2015 was a good year to be an old rocker; Farewell David Bowie, Lemmy

As we’ve mentioned in several posts here at Garagerocktopia, it may be difficult for some to imagine that rock and roll was once a firmly-entrenched part of the teenage universe, and rarely did it ever venture beyond that.

In the ‘50s, rock and roll was still something scary, this loud crazy music often played for white kids by black musicians. The movie Blackboard Jungle – one of the first films to feature rock and roll prominently in its soundtrack – was received with a mixture of fear and trepidation across America – and probably by parents worldwide. Of course, it inspired Paul McCartney and many other future rock icons.

While there was a cool adult here and there who got it and dug rock and roll – or at least tolerate it, rock was not a part of polite society. We could get into the whys and how that changed, but that’s another post.

Rock as a teenage thing continued into the ‘60s and into the ‘70s. OK, my upbringing was a little sheltered and a little cloistered, but it wasn’t until I was a sophomore in high school in 1979 that I actually heard a teacher and a student talk about a rock record, and as far as the mid-‘80s, listening to rock was still considered the outer edge by some. Growing up, at least where I ran, there weren’t any 70 year-old rockers and I could scarcely imagine such.

By the ‘80s, it was clear we would get to that point. The politically conservative magazine  The National Review featured an infamous cover illustration of an aged Mick Jagger. The story inside was a bit disappointing, but the cover illustrated what many thought was coming, that the Rolling Stones and other acts from the early ‘60s would make fools of themselves, a bunch of decrepit geezers who would try to recreate what they did in their 20s.

 

Well, it hasn’t exactly happened. Maybe what snotty-nosed nitwits like myself – as well as others who should have known better -- failed to take into account was that Ray Davies, Paul McCartney, Pete Townshend, Robert Plante and so many others, being the consummate professionals they were, would adjust, and that maybe, just maybe, so too what the expectations of their audiences.

Or in some cases, some they would actually find the fire again and put out some of their best stuff in decades, as did the Stones with A Bigger Bang in 2005, as have the New York Dolls, and as Iggy Pop has done consistently over the last several years, be it with the Stooges or as a solo act.

Last year was a very good year to be both a septuagenarian and a rocker. The following list is by no means exhaustive – I’m sure I’m missing some very obvious ones – but these are a few of the rockers years past Social Security age who put out some good stuff in 2015.

The Sonics

The first post on Garagerocktopia to have any meaningful number of views was our review of This is the Sonics, their first album in almost 50 years. It didn’t sound like there was any adjusting needed. Gerry Roslie and company seemed to pick up right where they left off.

Ditto the Pretty Things, who released a crunching rock album in 2015, The Sweet Pretty Things (Are In Bed Now, Of Course...) which sounded like anything but a bunch of guys contemplating a nursing home.

There were others as well. Though the Stones didn’t come out with anything, Keith Richards did, serving up a fine album, Crosseyed Heart, a fine collection of acoustic blues, reggae and vintage Richards rock and roll.

The Zombies also released an excellent album in 2015, Still Got That Hunger. With founders Rod Argent and Colin Blunstone in tow, the album spans styles, from “Moving On,” a blues-rocker that was a “Coolest Song in the World” on Little Steven’s Underground Garage, to the heartfelt homage “New York” that could make Donald Trump cry, to lots of expert soft-rockers the like of which you just don’t often hear anymore.

Other albums of possible interest include Vanilla Fudge’s Spirit of ’67 and Rattle That Lock by David Gilmour, both of which will do nothing to tarnish their reputations.

So why is it that rock and roll doesn’t have an age limit anymore? Partly, because, with apologies to Tom Brokaw, these artists belong to what is probably rock’s greatest generation, the one that has set a foundation for rock that has been built upon but never scrapped.

Perhaps because rock was much less homogenized once upon a time, these artists had a chance to really cement their styles and their visions. While rock and roll has always been a business, bands could put out a few commercial flops as they found themselves. Today, because there is so much pressure to net a profit immediately, taking chances and experimentation are often one-way tickets to being permanently shackled to your day job.

