Classic Rock Is the Best Genre
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[Music]
As far as I'm concerned, classic rock is music about the everyday, the average, the American. If you were raised by boomers and you listened to classic rock as a kid, you probably get where I'm coming from. But if you weren't and you didn't, you might think it's something more like this: a circle jerk about how this music is just more authentic and artistic than today's music. And while people like this are out there, and are the most vocal in every classic rock video on YouTube, I think they miss the point. Classic rock is the kind of genre that sits you down, like your boomer grandfather, and says, "Everything kind of sucks, but that's okay. That's all right."
0:53 [Music] Well, it's all right. Riding around in the freezing breeze...
The idea that music can describe feelings that are universal is almost the spirit of classic rock, I think. Trivialities that sometimes everybody just needs to hear. Everybody's gonna get old, decrepit, and drive an ugly car, and people are gonna worry about that. It helps to hear in those moments of worry that everything is gonna be all right. Everything is all right. Let me give you another example. Have you ever believed in or cared about something so much that no matter what got in your way, you wouldn't back down from it? You just had to follow through with it. Like those times where you wanted to kill those com- Make Go Away, King Kong! Well, there's a classic rock song for that, too.
1:38 [Music] Won't back down. No, I won't back down.
For me, this kind of music was never about meaning or theory or instrumentation or artistry, even though those things are present, don't get me wrong. It was always more about feeling and experience—powerful sensory imagery like the gates of hell, which amplify a shared experience in things like killing Vietcong. Now, I'm sure there's some naysayers in the audience right now screaming, "Okay, but when I listen to a fat lick from Slash or Eric Clapton, I'm not thinking about my feelings, man! I want to rock!"
2:21 [Music] Thunderstruck! Thunderstruck! Yeah, yeah, yeah, Thunderstruck!
And to that, I would say: consider Creedence. The bandmates are from Cali, yet they sing about being born on the bayou—doesn't make any sense. They're one of the quintessential rock bands of the 1960s, and one of their most famous songs is arguably an anthem to middle-class mediocrity.
2:45 [Music] Some folks are born made to wave the flag, Ooh, their red, white and blue. And when the band plays "Hail to the Chief", Ooh, they point the cannon at you, Lord.
When people heard John Fogerty's voice in this recording over top that guitar, you're not gonna tell me they didn't feel some semblance of hate at Vietnam, at their job, at anything that was going on that was outside of their control. And no, you're not gonna tell me that when they popped open a few cold ones and shot some pool with their buddies with this song playing in the background, they didn't feel some solidarity in it, either. And I think, in a sense, that's what rock did for people when its songs came out, and what it still does today. It channels that hate or annoyance or whatever you're feeling into vocal and instrumental energy that helps you accept: yeah, this is my life.
3:34 [Music] Carry on, my wayward son. There'll be peace when you are done. Lay your weary head to rest. Don't you cry no more.
And no, not all classic rock is about some kind of paternalistic, working-class revolt against mediocrity. No one was complaining about the results of the 1968 election when "Magic Carpet Ride" came out. But then again, they might have been. For me, it's just a chill song about taking a look at the world as it is and saying, "Hey, it do be like that, so I might as well just live with the moments I got." Again, a message that's not too deep, but who cares? It's a good song. It's the kind of music that you set on and groove to, because, yeah, we should try to worry less and live in the moment. So, let's just hop on the magic carpet ride, look inside, and let the music take us away. Ignore the everyday, because fantasy will set you free.
4:39 [Music] Heed what I'm telling you, listening to me, Fantasy will set you free.
Fancy and brilliant artistry aren't needed to articulate something so simple. You just need a good voice, a catchy tune, and the feeling is there. The audience gets it because they already know it. Though classic rock artists do record with more complex instrumentation—if they didn't, Pink Floyd or ELO wouldn't exist. "Mr. Blue Sky" is just a song about cherishing the beauty of a blue sky. I mean, damn, even if you haven't had wishes or desires or wanted to ride on a magic carpet ride, if you haven't seen the sky, I don't know, like, get that checked out or something. And yet, despite being so simple in its theme, the song's got enough musical complexity for about five other songs: piano, drums, sound effects, multiple synthesizers, electric guitar, violins and violas, and a vocoder. But again, the beauty of the song as a piece of classic rock isn't in Jeff Lynne's production and instrumental organization, as great as they are. It's the way that they supplement and complement a beautiful, simplistic, and universal message about human appreciation.
5:45 [Music] Hey, you with the pretty face, Welcome to the human race.
