When the Music's Over: Inside Classic Rock's Descent

Steven Hyden Examines the Format’s Past, Present and Future in His Latest Book ‘Twilight of the Gods’

As a disaffected teenager growing up in Brooklyn, New York during the late ’80s and early ’90s, classic rock meant so much to me. When most of my high school friends were either into pop, hair metal, hip-hop, or modern rock — I gravitated towards the music that I heard daily on local classic rock radio station WNEW-FM. Among the many artists I listened to on the dial were the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, David Bowie, Pink Floyd, Genesis, Yes, Queen, Foreigner, and Cheap Trick. At the time, I felt those bands were cooler and truer to the spirit of rock and roll in contrast to the Top 40 acts that dominated the pop charts (I couldn’t get past Mariah Carey, Vanilla Ice, Mr. Big, or Technotronic). For me, discovering the rock music of the ’60s and the ’70s was a learning experience about the history of rock and roll. By listening to classic rock, and then reading music magazines like Rolling Stone, I was establishing my own identity as both an informed music fan and someone who didn’t want to be part of the popular crowd.

I have listened to lots of music from different genres in the last 30 years since high school, but classic rock (which is not a genre per se, but a radio format invented in the ’80s) remains the soundtrack of my life and I’m sure for many other people of my age group as well. Despite the arrival of punk, disco, New Wave, and hip-hop, classic rock still has appeal with older fans thanks to the longevity of acts like Aerosmith, Styx, REO Speedwagon, and Chicago, all of whom continue to tour and make records. It seemed like these artists were going to be around forever.

However, the last few years have seen a considerable number of notable musician deaths, especially those from the era of classic rock — from David Bowie to Gregg Allman to Tom Petty. That is complemented by a growing number of artists who have announced their retirement from the road, including Elton John, Lynyrd Skynyrd and Paul Simon. The idea of classic rock at the crossroads is a sobering subject that music journalist Steven Hyden addresses in his recently-published and timely book, Twilight of the Gods: A Journey to the End of Classic Rock. Sprinkled with personal anecdotes and a sense of humor, this book looks at the evolution and decline of classic rock through such key artists as Bob Dylan, the Band, the Eagles, Bruce Springsteen, and the Grateful Dead. It also looks at today’s bands who mimic classic rock’s blueprint (among them Phish and Hollywood Vampires), and the alternative rockers (Foo Fighters, Wilco, Pearl Jam) who are assuming classic rock’s place in the form of dad rock. However, as Hyden points out: “There’s so many great rock bands still. I hate the whole ‘rock is dead’ conversation, and I write about that in the book. This isn’t a book saying that rock music is dead. It is a book about a certain generation of artists who are in the twilight of their careers.”

In this interview, Hyden, whose previous book was Your Favorite Band Is Killing Me, talks about the current state of the format; the cornerstone classic rock acts like Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, and the Eagles; and the future of classic rock after these artists are gone. (This interview has been edited for clarity)

How did the book come about?

I started thinking about it 5–6 years ago. In the first chapter I write about seeing this Who concert I think in 2001 when they were on the Quadrophenia tour. Obviously going into the show, I knew that Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey were older. They weren’t the same people that I knew from the [Who] album covers. I liked the show, but it really drilled home the point that musicians of their generation are reaching a certain end point.

Then in early 2016, there was this series of high-profile rock stars that passed away. It was David Bowie in January and there was Glenn Frey. And then Prince passed away in April. At that time, it seemed like this mortality of classic rockers [had] gone from something that I was thinking about, to being something that seemed very much in the front of pop culture. 2016 really was a big year for that, not just because the rock stars that died, but there were also weird things happening. There was Axl Rose joining AC/DC, and John Mayer was touring with [the surviving members of] the Grateful Dead. There was Desert Trip with all of those classic rock artists like Paul McCartney, Roger Waters, the Stones, the Who, and Neil Young. You see all these signs of the aging process for classic rockers. It’s definitely going to be something that we’ll deal with more and more as the years go on, because this generation is getting advanced in age. There’s going to be more legendary musicians who end up passing away in the next five or 10 years or so.

You mention in the book Led Zeppelin’s Led Zeppelin IV and Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side Of the Moon as two important albums in classic rock mythology.

If you were going to learn about rock and roll, these were two pivotal albums to learn about. Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd were in a way very complementary to each other. Led Zeppelin had such a physicality to their music, they were very sexual. It was sort of like all the things that you wanted to do as a kid but weren’t allowed to do: sex, drugs, and all that stuff. Led Zeppelin embodied that. Pink Floyd, on the other hand, was a very introspective band. And The Dark Side of the Moon, the motif was this space rock. But it’s really about exploring inner-space. Roger Waters was writing about the danger of going insane and the dangers of your own psyche [while] trying to fight against that. Which is something that’s very profound when you’re a teenager, because you always feel like you’re going insane.

I felt like those albums were covering all the basis when listening to them together. That’s probably why of all the classic rock bands, those two are the ones that kids keep going back to — especially if you’re the kind of kid who is maybe on the outside at your school and you’re starting to smoke pot a little bit. It seems like Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin are attracting those kids. Very little has changed in that regard in the last 20 years. There’s still that kid out there who will go through a Zeppelin phase or a Pink Floyd phase.

You describe the Eagles as the definitive classic rock band in the book. Why is that?

