What Killed Rock & Roll? (Hint: It Wasn't Hip Hop)

[Music] everybody I'm Rick piano this is Rachel and Dave Onorato welcome to everything music today we're not going to trash guitar companies we're going to talk about something that I like to talk about which is what happened to rock music specifically we're going to discuss how the loss of blues influenced music led to the decline of rock is a worldwide music phenomenon now I was born in 1962 Dave was born in 71 Rhett was born in 1990 when I was growing up I heard the Beatles I heard the stones I heard the who I heard Led Zeppelin well I mean when I was a kid I mean all the sixties bands Jimi Hendrix you name it all those bands were influenced by blues yeah I had to say pretty much the same references maybe a little later stuff like Boston and and Van Halen and some of that but those were all blue and blues influence too with the British Invasion you know in the early sixties like 63 64 yet all those beginnings come over here and at the time you know the popular music in America was all surf music and town and like Spector's wall of sound the British bands came over and had the Blues influence stuff and that's why they said it's a different that's why I think everybody went so crazy about it because it was like wow what is this it was like they took Elvis and they took a little Richard and Chuck Berry and all that stuff in the 50s and also a whole bunch of other blues records like Howlin wolf and you know all the early BB King stuff Freddie King all the Chicago Delta stuff of course Robert Johnson and all the early 20 stuff you know they really were like themes for that stuff over there know so all those bands in that little microcosmic Center you know between the stones and the kinks and and all those guys obviously the Beatles you know they list all day all this in the same records because they're all playing the same clubs they're all the same records around going hey are you hip to this so you into that you know and if you read interviews with all those guys man you know they're all like who was the coolest whoever the key if you had the coolest records you were the coolest person right he's thinking that how if you were good or not you were just so cool that everybody wanted to hang out with because you had those records you know they couldn't get him so I mean even Keith Richards says that in multiple interviews he was like you know I hung out with with Jagger cuz Jagger had all the cool records you know that's how we met yeah they were on a train and supposedly he looks over and Jagger's got this thing of Records and he's like he's got how a woman got Jimmy Reed he's like who is this guy I gotta know who this guy is you know that's how before in the band you know so so obviously was such a small little microcosm of people that they all kind of influenced each other so but it was all the same records being passed around and it was all the records that everybody here in the states weren't listening to it was all artists that they had forgotten about passed up mainly because they were black artists you know and and if you did hear some of that it was by white artists who recorded songs Pat Boone and and these type people who have recorded the live these blues tunes and make them popular and you know which did someone help the the black artists in some if they were lucky enough to get some royalties it did help them a little bit Bo Diddley and some other people actually got some notoriety from white artists covering their stuff but so basically you had these English guys who came over who were fern attics for blues artists and when they came over they couldn't wait to get there because most of the guys said they wanted to come and see the real blues artists well they were also doing they were literally doing blues yeah if you talk about not just the Beatles but you get up you know let's upload the stones I mean they yeah they were oh they write picked like the tan records and make careers out of them right and they're you know the one thing I will say about that most of those guys did acknowledge where they got her yes and we're like they tried to help the artists that they did take hot songs for all sure and and put them on tour with them or at least try shine light on that yeah and if they couldn't do it in America they took him to England and sure got people like Eric Clapton would you know they would they would every trend ships yeah names like Howlin wolf and all those guys over to England and those guys over there became huge you know artists in England solely on the basis of that small Kosmic of like five six bands going hey these are the guys you really should listen to and so they were lucky enough to have enough money to bring him back and sometimes and get him to play over there that's how they have their careers and all of those guys I mean like Albert Kane Freddie King I who I'm a huge fan of all said you know if it wasn't for those English kids we wouldn't have careers we would we would have died out in the 60s and it probably would have never happened for us so they were able to kind of cultivate their careers up until you know the the 90s when they fortunate started dying off but you know there there