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

Everyone, I'm Rick Piano, this is Rachel and Dave Onorato, welcome to all things music, we're not going to bash guitar companies today. We're going to talk about something I like to talk about, which is

what

happened to

rock

music, specifically us. We are going to discuss how the loss of the blues influenced the music and led to the decline of

rock

, which is a global musical phenomenon. I was born in 1962. Dave was born in '71. Rhett was born in 1990. When I was a kid, I listened to the Beatles. I listened to the Stones I listened to who I listened to Led Zeppelin, well when I was a kid I mean all the sixties bands, Jimi Hendrix, you name it, all those bands were influenced by the blues, yeah I had to say more or less the same references, maybe a little later. like Boston and Van Halen and some of that, but those were all blues influences and the blues also with the British invasion, you know, in the early sixties like 63 64, but all those beginnings come here and at that time you know the popular music in the United States.

It was all surf and city music and like Spector's wall of sound, the British bands came in and had blues influence and that's why they said it's different, that's why I think everyone went so crazy about it because they were like: wow,

what

is this! It was like they took Elvis and they took a little bit of Richard and Chuck Berry and all that in the '50s and also a lot of other blues records like Howlin Wolf and you know, all the early BB King stuff, Freddie King, all of it. the Chicago Delta stuff from Of course, Robert Johnson and all the stuff from the early '20s, you know they were really like themes for that stuff there, so all those bands in that little microcosmic center that you know between the stones and the kinks and all those guys, obviously, the Beatles, you know I list all this stuff all day long on the same records because they all play the same clubs, they're all the same records, hey, are you aware of this?

So, you know, and if you read interviews with all those guys, man. I know everyone says who was the best, who was the key, if you had the best records, you were the coolest person, right, he's thinking that whether you were good or not, you were so cool that everyone wanted to hang out with you because you had those records you know they couldn't get it so even Keith Richards says in multiple interviews he was like you know I dated Jagger because Jagger had all the cool records you know that's how we met yeah they were on a train and supposedly he looks up and Jagger has this Records thing and he says how a woman got Jimmy Reed, he says who is this guy, I have to know who this guy is, you know, that's like before in the band, you know so obviously.

It was such a small microcosm of people who in some way influenced each other, but it was all the same records that were circulating and it was all the records that everyone here in the United States didn't listen to, it was all the artists that I had forgotten to put down. happen mainly because they were black artists, you know, and if you heard any of that it was because of white artists who recorded songs, Pat Boone and these kind of people who recorded these blues tunes live and made them popular and You know, did anyone help to black artists?

If they were lucky enough to get some royalties, he helped them out a little. Bo Diddley and some other people actually got some notoriety from white artists covering their tracks, but basically you had these. English guys that came were penthouses for blues artists and when they came 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 doing it too, they were literally doing it . blues, yeah, if you talk about not just the Beatles, but you get up, you know, let's raise the stones, I mean, yeah, they were, oh, they write chosen like the tan records and they make careers out of them, and they're, you know , the only.

I will say that most of those guys recognized where they got it from, yeah, and we thought they tried to help artists take popular songs safely and put them on tour with them or at least tried to shine. In that, yes, and if they couldn't do it in the United States, they took it to England and surely they got people like Eric Clapton. Did you know they would? All the trending ships, yeah, names like Howlin Wolf and all those guys to England and those guys. there they became big, you know, artists in England solely on the basis of that little Kosmic five-six band that said, hey, these are the guys you should really listen to, so they were lucky enough to have enough money to bring it back and sometimes and getting him to play there, that's how they have their careers and all those guys, I mean, like Albert Kane, Freddie King, who I'm a big fan of, I said, "You know, if it

wasn

't for those English kids, we wouldn't do it." If we had careers we would have disappeared in the '60s and it probably would have never happened to us, so they were able to cultivate their careers until the '90s when their luck started to fade, but you know there was definitely a bump in the road for rock music. and the blues in the early '70s with all the acoustic music coming out of bands like Brad and America, but there were still blues influences in some of these bands, Jim Croce and Gordon Lightfoot and jape and They still do have the blues, yeah , then you came around in the mid '70s and you had disco, but immediately after that you had the punk movement and the new wave movements right and you could argue if you know it was raw old blues, right?