For starters, they’re just played on classic rock radio so much. The Eagles seem like the quintessential baby boomer band, and there’s a smugness to them that I think really turns people off. And yet at the same time, they were really effective at what they did. They’re something almost surgical about Eagles songs. It’s what kept them on the radio. They’re very efficient. They’re very well-written from the perspective of song structure: hitting the verse, the pre-chorus, the chorus. They’re perfectly constructed.

Taking a look at their history, the Eagles were this country rock band coming from the hippie Southern California scene. During the course of ’70s, they got more and more corporatized. So by the end the decade, they were the epitome of corporate stadium rock. Then they broke up out at the end of the ’70s. Fifteen years later, they got back together and this reunion has lasted for 20 years. They were regurgitating their hits in stadiums all over the world and making a shit ton of money doing it. And that’s very classic rock as well. These bands became brands at some point. And it’s not being about innovative, it became this jukebox-type thing. When the Eagles broke up, it coincided with the development of classic rock radio [in the ‘80s].

In its history, classic rock has been predominantly white acts, whose success was often at the expense of African-American artists. Is classic rock’s current decline due to the fact that people are now more interested in musical acts who are either female or of color?

Absolutely. I think rock music in general has a big problem with that. I do feel like in the 2010s that it’s improved pretty dramatically, at least in indie rock. Now it’s at a point [where] there’s so many well-known, great female indie rock musicians. And racially, too, it’s improved a lot. I think it’s also improved a lot with LGBTQ musicians. Of course, there’s a long way to go with that, but it’s much better than it was in the ’60s and ‘70s.

When we talk about classic rock, classic rock is not really a genre. It’s something that was made up as a radio format. And with that format, it’s gatekeepers deciding who belongs. There’s a lot of artists who are black and women who weren’t put in there and could have been. And if you listen to their music, they were making rock and roll or at least music that arise from the same sources.

As an example, I utilize Prince [in Twilight of the Gods]. Part of his greatness is that you can’t really classify him, he’s kind of his own genre. No one is going to say that Prince isn’t funky — he was definitely making soul music and R&B music. If you look at Purple Rain, to me that’s a rock and roll record. And then there’s so much guitar on that album and certainly some of the biggest known songs off that record, like “Let’s Go Crazy” and “Purple Rain,” those are rock and roll songs. “Purple Rain” [is] more like “Stairway to Heaven” than any R&B song of that era. You really could make a history of rock music talking just about black artists. We talk about rock music being so white, but a lot of that has to do with how these things are categorized.

The long-playing album was been a pivotal part of classic rock. Now with downloads and streaming, it seems that people are picking and choosing individual tracks rather than listening to an entire album.

I really believe that the big reason why albums still exist is because artists want to make them. They’re big music fans, they’ve studied the history of music. There’s something very appealing about wanting to be part of a continuum of music. If you grew up caring about albums, you wanna be part of that tradition. We live in a time where technology hasn’t killed the album, but it certainly has decentralized the album as the main way people experience music. Obviously people still care about albums, but playlists are a big thing now.

We’re already a few generations separated from people buying music in record stores. College students now probably don’t have much first-hand experience with that, or anyone under the age of 22. For as long as they’ve been music fans, it’s always been in an Internet-first thing. At the same time, you still see younger people listening to classic rock. That hasn’t gone away. They’re still finding it on streaming platforms. In a way, it’s a lot easier to discover that stuff now than it was when I was a kid. If I wanted to buy an an album, I had to go to a record store, which was much more difficult than simply punching ‘Led Zeppelin’ on Spotify and finding every album.

Once these classic rock artists move on, who are going take their place?

I’m very curious to see if there’s a classic rock version of hip-hop. Rock and roll has always been about preserving tradition and looking towards the future. Hip-hop seems to always have this thing of once you’re around for about a decade, it’s on to the new generation. It’s what kept it fresh and dominant for so long. But we’re starting to see more [hip-hop artists] have longer careers. I call Jay-Z the ‘Rolling Stones of rap.’ He’s one of the first rappers who can play stadiums based on his back catalog. And Eminem is the same thing. He’s been around for about 20 years. Maybe we’ll start to see sort of a classic rock version of rap assume that mantle, as there are fewer rock bands that can fill those kind of spaces.

I also wonder about hologram tours. You’re starting to see people talk about this, like Frank Zappa is doing it. The Beach Boys’ Mike Love has talked about maybe there being hologram tours of the Beach Boys after he can no longer tour. All that has to happen is for one person to do it well, and for everyone to see it and be like, Wow, that was actually really cool. And as soon as that happens, there’s going to be a ton of them and it’ll become normalized. Maybe it will be something where when you go to Vegas, you can go see the Beatles or the Stones in hologram form. To me, the final frontier is proving that you can be dead and still tour.

Has working on this book changed your feelings about classic rock?

The continuum of music is something that means a lot to me — the idea that you can listen to a brand new artist and trace that artist’s music as far back as you care to go, whether it’s 10, 20 , 50 years. It deepens my appreciation because it makes you feel connected to something that’s bigger than yourself. It makes you realize that there’s this conversation taking place through music and art in general that goes back throughout the ages. The idea that you can listen to a record by a person who’s no longer alive — you can feel their humanity when you listen to it. It’s like the closest thing that I have in my life to that sort of a spiritual connection. I just find that profound and beautiful.