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Mario Basini's verdict on rock legend band
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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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