was a definitely a bump in the road for rock music and blues in the early 70s with all the acoustic music that was coming out bands like Brad and America but there were still blues influences in in some of these bands Jim Croce and Gordon Lightfoot and jape and they they still yes retain blues yeah then you hit the mid 70s and you had disco but immediately following that you had the punk movement and new wave movements right and and you could argue whether you know that was a raw former blues right you know that was going back to the gun rule you know I can't play guitar but I'm gonna I'm gonna play three chords and I'm gonna scream because my life sucks and I got to do something and it's the same principle basis of then well then we go through the 80s we're not up to where rets been born yet so you can't talk about this so then we get to the 80s and pretty much most of 80s metal starting with Van Halen in the late 70s was still all Blues influence like the police you know bands like that even reggaeton where reggae blues and they had blues melody so a lot of things Melody's told were just blues melodies and a lot of the rips yep we're blues anyone in any sense you know he's saying blood right he tried to sing like that yeah I mean he even said you know he's like I'm he is fighting a sting was always like you know I hate the way of saying but a lot of people really liked it so I must be doing something right but he said you know I listening he was a huge jazz yeah musician so you know he he listened all the original Servan and all those classic blues and R&B and jazz singers so yeah it all came from the same spot so all the way through the eighties almost every 80s band was blues influenced yeah and then you get into the early 90s and we have the grunge movement I mean then there'll you know you have this transitionary bands like like Guns N'Roses that were very blues influence and and Jane's Addiction things like that but then all all grunge was for the most part all blues influenced because the guys were born in the early 60s like I was you had Kurt Cobain doing a cover of in the pines Leadbelly you had Pearl Jam doing yellow Ledbetter that has sounds like a jimi hendrix tune I mean a lot of Pearl Jam's riffs were right out of the blue right out of blues their solos were blues oriented Soundgarden's licks were blues oriented a lot of Alice in Chains vocal melodies had blues influences in them and then the mid 90s happened and Rhett Rhett was born early nighters and maybe it has something to do with Rhett but blues started to leave rock and rocks stopped becoming a dominant force I say around 1994 was the beginning of it when I say domina force I mean that rock bands were big worldwide in 1992 when Nirvana and Pearl Jam were at the top of the charts here in the United States they were huge in South America in Europe and Japan everywhere they were a worldwide force today when you think of worldwide forces you think of people like Beyonce or no I doubt those are but who are both blues influenced singers I mean Adele and and Beyonce both in the 90s you started to have bands like Dave Matthews Hootie and Blowfish and then right in 97 you started getting limp Biskit and cream in the beginnings of nu metal and I contend that nu metal was that was was devoid of Blues influence for the most part not all I mean Rage Against the Machine had was in the early 90s and then they they made the transition and then became Audioslave after sac left the band and they they reformed and but they're all of their riffs and rage were all blues oriented Zeppelin esque that that whole you know Chili Peppers and Faith No More and those bands were all still derivative of there was always that Zeppelin element somewhere and there was always oh yeah definitely blues feel but when Rhett was was starting to when he was a kid and you had all these you started getting all these early 2000s faceless bands the puddle of mud Chevelle other bands we won't mention a bands where you didn't know any of the people in the band well the other the other thing too is by the time I was like becoming a conscious human being and realizing what music was in the mid to late 90s that's the first major movement and music that I remember where the boy bands 98 degrees in sync Backstreet Boys you know I was in third grade fourth grade and and those were the records that kids around my time we're talking about and those the same thing those are pretty much all devoid of any influence of blues you know and so but the way I grew up my parents the first music I remember listening to in the house were the 70's and 80's funk bands so Earth Wind and Fire Gap Band cameo Rick James you know which is very heavily blues elements yes so when I started getting into music on my own fruition and started finding out what I liked I went straight to the Blues the first record I ever bought with my own money was the Jimi Hendrix Blues compilation which we were just talking about it's kind of a hodgepodge of Hendrix stuff but that's what led me to I mean literally I remember where I was the first time I heard red house dead record I can take you back to the exact spot I was like 12 years old the back my parents car with my little Sony CD