In a recent issue of Rolling Stone, Bono was quoted as saying that the Black Eyed Peas have “the new rock n roll attitude”. Will.i.am. went on to describe rock n roll: “It’s people that come from nothing, using music to get something, talking passionately and having a good time.” For both of these bands to speak so highly of and subscribe so thoroughly to the concept of “rock n roll” is a very alarming thing, and highlights the problem of rock n roll(endnote 1).
The Black Eyed Peas are anything but rock n roll. They began as an underground hip-hop group and break-dance troupe, friend to 311, corny, amiable, and true to who they were. Eazy E was an early fan and signed the nascent group, then known as Atban Klan, to its first record deal. A multi-racial, multi-cultural, socially conscious set of friends who looked to hip-hops late 80’s golden era for influence. Somewhere along the way, they began to look to the mainstream. Black Eye Peas recorded a single with Justin Timberlake, added former girl group member, meth head, and sex symbol Fergie to their ranks, and the rest is history. Millions of records, a handful of blockbuster singles, and myriad high profile collaborations later (endnote 2) , the Peas are one of the biggest musical groups in the world. Though they went from nowhere to everywhere through the strength, passion, and mass appeal of their music, they tell a much more contemporary tale than that of rock n roll – this is the tale of hip-hop.
(A)Pre-Fergie Peas (B)U2 the Rock n Roll Stars (C) Peas w/Fergilicious (D) Post Punk U2
U2 came of age as punk hit. They’ve sited on numerous occasions The Clash concert they attended together in Ireland, a galvanizing event that helped them form an identity and sound of their own. The Clash’s social and political awareness, and belief that the music they were playing could change the world, was channeled directly by Bono, who went on to become music’s most messianic figure, carrying forth the passion of The Clash with a more benign and universal appeal. U2 was something very different indeed, a group with the passion and drive of punk, but with a pop sensibility and interest, as they developed, in ambient and electronic influences. They’ve gone on to become the world’s biggest band, and they are, in theory, anything but rock n roll. Their primary influence, The Clash, took their rage and musical direction not only from the bleak Thatcher years they grew up in, but also their disgust with how bloated and institutionalized rock n roll had become. They wanted to tear it down and build something new. U2 presented a vibrant, progressive alternative to the turgid rock n roll of their day. Though it seemed as they had made good on The Clash’s promise, U2 are apparently perfectly content to align themselves with the dinosaurs who were similarly content to turn something that once had meaning into a corporate cash cow.
We all know that rock n roll was invented by black Americans; by Little Richard, Chuck Berry, and their contemporaries. We all know that Elvis, Buddy Holly, and Jerry Lee Lewis took this music and turned it into something much more popular, in no small part due to their skin color. We know that the music then, along with its forefathers blues and the gospel-infused soul Sam Cooke and Ray Charles, traveled across the Atlantic Ocean to influence the British bands who blew the whole thing up, took it to its farthest reaches, sold millions of records, filled stadiums, and did myriad other things with the genre that their black forebears couldn’t due to the racism of the times.
(A) Chuck Berry kicking it (B) The Who, doing it very right (C) Styx, doing it very, very wrong (D) Rod Stewart, milking the cash cow
As the music and concepts became bloated and overtly corporate, the old guard fell and punk rose in opposition, rising from the industrial fall out of Detroit, the drug-and-crime infested streets of New York, and the working class violence and desperation of the UK. From punk was born a million fragments, which went on to become the world of post punk: the angular attack of Gang of Four, the folky weirdness of R.E.M., the raw drunkenness of The Replacements, the experimental squall of Sonic Youth, the squealing chaos of early Dinosaur Jr., and of course the passionate, anthemic chest beating of U2, all of this eventually coalescing into what is now known as Indie Rock. As these bands germinated in the underground, hair metal (real metal having gone underground along with post punk, to reemerge with Metallica, Slayer, et al, get really bad after basically Helmet, then get really good again underground and come back as Converge, Mastodon, et al) and synth-pop took over the mainstream, only to fall under the tidal wave of grunge, which became in many ways the second coming of punk rock. Nirvana et al took the monolithic guitars of groups like Dinosaur Jr. and the Melvins, wedded them to the melodiousness of R.E.M., added some of the punk lunacy of the Pixies, and brought it to the masses. By this time, anything stamped with the label rock n roll, was embarrassing, manufactured, and corporate. Even in the UK, where shoegaze, the Cure, and the Smiths got the faithful through the 80’s and to the age of Brit Pop, the term became a sad and anemic imitation of its former meaning. Oasis would help to revive the concept in the mid-90’s, but that’s a matter for another day.
