Way too long, but if you feel like reading, grab your favorite caffeinated or intoxicating beverage…
Re: The “DJ vs. guitar players” thing:
First of all, let’s zoom out to the 100-500 year scale. Art reflects life – in all of this, that kind of represents the closest thing to an immutable “truth.” In the Baroque age, craftspeople worked with wood and made ornate tables and violins – so a signature work might be for strings (only), for instance. The piano as we know it really had its evolution during the 1800’s (in Bach’s prime, he was composing for keyboard instruments like harpsichord and organ), then the kickoff of the Industrial Age allowed for the absolute explosion of piano manufacture. Think of Liszt (one of Yngwie’s favorites) as a European touring rock star and Steinway enthusiast (endorser/artist?).
So a piano in the living room with some music books in the bench was a product of the times. In the @Troy era, that piano was in some ways still current (Billy Joel) and in some ways a relic – a musician might study Bach the way an actor might study Shakespeare. You’d recognize the genius, but you have to go pretty deep to get the inside jokes, and it’s never going to feel like something you’re going to show your buddies or play at a party. "Hey, everyone’s over, should we put on HBO Comedy or, I got this DVD of Shakespeare’s “As You Like It…” So it’s appreciated but relegated to what I call the “curio cabinet” of history.
Industrial Age metalworking (I mean, literally, METAL-working) was also…ummm…INSTRUMENTAL in bringing us the saxophone. Next stop: early jazz, big band swing…
So the next stop is the Broadcast Era. Tubes + speakers = amplifiers, art reflects life and does this thing go to “10?”…here we go!
So the flow of genres is a natural thing. Think of it like, a generation walks into a dark room, and someone eventually finds the light switch. Bob Dylan definitely found the light switch (I’m a fan, for what it’s worth). What does his career look like if he arrives with the same sound 20 years earlier OR 20 years later?
Of course, zooming out (again), you get to the Information Age. The instrument of expression becomes…information. I had that realization in the 90’s sometime but shook it off, because I literally could not imagine what it would look like. But the ideas of remixing/sampling, virtual instruments with library after library, and the DJ as being the star of the moment, these are a natural extension of the evolution. I think some of the resonance of rap (notice I said rap and not hip-hop – rap is a vocal style, hip hop is a culture) is due to this trend. Realize that comparing a chunk of the music of the last 15 years to traditional modes of expression, you might run into something analogous to “art with paints and brushes and painters” vs. “art with someone building a collage out of interesting pieces.” The collage isn’t necessarily any less interesting or vibrant, although I do think there is a higher bar to clear to elevate it above the “noise” of lesser works, since we’re talking about (literally) painting with a more limited palette, in a sense.
Let me digress: Without getting too deep into it, DJ’ing is clearly SO different from the instrumental musicianship we know and love. BUT there is a level of greatness in expression that can occur. I’m really tempted to list some of the things I’ve seen as a music fan…being 10 feet behind DJ AM for a set was mind-blowing. Being the one long-haired kid in the jam-packed club up in front of the stage watching Public Enemy with Chuck D rapping to beats coming straight off the vinyl was mind-blowing (“you guys gotta quit jumping on stage – it’s making the records skip”). There’s more, for sure, but you get the idea.
I asked one of the L.A. session guys what it’s all about, and he said, instantly, “inner musicality.” I knew he was right, but the older I get, the more “right” I realize he was.
Here’s one: Dave Pensado has a track record mixing across genres, but really focused on pop, R&B, and some rap. But he came up as an Atlanta guitar player – he has some stories of playing with “names” before hitting his stride behind the console. He’s an insightful guy with a ton of perspective. To cut a long story short, I was privileged to meet him a few times, and one of the things he told me was this (I’ll do my best): Using hard guitar rock and rap/hip hop as examples, he made the point that there are people of world-class ability in both genres who are worthy of exposure and appreciation, but what happens is that while a rock-type genre will be deep with artists we might describe as “minor league but still relevant,” the depth of a rap-type genre, as in how many people/recordings can be truly relevant or legendary, falls off into the mundane more quickly. I’m not only talking about hip-hop here; I think this could just as easily be applied to rap metal or any idiom in which an accepted part of what drives the aesthetic is the idea of creation using a constrained palette.
So that’s important. The issue should NEVER be “this stuff sucks” or whatever. That same bubblegum record that you loved to hate in the Tower Records era was enabling an A&R person to give a struggling band a demo budget. Where it got thorny was that the relative commercial success or failure of a genre or sub-genre turned into a self-reinforcing set of virtuous and vicious cycles, with the end result being that [trendy genre] would “suck the oxygen out of the room” for up-and-comers in [not trendy genre which nevertheless had potential to birth long-term artists]. An artist who doesn’t “look” (I’m talking “image”) or sound like you…are they elbowing you to the side or kicking down the door for YOU to run through? Or is it BOTH, and you don’t realize it?
