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Mario Basini's verdict on rock legend band



http://icwales.icnetwork.co.uk/0100news/0200wales/page.cfm?objectid=12733759&method=full&siteid=50082

Mario Basini's verdict on rock legend band Mar 14 2003


The Western Mail - The National Newspaper Of Wales


LIKE a drama connoisseur lucky enough to have lived in Shakespeare's London or a classical music cognoscente brought up in Beethoven's Vienna, a pop fan who came of age in the 1960s faces a problem when it comes to assessing the talent that came after.

How can you take anything that followed that golden era seriously?

If rock 'n' roll had its roots in the '50s with pioneers like Bill Haley, Buddy Holy, the Everly Brothers, Little Richard, Gene Vincent, Elvis Presley and the rest, the great rock bands belong to the '60s and the early '70s.

Compared to the fire, flare and imagination of those bands, most of which passes for today's pop music sounds stale, flat, repetitive and derivative.

The proliferation of labels and titles - garage, indie, hip-hop, house and the rest - are attempts to hide a boringly similar lack of invention and ideas.

The poll taken by BBC radio station 6 Music to discover the best rock band seems to reflect that judgment. Two of the musicians named by the poll came from that first great era of rock - the guitarist Jimi Hendrix and the manic drummer Keith Moon.

But I suspect that the reason why these two greats live on in the memory of today's callow fans owes more to the fact that they died tragically young than it does to their musical reputations.

Both shrouded themselves with the romantic aura of doomed youth because of the sheer persistence with which they pursued death through drugs and alcohol.

However boyishly appealing U2's Bono may appear, his claims to be rock's best vocalist pale into insignificance compared to those of Roger Daltrey of The Who or Eric Burdon of The Animals. And then there is the greatest of them all, the master of innuendo, the man who can turn a limp wrist into a sexually charged gesture - Mick Jagger.

If Charlie Watts of the Rolling Stones lacks Moon's flamboyance and his talent for self-destruction, musically he is the dead drummer's master.

Which of the choices made by station 6's listeners can match the creative invention of Lennon and McCartney or the guitar skills of George Harrison and Eric Clapton?

What many of those great stars of the sixties have demonstrated is the durability of true class. Compared to Jagger's 40 years at the top, even Bono appears a callow newcomer.



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