Eugene Havens

The day I formed a hatred of classic rock music, my family was camping at a mountain lake. I was around ten years old. We set up the tents, sat by the lake, and watched the sun go down. Across the water, on the lake’s far side, a party erupted. I saw old cars parked together and the shadows of teenagers. I heard faraway talking and laughing and an annoying song that played from a car stereo. It was rock music, chaotic and loud, with ear-piercing guitar and a half-crazed singer who made a lot of yelps in between the words. “Ha-ha-HA!”

My parents ignored it, but I was quietly upset. Why did they come all the way out here to play music? I was a little afraid of the teenagers who were clearly part of a bad element. They were on the other side of the lake, but it didn’t seem wide enough.

A long time after this moment in the early 1980s, I understood the nature of this strange ceremony. The teens were partying to the first Van Halen album. It’s one of the best debut albums ever, along with Led Zeppelin I and some others. The biggest crime these kids committed was playing it too loud in a family environment, but their choice of music was actually good, as hard as it would be to believe.

The little puritan in me wasn’t convinced. It wasn’t just the lakeside party. Heavy rock music was not my style. As a kid, I heard guitar solos as weird, chaotic noise and rock vocals as some wailing ritual that sounded a little scary. It was even worse with up-and-coming 80s metal, which served up a darker attitude but twice as fast. I knew it was a soundtrack to partying, and I wasn’t interested in the unholy trio of sex, drugs, and rock and roll, even as I became a teenager. I was growing up in the heyday of classic rock, where a landmark album debuted every other month, and I didn’t care.

Classic rock was hard to get away from in those days. I grew up in a small city with no alternative rock radio. There were two classic rock stations and three Top-40 stations. By the time I was in high school, Michael Jackson, George Michael, and Madonna played all day long. It didn’t get easier when I found myself trapped in the back seat of a car. At those times, I was serenaded by a yacht rock radio station my parents kept on (a soft rock genre yet to be named).

It led to a personal boycott of the radio and a reluctant commitment to brain-dead MTV. There, I saw young bands from England that resonated. They weren’t recycling guitar riffs or singing in a bluesy style. Alternative rock was introspective, being more focused on lyrics and melody. There were few guitar solos, and they were short. The bass guitar was a melodic instrument. British alternative had atmosphere, often a moody vibe, and worked on the adage of less is more. Possibly, the musicians weren’t very good. They couldn’t do more but made up for it with style. I found myself liking New Order, The Cure, and The Smiths, among others. They were a new movement, while Led Zeppelin, AC/DC, and Van Halen were drunk and full of themselves.

Heading to college, I was introduced to even more British alternative bands, and later, while working in New York City, Oasis would enter the picture. Electronic music became the next British trend led by The Prodigy and The Chemical Brothers. By the early 2000s, I would hear Muse, a band that blended the two styles of alternative guitar and a techno sensibility. There wouldn’t be a next discovery after Muse. By the late 2000s, rock bands were becoming endangered. Everyone was clinging to U2.

It’s how bad things were.

The music scene pushed Arctic Monkeys as the inheritor of British alternative music. It didn’t take. Franz Ferdinand wasn’t even close. With the lapse of true alternative bands, other musical styles took over, and alternative became a genre for older listeners (now in their thirties). Then things went south. Twenty years later, alternative music has been gutted and rebranded by the kids. Absent of any mystery or poetry, the alternative chart is made up of emo music with whisper-soft lyrics expressing tender emotional states. Alternative rock was a descendant of brash punk rock with a proud post-punk label. It later became a neutered, genderless safe room.

Rock music is similarly troubled, although the genre carries on, officially. New rock bands exist if you menu-dive the streaming services. Now and again, a young band like Greta Van Fleet appears as a karaoke act of a classic band like Led Zeppelin.

The best headlines in rock music are made by classic bands that continue to do live shows. There are a surprising number of 1970s and 80s bands still in existence with original members. It’s sad to see musicians in their 70s dare to play their old songs without any of their old acumen or athleticism. There’s a market for this museum experience because the rock industry has collapsed.

Rock music died before all of its performers could. How? Was it the rise of streaming music services that turned music into a commodity while paying the artists pennies? Was it Hollywood serving up nostalgic songs in movies and TV shows and making old hits more famous than new music? Did younger listeners, raised in a conformist culture, miss the point of rock music as a celebration of nonconformity?

Possibly, all three factors contributed to rock’s downfall. A fundamental problem lurked behind the scenes. Classic rock never could recover from the invention of modern production techniques. Studio impresarios are able to control all aspects of music using computers for a fraction of the cost of paying a full rock band. Record labels can handpick singers with the right image, like Ariana Grande, to create pop stars on demand. Across town, the dance-inspired hip-hop genre morphed into hardcore rap. It was similarly a low-cost genre that involved stripped-back production on computers, cheap and easy.

Over time, modern music has become akin to software the listener receives like a download into the brain. Driven by favorable studio economics and based on repetitive, hypnotic sounds, computer-based music is the definition of popularity today. Fans are conditioned to accept pop music’s tight production, simplified structure, and repetitive lyrics. Even when a guitar is present in a song, it’s in service to the computer program. The biggest musical draw today has used the same chord structure in dozens of her songs. To the musical consumer, it doesn’t matter.

If a listener knows too much and defies the programming, what resonates? If modern music isn’t satisfying, the answer lies in the past. What about British alternative from the 1980s? Does it still sound fresh? Does its moody poetry stand the test of time?

Not so much to this nostalgic fan. Qualities that made the post-punk genre an alternative to classic rock lost their appeal forty years later. The self-conscious introspection, the lack of dynamic musicianship (purposeful or not), and a nod to the fashion of the 1980s (ouch) aren’t as compelling or inspiring as they once were. Some will disagree. And yet, for every die-hard fan of The Cure or The Smiths who listens unironically to the old albums, others suffer at the sound of the genre’s naiveté.

