ELVIS
Yes,
we all know he was a poor white kid with a great voice who had absorbed white
and black southern musical traditions and was able to stir them up in a magical
and wonderful kind of way. But he was
more than a just a musician: Elvis was a hurricane that tore across our entire
culture. His hip-swiveling appearance on
the Ed Sullivan Show in September of 1956 didn’t simply announce the invention
of a brand new musical genre. In one
fell swoop it both electrified and terrified the entire country and world:
Elvis’s game pushed issues of sex, gender, and race to the fore, proclaimed clearly
that these things were on young peoples’ minds, and demonstrated that the giant
group of young people electrified by his performance was destined to challenge and,
indeed, dynamite, traditional mores along these lines and many others. Indeed, he was the first to galvanize
these forces. Elvis changed the world.
THE
BEATLES
The
rock and roll explosion set off by Elvis triggered a flood of great music in its
wake: Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, Carl Perkins,
Bill Haley, etc etc etc. The questions about
racial integration and teen sexuality raised by the music terrified the
Establishment and most adults hoped rock and roll was a fad that would just go
away. Apparently beginning to fulfill
these hopes, the music had started to stagnate early 1960s.
Marketing forces diluted the sound by placing toned down rock and roll
songs—with edgy blues rhythms and melodies and suggestive lyrics filtered out— into the hands of more palatable bland crooners like Pat Boone. In truth, as of 1960, rock and roll lyrically
had never really moved beyond the “girls and cars” phase. Bob Dylan hitchhiked to New York City from Minnesota
and burst upon the folk scene in Greenwich Village in 1961 with songs that raised
Woody Guthrie’s songwriting ethos to another level and into the political causes
of the times, but Dylan’s folkies in NYC wanted nothing to do with rock and roll
and were a niche music market, rather than a mainstream cultural force,
anyway.
The
Beatles, however, were something else. John
Lennon got a lot of crap for saying “The Beatles are more popular than Jesus,’
but he was pretty well spot-on. Bouncing,
once again, onto Ed Sullivan’s stage in February 1964, the world shook at their
feet. While lyrically, the early Beatles
songs generally hewed close to traditional subjects (“I Wanna Hold Your Hand,” “Please
Please Me,” “Can’t Buy Me Love”), musically the band was crafting more complex
song forms and moving beyond the blues based chord and melody structures of
early rock and roll. They were
ubiquitous— their records dominated the radio and covered record store racks
and walls, of course, but their faces also appeared constantly on TV, newspapers,
magazines— and their look, with their hair creeping ever closer to their shoulders, raised a
clear middle finger to the establishment, which once again began to get
nervous. By 1966, their songwriting had
completely exploded the definition and scope of rock and roll, lyrically and
musically, and in the process transformed the role of not only the music but
of the people who create it and listen it.
By the time “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” was released, rock
and roll songs could address pretty much any topic, idea, issue or question— social and political commentary, addiction,
old age, war, peace, education, parents, children, etc etc etc. These songs gave voice to ideas and feelings
in many young (and older) people’s hearts and minds and thereby empowered them to
come together (!) and act on these feelings and ideas. The Beatles transformed rock and roll from a
quaint musical fad or genre to an art form and a vehicle for social change, and
also expressed the outlook of an entire generation and empowered that
generation and generations of young people ever after to stand up for their
ideals. The Beatles changed the world.
THE
SEX PISTOLS…
…only
existed for about 15 seconds, but they also changed the world. Once again, despite the unbelievable
explosion set off by the Beatles in the 1960s, mainstream rock and roll had
become bloated and stagnant by the mid 1970s.
Some wonderful records were made during that stretch—indeed, many of my
favorites (“Exile on Main Street,” anyone?)—but the sense that music or young
people could or would change the world had given way to simply a “let’s party”
mentality. Rock stars staged mammoth
tours and were worshipped like gods by stoned suburban kids flocking to giant
arenas to see them, and all the while record companies raked in millions of
dollars. It was a business, a gravy
train—running just fine, but not really a force for cultural change.
Then
onto the scene, from the depths of depressed corners and backalleys of London, come the Sex
Pistols—an unholy mess of safety pins and fury.
Flipping the bird at absolutely everything and ripping out of the radio with raging
guitar hooks which frame lyrics bearing social commentary way more iron fisted than
anything Bob Dylan ever wrote, the Pistols instantly gave voice to the
forgotten underclass and scared the hell out of everyone else (their famous
first TV appearance was, like the Beatles’ and Elvis’s, a cultural landmark
moment, though for very different reasons).
They made, really, one album (yes, a few people have managed to cobble
together a few other odds and ends, but they made one album, really) and
imploded by the end of their only tour across America. However, by the end of that tour, the forces
of punk had been unleashed on the culture.
