The Best Rock and Roll Groups

 

Although it is not my number one music pick, sometimes only rock and roll will do.

I don’t mean “rock.” That is a more general term. I certainly don’t mean heavy metal or acid rock. They lack the roll.

To me, real rock and roll is urban and working class. It speaks of the experiences of urban, working class young people. It is musically simple, generally based on a repeated signature or riff. More than three chords is suspect. And it does not end with a finale or have significant variations. It just drives that riff like a motor turning. Life is a highway.

What are some classic examples?

The music of the Beatles is much more diverse than only rock and roll, but when they do rock and roll they can be as good as anyone. They have two great rock voices in McCartney, who can do a Little Richard swoop, and John Lennon, who has a soulful crack in his voice. Both have written great rock and roll songs.

Rolling Stones have long billed themselves as the “world’s greatest rock and roll band,” and I am not inclined to contest the claim. Musically, they are well behind the Beatles; they have only one decent vocalist, and Jagger is no better than decent. Neither Richards nor Wood, nor Jones before him, are really top rank guitarists. Watts and Wyman were great, but neither a bassist nor a drummer can carry a band. Still, this is rock and roll, a kind of folk music. Exemplary musicianship is beside the point. The point is if you can strike the right tone consistently. The Stones have kept it up longer than anyone.

Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band are more versatile, but when they do rock, they really do rock. Springsteen is magnificent as a lyricist, and writes very much from the working class urban viewpoint. I love their use of saxophone and keyboards. Rock and roll should not be limited to guitars.

ZZ Top has just the right groove too. Billy Gibbons is genuinely a top-rank guitarist. But his guitar work has the right mechanical grind. His voice too is mechanical and grinding. Made for rock and roll.

My brother, who prefers jazz, always objected that Creedence Clearwater Revival was too simple. That’s what rock and roll is supposed to be. The hallmark of true rock and roll, for me, is that I can listen to a song again and again and never get tired of it. This seems paradoxically more often true of simple songs. There is no better rock song than “Have You Ever Seen the Rain?”

Travelling Wilburys: the greatest of supergroups. As with the Beatles, you have the great swoop of Roy Orbison’s voice on the high notes. You have great rock songwriting, largely from George Harrison. These guys were having fun together, and that energy is what you want for rock and roll. You want the feel of busting loose.

Buddy Holly and the Crickets sound a little too bouncy and upbeat for contemporary tastes, but they deserve special recognition as pioneers. The songs still hold up, although Linda Ronstadt does a better “When Will I Be Loved” than Holly did. They were experimenting, and so can be forgiven. They must have been mindblowing in their day.

The Animals: I always thought Eric Burdon had a great rock voice, pitched towards the blues. As a bassist, I admired Chas Chandler’s runs, and Alan Price was great on the keyboard. He did marvellous solo work later. I wish the original group had stayed together longer. Burdon went weird when he went solo, and did things that did not suit his voice. They were best when they stuck to classics; but that perhaps limited their repertoire and so their potential to last.

Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels. Some claim Detroit is the true and original home of rock and roll. Sounds right—the home of the automobile. Nobody did the good old straight-up full-tilt rock and roll any better than the Detroit Wheels.

Joan Jett and the Blackhearts. As good as anyone, and keeping the torch high despite some metal influence. There is something special about seeing a woman who can rock.

Notably absent from my list: 

The Who. “My Generation” has some claim to being one of the best rock and roll songs, but often I find them embarrassing. Trashing your instruments on stage is a cheap gimmick. Swinging the microphone or windmilling your arm to simply play a chord are cheap gimmicks. Keith Moon was too busy showboating on the drums to keep a steady beat, and John Entwhistle did solos instead of keeping the rhythm. That’s not rock and roll; because it’s lost the roll. I call kitsch.

The Beach Boys; are magnificent, but they’re art rock. Too complex musically for r&r.

The Yardbirds too were too musically sophisticated and too artistically ambitious to be truly rock and roll. Led Zeppelin were too metallic. Cream lacked the roll.

Some individual songs from other groups deserve mention. You can’t do better than “Dirty Water,” by the Standells. But they were a one-hit wonder. Same for “96 Tears.” “Walk of Life” by Dire Straits is fine r&r; but Dire Straits generally is too musically complex for rock and roll. “You Really Got Me,” by the Kinks; but the Kinks are more art rock. Manfed Mann could rock, on “The Mighty Quinn.” But more generally, more towards jazz rock.