It’s what bands like Muse were for, to update an alternative rock mentality to a post-2000s world. Muse does it well. They’re one of the biggest rock bands left standing. And yet, the band’s adherence, or addiction, to technology limits its spontaneity. Muse is committed to production perfection, both in the studio and live, where its sounds are often triggered by computers. One can enjoy the marriage of classic alternative sentiments with the best advancements in sound quality, but it’s a compromise.

Old-school alternative was well-produced. It often had lush, airy arrangements full of chorus and reverb effects but still had the feel of humans in control of the sound.

Today, a record must be perfect because it actually can be. Young listeners who think Muse is an old band have newer versions. Polyphia is a virtuoso rock band that plays instrumental guitar music with incredible precision. Many call the style math rock. Whatever it is, the band is supremely talented, flawlessly produced, and therefore, like Muse, somewhat sterile. These bands perform in metaphorical clean rooms. No speck of dust or dirt will muddy the sound.

To say Muse and Polyphia have no flaws is taken as a compliment. Strangely, it isn’t. To a listener who remembers the organic feel of classic rock bands, perfection isn’t the pinnacle of music. As Noel Gallagher sang in Oasis, “True perfection has to be imperfect. I know that it sounds foolish, but it’s true.”

The genius of sweaty, grimy classic rock becomes clear in a sterile environment. Guitar rock was party music back then and seemingly little else. It was a bunch of guys with loud amps and drums rocking faces off. It wasn’t about style points. They were working for the weekend, capturing lightning in a bottle and aiming, mythically, to rock. Today’s original rock fans are senior citizens. The party is almost over. What’s left is the music itself. With all its imperfections, a serious listen uncovers artistic qualities that go beyond what it was. Classic rock has what we lack today: humanity.

Any number of unknown YouTube guitarists can shred with perfect timing. It could be said the modern musician plays better on average. The difference would be in the player’s connection and feel to the song. Rock guitarists from the past were true working musicians who spent all their time playing live, not in bedrooms in front of a webcam. It did a few things. Being seasoned by constant touring in bars and clubs, a classic rock guitarist had stage chops. Years of playing in a band context also inspired guitar players to invent new things. The riffs from the 1960s, 70s, and early 80s were popular because they moved the genre forward. Jimmy Page and Eddie Van Halen were idolized for their guitar solos, but they were famous for their guitar riffs.

You need only to hear a song’s name, and the guitar riff plays in your head: Heartbreaker, Black Dog, Dancing Days, Kashmir; Unchained, Panama, Mean Street, Ain’t Talkin’ ‘Bout Love.

The guitar riff was the basis of fame for all 70s rock bands, including AC/DC, Aerosmith, Kiss, Boston, Yes, Heart, and Rush. Back then, a great riff was taken for granted as one of many, merely a ticket onto the radio. Now, players and fans appreciate the long-lost riff as a musical poem all its own, both impossibly inventive and deceptively simple.

The talent of the classic rock guitarist often goes unnoticed. If anything, it’s the presence of flaws people talk about. “Eddie left a mistake in ‘Eruption.’” “Jimmy Page was a sloppy live player.” Few cared about errors (aside from Page’s sloppiest nights), because the playing had a raw, live feel even on the records. Players did entire takes in the studio to tape. In other cases, the band played live in studio. Mistakes were seen as nuances to the performance.

Today, a snippet of a guitar part or a syllable of a vocal can be stitched into a full song. The result is sonic superiority at the expense of spontaneous discovery. There’s less room for inspiration and fewer happy accidents in a controlled studio.

And yet, the presence of time-saving production techniques requires them to be used. Studio time is expensive. Back then, players needed to play better. They needed to be seasoned and versatile. Classic rock musicians were time-tested performers. There’s a bit of genius in every song on classic rock albums, a swagger in every chorus and verse, and virtuosity in every solo. (A guitar solo from the 1970s, like “My Sharona,” outclasses anything done today, outside of the metal genre.)

If the guitar riff drew fans in, the lead singer kept them. I never connected with the rock gods, from Robert Plant to David Lee Roth to Steven Tyler and Bon Scott. They promoted an image I didn’t want to emulate. I was an introvert. Now that the buzz is gone from those years, their role as musicians and lyricists is more impressive.

The ethos of classic rock was something everyone could relate to. Have a good time, risk everything for what’s important to you, and chase that one true love until the end. A lead singer not only came up with this everyman poetry but embodied the qualities to a legion of fans. It was no small task.

The best frontmen pulled it off. A class of rock singer exuded confidence and a hooligan charm, belting out songs in a register much higher than the average male. The vocal range may have been untouchable, but the message in the songs was relatable. An affirming song about nothing special is almost foreign to modern listeners, one with no point or agenda. “You Shook Me All Night Long” wasn’t a song about climate change, equity, or global politics. It didn’t seek to make us better citizens. Could anyone imagine Muse or Coldplay covering a crude song about the most important topic in rock?

Musicians don’t make these records anymore. Retro players like Jack White channel their sounds through a filter of modern irony. The Foo Fighters try to rock hard, unironically and unapologetically, but as emulators, fan service. Other musicians are too unpracticed, too business savvy, or too indoctrinated. The studios are too good. The analog era, where edgy energy was unleashed and was the point of music, is past. The albums from that era are available everywhere, hidden in plain sight. You don’t have to like Mozart or old-school jazz to admit it’s art. For classic rock to leap out of the past is a surprise to someone who wrote it off as a party favor. Now, I’m a listener.