Why did Marlon Brando “hate” rock ‘n’ roll?
Like a cinematic representative for the Beat Generation, Marlon Brando helped to bring theatrical display into the 20th century. Alongside his pioneering acting talent in notable titles such as A Streetcar Named Desire, On the Waterfront, The Godfather and Apocalypse Now, Brando was never short of a little ancillary wisdom.
Across his rare yet absorbing interviews, Brando made a name for himself as transient and tangential. Interviewers would try to tether the acting legend to commercial points of conversation, but he’d much rather discuss sociopolitical issues and state a case for social justice, especially where Native Americans were concerned.
During a 1979 conversation with Playboy, Brando discussed his standpoint on interviews. “I’m not going to lay myself at the feet of the American public and invite them into my soul,” he said. “My soul is a private place. And I have some resentment of the fact that I live in a system where you have to do that. I find myself making concessions because normally, I wouldn’t talk about any of this, it’s just blabber. It’s not absorbing or meaningful or significant, it doesn’t have much to do with our lives.”
Later in the conversation, an obstinate and impermeable Brando was asked in what vocations and media he finds true art. After agreeing that Tennessee Williams, the playwright behind A Streetcar Named Desire, was a veritable artist, Brando denied that singers could be considered artists.
The interviewer suggested that lyricists such as Cole Porter and Harold Arlen should, however, be considered artists. “Shakespeare’s a lyricist; he wrote many songs,” Brando replied. “Yeah, I suppose any creative writing. But you get so far down on the scale.”
The actor, in his mid-40s at the time, then took aim at contemporary rock music. Contrary to Joan Jett and the Blackhearts, Brando was sick to the back teeth with rock and roll long before Status Quo hit the global stage.
“You’re not going to call The Rolling Stones artists,” Brando posited. “I heard somebody compare them – or The Beatles – to Bach. It was claimed they had created something as memorable and as important as Bach, Haydn, Mozart and Schubert. I hate rock ‘n’ roll. It’s ugly. I liked it when the blacks had it in 1927.”
Throughout much of his career, Brando was an advocate for the American Civil Rights Movement. He would explain that a predominantly Caucasian corporate class was unjustly leading a nation appropriated from Native Americans. In his statement on rock ‘n’ roll, the actor ostensibly suggested a similar appropriation had occurred in the music world in the 1950s and ’60s.
Watch Marlon Brando discuss white privilege and the misrepresentation of Native Americans during an appearance on The Dick Cavett Show below.