I’m arbitrarily limiting this to groups. Hence no Sister Rosetta Thorpe, Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Bob Dylan, Bob Seger. I have not forgotten.

No headbangers here. No hard drugs, Just good times, beer, girls, and fast cars.

Organic Rock

It’s time to get the organ back into Rock and Roll.

Just listening to the Animals’ “House of the Rising Sun,” and remembering how good it was. Part of it was certainly Eric Burdon’s voice, but part of it too was Alan Price’s magnificent organ. Al Kooper’s organ on Dylan’s Blonde on Blonde has always made that album stand out. I never liked Jim Morrison’s over the top lyrics or histrionics, but Ray Manzarek’s organ was always the best part of The Doors.

I begin to realize that many of the most powerful rock songs I can think of had organ parts. Lighter Shade of Pale; 96 Tears. The organ, keyboards, are more musically versatile than the guitar. But more than that. The organ is a traditional religious instrument. There is something about the organ that adds great depth and strength to rock and roll. It brings rock back to its spiritual, gospel roots. And that is where its power has always come from.

Who Cares?

I never liked The Who. They may be the band that ruined rock and roll.

Ironic to say so, because “My Generation” is almost the ultimate rock song. But after that, they totally lost the plot.

They had no rhythm section—they lost the roll in rock and roll. No steady beat, no repeating bass line. It was all showboating, with three lead instruments.

And they smothered the music in more cheap showing off: Pete Townsend’s windmilling arm, only to play a simple chord. Roger Daltrey throwing the microphone around. Smashing their instruments at the end of the set. Talent no longer mattered; the music no longer mattered. Any no-talent can do any of that. You felt cheap and intellectually patronized just watching it.

Gospel

Forwarded out of the ether from friend Eugene Campbell, who says it brought tears to his eyes and he just had to share it.

Gospel music is the heart and soul of America. It is that African spontaneity that makes US culture different from European culture.

Not incidentally, this is where rock and roll comes from. At base, rock and roll is secularized gospel music. If you don't believe me, look up a video of Sister Rosetta Tharpe.

Actuslly, never mind. Let me do it for you.

Rock and Roll

Man, I love me that rock and roll.

They don't much make it any more. Psychedelic rock lost the plot in the mid-sixties, and then hard rock was the reaction. “Hard rock” killed it by taking out the roll.

But someone recently tried to do a list of five best American rock bands, and that got me thinking of my own list.

First, from the UK, the Rolling Stones have a legitimate claim to be, as they claim, the world's greatest rock and roll band. But to me they pretty much stand alone. There's no one else close in the UK, so far as I am aware.

Most American bands lean more towards country rock or folk rock. Great stuff, but not rock and roll, which is a more urban working class sound. Some American bands do got it, though.

ZZTop. Real Texas Chainsaw guitar work. 

Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band. Springsteen is not just rock and roll. He and the E Street Band can do everything magnificently. But when they rock and roll, they rock and roll. When they do anything else, they always roll. 

Joan Jett and the Blackhearts. Some say she's punk, and punk is cool. It is the closest thing to rock and roll. But I say she has that rock and roll ticking-over rhythm, not the choppy start and stop of punk. 

Creedence Clearwater Revival. My brother, who likes jazz, scorns Creedence, saying they are too simple. To which I say, “yeah, that's the point.” The soul of rock is relentless repetition of some simple riff. That is the magic. It's like a mantra, dude. It's dead simple, and that's why you never get tired of it. 

That's why The Who suck. They don't get that. My Generation was their one real rock song. You got to get the rhythm down, or you have nothing. The Who never did.

The Travelling Wilburys. Bit of a surprise, perhaps. Bob Dylan can do a fantastic rock and roll song when he chooses, as good as or better than anybody-- I Want You, Gotta Serve Somebody--but he doesn't write them often. The driving force behind the Wilburys seems to have been George Harrison. His stuff with the Beatles was quite different, although a song like My Sweet Lord hints at rock power. But he and the Wilburys really knew how to crank it.

The Who vs. The Stones

In the face of unrelenting bad news on the Church, it is perhaps time for a breather. Let's talk about The Who.

Some say that The Who are the ultimate rock band, and that “My Generation” is the ultimate rock song.

I disagree. “My Generation” is a great song, but The Who are not even a good rock band. They do not have the roll that is the beating heart of rock and roll. Their rise may have been the beginning of the end of real rock.

The roll is the solid, predictable, relentless rhythm. That is what the drums have always been about, and the strong bass line. These are the spine and sine qua non of rock and roll.

