Skip to main content
‘Rock and pop music were the unexpected consequences of the working-class entering history’
BRETT GREGORY speaks with TOBY MANNING, author of Mixing Pop and Politics: A Marxist History of Popular Music
Little Richard, 1984 [Ian Dryden/Los Angeles Times/CC]

WRITING in the Morning Star, Alistair Findley recommended this 565 page tome which “achieves the seemingly impossible by grounding high-level intellectual scholarship and theory within the popular culture of the day.”

So what initially inspired Manning to put pen to paper? 

“I wrote the book after researching Marxist theory,” he says, “and I started to realise how much we skim over the surface of everything in the news and in our understanding of the world”.

Historical maker near the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland, Ohio. Credit: Cliff/CC
The 95th Anniversary Appeal
Support the Morning Star
You have reached the free limit.
Subscribe to continue reading.
Similar stories
IS
Music / 3 November 2025
3 November 2025

New releases from The Dreaming Spires, Bruce Springsteen, and Chet Baker

69
Music / 8 October 2025
8 October 2025

WILL STONE applauds a comprehensive survey of love in its many moods and musical forms

Mo Chara and Moglai Bap of Kneecap performing on the West Holts Stage during the Glastonbury Festival at Worthy Farm in Somerset, June 28, 2025
Features / 11 July 2025
11 July 2025

From sexual innuendo about Blackpool Rock to Bob Dylan’s ‘God-almighty world,’ the corporation’s classist moral custodianship of pop music has created a roll call of censored artists anyone would feel honoured to join, writes NICK MATTHEWS

IS
Album reviews / 30 June 2025
30 June 2025

New releases from Toby Hay, Bruce Springsteen, Bonnie Dobson & The Hanging Stars