Keith Richards, in his memoir, Life, said the following about the fortieth anniversary edition of the Stones’ 1971 release, Exile on Main St.:
“[Exile on Main St.] was recorded in 1971, nearly forty years ago as I write. If I had been listening to music that was forty years old in 1971, I would have been listening to stuff that was barely recordable. Maybe some early Louis Armstrong, Jelly Roll Morton.”
Richards is overstating his case—Armstrong’s seminal Hot Five and Hot Seven recordings from the late 1920’s are a far cry from “barely recordable.” That goes for Jelly Roll Morton’s output (and a lot of other music from that era), too. But he has a point. You didn’t see big commemorative re-releases at the time of Exile’s release like you do today.
It’s not just the Stones or other Boomer-approved music getting the commemorative celebratory treatment either (like the massive fiftieth anniversary release of the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s slated for June 1). U2 re-released The Joshua Tree—a generation-defining album for many Generation X-ers—for its twentieth anniversary and hit the road to commemorate its thirtieth. Metallica re-released their Megaforce-era catalog last year (and it’s probably more influential now than it was at the time). I mean, heck, think how many millennials lost their shit when Nirvana’s Nevermind turned 25.
What happened?
Maybe music from the second half of the twentieth century is better than music from the first? Maybe people are more nostalgic nowadays than their parents and grandparents were?
I doubt it. First off, musical taste is subjective. Everyone thinks their generation’s music is the greatest. What’s more, no one has a monopoly on nostalgia. Cheesy sentimentality is a hallmark of American culture.
But the answer is probably deeper. Daryl Hall (Hall and Oates) told Rolling Stone when he was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, “We’re part of an important time in history. The late twentieth century had just enough communication abilities to allow superstar-ness and communality to happen. It was a musical renaissance that rivals the visual one that happened in the 1400s. It’ll never happen again, at least not in any way I could conceive of it.”
In other words, because technology was so much better in the later twentieth century, music was elevated to an iconic status unheard of before.
But is iconic music a new thing? That seems to be the case when comparing music from the 1970s to say, music from the 1930s. That isn’t so when comparing it to music from, say, the 1870s. Our relationship to music from the nineteenth century and even earlier isn’t much different to how we revere the pop icons from the 1960s and ‘70s. It seems more likely that our relationship to the early twentieth century is more of an aberration than an indicator of the way things always were.
Look at the classical masters—people like Bach, Beethoven, or anyone featured in A Clockwork Orange—they were popular in their lifetimes, they stayed relevant throughout the twentieth century, and their music is still relevant today. True, classical music sales are down and concert attendance—excluding the big festivals like Tanglewood, Ravinia, and others—is weak. But that doesn’t discount its relevance or appeal. Just look at YouTube—that great arbiter of cultural relevance—Beethoven’s 9th Symphony has 75 million views. Bach’s ‘greatest hits’ has 28 million. Someone is listening. Last year Deutsche Grammophon/Decca released a 200 CD box set to commemorate the 225th anniversary of Mozart’s death—that’s a bigger deal than Exile’s fortieth anniversary rebranding.
So what about Jelly Roll Morton and Louis Armstrong—or for that matter Duke Ellington or Frank Sinatra or Count Basie or any of those pre-1950 hipsters—why no love for them?
The big difference, I think, is the music itself. Music changed and because it did, technology needed to catch up. Until it caught up, popular music’s legacy took a beating.
Classical music was about the composer. If the composer was able to put his thoughts on paper—and the musicians were able to play it—you experienced the music as intended. Other musicians in other times, even generations later, were able to bring you that same experience as well. That deeper musical message—the conversation between you, the music, and the composer—not only remained intact, but remained viable, relevant, and alive.
