The very first bone record I found (in a St Petersburg flea market) contained the Bill Haley & His Comets’ 1954 hit Rock Around the Clock - often credited as the song that ignited the rock and roll revolution. While it wasn’t the first rock song, it was the one that broke through to mainstream audiences, changing youth culture forever. Its energetic rhythm, rebellious undertones, and association with teenage identity resonated deeply with young people in the West. But its impact extended far beyond the United States and Europe reaching youth in the Eastern Bloc, where rock and roll became both a symbol of resistance and a forbidden fruit.
Ther is a terrific moment in Paweł Pawlikowski’s 2018 film Cold War (a personal favourite) that evokes this perfectlly. The scene is a Paris nighclub in the 50s rather than the Soviet Union, but Zula, one of the two lovers who have escaped from the Eastern Bloc, suddenly wakes up to the raw power of the tune -
The song exploded onto the global scene when it was featured in the 1955 film Blackboard Jungle, a gritty drama about juvenile delinquency in American high schools. The film’s opening credits, accompanied by the song’s pounding beat, electrified audiences and signaled a shift in youth culture. Teenagers embraced rock and roll as their own, in stark contrast to the swing and crooner music favored by their parents. The song’s success helped establish rock and roll as a defining cultural force, setting the stage for artists like Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, and Little Richard.
In the West, the song symbolized fun, rebellion, and a break from the stuffy social norms of the post war ‘50s. Young people began adopting new fashions, hairstyles, and attitudes that distanced them from the older generation. Dance halls, jukeboxes, and record stores became spaces where kids could gather, forging a new cultural identity around music.
In the Eastern Bloc, where communist regimes sought to control cultural expression, Rock Around the Clock had a different but equally powerful impact. While the song and the broader rock and roll movement were officially condemned as symbols of Western decadence and capitalist corruption, they still found their way to young listeners.
Through smuggled records, clandestine radio broadcasts from Radio Free Europe, and bootleg copies recorded on X-ray, Rock Around the Clock became an underground anthem of defiance. The song’s energy and rebellious spirit gave Eastern Bloc youth a taste of freedom, even if only for a few minutes at a time.
“Put your glad rags on and join me, hon
We’ll have some fun when the clock strikes one
We’re gonna rock around the clock tonight
We’re gonna rock, rock, rock ‘til the braad dayight…”
The lyrics might not sound perticularly revolutionary, but the injunction to ‘F*ck everything else, let’s party all night’ were deeply countercultural in countries where young people were supposed to be concentrating on serious striving for a common goal- and to be up early in the morning to achieve it.
Governments saw rock and roll as a threat, fearing that it could undermine socialist values and encourage Western-style individualism. Authorities banned rock concerts, arrested musicians, and restricted the import of Western records. Yet, despite these efforts, the music continued to spread. Secret dance parties, illegal listening sessions, and self-taught rock bands emerged, creating a subculture that challenged state control.
I have written elsewhere about the Russian Stilyagi youth subculture who clendestinely enjoyed jazz’n’rock and roll on Bone records, but there were similar groups through the eastern bloc - in Hungary, the Jampecek took Western influence to the dance floor with dancing competitions and underground concerts; the Polish Bikiniarze were the most flamboyant dressers of all; in Czechoslovakia, the Potápky developed coded phrases to identify fellow members while avoiding police attention; Romania’s Malagambişti had the closest ties to working-class youth, rather than middle-class intellectuals. Operating under the most repressive regimes in the Eastern Bloc, they had to be extremely cautious, as any perceived association with Western culture could bring severe punishment.
Though each of these groups had its own style and emphasis—whether it was music, dance, or fashion—they were all connected by a shared desire for individuality and self-expression in a world that demanded conformity. Their Western counterparts, the Teds and Rock’n’Rollers, might have been more focused on rebellion for rebellion’s sake, but for the youth of the Eastern Bloc, every dance step, every pomaded hairstyle, and every Bone record was an act of quiet resistance.
And Rock Around the Clock, probably more than any other anthem, provide them with a soundtrack.
Rock Around the Clock on x-ray - the Bone Record that started it all off for me.