Goenka was emphasising the difference between understanding the reality of universal impermanence as a theoretical proposition—such as one learned in quantum mechanics, astro-physics, or the history of light entertainment—and grasping it on a more personal level, integrating it into one’s life, and leaving it on in the background like Alexa to monitor and mitigate one’s emotional reactions to life’s irritations. The difference, he said, was profound. It was everything.
My impulse was to shrug. So what? Yes, things change. I’ve noticed. Yes, the sands of time will run through the hourglass and the desert winds will blow away the dust of my bones and raze my vainglorious monuments to the ground. Big deal. I like change. New things replace the old and the world would be boring were it otherwise.
I’m the same age as rock music—maybe exactly the same age. I was born on Sunday, May 9th, 1965, among the first members of Generation X. That was also the day The Beatles first saw Bob Dylan play live, at the Royal Albert Hall. The large gamete encountered the small and something entirely new was created. The same weekend, Dylan began scrawling the lyrics to ‘Like a Rolling Stone’ on a napkin at the Savoy hotel—a free-form screed of scornful contempt for his own generation’s Beautiful and Damned, which evolved over subsequent weeks into what is now (statistically, at any rate) the most acclaimed song of all time. Bruce Springsteen once described it as “a torrent that comes rushing towards you. Floods your soul, floods your mind,” and when it was released in July, it changed everything. That summer, rock ’n’ roll, folk, and blues, drugs, poetry, Byronic peacock swagger, disdain, and conceit all coalesced into the greatest sound the world had ever heard.
It didn’t last. The art historian Kenneth Clark once wrote somewhere that every artistic movement lasts a generation if you’re lucky. You get between 15 and 25 years before the candle begins to gutter. 1965–80 is the short rock century. 1955–80 is the long one, if you want to start with The King rather than his Jester. In his 2016 book, Never a Dull Moment, music journalist David Hepworth convincingly places rock music’s peak at 1971 (and in Uncommon People the following year, he dates the end of the rock star to 1994). So by the time I started hearing LPs that belonged to friends’ older siblings in 1977, the bloom was already coming off.
My full induction occurred on November 17th, 1979, when the Friday Rock Show’s Tommy Vance played through a listeners’ poll that lasted fully two hours. I remember my parents turning off the TV and generously leaving me to it, no idea of the irreversible changes being made to my brain. I already knew ‘Smoke on the Water,’ ‘Child in Time,’ and ‘Stairway to Heaven,’ but I was now introduced to ‘Shine on You Crazy Diamond,’ ‘Supper’s Ready,’ ‘Layla,’ and ‘Free Bird.’ It was like seeing the Taj Mahal, Hagia Sophia, and Chartres for the first time all on the same evening. I have never entirely come down since. But six months later, according to the Clark Formula, it was all over. Rock, like Axl, was a blown Rose.
Sure, there were aftershocks–Guns N’ Roses among them. America’s Indie scene produced REM, Pixies, and Sonic Youth, while grunge produced Nirvana. Troopers like AC/DC and the Stones kept on keeping on like nothing had changed while a handful of names from the ’70s like Ozzy and Aerosmith enjoyed successful second acts. But the whole scene increasingly resembled a postmodern pastiche, like the Disneyfied, castrated facsimile of Vegas at the end of Martin Scorsese’s Casino. Springsteen remains glorious but he is leading a revivalist prayer meeting, not imparting the original revelation. By the mid-’90s, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame was honouring talent faster than Rock and Roll could generate it.
And now? A few good men have not deserted their posts but they are dying in their boots. The reinforcements never came. “Just about every rock legend you can think of,” Damon Linker wrote in an essay for the Week, “is going to die within the next decade or so.” The stats are grim and foretell a “tidal wave of obituaries”:
Behold the killing fields that lie before us: Bob Dylan (78 years old); Paul McCartney (77); Paul Simon (77) and Art Garfunkel (77); Carole King (77); Brian Wilson (77); Mick Jagger (76) and Keith Richards (75); Joni Mitchell (75); Jimmy Page (75) and Robert Plant (71); Ray Davies (75); Roger Daltrey (75) and Pete Townshend (74); Roger Waters (75) and David Gilmour (73); Rod Stewart (74); Eric Clapton (74); Debbie Harry (74); Neil Young (73); Van Morrison (73); Bryan Ferry (73); Elton John (72); Don Henley (72); James Taylor (71); Jackson Browne (70); Billy Joel (70); and Bruce Springsteen (69, but turning 70 next month).A few of these legends might manage to live into their 90s, despite all the …wear and tear to which they’ve subjected their bodies over the decades. But most of them will not.
