„Rock and Roll has always been a music of collective composition. Although many bands have one or two de facto songwriters, the authoring of the rock-and-roll semiotic is almost always a group activity. Unlike what happens in the Western compositional tradition, rock bands rarely work from scores. Although a songwriter may create the basic architecture for a song, that composer rarely writes parts for each instrument. As a result, the bassist and the drummer, for instance, often work out their own parts within the framework of chord changes and melody provided by the songwriter. These players are seldom credited as authors. From the start, rock and roll has been an unschooled medium. Writers and performers usually come to the process of creation without formal musical educations. Many cannot read msuic. Fewer write it. Fluency in Western notational music theory is all but nonexistent. As a result, bands compose songs democratically, anarchically, performing them, rehearsing and refining the performance until a stable, repeatable form is secured. It is the process inventing a musical amalgam that would probably not have resulted from a singular, informed compositional perspective. Additionally, the extended text of the rock song is always the product of decisions made by individual members of the band, yet also by producers, engineers, graphic designers, publicity agents, and others external to the unit of the performing artist. The text of the rock song – its musical content, its extramusical sonic elements and effects, its nonsonic supplements – is up for grabs. The entity of the group-as-author is often divided against itself, leaving the listener to negotiate the sonic artifact and to determine what it is, how it functions, what it means. Allegiance to authenticity, fidelity to a model or score, and the faithful presentation of flawless technical execution – such standards ignore the give-and-take of rock and roll as text, rock and roll as conversation, in favor of a wild goose chase after a fictional essence.“
(Seth Kim-Cohen in: In the blink of an ear (2009/13, S. 148)