player and it blew my mind and that's what got me into guitar Hendrix got yeah and a guitar yeah you know nobody in my family's a musician I didn't come from players or anything and it was that which kind of opened up my world I can remember the lick that started guitar for me and it was our King livewire Blues power 68 live record my father had it and I would I heard it and I just was like what is that you know it was like this bomb going off saying with ya Red House had first to Hendrix records you know just just mind blowing you know and as a little kid you know you're you're innocent so you know that stuff is true blooming is it cuts through the BS it's like it's a kid you know if you hear something go that's it yeah that's it yeah it's like there's no you don't have informed opinion you just you're so blown away by like what is that you know so it's like yeah that kind of stuff just like man okay for life I mean you know because it's vocal it is it's awful and if we go back and trace the origins of the blues I mean it goes it goes all the way back to slavery and fiat haulers I mean right when the slaves were picking it so hey man it's it's out of pain yeah and it's a uniquely American thing you know blues and then from blues jazz I mean that that all comes from probably the darkest time in American history and so that's why it's it's resonates resonance with everybody I mean that line that you just play it's it's so painful and soulful yeah and that's somebody crying that's somebody's soul being like I can't take it anymore and I got it just yeah let it out and that's what it is and I think and I think you know that's kind of partly what we're talking about here is that the music now it's plastic it's not that it's there are people who are trying to do it I'm not saying that everybody across the board there are really good fans doing some of that but as a whole especially commercially it's like that's been taken out of them that that element is gone they was almost like the corporation said you know what that's real we don't want that right because that's that actually has some human element we right you know it's like it's it's the whole you know really the whole EDM movement is devoid of any blues it is it is and a lot of the electronic music that's pop music is devoid of blues it's Arbonne auto-tuned everything is been there's no human element has been stripped of its Jannetty right and the if you want to look at a commercial is first commercial success the most successful artist in the last ten years you look at Adele for example it is really especially the first two albums to say you know they are the all blues melodies it's alright the Franklin yeah it's and people wonder why did twenty one sell 10 million copies and I was like both yeah it's a blues record it rock people still like the blues it's yeah it's it's it's Reetha Franken from Franklin Etta James you know Tina Turner it's all of that element it's that you know and she knew that I mean you can tell by her voice before they slipped her all out she brought it you know people who are so bombarded with other plastic garbage that that's just totally came out of nowhere you know if you were like what is that you know it's blues man it's real it's like that's the element that we we all kind of gravitate toward because we know it we you know every human being has had crappy days gone through pain has been pissed off that's man that's what music isn't it you express that on your music and when you take that out of it what do you have you have this just plastic music garbage in the background for a commercial so if you look at artists that have been successful in the last let's say 18 years since 2000 you talked about people like John Mayer that have that have a lot of blues elements obviously I mean use a blues guitar player right uh Justin Timberlake yes and I say by proxy of Justin Timberlake Chris Stapleton no yeah a lot of these modern yeah country guys are Sturgill Simpson you know these guys that are kind of not taking over oh I guess Stapleton is in a way taking over country music and sort of leading the force of taking it back from bro country yeah he's kind of been the forefront of turning at least 180 and going okay look we got to get back to switch which is going back that same thing you know I think part of the big it's hard to say country music is planning because it's still so commercially successful and there's still so many people there selling records always major artists but these songs don't stick around long term because they're super polished super commercial super safe I think it's really what we boil it down to it and that's what we're talking about if you know right around the time that blues left Rock is also around the time that the internet took over and the music business yeah it took over the other and so there's a correlation there in my mind we're now industry executives and record labels are saying well we have to play it safe and we know this sells we know this polished auto-tuned shiny thing sells but we're not sure if this raw you know so they don't want to take a chance they don't want to take a chance on it so people listen to you know the net by people I don't mean like