(A) The Clash, keeping it very real (B) Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth dredging up noise (C) Dinosaur Jr, in their late teens
(D) R.E.M., before bringing it to the masses
While all of this was happening, something else was stirring. In the Bronx in 1979, DJ Kool Herc hit upon the idea of renting two turntables for a party he was throwing, and the world of music began to change. Another powerful form of black music, one that ended up channeling the poetry, musicality, anger, desperation, joy, and struggle of the black American experience into something wholly new, was born. This genre, hip-hop, went on, through Rakim, Dre, Cube, & NWA, Public Enemy, Pac, Biggie, Nas, Jay Z, Missy Elliot, Outkast, and onward, to define the last ten years of the twentieth century musically and culturally. In becoming so commercially viable and culturally dominating, hip-hop went on to do something only dreamed of by Chuck Berry and his rock n roll co-founders; it brought a black art form to the forefront of the global cultural stage with its black progenitors still at the reigns (discussions on the whites who run the labels the black artists were/are on and the theory that the black men and women creating this music are still slaves to white tastes and trends will have to stay in closet for a rainy day).
(A) Kool Herc at the decks (B) Nas, elevating lyricism to poetry (C) Snoop, Dre, Pac, and Suge, bringing Gangsta to the masses (D) Outkast, winning grammies, selling millions, and weirding people out
Through all of this what we see is that rock n roll has been a dead concept since the Stooges burned out, Zeppelin recorded “Achilles’ Last Stand”, Hendrix died, and Keith Moon was so drunk he couldn’t sit up at his drum stool. It was a thing of a time, an arm of a cultural revolt that has since gone the way of the buffalo. Apart from its initial few waves (endnote 3) , the application of the term to any musical act is a death sentence for those who want to maintain any type of artistic integrity. The vitality of what was once rock n roll fell to the punk scene, then the post-punk acts and shoegaze, then to grunge and simultaneously (and ultimately), hip-hop. Rock n roll is, more than anything else, now either grossly nostalgic or a condescending pat on the head from record label suits.
To hear such groups as U2 and Black Eyed Peas, who have very decidedly forged new ground (whether or not that new ground sucks is irrelevant), slap themselves with the tag of rock n roll is a very scary thing. It seems as though, now matter how far we’ve come, validation by accepted cultural norms placates even those who work to radically reinvent those norms. Radiohead, we’re looking to you now.
Endnotes:
1. Rock n roll and rock being very different entities for these purposes, rock n roll being a thing of a moment that is no more, rock being a general descriptor for otherwise difficult-to-define music with loud guitars and a little swagger.
2. Through which Will.i.am. has proven himself a prodigious producer, if a somewhat pedestrian lyricist.
3. And the exception of Bruce Springsteen, who actually is more of a Dylanesque, singular, non-rock figure, but still, he’s earned it, so if he wants to be rock, what the fuck, why not? Also just to note this doesn’t mean all of the mainstream music that came out in the 70’s was bad – Cheap Trick, Grand Funk, Creedence, Tom Petty, hell, even Boston – there was some great stuff going on, it just wasn’t, as per Chuck Berry’s stunning progressiveness, The Stones’ drug-fueled mayhem, or The Who’s reckless abandon, Rock n Roll. It was pop music as influenced by rock and the early days of metal.
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