Keith Moon was a flashy drummer. But he could not keep a beat. John Entwhistle was a technical virtuoso on the bass, but he rarely did the same bass line for two bars. It was all about showing off.

Pete Townshend had the same problem, with his windmilling arms on guitar. Did this change the sound? Did it do anything? No; it was just flashy. Ditto Roger Daltry throwing the microphone around; and the ultimate gimmick of breaking their instruments at the end of a performance. It was cheap pantomime, not rock and roll. It was rock and roll grown decadent,

Compare the Rolling Stones. Every song is based on a riff. The relentless, catchy riff is the roll. Charlie Watts can do lots of impressive things on the drums, but he maintains a steady beat. Bill Wyman's bass was prominent, but consistent, and almost never said “look at me!”

And the best rock song ever? “(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction.” “My Generation” is just an imitation, in its sense of general discontent. So is the entire “punk” or “grunge” movement, which preserved the true rock flame.

It's all there in “Satisfaction.”

The Dynamics of a Rock Band

Remember him? He founded The Byrds.

There is a certain inevitable dynamic to rock bands that usually leads to them breaking up soon after achieving fame. The original leader of the band almost never ends up as the final leader of the band, and he usually quits in bitterness towards the others, most often at about this point.

Some famous examples: Who was the original leader of the Rolling Stones? Brian Jones—who left the band in 1969. Now the Stones are run by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. The Byrds? Gene Clark—who left after two years. The Band? Levon Helm, who stayed with the band, but due to bad feelings towards the others, did not appear for their induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The Band had enough cohesion from many years of playing together to weather the storm of fame better than most. The Who? Roger Daltrey put the band together, not Pete Townsend. The Doors? Ray Manzarek, not Jim Morrison. Remember Paul Revere and the Raiders? Wasn’t it confusing how Paul Revere was just the guy on keyboards, while the leader was obviously Mark Lindsay?

Did he ever make the cover of The Rolling Stone?

The original leader is generally a practical guy, an organizer. His skill is in pulling a bunch of guys together, giving them a direction, getting them their first engagements. A businessman, an entrepreneur; possibly a musical director of sorts. But these skills matter very little once a band gets off the ground, because they move to professional management. On the other hand, once the group becomes well-known, the essence of their value as a commercial enterprise becomes whatever makes their sound unique and identifiable. If this person walks, the group is dead; so whatever they say goes.

Who this person is going to be is not altogether predictable in advance. It is most likely to be the songwriter of the group. Next most probable is the lead singer, because voices are the instruments most likely to be distinctive, and the lead singer tends to be the focus of attention on stage. After that, in a rock band, the lead guitarist, if he has a truly distinctive style. Bassists, drummers, and rhythm guitarists are easily interchangeable.

The original name was going to be The Levon Helm Sextet.

Brian Jones was dead in the water—if you’ll pardon the expression--because he could not sing very well and could not compose. Outsiders naturally went to Jagger first, as both singer and co-composer. The amazing thing is that Keith Richards managed to hold his own—this indicates who the real songwriting talent is in that band. In the Byrds, Gene Clark was both a singer and a songwriter, but was doomed when producers decided to go with McGuinn’s more distinctive voice. Because it was distinctive, it became the group’s signature, along with McGuinn’s truly unique guitar playing. Even with his songwriting talents, Clark, who played no instrument, was left with nothing to do when the group was on stage. And their biggest hits were cover tunes; Clark’s songs were never a critical asset.

In The Band, Levon Helm was also a singer, but not the lead singer. That was Richard Manuel. But Manuel did not really dominate, because he was one of three good voices used regularly—himself, Helm, and Rick Danko. Robbie Robertson came to lead the band because of his dominant songwriting abilities, and a powerful stage presence. With three singers, he was the one consistent point around which everything else on stage seemed to revolve. When he left the Band, and the Band nevertheless tried to continue, it got nowhere—because it could not generate any new songs.

The Doors' founder and best musician (r), and best songwriter (l) trying to give autographs.

When Jim Morrison died, similarly, The Doors could not carry on. They retained a distinctive sound in Manzarek’s organ, and considerable songwriting talent with Robbie Kreiger, but Morrison’s voice and his outrageous stage personality were too much the essence of the band in the public eye. For The Who, Pete Townsend surpassed Roger Daltrey when he started writing songs. Daltrey stayed in the band, but the feuds the two got up to were legendary.

As the examples suggest, all this is fairly unpredictable; it is hard to know when the band is just setting out what in what they do will strike a public chord and become their marketable essence. But it is always most likely that the original leader will be supplanted. If the odds are random, and there are four or five members of the band, the original leader has only a 20 to 25% chance of ending up on top.