You can’t say that about jazz, the blues, and what eventually became rock and its derivatives. For starters, those forms rely heavily on improvisation in almost every aspect of their actualization. Improvisation is intrinsic to things like solos, backing figures, and how the singer phrases a line. Those forms are also dependent on a living, oral history. Things like feel, or groove, cannot be notated. You have to hear them—really, you have to be immersed in them—to know how to play them. Funk grooves, reggae feels, and shuffles are great examples of simple feels that are impossible to play—or explain—to the uninitiated. (The big joke in jazz circles is getting classical musicians to play jazz eighths. If you’re not familiar with the feel you sound like Humpty Dumpty. It’s really funny. Well, it is to jazz nerds.) In these forms, composition, or songwriting, is important, but the artists’s specific way of doing it is even more important. As a listener, you want to hear that artist play that song that way. It’s the sound of that particular voice, or that particular nuance that you want to listen to. The composer, or songwriter, is still important, but is secondary to the performance—and ultimately, to a specific performance.
Classical music didn’t need technology. Pen and paper were enough to convey its message and guarantee its immortality. But performance-centric music doesn’t work that way, its immortality is bound to a particular performance. You need technologies that didn’t exist in the first half of the twentieth century to capture that.
The music of the 1920s and 30s was no less vital or culturally relevant than that which preceded it or followed it, but, unfortunately, if you weren’t there to hear it, you missed it. Louis Armstrong’s Hot Five and Hot Seven recordings are amazing—and hint at an incredible live act—but they’re also lo-fi. Lo-fi isn’t bad (or “barely recordable,” Keith) but it’s not the same listening experience as say, listening to Sgt. Pepper’s. It takes more effort. You have to really listen. And not to overstate the point, but it takes a commitment to hear its message. Forty years on (or now, 80 years on), if you aren’t an academic or early-jazz aficionado, you probably aren’t interested in making that type of investment.
That’s not true once technology got up to speed. By the time the ‘60s came rolling around, it was not only possible to capture performances in high fidelity, but to make them sound better—better than they actually were—and to do things that were impossible to do in real life. You had all sorts of crazy high tech gizmos like multi-track machines, mixing consoles, compressors, delays, reverbs, two-inch tape, and fancy microphones at your disposal. A singer could double his vocal part, or harmonize with himself, or record one line at a time and never run out of breath. You could add orchestras, or record a track backwards, or speed it up, or cobble together the best parts of different performances. You could edit out mistakes or retune a voice. You could quantize different sections and sync them together perfectly. And those things only got better and easier to do as time went on.
Similar to the classical masters, who composed—on paper—perfect representations of their music, as they heard it. From about the 1960’s onward, modern performers create—with the help of the studio—perfect representations of a specific performance of their music, as they hear it.
Because of that, those recordings are documents, perfect performances that stand on par with the written compositions of yesteryear. They can be heard on their own terms, as intended, and communicate their inner magic with clarity and without ambiguity. They’re vital, relevant, and not only of interest as historical documents. New audiences relate to them, too, and it isn’t a surprise that their fortieth and fiftieth anniversary celebrations are a big deal. You saw lots of young faces at last year’s Desert Trip. Brooklyn is crawling with un-ironic 20-somethings in ‘70s-era concert Ts. Michael Jackson’s Off The Wall is still exciting. It also isn’t a surprise when the local philharmonic or chamber society throws a 200th or 300th anniversary celebration to commemorate some life event from the life of Mozart, Bach, Brahms, or whoever. Music is music. When great music is easy for the listener to grasp, its message is timeless.
So Keith Richards had a point, but Daryl Hall was probably more perceptive. Technology made a musical renaissance possible and that had a major cultural impact, elevating improvisatory art to the level of the classical masters.
What’s that mean?
My guess is as good as yours, but my prediction is that in 50 years, when, for example, Sgt. Pepper’s turns 100, the hype machine will kick back into high gear. Sure, everyone involved in the original recording will be dead, and sure, maybe the branded psychedelic t-shirts and tote bags won’t seem like such a great idea. But the music will be remastered for whatever new format is in vogue and it will be sold, and earn big bucks, and someone will attempt to recreate it live and take it on tour, and PBS—if it still exists—will run specials about its cultural significance and legacy, and some hip new pop star will wax nostalgic about his great grandparents’ love of the Beatles and how he found their old vinyl and original posters in a trunk in the attic. It has to be that way because the Beatles made great music and had the tools to capture that music. Great music is timeless. Great music is meaningful.
And great music will always be relevant.