Going back to the gun rule, you know I can't play the guitar, but I'm going to play three chords and I'm going to scream because my life sucks and I have to do something and it's the same basic principle as back then. Well then we go through the '80s, we haven't gotten to where the rets were born yet so you can't talk about this, then we come through the '80s and pretty much most of the '80s metal, starting with Van Halen in the late '80s. 70, it was still there. The whole blues influence is like the police, you know, bands like that, even reggaeton was reggae blues and they had blues tunes, so a lot of the stuff that Melody told was just blues tunes and a lot of the rips, yeah , 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 fighting a sting, it was always like that, you know I hate the way I say it, but a lot of people really liked it, so I must be doing something right, but he said, you know he was listening to it, he was a great jazz musician, yeah, so you know he listened to the whole Servan. original and all those classic blues, R&B and jazz singers, so yeah, it all came from the same place, so all the way.

During the '80s, almost all the '80s bands were influenced by blues, yeah, and then you get to the early '90s and we have the grunge movement. I mean, then you know you have transitional bands like Guns N'Roses that were very blues-influenced and and Jane's Addiction, stuff like that, but all of grunge was mostly blues-influenced because the guys were born in the early '60s. , like me, you had Kurt Cobain doing a Leadbelly cover in the pines, you had Pearl Jam doing a yellow Ledbetter. that sounds like a jimi hendrix tune, i mean, a lot of Pearl Jam's riffs came out of nowhere, they came out of the blues, their solos were blues oriented, Soundgarden's licks were blues oriented, a lot of the vocal melodies on Alice in Chains had blues influences and then it happened in the mid '90s and Rhett Rhett was born early in the night and maybe it has something to do with Rhett, but the blues started to leave rock and rock stopped becoming a force dominant.

I say around 1994 was the beginning when I say dominant force, I mean. that rock bands were big around the world 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 force world today, when you think about world forces what do you think of. from people like Beyonce or not, I doubt they are, but they are both blues influenced singers, I mean Adele and Beyonce, both in the '90s you started having bands like Dave Matthews Hootie and Blowfish and then right in '97, you started getting limp biskit and cream. in the early days of nu metal and I maintain that nu metal lacked blues influence for the most part, not all that Rage Against the Machine had was in the early 90s and then they transitioned and then became Audioslave later.

Sac left the band and they reformed, but all their riffs and rage were blues-oriented, Zeppelin-style, all that, you know, Chili Peppers and Faith No More and those bands were still derivatives of there always being that Zeppelin element. somewhere and there was always, oh yeah, definitely, a blues feel, but when Rhett was starting out, when I was a kid and you had all this, you started getting all these faceless bands from the early 2000s, the puddle of mud, Chevelle, other bands, we won't mention any bands. where you didn't know any of the people in the band well, the other thing too is that when I became a conscious human being and realized what music was in the mid to late '90s, that was the first move and important music. that I remember where the boy bands 98 degrees in sync Backstreet Boys you know I was in third grade fourth grade and those were the records that the kids of my time are talking about and those same ones, practically all of them lack any blues influence, since you know, but the way I grew up, my parents, the first music I remember hearing at home was the funk bands of the '70s and '80s, so the cameo of Earth Wind and Fire Gap Band, Rick James, you know, is very blues. elements yes, so when I started getting into music on my own and started discovering what I liked, I went straight to the blues.

The first record I bought with my own money was the Jimi Hendrix Blues compilation we were talking about. He is friendly. 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 the Red House Dead record. I can take you back to the exact place I was like 12 years old, in the back of my parents' car. my little Sony CD player and it blew my mind and that's what led me to the guitar. Hendrix got yes and a guitar, yes, you know, no one in my family is a musician.

I don't come from musicians or anything like that and that's what opened me up. My world, I can remember the lick that started guitar playing for me and it was our live album King Livewire Blues Power 68. My dad had it and I listened to it and thought, What is it? You know, it was like this bomb exploded. saying that Red House was the first to record Hendrix records, you know, just mind-blowing, you know, and like a little kid you know you're innocent, so you know those things are true and they flourish if you cut through the nonsense, it's like If I was a guy, you know, if you hear something, that's, yeah, that's, yeah, it's like there's no, you don't have an informed opinion, you're just so shocked why that is, you know, so it's like, yeah, that kind of thing as a man, it's fine for life, I mean, you know, because it's vocal, it's horrible and if we go back and trace the origins of the blues, I mean, it goes back to slavery and trust shippers, I mean, just when the slaves were gathering.

It's so, hey, man, it's out of pain, yeah, and it's a uniquely American thing. You know the blues and then you know the jazz blues. I mean, all of that comes from probably the darkest time in American history and so it resonates with everyone, I mean. That line you just played is so painful and moving, yeah, and it's someone crying, it's someone's soul saying, "I can't take it anymore and I got it, yeah, let it out and that's what it is and I think and I believe." than you." I know part of what we're talking about here is that music is plastic now, not that there are people trying to do it.