But organizational skill does not generally come along with artistic talent; more often the opposite. Serious artists tend to be quite impractical in their view of the world. It is the unique and original artist who will end up dominating in this situation. The odds are stacked against it being the same guy who has the organizational skill.

And on this Rock I Shall Build My Church

Rock and roll is essentially Christian music, with its roots firmly in gospel. It remains Christian music; you might be surprised how many prominent rockers have publicly outed themselves as Christian. Given the troubles that Dylan got for openly turning Christian in the Seventies, it is remarkable that anyone has dared since. It makes me suspect there are ten more for every one on this list.

Start with three of rock's founders: Elvis Presley, Little Richard, who became an ordained minister, and Johnny Cash. Dion is also a professed Christian.

Both surviving Beatles, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, have come out as monotheists, if not specifically Christians.

So—Elvis, Dylan, and the Beatles. Can't get much higher up the rockface than that.

Add Roger (Jim) McGuinn, the leader of the Byrds, the American response to the Beatles. Throw in Eric Clapton, Alice Cooper, Bono and the Edge from U2, and Bob Marley. Richie Furay of Buffalo Springfield has since become a Christian minister. Arlo Guthrie, son of Woody. Roger Daltrey from The Who. Gladys Knight. John Mellencamp. Barry McGuire. Paul Jones of Manfred Mann. Boys II Men; The Backstreet Boys.

In addition, some of the best straight up rock songs ever written have had Christian themes: “Put Your Hand in the Hand,” “Spirit in the Sky,” Dylan's “Gotta Serve Somebody,” Aretha Franklin's “O Happy Day!,” the Byrds' “Jesus is Just All Right” and “Turn! Turn! Turn!.” Boney M's “Rivers of Babylon.” George Harrison's “My Sweet Lord,” though it is not specifically Christian.

The power of rock is almost necessarily religious. If you get the religion right, you're in a sweet space. If you get the religion wrong, you are playing with a power you are not likely to be able to handle.

This list of Christian rockers is mostly a list of survivors.

Why TV is Getting Better

If the prison is no longer secure, perhaps Rick and the others could consider relocating here.

Not everything is going to hell in a handcart. Currently, I am eagerly anticipating the new seasons of Downton Abbey and the Walking Dead. Television is getting much more interesting than it used to be, and far better than movies currently are.

So it goes; these things come in renaissances. Suddenly one medium or another will be fermenting. Popular music and comic books had amazing runs in the 1950s and 1960s. Films were really good in the 60s and 70s. Poetry was strong in the 50s. A variety of arts seemed relatively strong in the 60s, and now most seem relatively weak.

One cause, as I have previously lamented here, and as such worthies as TS Eliot and Samuel Beckett have lamented long before me, is that art has become increasingly dissociated from religion. Do that, and art dies. But within this general trend, the sudden lunges forward of specific media seem to fit an old observation by Marshall McLuhan: when a medium becomes obsolete, it become art. This makes sense: it has lost its practical use, and so, if it is going to continue at all, it will be for aesthetic reasons, among those who love the medium for aesthetic reasons.

Radio became obsolete in the 1950s, with the advent of TV. Hence the rise of popular music, specifically rock and roll, as new message for that medium. Film faced a less immediate threat of obsolescence from TV, and so reacted less dramatically and over a more extended period of time: we had a good run of artistic film-making beginning in the fifties and running through the seventies, with Hitchcock, Kubrick, the French auteurs, Scorsese’s Godfathers, and so on. Look at a list of great films of the Seventies, and you will marvel at how much that is memorable came out in such a short period. Comic books in turn can be understood as print’s reaction to TV—more specifically, pulp fiction’s reaction. There had been an earlier wave of comics, of course, the “Golden Age” of Superman and Batman, which was pulp’s reaction to radio.

He was right about everything. He just spoke fifty years too soon.

One can go back in time for other examples. The printing press gave us Shakespeare: the great Elizabethan age of drama came just when people started to be able to read, and to no longer need public performance for any practical purpose.

TV seems to be at that point now, beaten out of its prior position as primary medium by the Internet. It is no longer the main source of news and entertainment. It is no longer for everyman, or for the biggest profits from the greatest number. Hence we get interesting drama like Downton Abbey and the Walking Dead, appealing to a more discerning audience.