OK, to get back on point: That’s kind of the model from the end of the Tower Records era. But let’s zoom WAY out to the 500-year scale. That’s pretty huge, but I would argue that instant access to searchable information is as much of a game changer as Gutenburg’s printing press 500 years ago! When Beethoven was doing his thing in Vienna, he was “going indie” (no sponsorship from the nobility, like Mozart had) and trying to get the right PUBLISHING DEAL, literally, while booking shows and trying to pack the house. That model didn’t change, through Liszt and Paganini to Stravinsky to Gershwin to Miles to the Tower Records era.
Unlike you, I really pretty much assumed that rock and metal would be transcended by electronic expression, and that being a fan of '80s rock in the 2020’s would be like putting an “I [heart] Count Basie” bumper sticker on the road case of your JCM 900. Sure, there’s an outlet and the occasional festival, and an audience forever, really, but the genre (swing jazz) was relegated. You’re not going to “jam” it at a party, unless it’s a theme party or something. But put on some Cole Porter, and go song after song after song, and realize, that there’s kind of this unbroken thread there. Like if you went into your time machine and were all of a sudden hanging with 40 people in a mixed, younger crowd, possibly with some booze on tap, what decade is it, and what’s in the background, and how cool is it that everyone can sing along? How do you top a song like “Embraceable You,” anyway?
So I really think that metal, given how transient it may potentially have been, has aged rather well. The stadium-filling artist is, unfortunately, a relic also, in this world of narrowcasting. But I’d say that it’s important to not use that as a barometer. Without an MTV-style place for “common ground” between genres, you just get a razor-thin level of marquee artists (Ed Sheeran, Bruno, Adele, Cardi B) and everyone else. Comparing ANYONE’s career arc these days to their career arc is like comparing a regional upmarket restaurant chain to an omnipresent fast food chain (ONLY talking about commercial considerations and not artistic evaluation here). You are talking about two entirely different industries and business models, even though they both sell food. So I think it’s a trap to talk about “the industry” and narrow down evaluations to that level. It’s certainly been frustrating to see hard rock and metal lose a share of the crossover world while country stars are routinely on the cover of the grocery store tabloids (no, seriously, when Tommy Lee and Heather Locklear were an item at that level and the Crue was signing the biggest deal ever, if you gave me the Blake Shelton/Miranda Lambert/Luke Bryan blueprint and said THAT’S where it’s headed in 30 years…) but really, you have to decide how much the crossover world and the casual fan drives what you do, or where you’re at, or how much you are committed to capturing a minuscule fragment of the collective mindshare of people who turn you on BECAUSE they want sonic wallpaper in the background. By the way, I am not slagging country in the slightest: I think, if anything, a lot of country and Nashville rock really carried the torch to the next generation in terms of keeping guitar-oriented music out of the “curio cabinet” I referred to above.
But as far as crossover audience, remember that a monolithic crossover audience doesn’t exist for ANYTHING these days, short of maybe a $100m tentpole comic book action movie, and music as a format is not playing in that game.
Pandemics aside, metal audiences fill auditoriums and clubs and festival grounds 40+ years after Black Sabbath. This is in contrast to the pop/hard rock style (think spandex and Aqua-Net), which really hit across the board at the time and kind of dominated everything. A wise man once said, if you have a dedicated audience of 5,000 people TOTAL, spread between all the cities you play, who will spend $20 on you once a year, you are making six figures as an artist. Video game culture has been kind to metal and has kind of served as a “gateway drug,” with a lot of the newer generation taking ownership or taking the deep dive to build on the sound and push the boundaries on their own, and I personally think it’s a fitting marriage.
So, when we return to normalcy and you see that line around the block of diverse kids with jet black hair, with chugging low-tuned guitars and speedy double-kick drums coming out of stereos in the parking lot, do NOT take that for granted. Metal has a generational lease on staying current and having a dedicated audience that loves THEIR young artists on THEIR terms while respecting where the sound came from, an audience that will scrape up their lunch money and pack a big brother or sister’s car to drive to the city (again, when the time comes) and wait in line to be in the room witnessing THEIR bands, with like minded people their age and a few of us elder statesmen/women hanging in the back nodding our heads in approval.
And don’t get me started about the mindshare metal holds on the internet, both on its own terms and as a soundtrack to all kinds of things.
How many genres have a run like THAT – half a century and going strong?
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The next chapter at some point will be “why can’t the 2000’s have a healthy intersection of art and commerce which gives us a Pink Floyd DSOTM or Led Zeppelin IV or Fleetwood Mac Rumours-type smash that definitively pushes boundaries while hitting on all levels AND crossing over, establishing a small but vital class of musicians as societal philosophers or generational thinkers and representatives outside of music or even art, like Marley or Hendrix?” OK, that is a different conversation…
He fastly became my favourite guitar player, not because of his speed, but the overall control over the instrument, the bends, the vibrato, the amazing solo ideas. His stuff from 1981 to 1995 is to me what a lead guitar player should aim for.
We went together in a 15day school trip in France and she introduced me to that album. It was like Yngwie on steroids with screams, super heavy guitars and scary concepts. 10 years later we still talk from time to time and she still likes that album. What a great way to learn about Alexi Laiho! Too bad he wrecked his arm and started all that self destructing behavior, he was a fantastic player and composer.
