Thirty Years Later How Rock The Vote Changed Music And Politics

The youth vote has been a key subject in the 2020 election, with many speculating high voter turnout in the youth market could swing the election one way or the other.

It wouldn’t be the first time according to music executive Jeff Ayeroff, who founded Rock The Vote in 1990. “We did swing an election according to Bill Clinton. He felt that Rock The Vote was the difference in him getting elected because it was a very high youth voter participation that had never happened before,” Ayeroff tells me.

This year, 30 years, after the formation of Rock The Vote, Ayeroff and others are looking back at the organization that changed the intersection of music and politics.  

Public Enemy frontman Chuck D has been involved with the organization for some time and remains a supporter of Rock The Vote. “Over the years it’s motivated and educated young people to understand that they have leadership and power, too, and don’t have to wait for older people to tell them,” Chuck D tells me.

I spoke with Ayeroff about the formation of Rock The Vote, the organizations relationship with MTV and how the connection between musicians and politicians has changed over the last three decades.

Steve Baltin: Where did your interest in politics come from?

Jeff Ayeroff: I have a degree in political science and I have a law degree. So that was my background before I went in the music business. I was an entertainment lawyer for a couple of years and then I just got a job doing what I wanted to do. I’m the kid who went to the Monterey Pop Festival while I was at UCLA and saw Jimi Hendrix light his guitar on fire while I was on a mind-altering drug. “That mother f**ker just light his guitar on fire?” And then the next day I was walking around saw this guy with a beard who was about ten years older than me, a rich hippie, with the most beautiful woman I’d seen in my life. It happened to have been Lou Adler. Somebody said, “He’s putting on the festival, he manages the Mamas And The Papas.” I went, “Ding, that’s what I want to do.”

Baltin: And how did that manifest into Rock The Vote?

Ayeroff: The basic idea for Rock The Vote was we had been, those of us who worked in the area of video, MTV, the next phase of music, had been accused of so-called unplugging a generation. It was a sort of right wing mantra, which is the connection of Frank Sinatra to swivel hips [Elvis Presley] to the Beatles, usually took place in the south and some of the conservative parts of the rest of the country. It was black music, it was devil music, they’re gonna take away white teenage girls. Whatever it was politicians were always able to use rock and roll as a tool to get older voters to be put in fear of the denigration of their children. And there was no constituency to stop them, there was no youth vote at that point. I think research can show I’m probably right, but I can’t tell you I’ve done deep research into this. The only thing everybody knew about the youth vote then was that they didn’t vote, kids don’t vote. There weren’t the marijuana or free speech constituency. So that’s the political side of it.

Baltin: And when did you first see Rock The Vote make an impact?

Ayeroff: By the time Rock The Vote rolls out I called my assistant, Beverly Lund, who is basically the mother of MTV. And she goes, “Hey, I’m active in the Beverly Hills democrats, I’ll put it all together.” We did a meeting with all the record executives.” I had a lot of connections in the video director world, in the video production world, in the art directors and creative directors from all over the country. And a bunch of guys who worked for me over the years had matriculated to becoming senior vice presidents or presidents of record companies. So there are 60 of us in the ballroom at the Four Seasons Beverly Hills. And Jerry Brown, when he was out of office in California, spoke at it. I spoke at it and we put together Rock The Vote. Then Tom Preston, Judy McGrath, John Sykes all were my friends cause during that era I was the executive in charge of videos for the Police, ZZ Top, Don Henley, Prince, Dire Straits, A-Ha, Madonna, so I was a prime supplier and good friend to those people. So they invited me to speak at one of their enclaves in the Hamptons, I guess it was a company retreat. I explained to them what Rock The Vote was and they signed on, MTV. It was good business and it felt good. It served the soul to plug a generation back in that we were probably so simple then. It’s ironic when you look at what kids are doing today with video games, the telephone and TikTok and everything.

Baltin: How has the relationship between music and politics changed?

Ayeroff: It’s not rock and roll anymore. It’s a much bigger field of aggrieved musicians, who are part of a community, rightfully aggrieved or pissed off. It’s not like white rock and roll musicians are being pulled over by cops. It’s a different era we’re living in. When we helped elect Bill Clinton he was the first baby boom generation, he was the guy who could play sax. It was easier for us to get kids to vote because we went from a dialogue to a certain extent inventing the idea of a youth vote, of having a significant ability to win a certain election. If the kids vote the whole nature of politics would be different. And that was a thing I really understood quite frankly. You put a youth vote in the mix of politics and politics becomes different. Fast forward to day and there are many, many aspects of how you can reach your audience that didn’t exist when we did it. We had one pipeline and we filled that pipeline. I got to do the Madonna spot because Madonna and I were friends. So I asked her to do it and she did it. Everybody always thought Rock The Vote was part of MTV. We were always separate entities because we were a political organization as a non-profit. And today every kid’s got a banner, every kid has an understanding. There’s Headcount, Voto Latino, there’s the Tom Steyer thing, there are so many youth organizations right now and so many people, whether it’s the Parkland kids, whether it’s Lin-Manuel Miranda, everybody has a platform. Even the people like Jose Andres, that’s a rock and roll chef basically doing politics, I think a lot of it is a reaction to Trump quite frankly. I think creative people are not part of a constituency comfortable with Trump as a president, let’s put it that way.

Baltin: What do you see as the legacy of Rock The Vote 30 years later?

Ayeroff: I honestly believe Rock The Vote normalized political action with the creative communities and the entertainment business. To a lot of people who grew up in that era watching MTV Rock The Vote became synonymous with music and politics. Then of course everything morphs. If we were to be the genesis of youth voting I’d be really happy to think that’s what it was. I know before us kids didn’t vote and now I wish we could get more kids to vote. People worked on that constantly, getting the youth vote up. When Taylor Swift gets political you know some s**t hit the wall. Katy Perry is one of our big spokespeople right now. There’s always been an easy connection. I just worked on the voting campaign that Snoop Dogg is doing right now. We created a poster with Shepard Fairey. I’m still trying to do some good trouble. So I came up with this idea for Snoop, we kind of worked on it for a few months and pulled it off. Shepard’s a friend, we share a history. It’s 30 years later it’s hard for me to believe. It’s still going strong.