That’s a line I’ve heard from bands for years - mostly bands that suck and say since Led Zeppelin got bad reviews, why wouldn’t they?
But the critics I know of, mainly those that write or have written for Rolling Stone magazine - mainly seem to be journalists or authors who just became obsessed with rock music at some point. Are any prominent critics essentially musicians that just couldn’t hack it?
How does one get to be a rock critic to begin with?
I would think writing music reviews for your college paper would be a good start.
I think Frank Zappa described them (or rock writers generally) as people who can’t write, writing about people who can’t sing, for people who can’t read. Something like that.
This criticism gets used all the time in various ways. I constantly see people saying that movie critics who haven’t made a great movie should keep their mouth shut. Ditto for book reviewers. Of course, unless the people saying this have all created hit records, award-winning movies, architectural masterpieces, enthralling books, and so forth, I don’t know how they criticize anything.
Rock critics listen to and know a lot about music. Film critics know a lot about and watch a lot of films. It’s silly to demand that soemone be a practicing expert in a field to critique it: I’m no engineer, but I won’t get into an airplane with styrofoam wings.
Well, I think David Lee Roth summed up rock critics neatly, when he said, “You wanna know why critics love Elvis Costello so much? It’s because 99% of them LOOK like f***ing Elvis Costello, THAT’S why.”
Crawl on your knees to Macomb,IL & pray God will
smile on you & grant you an audience with Rick
Johnson.