[Boldness added for emphasis.]
I have to mildly disagree with you on that point. I think youthfulness plays a major factor in music like rock and hip-hop but is of lesser importance for other types. Country songs often come from the perspective of someone who’s had at least some life experience behind them (Taylor Swift notwithstanding). This is true to an even greater degree with the blues. Also, youth is not much of factor in the many forms of jazz.
Also “Rock” covers a huge range of music. When some people say rock, they mean hard rock only. My definition is a lot more expansive, and doesn’t rely on youthful exuberance and aggression, which again, sounds a bit foolish coming out of the mouth of a middle-aged person.
Maybe a good alternative discussion might be “Rock that has grown old gracefully.” From Todd Rundgren’s Second Wind:
I suspect those who started their careers writing about more complex subjects than those that obsess 18 year olds are given the latitude to grow. Elvis Costello may have been marketed as an “Angry Young Man” early on, but his lyrics were more varied than that.
For the very best in Jazz, check out recording from the Newport Jazz Festivals, 56-64.
So many great jazz performers were in the “sweet spot”–still gifted with fire, but having acquired technical polish. The optimum balance, so to speak.
Clapton is quintessential ‘Dad Rock.’ If he kept finding new listeners, those people must have been as dull and uninteresting as he is as a guitarist.
You certainly don’t have to be a good player to become super wealthy and famous; it’s practically a hindrance. Celebrity status has to do with popularity, and Pop or Rock’n’Roll musicians are not required to be great players, just great at being popular.
Creativity can refer to more things than musical creativity, and even musical creativity doesn’t necessarily presume skill and talent … it can mean a unique or original twist that attracts listeners, who often want to hear music they can understand. That’s why John McLaughlin isn’t a famous guitar God … he’s playing over the heads of Rock fans. Clapton is a master of finding listeners all the way through his career from his 20s to his 60s, and that his listeners approximate his own age is no surprise. What else would we expect?
I’ll add to my previous post that, though I’m not a Clapton fan (I’m a Hendrix fan), the OP regarded creativity, and creating “White Room”, “Layla”, “Acoustic Layla”, and then “If I Could Change the World” over a period of four decades, indicates creativity to me, vs the 60s bands that eternally play the 1969 songbook over and over, or who become cartoon Elton John, celebrity friend and mascot.
Respectfully, your personal opinion of Eric’s style is irrelevant to the OP or to any of my statements, though thanks for sharing that.
A couple of thoughts. . .
First, great rock is definitely something that is of the moment. I won’t go so far as to say that it’s ephemera, but if you take a great rock song out of its moment, it isn’t the same song. So the artist who wrote a great song at a given point in time is the same artist who writes another song ten or twenty years down the road, but it’s not the same moment. So the work doesn’t click in the same way.
Second, rock is an extremely limited form, so that writers don’t have the same opportunity that, say, jazz musicians or classical composers have to do different things. A rock writer is forced to work within the very tight constraints of the form – three to five minute pieces, a limited harmonic pallette, and, especially, the need to work within the range of the human voice, and usually an untrained voice at that. A classical composer isn’t forced to work within a given form, so that when he feels that he’s done everything he can do with that form, he can move on to something else. Igor Stravinsky was writing new and amazing stuff in his eighties, as was Olivier Messaien, and those are just two that come to mind. Classical musicians also don’t live or die by album sales, so they’re a bit freer. Come to think of it, I bet there are rock musicians who’ve been playing and writing great stuff for decades, but nobody will give them a record contract, so we don’t know about their later work.
It’s also true (does this make three thoughts?) that most (certainly not all) rock musicians are technically untrained, and don’t have the tools to move into different formats. Also, their audience won’t support them if they do.
I disagree. There are plenty of great rock songs that are not limited in the way you describe. Granted, a much greater number are. Sturgeon’s Law, and all that.
