Good Old Rock and Roll: Performing the 1950s in the 1970s Philip Auslander Georgia Institute of Technology Introduction Although one might expect otherwise, Sha Na Na’s performance at Woodstock had much in common with John Lennon’s performance with The Plastic Ono Band at the Toronto Rock Revival. Both events took place in 1969, less than a month apart—Sha Na Na performed at Woodstock on August 18, while Lennon appeared in Toronto on September 13. Both groups were quite new at the time of their respective performances. Sha Na Na was formed in 1969. Their performance at Woodstock was only their seventh gig. Lennon had not played live in the 3 years before his Toronto appearance, and The Plastic Ono Band had never performed in public. Both groups focused their repertoire on rock and roll songs from the 1950s: Sha Na Na were captured for posterity in the documentary film Woodstock (1970) performing Danny and the Juniors’ ‘‘At the Hop,’’ while The Plastic Ono Band opened their set with Carl Perkins’ ‘‘Blue Suede Shoes.’’ Despite these similarities, the two performances in question stand at opposite ends of a continuum that charts the relationships rock groups of the 1960s and 1970s assumed to the rock and roll of the 1950s. This continuum is not a timeline: it traces the development of a tendency in rock along an ideological axis rather than a chronological one. The poles of this continuum are the ideologically charged concepts of authenticity and inauthenticity central to rock music and rock culture (Auslander 65–81). Sha Na Na and Lennon, whom I have selected to represent the extreme positions on this continuum, were scarcely the only rock musi- cians of the late 1960s and 1970s to exploit the music of the 1950s. 1 Although a complete study of this renewed interest in rock and roll has yet to be undertaken, I shall limit my discussion here to musicians who not only played music styled on the rock and roll of the 1950s but also created performance personae that express their respective relationships to that earlier music. In addition to Sha Na Na and Lennon, I will look at The Mothers of Invention and Wood’s Wizzard from this perspective and place 166 Philip Auslander