This is literally music to my ears:
Back in 1959, on the cusp of the Swinging Sixties, I was posted to Germany as part of my National Service and quickly found myself a new niche. In those days, the Forces radio station played an endless diet of Bing Crosby and Peggy Lee — both wonderful singers, but their music was the sort of thing we young servicemen associated with our parents.
We wanted something different, something to call our own — and we’d found it in rock ‘n’ roll.
Powerful and energetic, these new songs had exploded on to the music scene to become the anthems for our changing times…. This was the dawn of two decades which would usher in some of the greatest music ever made and the greatest lyrics ever penned — written and performed by bands and solo artists whose names are now etched in the music hall of fame.
From Elvis and the Beatles to the Rolling Stones and The Who, Bob Dylan and the Kinks, Rod Stewart, Eric Clapton, Elton John, Queen — the music that emerged from that era has more than stood the test of time and is loved by baby boomers and their grandchildren alike.
Yet not, it seems, by the bigwigs at Radio 2.
As the Mail reported yesterday, it appears that they have quietly asked their DJs to ‘scale back’ on playing songs from the Sixties and Seventies in favour of music from the Eighties onwards.
I’m sure I can’t be the only one who is baffled. Yes, the Eighties and Nineties produced some terrific music, but it seems sheer folly to deprive the Radio 2 audience of some of the hits from the decades before — whatever their age.
I’ve hated Boomer music for literally decades. To me, the main difference between classic rock and punk rock is that at least the punk rockers knew they didn’t know how to play their instruments very well. There are ten-year-old girls now who play better guitar than the average classic rock guitarist. And it’s hilarious to see the characteristic complete lack of self-consciousness inherent in the Boomer braggadacio about their lack of interest in their parents’ music combined with their bafflement that their grandchildren have no interest in their music.
The greatest music ever recorded? I think Beethoven and Mozart and Wagner might have a little something to say about that. No one even listens to the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, and the Kinks anymore and they’re still alive. I think… I don’t actually know or care. Generation Z thinks The Who comes from Mongolia.
Just go gently into that endless night, Boomer, to the comforting sounds of Hotel California if you please.