Long-haired, freaky people need to apply: Rock music, cultural intermediation, and the rise of the ‘company freak’

Abstract

This article explores the phenomenon of the ‘company freak’ at American record labels of the late 1960s and early 1970s. It presents historical research on company freaks as well as theorizes how the concept of cultural intermediation might be recast as a means of complicating the standard narrative of rock’s commercial ‘co-optation’ during the period. In highlighting that company freaks were no simple appropriators, I argue that scholarship on consumer culture needs a sharper focus on historical instances of cultural intermediation in order to avoid gross caricatures of cultural commodification.