musicians people that like dig into music I mean people that just listen to the radio on their car and buy whatever's on top for tea or listen to whatever is on top forty they're gonna listen to whatever you stream on their FM radio and so that's why some of these artists are so popular nowadays is because that's all the mass the masses are hearing is this super polished pop thing which is devoid of a lot of soul and feeling with some major exceptions Bruno Mars right Bruno Mars especially his live show is like kind of James Brown say it's about the joy yeah like a prince kind of thing right exact Prince you know thee but those artists are still popular yeah like you know Aretha Franklin all these these artists from the 60s and 70s are still popular and new generation like man I found the blues and I found rock and stuff when I was a kid it was born in ninety I was definitely not alive when any of that stuff was first popular but I found it and it's had such an influence on me because of its prevalence and because it's its power yeah so one of the other things that happened in the 90s was in 1996 the Telecommunications Act of 1996 at Bill Clinton signed which essentially made these mega-corporations took over all the media's right now it's probably about five or six these mega media corporations that control everything that we read watch and listen to and this homogenous ation of music began right at that time that's the time period 1996 and I'm talking about yeah that mixed with as Rhett just said Pro Tools and when you get Pro Tools you got auto-tune and then melih died and then you started to have that happened really the transition when everyone started using Pro Tools was right around 2000 99 to 2000 when the mix Plus system came out and then you started to have the grid off' occation of all music not just rock all pop music everything was tuned everything was put to a grid a time grid and a pitch grid you can't have blues if you are on a pitch grid you can't know there's nothing perfect and not lose man no nothing why would you bought perfect blues and if you hear perfect blues you go that's not blues so it's you can't do it there's a be like a perfect example I was tell people like would you really want to hear a Stones record corrected no put on that's probably done Exile Main Street and incorrect good what do you got I mean it's like come with me cringe right so right there you take out the human element so those two things the corporatization of playlists with with these of radio with these huge companies like Clear Channel and cumulus that took over and bought up all these radio stations and then would have one person programming all the rock station or example yes a quick the human element get rid of a DJ that actually has taste some hypnocil I K I want to hit people to some new stuff oh you can't do that do you remember and I and back when bitter sweet symphony' came out and I next the the DJ played it eight times in a row and that was a note that song exactly that was a I remember driving in my car when that happened and so was the DJ and I said wow I love that sign I'm gonna play it again yeah then it played it he goes I'm gonna play it again he played it eight times straight for the individuals Lesley Fram that ran 909 X here she took chances on bands I mean not just not just major label bands on local bands II know that that was the to me that was the last station that somebody's tried to be like you know what we're gonna try to do an old-school and let the DJ's dictate some stuff and let management dictate what's going on and let the listeners dictate the other one hey Colin if you like this song call in and we'll play if not yeah you don't have that you know when you when you homogenized everything that's just what you get well I remember so I was young but I remembered ninety-six rock yeah here in here in town and I remember the day it changed from 96 rock to project 961 yeah it was like you know yeah metal a metal station and then a few years ago they even dropped that to now it's power 961 in the right Billboard Top 40 so now there's not even good stations around and ninety-six rock was like a cornerstone rock station Atlanta yeah when I moved to turn nine years that was the big rock station right he was like he was on 96 it was that was it you know in the 70s when I was a kid there were stations in upstate New York like W cmf and Rochester that you know bands like rush wouldn't exist if it wasn't for all these upstate New York and and places like Cleveland that were the only lines the buzzer dude they get rush they in fact they've made their career and they they even say in a lot of documentaries that it was like if it wasn't for WMS we wouldn't have been anywhere near because it was a one DJ he played the first couple of thing and he kept playing it it kept playing it and he didn't you know he just was like I just really liked it so I'm gonna keep writing and within two weeks man they were like on tour and then they started they got picked up by management kind of anything and then they tore a kiss and all they start hoping up for okay so yeah strictly because of DJ yeah it was cool enough to go you know what this deserves to be on the radio and if