Rock & roll was born as a celebration of youth; and it came with the danger of sexual anarchy. It signified rebellion, a break from the Lawrence Welk-isms and button-down repression of the adult world – specifically, that mother of all concepts: parents. But, millions of changed guitar strings later, something strange has happened. Instead of outgrowing rock & roll, some of the world’s greatest combos have made the youthful art form retirement-resistant. In the process, and in the marketplace, the music has been redefined as something not exclusively relevant to the under-30 crowd, and not even at odds with your grandparents. If anything, adults listen to more rock & roll than their offspring, who fill their I-Pods with hip-hop and dance-pop. If rock & roll is no longer the musical enactment of rebellion, what meaning can it possibly have? How does it earn its cultural keep? Is it merely something we’ve never stopped enjoying? On one level, rock & roll – like all the most popular forms of music – serves as a poorly disguised metaphor for sex. And sex has a lot to do with image –both that of the performers we worship and our own self-image; which, in some ways, music sells right back to us. The secret is out: Rock is age-adaptable. Nobody is square. It turns out, square wasn’t even one of the shapes of things to come. Look at the Rolling Stones. On their account alone, the expression “fit as a fiddle” should be amended to “fit as a Fender guitar.” But getting older is not necessarily the same thing as building immunity to irrelevance. The Stones can do it, but how many people would pay to see more typical looking specimens of their age take the stage? Imagine John Houseman doing “Satisfaction.” And likewise, a new band with members in their ‘60s, no matter how talented, couldn’t expect to burst on the scene and carve out a viable career. At best they’d be a short-lived novelty. Still, for the first time in history, the original ‘60s and ‘70s bands – the very small percentage that have held on this long, and happen to be in their ‘60s and ‘70s – have public permission to grow old while playing our song. That won’t change. Because even as rock stars get less beautiful, the music is suspended in pulchritude.
Jordan Oakes is a local journalist who has written for publications such as St. Louis Magazine and the Christian Science Monitor. He has strong opinions that begin to atrophy if he doesn't exercise his right to express them. Tune in every Wednesday for another installment of Mediatribe - and if you missed last week's post, click here.
