I think correctly spoken is "the downbeat" makes for rock and roll (for example monkey man by the Rolling Stones.)
This is not in any way Marching Band music nor even worse "carnaval music" with a dainty keyboard riff of legendarily bad Dire Straits infamy ("Walk of Life.")
In other words there need not be indeed ideally there no "set beat" per se but an "off-putting" meaning "downbeat."
The master of this was Syd Barrett of early Pink Floyd fame who kinda went bonkers as is all too often the norm in not even knowing you've invented an entirely new and beyond belief popular musical form but if you listen to "Interstellar Overdrive" or even "I've got a Bike!" you can really here a guy who's really "playing with the music"(I don't think he was much interested in guitar in the first place) meaning something meant to be literally "off" ... and amazingly for early Pink Floyd "with everyone else being off together!" which just, well...really rocks...meaning you as the observer just kind of stand their and stare at the music which using music as some normative form is supposed to be literally "off putting" but if one goes to an Opera what in fact is the Audience doing? And that would be "well, pretty much sitting there and staring" meaning "right boring, mate!" or "the punch of an Italian Army in World War 2" meaning basically "joke music" that is way into itself.
Anyhow to point out this was no accident look at what came out of Great Britain from the 1960s starting with Syd and it truly was an explosion in ... absolutely Rock'n Roll. (Led Zeppelin, David Bowie, the Rolling Stones, Cream, AC/DC, Genesis, Deep Purple, the Who...just on and on and on it went...to include further iterations of Pink Floyd post Syd.)
But again I use as my Rock Standard "Monkey Man" by the Rolling Stones and in the opposite "Day Tripper as NOT ROCK" by the Beatles (with a great start only to turn into a single chord changed 4 bar blues snores-ville append.)
Another Rock Standard is "Travelling Riverside Blues" by Led Zeppelin which again starts with an oddly melodic guitar riff that gets "slammed" by the drummer in all the wrong places...same too with The Who's "Baba O'Riley" so no if you're simply counting "1234" that is not Rock'n Roll meaning not only is there ZERO backing beat but all rhythm is in fact front and center and kind of "battling it out on stage" like the inside of Syd Barrett's mind.