Let’s assume the opposite: that musical creativity does not diminish with age. Then, we can assume that the greatness of albums will be randomly distributed throughout the artist’s career.
The ones that have a really crappy debut album, purely by chance, will tend to not become famous, or drop out altogether from the musical scene.
Whereas the ones that happened to reach their creative peak early, again, purely by chance in my hypothetical, did stick around, and then their later stuff is much worse. Only natural, because Sturgeon’s Law says that most of any one type of music is crap.
So pure randomness is consistent with the apparent lack of creativity of artists with age. I don’t think it’s the whole explanation, but I do think it’s some of it.
I was drunk, but I noticed. Also noticed how my girlfriends would get all hot and bothered over him, Samboro, or both. However, as I’m a prog rock fan, feel free to factor that into evaluating my opinion on other bands.
I think for the most part, the “early stuff” tends to be better because the band is dealing with all their best ideas, and they’re committed to sounding a certain way. Once you’ve delivered up your best, it’s tough to create something new that doesn’t sound like you’re ripping off your old songs. That’s when the experimentation and the side projects start.
I’d say it’s rare for a band to stick together long enough to become more accomplished musicians together and release their best album later in their careers. It helps if you start out in something simple. If you’re playing snotty three-chord punk, things can only improve from there.
Bearing in mind the caveat that rock and roll is not strictly rock, Frank Zappa produced/released over 60 albums in a 27 year recording career, including two in the year of his death (one new original material) at age 53.
I noticed a TV credit recently for Jay Ferguson as composer or in charge of music for some show. COuld it be I wondered? Other old farts will know who I mean - Jay Ferguson was a member and somg-writer for the way cool 60s band Spirit. Wrote a top 10 hit in 1968 (many other terrific songs)and is producing catchy TV themes in the 2010s.
**Is this unique to rock and roll? Or even to music?
I think that, in MOST fields of art and entertainment, people tend to do their best work when they’re young. Yes, there are Franz Joseph Haydns still writing great symphonies in their sixties and P.G. Wodehouses still writing entertaining books in their eighties, but are they typical? I don’t think so.
Can’t we all think of writers who came out with one brilliant novel early in their careers, and never wrote anything nearly as good afterward? To use one example, James T. Farrell completed his brilliant ***Studs Lonigan *** trilogy at the age of 31, and never came close to matching that achievement again.
Arthur Miller, one of America’s greatest playwrights, lived 90 years, and was writing to the very end… but he didn’t have any successful plays in the USA after 1955, when he completed A View From the Bridge. Once he hit 40, Arthur Miller was pretty much a has-been.
How many great songs did Burt Bacharach write after 1971? What did Truman Capote write of any merit after In Cold Blood?
MOST creative artists are only at their peak for a relatively short time.
Even if they’ve been recording new stuff all along (which they mostly haven’t; they’ve only put out 3 new albums in the past 22 years), older acts like the Blues seem to generally find that most of the audience at their concerts want to hear their old stuff. They can probably get away with mixing a new song or two into the playlist, but that’s probably the limit.
Artists like Kate Bush or Todd Rundgren, as gaffa noted, are probably the exceptions to the rule, in that they seem to have a fan base who’s more willing to move with the artist into new areas.
I do think that it’s probably harder to write good rock music when you’re no longer a edgy, struggling 20-something. Success leads to being comfortable and (maybe) having a family, and the inspiration for your music changes.
This feeling was extensive enough in mathematics that the traditional top prize in the field, the Fields Medal, is not awarded to anyone over the age of 40. This is made even worse by the fact that the prize is only awarded once every four years.
I think it’s mostly due to age, but varies between individuals. It’s like John Cougar once sang, “They say life goes on, long after the thrill of living is gone.” And for most people their creative years, when they are young and most excited about life, are their best. But, there are always exceptions.
I believe most folks’ musical tastes are pretty well established by the time they are 18. They may discover new artists, but the genres they like tend to be set - a hard rock fan may discover new hard rock bands, or move slightly afield to hybrids of their preferred genres, but it’s rare that they’ll discover a new one.
Todd keeps his fans on their toes by moving into different genres, and he’s lost a few of them along the way. A lot of them disliked his exploration of rap with No World Order and The Individualist, while I didn’t care for the hard rock of Arena.
I’ve been told that the hardest song to write is a requited love song. “I love you, we’re perfectly happy…” doesn’t give the same possibilities as “Why don’t you love me?”.
The Sky of Honey disc of Kate’s double album Aerial is an attempt to do that. It’s a album length song cycle about one perfect day of joy and contentment. Maybe that’s why it took her twelve years to release it.
