Killing Rock, pt. 2: The Death of Rockstars and the Charisma Deficit
“I’m Sorry. There won’t be any Rock and Roll tonight. This is all that’s left. This feeble, wimped out death rattle is all that remains of the rolling thunder of America’s heartbeat.” – Walter Shit
I like Rock and Roll music. This is not exactly a secret. Hell, I spent – arguably wasted – several years of my life in various abortive musical projects attempting to create my own version of it. While it may be enjoyable to listen to and fun to play, Rock and Roll is not exactly some music for guys with heavyweight chops. Even some of the more technical genres pales in comparison to the top shelf of what is offered in, say, Jazz for instance. To put it more succinctly, any idiot who can count to four can play Rock and Roll. At its base, Rock and Roll is just a dumbed down combination of the baser elements of Jazz, R&B, and Country. To make it work, to sell it as it were, you need a rockstar. Someone who is that right combination of arrogance and shallow charisma.
When Rock and Roll was on its rise and at its zenith, you had figures like Elvis, Mick Jagger, Dave Mustaine, Roger Daltrey, and many others. They offended people with their on stage antics, they would shoot their mouths off in the press, they would feud with each other. People loved them, and they loved to hate them. These sort of big personalities SOLD the music. The 1980s took the image of Rock and Roll to silly new heights with the teased up hair, coloured leather, and spandex. Then as the 1980s gave way to the 1990s, America saw the rise of Grunge and Alternative. Originating with the college hipster set, this crowd sought to tear down the image of the rockstar. The music regressed to a simpler form and the larger than life personalities of the performers of previous decades was replaced with a morose, self-pitying, slovenly slacker sad sack. Bands like Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and Alice in Chains were black holes of charisma. This bled over into other subgenres too, with even many of the Metal bands of the day eschewing the genre’s trademark leather, chains, and spikes for the sensitive lumberjack look of the Seattle coffeehouse crowd.
Where am I going with all of this? The 1990s has become one of the most weirdly fetishized decades in music. The dilettantes who write for the usual rags that bemoan the fact that the younger generation just doesn’t want to rock even hold up the 1990s and Grunge as some last bastion of true Rock and Roll. It was the decade that killed it. It took the fun and rebellious spirit out of the genre. Everyone was just a complete void of personality and font of false modesty. The entertaining feuds and raucous antics were gone and replaced by the moaning of the sensitive, self-pitying simp. Rock and Roll was now well and truly safe. A bland, tasteless corporate commodity. As wave after wave of bands went further and further in that direction afterward, it’s not surprising that interest waned.
Along a similar theme to these articles/rants, I had written one on the previous incarnation of The Grim Tower (before we got unceremoniously nuked) about Hip-Hop. For any of you out there who saw that article, I still hold by what I said in it. Hip-Hop is not, as the dilettantes say, some new, vibrant, hip, fresh genre. It has been for a long time. When the old groups started breaking apart in the 1990s, and the genre became creatively monopolized by record producers, it too became a commodified corpse being picked clean by corporate vultures. The reason why Hip-Hop continues to sell though is because that’s where all of the rockstars are these days. Yes, the music may be bland and samey, but it still has big, memorable, and sometimes controversial personalities attached to it. It’s still, for lack of a better term, “sexy.” I’m sure that will change one day. It seems inevitable. However, until the personality returns to Rock music, it will be forever doomed to play second fiddle to a dwindling, niche audience.