I'm not saying that everyone across the board has very good fans doing some of that, but in general, especially from a commercial point of view, it's like that was taken away from them, that that element was gone, it was almost like the corporation would say, you know, that's real, we don't want that right because it actually has some human element. I know it's like the whole, you know, really the whole EDM movement is devoid of any blues, that's right, and a lot of electronic music, which is pop music, is devoid of blues, it's auto-tuned by Arbonne, everything. has been, there is no human element. has been stripped of his right to Jannetty and if you want to see a commercial he is the first commercial success, the most successful artist in the last ten years, you look at Adele for example, it is especially the first two albums to say you know they are the all the blues tunes, okay, Franklin, yeah, it is, and people are wondering why Twenty One sold 10 million copies and I was like, "Yeah, it's a blues record, it's a rocker." People still like the blues, yeah, it's Reetha Franken by Franklin Etta James, you know?

Tina Turner, it's that whole element, it's what you know and sheI knew, I mean, you can tell by her voice before they took it out, she brought it, you know, people who are so bombarded with other plastic garbage that it just came out completely. nowhere do 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 all gravitate towards because we know, you know that every human being has had horrible days, has been through pain, has been angry that's man, that's music, right?, you express it in your music and when you take it out of it, what?

You have this garbage of plastic music in the background for a commercial? So if you look at artists who have had success in the last, say, 18 years since 2000, you talked about people like John Mayer who have a lot of blues. elements obviously I mean using a blues guitarist, right, uh, Justin Timberlake, yeah, and I say by power of Justin Timberlake, Chris Stapleton, no, yeah, a lot of these modern country guys, yeah, they're Sturgill Simpson, you know , these guys that aren't taking over, oh, yo. I guess Stapleton is taking over country music in a way and leading the force to take it back from country bro yeah he's been at the forefront of turning at least 180 and it's going well look we gotta go back for a change which is go back .

That's right, you know, I think part of the big thing is it's hard to say that country music is planning because it still has a lot of commercial success and there's still a lot of people selling records, they're always important artists, but these songs don't stick around long term because they're super polished, super commercial, super safe. I think that's really what we boil down and that's what we're talking about if you know right around the time that blues left rock and also around the time that the internet took over and music. business, yeah, it took over the other one, so there's a correlation in my mind, now we're industry executives and the record labels are saying, well, we gotta play it safe and we know this sells, we know this shiny thing and polished and auto-tuned it sells, but we're not sure if this is raw, you know, so they don't want to risk it, they don't want to risk it, so people listen to you, you know the network from people, I don't mean musicians, people who like delve into music, I mean people who just listen to the radio in their car and buy whatever's on top for tea or listen to whatever's in the top forty, they'll listen to whatever they're playing on their FM radio and it's because That some of these artists are so popular today is because that's all the masses listen to, it's this super polished pop that lacks a lot of soul and feeling, with a few important exceptions.

Bruno Mars, right, Bruno Mars, especially his live show, is kind of like James. Brown says it's about joy, yeah, like a prince, kind of, exactly, Prince, you know you, but those artists are still popular, yeah, like you know, Aretha Franklin, all these artists from the '60s and '70s They are still popular and the new generation, as a man, I found. the blues and I found rock and stuff when I was a kid, I was born in the nineties. I definitely

wasn

't alive when all that stuff first became popular, but I found it and it's had a huge influence on me because of its prevalence and because it's its power, yeah, one of the other things that happened in the '90s was that In 1996 the Telecommunications Act of 1996 was signed under Bill Clinton, which essentially caused these megacorporations to take over all media.

Right now, it's probably about five or six of these mega media corporations. that control everything we read and watch and listen to and this homogeneous action of music started right at that time, that's the period of 1996 and I'm talking about yeah, that mixed with, like Rhett just said, Pro Tools and when you get Pro Tools, you get auto-tune and then melih died and then that started happening really, the transition when everyone started using Pro Tools was around 2000 99 to 2000 when the Mix Plus system came out and then you started having the network out of place all music, not just rock, all pop music, everything was in tune, everything was put on a grid, a time grid and a pitch grid, you can't have blues if you're on a pitch grid, you can't know that there is nothing perfect and not to lose, man, no. nothing, why did you buy perfect blues?

