized persons to deal with their social exclusion and alienation. Drawing on Kotarba’s (2012) analytic categories of the self, I will show how these data give insight into a wide range of existential meanings related to the music of Lou Reed. For many who wrote these comments their reading of Lou Reed has been an essential transformative part of their life in similar ways to baby boomers as outlined in Kotarba’s (2012) Baby Boomers Rock ‘n’ Roll Fans: The Music Never Ends. I first show how Kotarba’s (2012) core concepts of the musical self provide insight into how fans of Lou Reed develop a sense of self through Reed’s music. I then turn to a discussion of the marginalized self as a development of Kotarba’s (2012) categories of “authenticity work” and “becoming of the self.” Suggestions for future research are noted.

Keywords

Acknowledgements

Acknowledgments

I want to thank Joe Kotarba for organizing the Couch Stone Symposium on Music in 2013 and for his stimulating academic support. I also want to thank Chris Schneider for his editing skills, his knowledge of Lou Reed, and for sharing his love for baseball with me.

Citation

Müller, T. (2016), "Saved by Rock ‘n’ Roll: Lou Reed, His Fans, and the Becoming of the (Marginal) Self", Symbolic Interactionist Takes on Music (Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Vol. 47), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 1-20. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0163-239620160000047001

Publisher

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Emerald Group Publishing Limited

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