Underclass kids in the UK, USA, and elsewhere had been ignored and trod upon for a long time, were mighty pissed off
about many things, and had been so for awhile, but now had a voice and were demanding
to be reckoned with. These people,
somehow previously hiding or lurking or waiting in the shadows to come out,
were suddenly everywhere—you couldn’t and still can’t walk down a street without seeing
palpable traces of the punk ethos and experience: spiked hair, leather boots or
jackets, piercings, body ink, etc all expressing a sense of disconnection with the
stifling conventions and socioeconomic inequalities of the dominant culture. Dozens of great bands followed in the Pistols
wake—the Clash, the Dead Kennedys, etc etc etc—but it was the Pistols who, in
just a few seconds, opened the door and gave voice to a whole generation of forgotten
and overlooked people. The Sex Pistols
changed the world.
NIRVANA
By
now you know the cycle: after a ground-shaking
cultural change set off by a world-changing trailblazer and followed by many other strong artists,
rock and roll stagnates. The 80s were
the ultimate in rock and roll stagnation.
Punk had been stolen out of the hands of angry misfits and underclass
rebels and turned into electronic pap performed by people who spent more on their
“spiked” hairdos and pre-torn t-shirts and jeans than on their instruments. Hell, most radio songs through the 80s didn’t
even have a drummer—just some casio drum machine thing like you hear on cheezy
organ store demos. The music had no grit
or grind, didn’t threaten anyone in any way, addressed no real issues lyrically, and was
mostly like white bread soaked in milted vanilla ice cream—bland blah
blech. Yes, there were occasionally
musical signs of life (thank god for the Red Hot Chili Peppers!). Yes, there was Live Aid and “We Are The World,”
which were nice one-offs but mostly rock star PR photo ops in the end—not really
movement starters. And yes, U2 purported to have a social conscience, but I’ve
gotta say that Bono lost me when, after paying $15 for the Rattle and Hum CD
and $10 to get into the movie, I watched him on the screen in front of a football
stadium of 75,000 people who had paid $50 or so per ticket and $20 for t-shirts
sermonize about TV priests milking money out of people—what a load of
crap. If rock and roll wasn’t dead as a
music and as a cultural force, then the priest was there in its room administering the Last
Rites.
And
then, seemingly out of fuckin’ nowhere comes Nirvana. On my walk this afternoon, I listened to a
bootleg of them at Chicago’s legendary Cabaret Metro recorded just weeks after
Nevermind was released, right at the very beginning of the time the
record, and thus the band, were starting to break. The document is one of the most arresting
recordings I’ve ever heard—imagine a B52 revving its engines at the beginning
of a runway before takeoff. They were on
to something much larger than themselves and they knew it. The band had a new, raw sound which grabbed you
by the throat, inward and outward looking lyrics which articulated a significant
set of experiences, reactions, and observations common to a new set of young
people in ways that were new, funny, painful, frank, and keenly insightful, and
a general aesthetic—jeans, flannel shirts, a kind of modest, understated regular look— that placed the emphasis on their work and disposed of all the
idolatry and outward appearance crapola that had become more important than the
musical or lyrical ideas expressed by purported punks, hippies, and other rock
and roll musicians. Like Elvis, the Beatles, and the Sex Pistols,
Nirvana had a new musical vision that articulated and established a voice for a
whole generation of young people. The
door now open, many great artists followed shortly—Pearl Jam, the Smashing
Pumpkins, Liz Phair, etc etc etc. Again, suddenly not only was the music
everywhere (and wow, was that music something—pure, intense, respectful and inclusive
of traditions that it was also altering or even blowing up, honest,
unapologetic, witty, literate, and completely unlike anything ever heard
before), and not only was Nirvana on every radio and TV station, newspaper,
magazine, and T-shirt, but suddenly the concerns of the entire generation they
were speaking for—raised on consumerism, surrounded by scary, creepy news
stories, etc etc etc—had to be reckoned with.
Like Elvis, the Beatles, and the Sex Pistols before them, they had not
only pushed rock and roll music into new territory, but had also brought an
entire group of people’s feelings and concerns to the fore. Nirvana changed the world.
ANYONE
ELSE…???
There
are dozens, hundreds, perhaps even thousands of other great rock and roll artists,
but I think all of them were able to do what they did because these four
opened doors, blazed new territories, established legitimate audiences on large
scales, and remade not only the musical but the entire cultural landscapes of their times. These four are on the top shelf,
methinks, all by themselves. One
Direction is NOT the new Beatles. I
challenge you, dear readers, to make a case for anyone else in rock and roll.
I
think, also, a similar “world changer” statement might be made about one or two
hip hop / rap artists, but I’m not familiar enough with the field to know for sure
which one— Public Enemy, Run DMC, The Beastie Boys, or____________???—was really
the world changer. Please edify me as you see fit.
Thanks
for reading.
Peace,
Love, and Rock and Roll
mk
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