Nothing can come close to Can’t Buy A Thrill, Countdown to Ecstasy or Aja, but Two Against Nature and Everything Must Go are far from bad albums. I think TAN was a lot better than EMG (Pixeleen is really the only standout track on the latter) and while neither of them approach Dan’s previous work, I’d say they’re both pretty decent albums.
outlierrn, what’s your definition of rock if Steely Dan isn’t included in it?
Heh:
“I think that it’s the only way you get to be in a successful rock band thirty years later. I mean, I think you have to have your head screwed on pretty good and your values in the right place. It’s so easy on the road and in the rock and roll world to start believing all the crap that people tell you and it will be your downfall if you start believing you’re as great as everybody says. I’ve seen so many artists, so many musicians crash that way.” – Alex Lifeson, guitarist for Rush
And yet they keep getting handed Grammys …(well, except for AC/DC, maybe) and I wonder how because I never hear their new stuff played on the radio.
I heard it said once about older baseball players, that their batting average tends to go down, but they hit for more power.
Success breeds victory disease; a failure to innovate.
In the case of, say, the Stones, they write songs about as well as they ever did; it’s just that they’re writing the same songs they always did, or are trying to.
Bands that are pretty much just coasting tend to be those bands that are rewriting the same songs over and over again. AC/DC released “Back in Black” in 1980, and have since been trying to remake “Back in Black” over and over again. Every new Stones album sounds the same. Paul McCartney’s songs, after awhile, started sounding like they’d been written by a PC application called “Paul McCartney SongMaker for Windows XP.” All Aerosmith songs since “Permanent Vacation” are essentially identical.
The history of modern pop/rock is once of constant innovation. People like to hear the new sound. First they liked old school rock and roll, then doo wop, then the Beatles came along and then you had Brit rock, then you had folk pop, then Zeppelin invented hard rock, then you had an explosion of new stuff in the 70s - disco, punk, metal, rockabilly. Later came modern pop, New Wave, synth, dance, and rap emerged, which led to hip hop. Metal spawned hair metal which spawned new metal and grunge. So on and so forth.
People have always wanted new stuff to listen to. What was popular ten years ago is not popular today. Oh, the basics stay the same - good beats, good hooks - but the presentation must change.
Those few bands that do stay fresh and relevant and DON’T get relegated to adult stations are the ones who’re willing to do new shit. I don’t really like Madonna or her music, but you’ve got to admit she tries new stuff; it’s all within the general field of dance, but she’s always put new twists into it and has been ahead of the curve on a lot of things. Paul Simon had a monster smash hit with “Graceland,” which was 20 years or so after he hit the scene, because he went out there and found a new sound. It’s interesting to note that Aerosmith reemerged on the strength of a crossover rap/rock cover they did with Run-DMC.
Most of the time, however, the bands that seize the new sound, or invent new sounds, are young bands who simply have more to gain by trying new stuff. The Stones didn’t have any reason to experiment with the raw sounds, distortions, and Gen-Y lyrics that became grunge, so why would they? Instead, guys you never previously heard of like Pearl Jam and Nirvana tried it out, and whaddya know, struck gold. It never would have occurred to an old established band like Aerosmith to try furious thrashing and revolutionary-worded yell-singing to create new ass-ckicking tunes, but it did occur to Rage Against The Machine, since they were unknowns and needed something new anyway. And why would, say, Diana Ross have wanted to try something bold and new the way Lauryn Hill did both with the Fugees and on her own?
I was going to make a similar comment as well. Steely Dan may write rock music, but they don’t rock.
I was thinking about that after seeing my favorite artist, the wonderful Robyn Hitchcock, last weekend. He is now in his mid fifties and was just fantastic. His early work was great, some of it in the middle not so much, and now he is great again. I look at people like Bob Dylan, Paul Simon and Leonard Cohen and don’t see the kind of decline you see in pure rock bands.
I have always favored lyricists over pure rock bands and I think they hold up better. They don’t rely on a particular sound that goes in and out of style as much. They also don’t rely on the visceral power chords that bands like the Stones do. I think that makes ‘folk’ musicians (for lack of a better word) harder to copy and keeps their sound fresher for longer.
