…because the fact that Rock is dead, once and for all, does not reflect well upon us.
Joe Walsh was always a funny guy with the best album titles, e.g., The Smoker You Drink, the Player You Get; You Bought It, You Name It, et al., and he was well in character on the Facebook post I saw, telling people to social distance six feet from themselves. Ha, if only we could, am I right? But the legend who gave us “Funk 49,” “Walk Away,” and the lead guitar on The Eagles’ “Hotel California” was also earnestly “wear the mask, kids” and it was right then and there I realized that Rock was dead.
It’s bad enough Paul McCartney expects me to care about the album he made all on his lonesome during “rockdown” because he was such a good citizen social distancing himself like he would anyway for his third solo effort with no side musicians. I’m trying to remember if I really did see that video of King Crimson’s Robert Fripp and his wife with face-diapers on. I’m pretending I didn’t and I’m not looking it up.
Other examples crowd for attention in my mind, of people who once represented a culture that confronted authority and disdained conformity telling us to be good little subjects and obey. Do all the pointlessly stupid things you’re told, be afraid of a pandemic that’s no more than a seasonal flu hyped beyond recognition. Let your rulers ruin your lives with lockdowns and restrictions even as they swan about as they please before your very eyes because it’s science, you selfish denier!
This is a lot bigger than many realize, than most will want to realize. Gather ‘round, my children, Grandpa has a story to tell….
*******
It’s been up to 40 years ago since it was ever an issue for most people, but there was a time when the very act of listening to a rock station was a marker of rebellion. You were telling your elders you didn’t buy into their bitchy, bossy bullshit, you were walking another path, a better path. This was something you chose to do, not because some bitchy, bossy old thing said so. Which, naturally, drove the bitchy, bossy old things insane with rage.
The traditionalists will say it was because rock represented sexual licentiousness and a loosening of morals that we are still suffering the effects of today. That would work as an excuse if I didn’t remember those bitchy, bossy old things as well I do. Our elders back in the day didn’t give a rat’s backside for anyone’s souls, not even their own. They didn’t care about Western Civilization or any of that long-haired homosexual nonsense. They liked being in charge and telling people what to do. And if they weren’t smiling and happy, no one was permitted to be smiling and happy. They hated their lives and expected you to hate yours as well. John Lithgow’s portrayal as the fanatical anti-dancing, anti-rock-‘n’ roll preacher in the 1980s movie Footloose was no exaggeration to the audiences at the time. They were really like that, and worse.
The squawk and roar of electric guitars, the shouts of young men into the microphone over the automatic gunfire of drums and the rumbling artillery of bass was a necessary challenge to this orthodoxy. We put up with our elders for as long as we had to, and changed the channel and turned up the radio in celebration of our freedom whenever we could get away. The bitchy, bossy old things bitched and bossed, and blamed that rocky-roll music for us not wanting to come to church anymore and having sex outside of marriage.
Sure, it didn’t help with the whole civic morals thing. But our elders setting such a piss-poor example with their corruption and bitterness and bullying attitude was what sealed the deal. How could rock ‘n’ roll and sex outside of marriage not look good in comparison to the way these people lived?
*******
I loved The Who’s “Long Live Rock!” the song that closed out the original Odds and Sods album in the 1970s. I was always puzzled by the “Rock is dead” line Roger Daltrey sang before Pete Townshend’s final verse. What else could there be? Sure, there would be R&B and disco and suchlike but there would always be capital-R Rock.
One has to credit it for lasting as long as it did. As it happens it’s been years since Pete Townshend sold out and licensed his songs as themes for cop shows, and I don’t know what year to call the time of death, but all these former faces of youthful rebellion gone haggard and eagerly urging us to comply with the same authorities that gave us Vietnam and our current Forever Wars—this tells us in no uncertain terms that Elvis has left the building. Feet first, and he’s not coming back.
Rock and its culture is yet another institution I’ve seen come and go away in my life. Come to think of it, pop music in general is finished. It’s as if all the great songs of any given genre have been written. With culture in general spluttering out, franchises 50 to 60 years old staggering around like the living dead begging to be put out of their misery, one longs for whatever catastrophic ending must come so that we can begin again.
Of course, as John Lennon noted in response to people urging The Beatles to get back together, you’ll always have the old recordings if you need a trip down Memory Lane. Although sometimes it’s hard to enjoy when you’re aware the songs once meant so much more than their words and melodies.
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