Meanwhile, radio and comic books, as their obsolescence deepens, have lost their ability to sustain a large enough audience for pop art purposes. They have had to become yet more specialized in their appeal. No more top forty, and no more cheap, mass-produced comics. They are moving from pop art, like rock and roll, in the direction of “high art.” Which is to say, really, either old art in rerun, or, if new, relatively lifeless, gloomy, and academic art. Generally living on charity from the public purse.

There is a fine line here: if a medium is the most efficient available, you get trashy entertainment for the masses. But on the other hand, you need a large enough audience to sustain real art, or artists cannot afford to create. They go into politics or academics or accountancy instead.

It died to give the world rock and roll.

Film is an interesting case in this regard. TV made it obsolete in the 50s. Then computer-generated special effects made it rise from the dead—courtesy of Spielberg, Lucas, and Pixar. FX were too expensive and time-consuming for TV, and did not play nearly as well on the small screen, including the computer monitor.

For now, all there is to do is to enjoy TV; along with a predictable renaissance in traditional, 2-D animation, notably from Japan. And wait for the next media technology to again reshuffle the playing pieces.

The Who

Next to the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, The Who is commonly cited as the third great contender for “World's Greatest Rock and Roll Band.” Individually, John Entwhistle commonly shows up high on lists of greatest bassist of all time, Keith Moon on lists of greatest drummer of all time, and Pete Townsend on lists of greatest guitarists.

Keith Moon, bidding for attention.

I strongly disagree. I think The Who does not belong in the same league as the Beatles or the Stones. They do not even belong in the same dimension of reality. They are not a great rock band; they are a cartoon band. They were all flash and little substance, and their example has been responsible for most of the worst things that have happened to rock since.

This is Spinal Tap.

Let's take the players one by one: Keith Moon is a flashy and a loud player. But the job of a drummer is primarily to keep time, and Moon never did that well. The first temptation for any drummer is to play too loud; it is easy for a drummer to drown out the other instruments. Moon never got past this rookie pretension.

John Entwhistle

John Entwhistle's fault is about the same. He can play very fast; but that is not the job of a bass player. The bassist is, with the drummer, the rhythm section. His first job is to lay down a consistent line, a setting for the melody to play against. Entwhistle never does this. Nor is his own line ever melodic. Playing fast is by itself not good music; it is just showing off.

Together, Moon and Entwhistle deplete The Who of one half of what makes rock and roll: they are all rock, and no roll. In this, The Who started rock in general down the wrong path--a path the Rolling Stones, at least, but few others, managed to avoid. And without a proper rhythm section, what do The Who have left? Just one instrument.

Pete Townsend strums a chord.

That's Pete Townsend. He can play a good lead guitar when he needs to, but who else makes such a big deal out of simply strumming a chord? Still flash over substance.

Roger Daltrey? A technically adequate singer, but no more. There is nothing distinctive about his voice. He simply sings clearly and on key. At least he knows, and does, his job. 

Roger Daltrey

Taken together, as well as singly, as befits a cartoon band like the Monkees, the Archies, or Kiss, The Who is all gimmicks, all the time. They are always playing to the cheap seats. Even the name is a gimmick. They were the first to smash their instruments onstage—not necessarily a cheap gimmick, but a shameless one. They hold the Guinness record for the loudest rock concert of all time—the most obvious gimmick of all, and sadly too easy to imitate. Add stuttering vocals, bass solos, playing with feedback, Townsend swinging his arm like a windmill, Daltrey swinging the mike around. It's all about looking like a good rock band, as opposed to doing the work of being a good rock band. None of this is about the music. Even if they were actually good, they so blatantly insult the intelligence of their audiences that anyone at all thoughtful should be too embarrassed to say they liked them. How can you get past this?

At their best, they have produced a few great songs—but fewer than a lot of less-well-known bands you could name: "My Generation," "We Don't Get Fooled Again," and "Squeezebox." Against this, there is the painful pretension of Townsend's “rock operas,” and his claiming to be influenced by Purcell. That's just musical social climbing. This is beneath any true rocker. There are songs in which something as puerile as a pinball competition is presented as heroic.

Gimme shelter.

The Who's star on the Walk of Fame

Reflection on Visiting the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts

Barnett Newman's floor-to-ceiling "Voice of Fire."

A basic principle of modern art: the larger the canvas, the smaller the talent. It is a simple thing to achieve impact just by drawing something very large. Everybody is doing it these days. It is fantastically tedious.

A similar principle applies in rock music: the greater the volume, the lesser the talent. As Keith Richards has noted, the essential trick of rock is to achieve an impression of power without resorting to volume.