That essay was published four years ago. It’s not dark yet, but it’s getting there. And as these totems of cheerfully complacent youth and vitality meet their maker, Linker writes, it “will force us not only to endure their passing, but to confront our own mortality as well.” Concert attendances remain high, but demographics toll the bell. Those tickets, album sales, and streams are so heavily skewed towards the elderly now that the whole project is just one cold snap away from oblivion.
by Simon Evans, Quillette | Read more:
Image: Genesis performing in 2007. Photo by Andrew Bossi via Wikipedia.[ed. See also: The coming death of just about every rock legend (The Week):]
"Before rock emerged from rhythm and blues in the late 1950s, and again since it began its long withdrawing roar in the late 1990s, the norm for popular music has been songwriting and record production conducted on the model of an assembly line. This is usually called the "Brill Building" approach to making music, named after the building in midtown Manhattan where leading music industry offices and studios were located in the pre-rock era. Professional songwriters toiled away in small cubicles, crafting future hits for singers who made records closely overseen by a team of producers and corporate drones. Today, something remarkably similar happens in pop and hip-hop, with song files zipping around the globe to a small number of highly successful songwriters and producers who add hooks and production flourishes in order to generate a team-built product that can only be described as pristine, if soulless, perfection.
This is music created by committee and consensus, actively seeking the largest possible audience as an end in itself. Rock (especially as practiced by the most creatively ambitious bands of the mid-1960s: The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Kinks, and the Beach Boys) shattered this way of doing things, and for a few decades, a new model of the rock auteur prevailed. As critic Steven Hyden recounts in his delightful book Twilight of the Gods: A Journey to the End of Classic Rock, rock bands and individual rock stars were given an enormous amount of creative freedom, and the best of them used every bit of it. They wrote their own music and lyrics, crafted their own arrangements, experimented with wildly ambitious production techniques, and oversaw the design of their album covers, the launching of marketing campaigns, and the conjuring of increasingly theatrical and decadent concert tours.
This doesn't mean there was no corporate oversight or outside influence on rock musicians. Record companies and professional producers and engineers were usually at the helm, making sure to protect their reputations and investments. Yet to an astonishing degree, the artists got their way. Songs and albums were treated by all — the musicians themselves, but also the record companies, critics, and of course the fans — as Statements. For a time, the capitalist juggernaut made possible and sustained the creation of popular art that sometimes achieved a new form of human excellence. That it didn't last shouldn't keep us from appreciating how remarkable it was while it did."
"Before rock emerged from rhythm and blues in the late 1950s, and again since it began its long withdrawing roar in the late 1990s, the norm for popular music has been songwriting and record production conducted on the model of an assembly line. This is usually called the "Brill Building" approach to making music, named after the building in midtown Manhattan where leading music industry offices and studios were located in the pre-rock era. Professional songwriters toiled away in small cubicles, crafting future hits for singers who made records closely overseen by a team of producers and corporate drones. Today, something remarkably similar happens in pop and hip-hop, with song files zipping around the globe to a small number of highly successful songwriters and producers who add hooks and production flourishes in order to generate a team-built product that can only be described as pristine, if soulless, perfection.
This is music created by committee and consensus, actively seeking the largest possible audience as an end in itself. Rock (especially as practiced by the most creatively ambitious bands of the mid-1960s: The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Kinks, and the Beach Boys) shattered this way of doing things, and for a few decades, a new model of the rock auteur prevailed. As critic Steven Hyden recounts in his delightful book Twilight of the Gods: A Journey to the End of Classic Rock, rock bands and individual rock stars were given an enormous amount of creative freedom, and the best of them used every bit of it. They wrote their own music and lyrics, crafted their own arrangements, experimented with wildly ambitious production techniques, and oversaw the design of their album covers, the launching of marketing campaigns, and the conjuring of increasingly theatrical and decadent concert tours.
This doesn't mean there was no corporate oversight or outside influence on rock musicians. Record companies and professional producers and engineers were usually at the helm, making sure to protect their reputations and investments. Yet to an astonishing degree, the artists got their way. Songs and albums were treated by all — the musicians themselves, but also the record companies, critics, and of course the fans — as Statements. For a time, the capitalist juggernaut made possible and sustained the creation of popular art that sometimes achieved a new form of human excellence. That it didn't last shouldn't keep us from appreciating how remarkable it was while it did."