But that's not to say classic rock is some opiate of the masses that people just turn on to forget about their problems. A lot of it's just a big dump on Western society. And if you think about it, that kid listening to KISS or Twisted Sister in his room, relishing in the thought of him ruining his dad's legacy as chief analyst at IBM Computers because "It's not a phase, Dad, it's rock, man! You don't get it!" is kind of a stereotype, and one that exists because, yeah, bands like KISS, and better yet, Led Zeppelin, exist.
6:21 [Music] Ah-ah!
Sometimes the riff in a song, and even the progression, especially if it's minor like this, just make you want to start banging your head up and down and giving a big old middle finger to everything you hate. I mean, it's a song about death and gore, and war, and destruction, accoutrements of the universal male ego and its will to overpower and dominate, or something academic like that. And so much rock music, especially from the '70s and early '80s, before hair metal took over mainstream rock, is filled with exactly that kind of feeling. Sometimes it's an opposite kind of angst, a powerlessness. But it's an angry, hazy powerlessness. Like you're lost, losing control, and screaming for a way out.
7:10 [Music] There must be some kind of way out of here...
And maybe in that way, this kind of music doesn't just touch on an American experience. The Beatles, the Stones, Queen, a lot of classic rock is arguably British. But at least in America, we know about and listen to this music as previous generations did, because their music entered into the American experience during the British Invasion of the 1960s. Ed Sullivan, American Bandstand, The Midnight Special—these were American shows centered on showcasing the best of rock at the time, and these bands were on them. So, again, they're still kind of American, but not really. And yet, because of that, these foreign songs and artists are just as ingrained in the American experience of classic rock as someone like Aerosmith.
7:56 [Music] Sing with me, Sing for the year, Sing for the laughter, Sing for the tear.
If I listen to "Start Me Up", that's talking to my granddad about Nam by the family pool on a hot July day while we're eating cheeseburgers and tofu hot dogs he cooked on the grill. We were vegetarians. "Hey Jude", and I'm a kid again playing with Barbies, because, uh, boys play with dolls, too, sexists. My grandparents weren't British. Their own families came here from East Europe a generation before they were born, and yet they listened to this music, the same music in the same group as Boston, The Doors, Journey, and Black Sabbath. Maybe that's just because all of those artists happened to be in a heavily commercialized and unchallenging genre, many of whose songs topped the charts in the 1960s and 1970s, and which continue on in unending rotation to this day on numerous classic rock and oldies radio stations with the same tagline:
8:53 When you're listening to the best of oldies, you're listening to Magic 98.9.
The songs in this video were all at the top of the charts in their heyday. But I didn't listen to war stories while "Ain't No Mountain High Enough" or "Heart of Glass" was playing in the background, and we rarely ever touched the classic rock radio stations in my home. We had CD and cassette collections that my granddad bought from Time Life, even if he, you know, pirated a few here and there, because as far as I'm concerned, he wanted copies of his favorite music, music which understood his experiences as an average working-class man, one that fought in Vietnam. And if you're cynical about the past, it's so easy to reduce any of the experiences this music creates as relics of a nostalgic mind. And when a lot of nostalgic minds listen to this music, I admit, it's all the easier to do that, especially when we're bombarded with promises of a glimmering future constantly.
9:42 The cynics would be right. There is modern music that creates experiences, too. But this video wasn't about that music or those experiences. It's about the human experiences in classic rock, the American experiences, ones that all of our grandparents went through trying to appreciate the everyday, not backing down, reminding yourself that, yeah, we don't all get to be fortunate sons. When we listen to this music, they share those experiences with us, and they become our experiences, too. This is Mr. Amazing. Thanks for watching.
10:17 [Music] Run through the jungle...
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I think to a lot of people, this may have come off as an attempt at, you know, a complete retrospective or documentary of classic rock, and fundamentally that really wasn't what I was trying to do. I know I glossed over a lot of big names, like Pink Floyd, for instance. When it comes to them, I, you know, they deserve their own video, pretty much. And that's why I glossed over them. There's so much to talk about that I didn't want to go on this five-minute tangent just about Pink Floyd or just about The Beatles. It's like they deserve their own maybe somewhat shorter videos just discussing their importance to music or their importance to art, or, you know, that kind of thing. And fundamentally, then, this video was more like what I thought about classic rock bands. And I think, you know, to reduce Pink Floyd as just this one piece of the classic rock puzzle, that wasn't what I was trying to do here.
12:06 So they may get their own video, The Beatles may get their own video, Queen may get their own video, um, and people like Steely Dan and Fleetwood Mac, who are arguably more soft rock, they're definitely, uh, gonna get a whole soft rock video. So, uh, look forward to that, uh, if you if you like those bands. Don't think I left them out or anything like that. Uh, it was intentional. The way I wrote this video was, uh, intentional.
12:28 [Music]
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