And if you hear perfect blues, you say it's not blues, so you can't do it. There is a perfect example. I told people: would you really want to listen to an edited Stones record? in that probably Exile Main Street has been done and incorrect well, what do you have? I mean, it's like come with me, shudder, so right there you eliminate the human element, so those two things, the corporatization of playlists with these radio ones with these big companies like Clear Channel and Cluster that took over and bought all these radio stations and then you would have one person programming all the rock stations or, for example, yes, a quick human element, get rid of a DJ who actually has a little bit of hypnocil.

I K, I want to hit people for some new things, oh, you can't do that, remember? And I and when "Bitter Sweet Symphony" came out and then the DJ played it eight times in a row and that was one note, that song exactly was one, I remember. I was driving in my car when that happened and so was the DJ and I said wow, I love that sign, I'm going to play it again, yeah, then he played it, he says, I'm going to play it again, he played it eight times in a row for the individuals.

Lesley Fram, who ran 909 I know that for me was the last station where anyone tried to be like, you know what we're going to do. He tries to do it old school and let the DJs dictate some things and let the management dictate what's going on and let the listeners dictate the other. Hi Colin, if you like this song give us a call and we'll play it, if not yes no. You have to know when you homogenized everything that's what you get right. I remember I was young but I remembered ninety-six rock, yes, here in the city and I remember the day it changed from 96 rock to the 961 project, yes. it was like, you know, metal, a metal station and then a few years ago they even dropped it until now it's power 961 on the Billboard Top 40 right, so now there aren't even good stations around and ninety-six rock was as a staple rock station in Atlanta.

Yeah, when I moved for my ninth birthday, that was the big rock station, right, he was like he was in '96, that's how it was, you know, in the '70s, when I was a kid, there were stations in the north of the New York State as W cmf and Rochester. You know, bands like Rush wouldn't exist if it weren't for all these upstate New York and places like Cleveland that were the only lines, the bell guy that they're in a hurry, in fact, they've made their career and they even say in many documentaries it was as if it weren't for WMS we wouldn't have been even close because he was a DJ, he played the first things and kept playing them, he kept playing them and no.

You know, he just said I really liked him so I'm going to keep writing and within two weeks they were on tour and then they started and the management picked them up and then they kissed and everything. They start to expect it to be okay so yeah strictly thanks to DJ yeah it was cool enough to go you know what this deserves to be on the radio and if they let me play it I will do it yeah and we'll do it. I don't have that, so what we have now is that all of us, all the people, search the Internet to find cool bands and we know, I mean, there are stations that do it, but if you really have an idea, I mean, really You have an idea, the Flints.

Now Spotify is modern, it's the one station that rules them all, yeah, actually, and wherever I'm talking about, you know, because as someone like me I work in the industry, with bands that are trying to break out and yes, the thing with everyone. what's new, that's the new radio that has a new spin on a radio, as a man, if I can get on this top 40 playlist or if I can get on this whoever's playlist, yeah. I know people who are in bands that have organized tours around Spotify. I mean, there's this band Wolfpack that's an amazing killer funk band that actually played with Spotify a couple of years ago where they put out a 10-track record that was all silent and No, there's no music at all and they're reaching out to get a relatively small fan base I think, but they told everyone to just put it on and let it play and I think they made over $20,000 and financed the whole tour, where I think I hope.

I'm not trashing this, but every show was free admission for their fans and it was a playground of venues where you meet new tactics, you know well, it could happen, yeah, I mean, I picked it up again, that's from the old school, yeah, that's like, oh yeah. Like well, well, how are we going to make this happen, you know, it's grassroots, it's so again, it's going back to the sadness, it's like taking it all away, what really works, what you know and I don't. I don't think people don't. I don't want to go see live music.

There are a lot of people, don't you know? Nobody wants to go see loud music anymore, that's why it's fading and you understand that they have too many distractions. I think at the end of the day, if it's delivered correctly and it's something genuine, they'll come see it yeah, okay, I mean, yeah, there's an item on that wall, there's an item that will always be in front of your computer and it doesn't matter. If you pay them twenty thousand dollars they would like the house, but you know, I really appreciate that they do it, you know there is authenticity in most live music and especially in the bands that keep the blues influence alive, bands like Alabama shakez, You know, even guys like Jack White. who's built a great career in three or four different bands that are all deep blues, rack and touring, yeah, dead, whether his solo material is White Stripes, those are all blues bands and the Black Keys, Black Keys , yes, his blues band, and so back.