Actually now that I think of it there are some true re-inventers, including Paul Simon, that did completely change what they were doing, but I think that is significantly more rare.
This is what happened to Metallica. Before “St. Anger” came out, I heard an interview with James Hetfield where he commented that it felt good to create an album that wasn’t full of “negative, fucked-up energy.” Millions of Metallica fans ran out and bought St. Anger, only to find it was absolutely horrible. It turns out that negative, fucked-up energy was a vital part of what made Metallica good. Without it, they’re just another over-the-hill band who doesn’t know when to call it quits.
Here’s a thought in a similar vein: “new” bands have usually, in truth, been around for a while before they got their first record contract. By the time they get that contract, they’ve probably got a backlog consisting of more than one album’s worth of “new & original” material. So they spew that backlog out over the course of their first few albums, perhaps updating some of their old-but-unreleased songs and tossing in a few brand-new compositions.
But the thing is, they had years to perfect that material before they ever saw the inside of a recording studio. More importantly, perhaps, they had time to write that material. Then they put out their first album, and head out on tour (most likely as the opening act for a more established artist) and suddenly they have neither the time nor the place to sit down as a band and come up with new material. Eventually the backlog runs out, and they find themselves getting ready to record album number 4 or 5. The record company says, “Okay guys, let’s record a new album. We need twelve new songs, and you’ve got three months to do it.” They’re forced to bang out enough material to fill a CD as quickly as possible so that the record company can get more product on store shelves and get the band back on the road. And the results are, unsurprisingly, not as good as the earlier efforts.
I like that Dee Snider quote. It seems to sum it up about as concisely as possible.
I think most artists run out of things to say. They get comfortable with the success in their lives and let the ideas slip through. No one wants to hear a song about ‘airport security check for first class passengers having a long line’. Or ‘I’m afraid to piss that contractor off because he might sue me’. Or ‘this autograph session at Barnes and Nobel is really boring’.
It seems like the artists that maintain their quality across generations have a strong background in writing and observation. Steely Dan and Paul Simon are great examples of this. For example, Paul Simon had great success with Graceland (and the album after) because he wrote about getting older and the problems that you encounter as you approach middle-age. Then he combined it with a set of sounds that were brand new to his audience.
I often get frustrated with some of the older artists that I listen to because they seem to continue covering the same ground over and over. I mean, you’ve been a popular musician for 20 or 30 years, seen the highs and lows, literally travelled the world, met all types of people, experienced a huge variety of food, cultures, sounds, and ideas – and this is all you have to write about?
I think at some point the art becomes a job and no artist is immune.
And I’ll repeat the question: what’s your definition of rock?
What are Steely Dan if they’re not rock?
I certainly disagree that rock groups are worse later in life. I often watch the rock reunion shows that they do on PBS during pledge week, and it’s clear to me that the groups that play in these shows, who had hits in the early 1960’s or even the late 1950’s, are as good as musicians in their sixties as they were in their late teens and early twenties. Their voices often are also just as good too.
Vocally, people don’t peak in their twenties. Their voices are generally best from about 35 to 55. It’s too bad that rock musicians are often ignored in their best years. One of the few cases where a singer was allowed to do his best work in his true peak years was Frank Sinatra, whose best work was indeed from about 35 to 55.
In terms of writing songs, it’s a different matter. Some rock musicians simply don’t have anythng new to say after about 25. Others continue to produce good songs well after this time.
As someone who tends to think that pretty universally that bands which are famous and remain so are generally pretty untalented, I would argue largely that it’s not so much a matter that the band gets worse or ceases to evolve, but rather that they just weren’t that good to begin with and what you were really enjoying was the image of the band, the social aspects of sharing the band with your friends, the stage antics of the band, and annoying your parents. The music itself just was never that deep. Perhaps it might have had a nice dance beat, but that’s about it.
Now I do agree that even with bands that are skilled that they aren’t necessarily going to get better over time. I think that they’ll generally progressively improve through their twenties and some way into their thirties, before running out of oomph. But those same bands will also start kicking ass again when they get over 60 since, even if they are playing the same style of songs, they have more gravitas to it. Howlin Wolf or Dick Dale, for instance, kicked more ass as old farts than they ever did as young uns even though their music itself hadn’t changed any.