they're gonna let me play it I'm gonna do it yeah and we don't have that so what we have now is we have all of us all people searching the internet to find cool bands and knows I mean there's stations that do but if you you really got a dig I mean you've really got a dig the Flint's now Spotify is this the modern it's the one station to rule them all yes actually and whatever spot I mean now you know cuz as someone like I'm in working in the industry like with bands who are trying to break and yeah the thing with everybody's going for now is to try and get placed on a Spotify plates the thing that's the new that's the new radio that have new spin on a radio as man if I can get on this top 40 playlist or if I can get on this whoever playlist yeah I know people who are in bands that have built tours around yes Spotify plays I mean there's a band Wolfpack who's an amazing funk killer band where they actually game Spotify a couple years ago where they put out a record of 10 tracks that were all silent and no no music on whatsoever and they reach out get a relatively small fanbase of time I think but they told everybody to just put it on and let it play and they made I think like over $20,000 and they funded the whole tour where I think I hope I'm not butchering this but every show was free admission for their fans and it was some gamespot of places you know new tactics to to you know right it could happen yeah I mean that tacked it again itself that's old school yeah that's like oh yeah like okay well how we gonna make it happen you know it's grassroots it's so there again it's back to the blues it's like strip it all down what really works what you know and I don't I'm not under the belief that people don't want to go see live music I get a lot of people don't you know nobody wants to go see loud music anymore that's why it's dying down and you get they've got too many distractions I think at the end of the day if it's handed to them right and it's something that's genuine they'll come see it yeah okay I mean yes there's an element that wall there's an element that's always going to be sitting in front their computer and it doesn't matter if you pay them twenty thousand dollars they would like the house but but you know I appreciate off that they do they do you know there's there's an authenticity about most live music and especially bands that are keeping that Blues influence alive bands like Alabama shakez you know even guys like Jack White who has had he's built a huge career on three or four different bands that are all blues depth rack and tours yeah dead whether his solo stuff the White Stripes those are all blues bands yn Black Keys Black Keys yes the their blues band and so going back we were talking earlier that sort of tradition of American bands going over to Europe because Europeans appreciate music and especially American music on a different level than we do here at home Kings of Leon Black Keys these bands went and broke in Europe and then came back over like three drinks dude yeah like the rival sons rival Celine I used to go see them you know 810 years ago and they were you know 50 people at the show and now they're selling out their open up for the stones yeah you know they just open the last stone store and I mean they're killing him in and they deserve it because they're they're keeping it real they're keeping it traditional and my my friends I'll give them a shout out Tyler Brian the shakedown they're doing the exact same thing no they're they're killing it and just spending so much time out on the road and just put out a really great record but yeah they go over to Europe yeah okay so so is is there really hope for rock music to become a worldwide force again though there's two schools of thought the way I see it one school of thought is a because of the internet because of Spotify everyone's so fragmented now everyone has their own little niche to have your own playlists of your own stuff and so from that perspective through that lens then yes you can say well no it's nobody's ever gonna have a Nirvana again the other thing to think about is between now and 2020 in the next two years there's gonna be another I think three to five billion people that are coming online for that first time right so this internet pool that everybody's swimming and now is about to get a lot bigger and so for bands that are on Spotify and Apple music and YouTube YouTube is a huge yeah platform for music and for people to scouring music I mean think about that Korean artist a few years ago psy who had massive Gangnam style Gangnam style I mean that that hit because of YouTube right you know we're on YouTube right now yeah exact exactly yeah which shows what I mean honestly like we believed in this platform I yeah yeah well it's a viable platform so in my perspective I think it you could but I think the more likely answer is things are gonna continue to be more fragmented but again from a musician's perspective even if you have a smaller slice of that pie even if you never are a Nirvana you know they're on YouTube right now there's a billion users that come on okay so so this no this is a segue into this issue that I've had that people have talked that heard me talk about which