Earlier we were talking about this kind of tradition of American bands going to Europe because Europeans appreciate music and especially American music on a different level than we appreciate here at home. Kings of Leon Black Keys, these bands went and broke up in Europe and then came back. Like three drinks, man, yeah, like the rival son, Celine, I used to go see them, you know, 810 years ago and it was, you know, 50 people at the show and now they're selling out the Stones, yeah, you know, just open the last stone store and I mean they're killing it and they deserve it because they're keeping it real, they're keeping it traditional and my friends, I'll give you a shout out Tyler Brian the shakedown They're doing the exact same thing no they're killing it and they just spend a lot of time on tour and just put out a really great record, but yeah, they go to Europe, yeah, okay, so is there really there?

I hope rock music becomes a global force again, although there are two schools of thought the way I see it, one school of thought is because of the internet because of Spotify, everyone is so fragmented now everyone has their own little niche to have your own playlists. your own stuff and from that perspective through that lens, then yes, you can say, well, no, no one will ever have a Nirvana again. The other thing to think about is that between now and 2020, in the next two years there will be another, I think, three to five billion people coming online for the first time, so this Internet group where everyone world is swimming and now it's about to get a lot bigger and for the bands that are on Spotify and Apple Music and YouTube YouTube is a huge platform for music and for people looking for music, I mean, think about that Korean artist from a few years ago, psy, who had a massive Gangnam style.

Gangnam Style, I mean, that success was because of YouTube, you know, we're on YouTube right now, yeah, exactly, yeah, which shows what I honestly believed in this platform. Yeah, yeah, well, it's a viable platform, so from my perspective I think you could, but I think the most likely answer is that things will continue to be more fragmented, but again from a musician's perspective, even if you take a smaller slice of that pie, even if you're never a Nirvana, you know they're on YouTube right now, there's a billion users coming in well, so this no, this is a transition to this problem that I've had and that the people have.

I talked about hearing me talk about what YouTube blockers are. I've done this series called What Makes the Sun Great that a lot of you are watching because of that series and I have these bands like Fleetwood Mac or Queens of the Stone Age, both. which are blues influences that block these videos that I make that essentially tell people that's how it is for them and theirs and a lot of the bands that I can't make videos for like Led Zeppelin The Beatles these people that are YouTube blockers . Mean Prince has really been a blocker and you know, I mean now, it's just that artists are versatile, well, we don't know.

I've spoken to record labels this week. I've talked to publishing companies and they honestly don't know. I spoke to an editor this week. An important editor. A friend of mine. I spoke with asenior. I would think that someone else would say that they don't know what the legal end is. No, I think that is the legal purpose. the artists say yes, because they all make deals. Led Zeppelin was one of the last groups to appear on Spotify and Apple Music and they don't allow anything on YouTube that isn't authorized by them, so I think it's specifically the artists.

I might be wrong if any of you artists are watching this Jimmy Page, if you are there we love you, yes yes Lido has come on the show please let me make a proper video about how great Led Zeppelin is, anyway. bring your birth so we can please you, you know, I thought about this overnight, we filmed the video last night and I started thinking about this morning, that thing that I left out of the video that we didn't talk about and that I was personally involved in. It's how and our people at the labelsStarting around 2002 or so, when the music industry started to really start to decline as far as their revenue model, our people were hiring producers to not only write the music with the bands, but also to write the lyrics and perform some songs. of the music they would hire me to play on records I would help people write the songs or co-write them and I would ask them why don't they look for people who can write their own songs once they hire artists who can write their own songs and that seems like something really Obviously, but that's not what happened, they found people, they brought producers and said, you're going to write with this fifty-year-old guy, you know, producer, you're going to write, the artists are going to write. with them and these people are helping him write his lyrics.

I mean, it was ridiculous to me and I said just find people who can write their own music like it's always happened, so it was that and you had this new metal movement, I had the same partner. The producers who produced all the records had the same mixers on all of them and they had the same few producers who produced all the records. The record labels didn't want to take the risk because if you signed something that flopped and you spent a lot of money on If You Lost Your Job, you can look up who these people are and I always wondered if I wasn't one of these people.

I didn't make all of these records, but there are a couple of producers who made a lot of the records in the early 2000s. They all sound the same they were made with the same amps where they were made with the same songwriters they had they were doing four bars at a time they did it on a loop and this whole assembly line of rock music started happening where all the stuff was self-tuning everything was gridded all the drums were gridded down to the sixteenth note and all the soul of the music was removed, including the blues, the lack of Blues can't have autotune and blues together just doesn't work, so I just wanted to add that other part to this and say that it was definitely part of the decline of rock music anyway.

I'd like to thank Dave and Ratt for being my guests and remind you to subscribe to my all things music YouTube here. channel if you are interested in my Blessed book which helps support this channel please visit my website at wwlp.com and you can find it there thanks for watching.