Famously, Bruce Springsteen put out seven albums before he became the commercial hurricane he was by late ‘70s. Today, at least for artists looking to hit the stratosphere, if your first at-bat isn’t a home run, you’re in serious danger of being completely a DIY operation – which is good if that’s what you want to do, but it’s not for everyone.

And, let’s keep it real – being 70 today ain’t what it was 30 or 40 years ago. While Father Time overlooks nobody, some people just make their rendez-vous with him a lot less obvious.

We can’t let this week go by without tipping a hat to two icons who have passed on to that great jam in the sky, David Bowie and Lemmy. We won’t even venture to try to have the most heartfelt, creative or profound homage here. All we can say is, for pretty much the same reasons, the impact of these two will be felt for a very long time – probably as long as there is a rock and roll, and it’s hard to imagine their influence ever waning.

Often, Bowie would correct those calling him a rock star, reminding them that he was an artist who used rock as his medium. How this could be any more obvious, I don’t know, but what astonishes us here at Garagerocktopia is just how commercially successful he was in these projects. Perhaps this is the “no-duh” line of the year, but the world never saw anything quite like Bowie before, and there’s nothing like him now.

Really, for us at this blog, it was about a 10-year plus period, from 1969 to 1983 or so, that Bowie was at his most brilliant. The stunning array of personas – Ziggy Stardust, the Thin White Duke, and the friendly popster of Let’s Dance vintage remain unparalleled in rock.

Have there been plenty of “weirdos” before and since? Of course. But many of them, fun though they may be, never had the musical gravitas of David Bowie. And, they could never shift from genre to genre as he did, be it the Glam of Ziggy Stardust, or the soulfulness of Young Americans, or the techno of Low. Perhaps this was why the purposefully androgynous Bowie was able to become a fixture on American FM rock radio in the days when uber-testosteroned acts like Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple were the format’s pillars.

One of Bowie’s most amazing qualities was his ability to pick a stunning array of collaborators, geniuses in their own right who often took Bowie’s projects from excellent to classic.

These include Iggy Pop, on whom Ziggy Stardust was largely based (Iggy, Ziggy, get it?); Mick Ronson was a colossal guitarist whose own career had stunning variety. Other guitarists include longtime colleague, the great Carlos Alomar, Robert Fripp of King Crimson (who just made Scary Monsters what it was) G.E. Smith of the Saturday Night Live Orchestra, and Stevie Ray Vaughan to name just a few.

And think of singers, ranging from John Lennon to Freddie Mercury to Luther Vandross, none of whom, sadly, are with us anymore. There must be one incredible singalong going on in Heaven right about now

Bowie was an artist right to the end. His final release, from just a couple weeks ago, was Blackstar, a dark, and especially in light of Bowie’s passing, very haunting work from a man whose chief collaborator this time was his own demise. It’s impossible to imagine modern rock – at least rock of any quality – in a world without David Bowie.

Though we’re late on this, we also want to pay our respects to Lemmy, leader of Motorhead, arguably the most important metal band this side of Black Sabbath. Their raw, jackhammer hooks and pounding beats were for years thought to be too heavy for widespread audiences. 

But listen to any heavy metal station today and you not go more than a song or two that doesn’t have some lineage right back to Motorhead.

Lemmy was about as scary a presence as one could find, the biker guy who talked like a pirate. But, once he got a chance to speak at any length, was actually a true intellectual. 

But, metaphysics or quantum mechanics weren’t what one was concerned with when listening to Motorhead – rocking your brains out was, and nobody did it better than Lemmy and Motorhead.

 Next week, we'll have two new posts. The first will be a little bit of opining about a trend we could do without, but the second post will be a feature on a "new" group from the UK, Headline Maniac. We put "new" in quotes because these are guys who've been around a day or two. Check the post and read all about a group that make butt-kicking rock and roll it's way of life.