I didn’t say that Steely Dan’s not rock. I said that they don’t rock. That’s a very important distinction.
Again, I like steely dan a lot, but they’re in the progressive/art/jazz/fusion zone with Alan Parsons and Jethro Tull. Great groups, popular with the same audiences and at the same time as Rolling stones, Lynyrd Skynyrd, The Band, but they’re not playing the same music.
I admit that it’s a fuzzy line, but I think it’s a valid distinction WRT my first post about why Steely Dan is an exception to the OP.
Too much nonsense in this thread.
If music critics have any kind of say at all, it’s obvious that most musicians get worse as they age.
I think it’s caused mainly by decreased creativity and increased lazyness. There are also other minor factors. perhaps something about appreciation of rock music. In general, old people don’t listen to rock music nearly as much as young people.
This sentiment matches my opinion.
I do find it interesting though when after many years of writing and recording dreck, an artist finds his/her muse again for a moment. Someone mentioned Paul McCarney’s latest CD Chaos and Creation. I concur. I’d also put Elton John’s latest CD Captain and the Kid on the list where my reaction is more of “wow, that’s surprisingly good”, rather than “wow, yet another in a long list of crappy albums”.
I wonder if it’s by accident. The law of averages might say that with enormous raw talent, it’s bound to express itself sooner or later regardless of circumstances.
The guys in Steely Dan are Gods, but the last two albums are nowhere near the quality of their 70’s work, and Gaucho is the most God-awful cocktail lounge jazz this side of a New Jersey Holdiay Inn. And they have not remained consisitently anything, because of the 20 year break they took.
And they definitely do and are rock. Just because they are smart guys who live in the studio and never did the rock star tour thing with girls throwing panties doesn’t mean they don’t rock.
One thing that hasn’t been mentioned: Success may breed laziness, but it can also breed desperation. Great rock music is written when the artist follows his own muse, and to hell with what everyone else thinks. Eventually though, continued security and popularity become more important than the music itself. He tries to write songs to please everybody else rather than to please himself, which inevitably results in bland, forgettable music.
Steely Dan does not rock, and I question the testicular consciousness of anyone who claims otherwise.
They’re good. But, rock, no!
There are some people who I think can still tap into a youthful pathos as they age. Lucinda Williams’ music has grown up beautifully, and to me is better than her young stuff.
I tend to think that Slim Dunlap still captures some of The Replacements vibe, while Westerberg doesn’t. Westerberg is good, and writes some good songs, but Slim Dunlap still sounds like he has a pair.
I think success has a lot to do with it. Young angry band becomes rich as Croesus band and the wind is sucked out of their musical sails/sales. Many bands that never have huge success are able to keep developing musically for decades.
I recall reading an article years ago by an Aussie journalist who, in the 1960s, lived in England. Down the street lived a musician who was in a band. The journalist and his friends would often bump into the band on the street and they would end up having Aussie vs Brits snowball fights. The band ended up being The Stones. Now Keef may still fall out of trees but I think that not much later, the eventual Sir Michael Philip Jagger, would have been quite over snowball fights.
This, to me, kind of goes beyond just rock and roll, and really is a question that can pertain to all creative endeavors. It seems that in any genere, with music just being the most obvious example, artists tend to peek, usually sometime between 20 and 40 and then the quality of thier output tends to slowly decline. I recognize that there are exceptions to this rule, Patrick O’Brian, for instance didn’t really hit his stride until his 50’s. But for every example like his, there are dozens like the Stones, or Francis Ford Coppola, or Herman Melville, who peaked and then kind of declined from there.
It is counterintuitive, one would think that more experience and practice would lead to greater quality work, but it doesn’t. Its almost like people have a limited amount of creative “mojo” which reaches it peak and then seems to taper off. Not that their later work isn’t quality, but at the same time nor is it timeless. Paul Simon, in 30 years of trying, hasn’t been able to write another “Yesterday” or “Hey Jude.” I doubt Keith Richards is going to wake up tonigh with an iconic riff like “Satisfaction” in his head.