This afternoon I went to a local bar with my father as I generally do on Saturday afternoons. As we were sipping our beer I couldn't help but notice the music being piped in. Among the titles I heard were,
Come Together: The Beatles (1969)
Who'll Stop the Rain?: Credence Clearwater Revival (1970)
Jumpin' Jack Flash: The Rolling Stones (1968)
Brown Eyed Girl: Van Morrison (1967)
Stairway to Heaven: Led Zepplin (1971)
This music is 45 years old--45 years!--and we are still listening to it. And it is not just us--and by "us" I mean we Baby Boomers, children of the Age of Aquarius. Young people are listening to it as well. I find this subject endlessly fascinating. I have written about it here before. I can personally guarantee that when I was a tween-ager I was not listening to music from the 1920s and 1930s. Oh, there was a brief period during which Scott Joplin' various rags, popularized by the film The Sting, were in the vogue, but that was an aberration. What is it about the music of my generation that has held the fascination of subsequent generations like no other in the 20th century?
I was so filled with curiosity about this mystery that I asked the 27-year-old bartender about it. First, he said that this was the music he listened to when he was growing up because his parents were listening to it. I pointed out that when I was growing up the last thing I wanted to do was listen to the music my parents were listening to. Then the bartender said that young people were attracted to this music, commenting that a lot of kids liked The Beatles. (He amusingly referred to this music as "classical." In my day "classical" meant Mozart and Beethoven. Apparently, now it means memorable popular music from the mid-1960s through the mid-1970s.) I pointed out that this begged the question as to why contemporary kids are attracted to The Beatles in way I never was in my childhood to Glenn Miller or Peggy Lee. Finally, he simply insisted that this music--the music of MY generation, and not his--was simply good, and further that, with a sadly small number of exceptions, the music one hears on the radio today more or less sucks.
I expect to live another 20 years or so, and on my death bed I will be pleased to learn that Applebees is playing The Moody Blues and Janis Joplin.I used to think that the Chuck Berry song Roll Over Beethoven was just a whimsical play on words born from childlike belief in the importance of one's own generation. Now I am not so sure.. . . Roll Over Beethoven and tell Tchaikovsky the news, indeed!