Again, I disagree. I suppose it depends on your definition of “Rock”. I consider artists like Bjork and Diamanda Galas rock, and neither fit into your definition. But we don’t have to go that far afield…just looking through this thread, many artists and bands mentioned have pulled in classical and jazz influences while still remaining rock - the reverse is rarely tried. (Personally, I find jazz players using rock or pop melodies cringe-inducing).
As mentioned earlier, Frank Zappa was a serious composer who worked with rock bands because they were available. Orchestras are not exactly knocking down the doors of new composers looking to perform and record their music. The people who get recorded are the ones who can play the academic game.
By the way, we really need a term for long-form instrumental music intended to be performed by orchestras. “Classical” really does not accurately describe music written in the last few years.
There are plenty. But I’m not even sure that rock music being of the moment is a limitation. It could be an advantage. Something like “Anarchy in the UK” definitely captured a moment in time in a way that couldn’t be done in any other form.
Bjork and Galas are outliers. But I think it’s true that a rock composer can’t easily decide that he’s tired of the constraints of the form and decide to write an hour-long tone poem or something, using tone rows and two dozen vocalists. And if he did, the record company would tell him to get lost. To say that the form has limitations isn’t to slight rock musicians, it’s just an acknowledgement of what the form is.
True enough, although there are quite a few new composers (and I realize that the word “new” covers a longer period of time in the classical world than it does in the pop world) who are getting performed and recorded because people actually like their music.
Absolutely true. I just couldn’t think of a better word. I’ve heard people use the term “serious music,” which I hate, because it’s kind of snotty and elitist.
But if they have been able to free themselves of record company control, via luck or success in other ways, they do. Look at Kate Bush’s album The Dreaming - songs in waltz time, sampled sounds used a la musique concrète, céilidh bands - and it was her first to get on the US Billboard charts. Kate’s albums since then have gone much further afield, very successfully.
And my other favorite, Todd Rundgren did an a capella album and toured it with a choir recorded album-length instrumental tracks, and an interactive album composed of 990 4 bar musical sequences with software to allow the listener to control the tempo, mood and mix. The Metropole Orchestra did a wonderful show devoted to his music.
You may say they are outliers, but most of the rock I enjoy must also be.
I’ve also heard the term “academic music”, which seems even worse.
Musicians may play better than ever in their 60s, but are they still writing good new music?
I wasn’t referring to the age of the musicians, I was revering to the years of performance. During this era, names like Basie, Gillespie, Armstrong and many, many more, were at their artistic peak.
Don’t tell me you’ve never heard of the Newport Jazz Festival?
Part of the problem is the expectation of the listener. Some musicians will always be compared to their first output of genius.
Rodney Dangerfield was funny into his old age, but I think Billy Connolly was much funnier in the 1980s than he is so far in this century.
With music it’s not just artists who write their own material. Elvis Presley was cutting edge from the mid 1950’s until about 1962 after which the hits were fewer and less innovative. He wrote none of his own songs even though he apparently is credited as a co-writer on many of them. So whoever selected the songs for him to record lost the knack just as many song writers seem to lose the knack.
That’s only partially true (although I can’t resist putting some of blame on Colonel Tom Parker). What happened in the 60s is that many songwriters began following the lead of Bob Dylan and chose to perform their songs themselves rather than let someone who was more vocally talented do it. As a result, many artists like Elvis who didn’t write their own songs suddenly found themselves with less quality unused material to chose from.
Yes, I’ve heard of it, but my point remains, even though I plainly misinterpreted you.
All of the men you name were great bandleaders, and they may well have been at their peak as MUSICIANS, but were they still composing great new music, or just performing their old stuff at a high level?
Dave Brubeck, to use one example, continued to play piano superbly into his eighties. But was he composing anything new, or just doing “Take Five” as well as ever?
The rules for Jazz are a little different. In Jazz, improvisation and arrangement are as important as composition, and these aspects can stand alone in a player’s resume. A quick look at Jazz giants Kenny Burrell and Wes Montgomery show that, while they composed some beautiful pieces (Montgomery’s West Coast Blues and Road Song, for instance) they were primarily known for interpreting the writing of other composers. Same goes with most of the famous Jazz singers.