Throughout
the history of rock n' roll, eccentricity has been an embedded element. That is
to say, it is not forced or showed off but is just something that develops as a
part of the musician's artistic development. And that, it is ludicrous to
reduce rock n' roll to just that. However, when we fail to experience that
erratic spirit in a musician or in a piece of music, the genre feels
incomplete. After all, almost every great rocker in history has been a wild
child. What comes to mind almost immediately are iconic rock n’ roll sounds of
The Doors’ ‘Wild Child’, or Lou Reed singing ‘Take a Walk on the Wild Side’ or
Suzi Quatro’s ‘The Wild One’.
The elusive Quatro, apart from being related, in
public perception, with the old rockabilly song ‘Suzie Q’ and considered
as the first female punk musician, successfully became a cultural symbol for
the feminist thought in the genre which was so far considered a men’s game. I
remember when I first heard that young, course voice singing, “I’m a blue-eyed
bitch, and I wanna get rich. Get out of my way ‘cause I’m here to stay. I’m the
wild one” a young teenage girl myself, I could feel that angst arising from a well-known
position of suppression on accounts of gender, mainly. But the larger picture
would similarly have musicians producing loud, raw sounds out of a certain
sense of anger, frustration or personal distress. No doubt Cobain chose to
begin with the line, “Teenage angst has paid off well” for one of their better worded ‘Serve
the Servants’.
So why
is it then, that as these great rockers age, (of course, those who got the
opportunity to age) they lose their wild side, somehow, and go on living their
lives and well eventually dying, like the rest of us? And when they do continue
making music, their sound attains a mellowed down effect and structure. Agreed
that the iconisation around the genre is an out-and-out humanly created
phenomenon, or that the angst remains to be largely a product of its times, from
the many intersecting movements, anti-war, second wave feminism, gay pride etc,
of the 60s to the anti-glamourisation of rock n’ roll itself in the 90s. The anomaly
still remains to be about the lifestyle choices and thus, the music of the said
rock musicians being sobered down.
Thus,
you would now see an almost transformed Trent Reznor, from his dark, nihilist,
hardcore industrial rock side to becoming the guy with cropped hair, producing
music for movies and making albums like ‘Hesitation Marks’ which would have a
softer, experimental touch to it. “I am just a copy of a copy of a copy. Everything
I say has come before”, sings Reznor in the record.
Or an
Eddie Vedder with his long locks, climbing the high scaffoldings on stage
while performing, back in the 90s, and writing angst-driven songs about high
school massacres to now creating ambient, and probably the most soothing sounds in
mainstream music. “Circles, they grow and they swallow people whole”, goes a
line in a song from the soundtrack of the movie ‘Into the Wild’.
This track ‘Guaranteed’ along with 'Society' and other ones on the record, became an instant rage among the young for their themes of
breaking away from unfounded socially created shackles; the
circles of similarity, corruption and materialism. It, thus, turned out to be a
significant moment when the so-called youth angst came to be manifested in such softer
tunes which can be fulfilled only by an acoustic guitar, contrasting from a ‘Smells
like Teen Spirit’ of the 90s.
Even our beloved Plants and Pages of the 70s,
or Quatro herself, for that matter, chose to shift from their initial genre of hard
rock to either experimenting with softer Morroccon tunes or country music,
respectively. And if a true lover of
Plant’s voice, you could notice his music becoming less about the high pitches
and notes he used to hit, and rather about the melody itself.
This is not to suggest some sort of gross generalization,
though. One can very well look at exceptions all around, what with
young-and-wild-at-heart oldies like Jagger, Ozzy, Iggy, or Alice Cooper still going about their business. But for me, as I followed the musical trajectories of artists I’d
admired since the time music became an essence in my life, I felt this
transition happening right in the forefront.
To say that people age, including rock
musicians would be an oversight. Probably, it is just the way life treats you,
and I’d have to go through the same circles to comprehend that, or maybe, it is
only a personal, musically challenging choice that they choose to make. One can
only wonder. As long as it's pleasing, hard or soft, wild or sober, eccentric
or not, I don’t think we mind.