is the blockers of YouTube I've done this series called what makes the Sun great that many of you watching are watching because of that series and I have these bands like Fleetwood Mac or Queens of the Stone Age both that are blues influence that block these videos that I make that are essentially telling people that are so for them and theirs and a lot of the bands that I can't make videos of like Led Zeppelin The Beatles these people that are blockers of YouTube I mean prince has really been a blocker and and you know I mean now is it is it the artists versatile well we don't know I've talked to be I've talked to record labels this week I've talked to publishing companies and honestly they don't know I talked to a publisher this week major publisher a friend of mine I talked to a senior I would think another say it's a they don't know it's the legal end of thing no I think it's I think it's the artists are telling them yeah because everyone makes deals Led Zeppelin was one of the last groups to come on Spotify and come on Apple music and and allow and they don't allow anything on YouTube that's not sanctioned by them so I think it's specifically the artists I may be wrong if there's any of you artists out there that are watching this Jimmy Page if you're out there we love you yes yes Lido's come on the show please let me do a proper video on how great Led Zeppelin is okay anyways I bring your birth so we can please you know I thought about this overnight we filmed the video last night and I started thinking about this morning that one thing that I left out of the video that we didn't talk about that I was personally involved with is how and our people at labels starting around 2002 or so when the music industry started to really began on its steep decline as far as their revenue model was concerned is that and our people would hire producers to not only write the music with the bands but even write the lyrics and perform some of the music I would be hired to play on records help the people write the songs or co-write the songs and I would ask the people why don't you just find people that could write their own songs once you just sign artists that can write their own songs and that seems like a really obvious thing but that's not what happened they would find people they bring in producers and say you're gonna write with this fifty year old you know producer you're gonna write the artists are gonna write with them and these people are helping him write their lyrics I mean it was ridiculous to me and I said just find people that can write their own music like he has always happened so it was that and you had this new metal movement had the same couple producers that produced all the records you had the same mixers on all of them and you had the same few producers that produced all the records labels did not want to take a chance because if you signed something that failed and you spent a lot of money on it you lost your job you can look up who these people are and I would always wondered I wasn't one of these people I didn't make all these records but there's a couple producers that made a lot of the records in the early 2000s they all sound the same they were made with the same amplifiers where they were made with the same songwriters they had the they would do four bars at a time they would loop it and this whole assembly line of rock music began to happen where all the stuff was auto-tuned all of it was gridded all the drums were gridded to the sixteenth note and all the soul was taken out of the music including the blues the lack of blues you can't have auto-tune and blues together it just does not work so I just wanted to add that other piece of this and say that that was a no question part of the decline of rock music anyways I like to thank Dave and Ratt for being my guests and remind you to subscribe here to my everything music YouTube channel if you're interested in my Beato book which helps support this channel go to my website at wwlp.com and you can find it there thanks for watching

Channel: Rick Beato

Views: 1,437,688

Keywords: rock is dead, rock music is dead, Blues, Rick Beato, Everything Music, Discussion, music discussion, the rolling stones, the beatles, led zeppelin, bb king, Albert King, freddie king, blues music, The Beginnings of Rock &Roll, How Rock Music Died, Grunge, Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck, howlin wolf, nu metal, telecommunication act of 1996

Id: T0ycwnJArHQ

Length: 31min 35sec (1895 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 11 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/alllie]

There's one thing they said that I think was wrong. They claimed that the media companies went to 5 or 6 companies in the 90s under Clinton. It's my memory that it happened under Bush. There used to be regulations that a corporation could only own one media outlet per market. Bush's people eliminated that so one corporation could own as many outlets in a market as they could buy. Nationwide it went to 5 or 6 corporations owning all the media outlets. Which hurt music and news and movies.

[u/Massive-Gas]

Rock N Roll isn't dead, it just went into the Witness Relocation Program. It's still around to an extent.