In their 1977 book, Rock'N'Roll Is Here To Pay: The History and Politics of the Music, Steve Chapple & Reebee Garofalo characterized the pre-1977 history and politics of the U.S. corporate rock music industry in the following way:
"...The music industry is racist...and many of the political forces that are exerted on blacks outside the business are duplicated within it...It is important to look at the unfolding of that racism within the history of the industry...
"...The music business, the record companies and radio stations, are integrated into a much larger framework of other businesses, sources of finance capital, and the general network of the business system which has an interest--a real, material interest--in reproducing and reinforcing the status quo...
"...In many cases record companies are owned by some of the most obviously reactionary and militarist corporations in the United States...
"Three major record companies...are politically indistinguisable from their parent firms: RCA, CBS, and ABC. RCA and CBS have long been part of a business establishment that supports both major political parties on a regular basis...
"...Most directors at CBS and RCA supported the [Vietnam] war when it was backed by Republicans and Democrats under the Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson administrations...
"...During the Vietnam War buildup RCA had annual Defense Department contracts averaging $300 million, and still got some $243 million in DOD business in 1974.
"During the 1960s CBS president Frank Stanton...was chairman of the board of the Rand Corporation, the Air Force-funded think tank that has done extensive secret research for the military on subjects as diverse as counterinsurgency warfare techniques, effectiveness of prisoner interrogation methods, and police surveillance uses of cable television...Stanton was head of the committee that annually reviewed the activities of the U.S. Information Agency, a CIA-funded propaganda operation overseas, and he was chairman of Radio Free Europe, another propaganda outlets, financed through the CIA...
"Given their ties into big and bigger business, no progressive political initiative will be coming from the parent firms of the record companies..."
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