Arthur Miller memorably said “An era can be said to end when its basic illusions are exhausted.” I was pondering this thought when thinking of the rise and demise of pop music as a cultural form that could help make sense of the world and the craziness we are living through. It can no longer. Nor can it can be argued other multiple other cultural forms--cinema, novel etc can also keep up with the pace of change as we run headlong into a climate catastrophe and a swift turn to the right that has characterized the politics of this era. But popular music used to do the work that no other form could--make clear where the fault lines were in the culture--between the hip and the non hip, the anti war part of the generation crudely characterized as pro flower power and the rest and later those who embraced cultural diversity and the ones that refused to even listen to reggae, hip hop and the plethora of world music. There were watershed moments that we could cite as the beginning of the end--Woodstock the height of the free love movement and Altamount the dark side of the drug culture where according to a BBC report a crazed nut --with a gun pointed it at Mick Jagger and was stabbed multiple times by the Hells Angels acting as security guards. But no one could properly kill the rebellious spirit of the sixties and many kept it going well into the 21st century. It was the golden age of rock and what was remarkable about it was how quickly great artists like the Beatles, The Who, Crosby Stills and Nash, Neil Young, David Bowie went from singing mindless fun hit music of the type that MoTown produced in the early sixties to major songs that reflected the times in all their angst driven revolt. Their leader was of course Dylan who managed to turn the pop song (or in his case the folk song) into both a commercial and a socially relevant work of art. The two key songs to do this were Like a Rolling Stone that mesmerized artists with its poetically controlled anger at how privileged mindless person can because of their shallowness be left penniless on the street. Like a Rolling Stone opened up one door to authentic expression of anger at the hollowness of people and the culture that had formed them leading to other great songs of the era—Sounds of Silence by Simon & Garfunkel, My Generation, by the Who, Strawberry Fields by the Beatles, Blowin in the Wind inspired soul singer Sam Cooke to not only cover the song 1963, but inspired his amazing lyric in 1964, A Change is Going to Come which saw hope rather than despair that the injustices the singer witnessed as a black man would be corrected in good time. But when the “change” that Sam Cooke believed was going to come in 1964 did not materialize the later half of the sixties were full of great yelps of anger at a system that could for example allow for the murder of four unarmed Kent State students. Ohio, by Crosby Stills Nash and Young still cuts it —still makes the raw anger available as Young puts you in the scene and gives you a glimpse as to how paranoia turned to violence that tragic day. Really radical songs started emerging with the punk era that carried even more edge—songs like Anarchy in the UK by the Sex Pistols and the anti war protests of groups like the Dead Kennedys but none of these bands could unify the world in the same way as the earlier groups. Part of the story was the death of the album killed by streaming services and part of it can be explained by the fracturing of tastes as the baby boom crowd switched out their sandals and beads for suits and ties and a mortgaged home in suburbia.
The recent lauding of Joni Mitchell and Tracy Chapman at the Grammys and the ever present popularity of the Beatles (most recently in the release of the AI assisted Now and Then make clear that its not just boomers who care. Bob Dylan and Springsteen still tour endlessly as do the Rolling Stones. There is a fear that if anyone of these icons stopped putting out records, memoirs or previously abandoned back catalog material that we would have to finally face up to the fact the era when pop singers could also be cultural leaders was finally over.. What will ever replace a Bob Dylan stinging condemnation in his classic Masters of War of not just the Viet Nam disaster but all the mindless other wars that the US has entered during his lifetime. Written at the height of Viet Nam he still found its message relevant when singing it at the 1991 Grammy awards in a nodding reference to the Iraq catastrophe, performing the song once more for the Hiroshima concert in Japan in 1994. Springsteen Dylan’s “brother from another mother” hit the big time with his 1984 Born in the USA hit full of righteous anger at the betrayal of the American dream for so many American working class youth sent off to kill or be killed in Vietnam. Springsteen keeps the song fresh and at each concert and objects to the way Trump willfully misinterpreted it as a patriotic ballad.
Bruce’s anger at social injustice although muted now remains a valuable but flickering reminder of our era’s illusions — that love and peace are the universal values that will overcome their opposite and that solidarity between races and workers will lead to a more democratic and egalitarian society. Without doubt we are arriving at the end of that era but what will replace it? Likely candidates include mindless nationalism, crazy individualism (rockets to the moon and settlements on Mars), climate and reality denial and infotainment on demand.
Do I sound pessimistic about our future? Yes for now. But we need to remember the people who believed the most strongly in the illusion of something more meaningful came from places in the world we never expected—the back streets of Memphis, Liverpool, the Iron Range in Minnesota and Long Reach New Jersey. They came into the world without any special privileges except their talent and passion for communicating their vision. They overcame a culture that was even more locked into conformity and group than our own. In other words its not too late for the next cultural leaders we need to emerge'. Meanwhile Bob, Bruce, Joni and Tracy, Paul and Ringo—keep on rocking.
Engaging and nicely written piece