Very true. I’ve had musicians who I would have assumed would be lightweights impress me. Back in 2001, I saw a concert called A Walk Down Abbey Road that featured Todd and a bunch of musicians doing two sets, the first of their “hits” and the second of Beatles tunes. The real revelation of the show was David Pack of Ambrosia. He’d had hits with the soft rock songs How Much I Feel and Biggest Part Of Me, but it turns out that he is a hell of a guitarist and can rock with the best of them, and yeah…40+ years of playing the guitar pays off.
Heh, I saw the Walk Down Abbey Road tour as well. An idiot sitting behind me remarked to his date that “That Rundgren guy…he doesn’t really belong on stage with the rest of them, what has he ever done?” You can bet I gave him a piece of my mind! It turned out that it was Todd’s birthday that night and the crowd (except for the guy behind me) offered up a rousing version of Happy Birthday.
I think lot of the great rock songs have been written by, essential, teenagers.
Does 2112 have the same style as Signals*? Is “Losing It” in the same style as “The Temples of Syrinx”? Nope. There are major changes in tone, instrumentation, etc. Rush has changed a ton through out their career. However, the essential Rushness stays the same.
Rush, whether it is 2112, Moving Pictures or Test for Echo, always sounds like Rush. Whether it is guitar driven or keyboard driven, heavy or light, it sounds like Rush.
There are other bands/musicians who are constant this way. I can recognize a new Steve Morse song almost instantly even though he covers an extremely wide range of music. Somehow, whatever it is that makes Steve Morse sound the like Steve Morse, always comes through. Most of the bands I like tend to be this way and most tend to be progressive and change quite a bit.
Changing styles but keeping the distinctive aspects that define an artist is hard. Some bands can do it but others start to sound like someone else. Once that distinctiveness is lost it all starts merging into the rest of the genre.
Slee
*Picked because they are two of my favorite Rush albums.
I started pondering this phenomenon just last week (after hearing a recent Paul McCartney tune on the radio, in fact). He (with Lennon) was a musical genius who seemed able to churn out pop masterpiece after pop masterpiece at will. I don’t think he has produced anything in the last couple of decades that would compare with any of dozens of his early songs.
Then I considered which musicians remain fresh into the golden years of their career. I struggled with this thought and could only name a few semi-possibilities (Paul Simon, Elvis Costello, David Byrne).
Whoa, hold the phone. Just thought of one (IMHO): Bob Dylan.
mmm
Can’t speak to his most recent work, but I think Neil Young stayed surprisingly relevant far beyond most of his contemporaries. Being embraced by a lot of the noisier post-punk bands in the 1980’s and '90’s didn’t hurt.
Also keep in mind that general tastes in music change over time as well. The 90s marked a transition away from pre 1991 bombastic guitar rock into more subdued and introspective “alternative” rock.
The 2000s saw a lot of emo, pop-punk and indie garage bands.
And these days, there is hardly any rock anymore.
Fair enough. I meant “cutting edge bad ass rock” in a bunch of high school jocks driving around in the Camaro sense. Not the angry kid who dressed all in black skulls and ripped denim like an extra from River’s Edge and smelled like Marlboros sense.
Interestingly of the “big 4” 80s thrash metal bands (Metallica, Antrax, Megadeth and Slayer), Metallica was the only one that seemed to make the crossover into pop. But I also remember that caused a lot of controversy with their core fan base.
Um…I think you mean John Cougar Mellencamp…or John Mellencamp…or possibly Johnny Cougar.
Some good examples here. Some bands can have long careers essentially recording the same material over and over, but they’re fairly rare. Musicians generally want to progress, whether its absorbing new influences or growing musically or whatever, but there’s some core essence to their sound that makes them who they are, and all they’re doing is finding ways to explore that core with new sounds, new skills, new influences. Bands die out when they lose that core, or their fans lose interest in it.
I think Dream Theater is a fantastic example of the type of band that has maintained that core but continued to change and remain creative. Every album they’ve released has a very definitive Dream Theater sound, but there’s also very clear changes. They’ve managed to remain creative because they always have new influences and, in fact, their most recent album was one of their best in a while and I expect their next one will have even more progression with their new drummer bringing in his influence right from the start of the composing.
The thing is, a lot of labels and bands want to sell more records, so they incorporate popular trends which doesn’t work with their core, or their core is so ingrained in a current trend that they just can’t last when the trend ends.
Regardless, I don’t think age kills creativity. No matter what idea you have, without bringing in new influences, it will get old. It’s just a matter of how willing one is to bring in those influences and how well they work together.
