A new BBC4 series attempts to find America's ultimate rock band. But Neil McCormick does not agree with its conclusion .
Who is the greatest American rock band of all time? I suspect the answer might depend from which side of the Atlantic you view the question.
From a British perspective, it wouldn?t necessarily be America?s biggest sellers, many of whom don?t really have much purchase beyond their national borders, from the plush Seventies soft rock of Boston, Chicago, Kansas and Journey to the flashy Eighties hair metal of Motley Crue and perennial jam rock of The Grateful Dead. Even many of the most internationally successful American rock bands are critically scorned in the UK, with superficial, showband aspects that see them dismissed as jumped up pop acts, from glam rockers such as Kiss and Alice Cooper to the overblown pomp of Meat Loaf, Bon Jovi and battle scarred survivors Aerosmith.
Starting tomorrow on BBC4, a new documentary series, Born To Be Wild, offers an intriguing list of possible candidates for the title, with three episodes tracing how rock changed with the political temperature of the times. Subtitled The Golden Age of American Rock, the series proposes a compelling narrative that covers the origins of modern rock in the revolutionary, anti-establishment peace and love movement of the late Sixties, its gradual transformation into a decadent, overblown, conformist, multi-million selling corporate business in the Seventies and its reformatting under the influence of MTV into the flashy, pseudo-rebellious, pantomime rock of the Eighties.
Although the series concludes with the gritty disenchantment of early Nineties grunge, its final episode proposes Guns N? Roses as ?the ultimate American band?. Over shots of a scrawny Axl Rose gyrating with leonine threat to the metal groove of a band almost completely obscured by massive manes of shaggy hair, a voice over explains that ?they had the swagger, theatricality and arrogance of the big Seventies bands like Aerosmith and Alice Cooper but mixed in with the sleaze and energy of punk and British hard rock. They existed in the mainstream alongside pop stars and power ballads but they were completely anti-establishment.?Well it is true, that they sold 28 million copies worldwide of their 1987 debut, Appetite for Destruction (not the 50 million claimed in the programme), and I purchased one myself. But I look at all that flamboyant screeching, widdly guitar and sexist posturing and think is that really the best a country of three hundred million can do?
I?m with Tom Petty, a rather more self-contained rock star, who drily remarks ?that hair band stuff was just the absolute lowest point I?d ever seen rock get to. Kurt Cobain came and mowed them down like wheat before the sickle and you saw what was left of those hair guys trying to get into plaid shirts and look a little less sprayed up because they were done for. And if that can happen to you then you?re doing the wrong thing.?
In terms of the major question, cases might be made on the grounds of record breaking sales and universal popularity for the Eagles and Fleetwood Mac (three fifths of whose classic line up was British). But arguably, amongst global superstar US rockers, only Jimi Hendrix, The Doors, Bruce Springsteen, REM, Metallica and Nirvana have combined the qualities of personal uniqueness, creative boldness and popular and critical acclaim required to be considered the greatest of all time.
Which is not to suggest no one else counts. In the UK, we have long been fascinated by the underbelly of American rock. The list of our favourites runs from the poisonous drones of Lou Reed and The Velvet Underground to the proto punk of Iggy Pop and The Stooges, the MC5, New York Dolls and Patti Smith, the new wave blasts of The Ramones, Television and Talking Heads to the fuzzy post punk charge of Sonic Youth, The Pixies and industrial attack of Nine Inch Nails.
Indeed, you could argue that the real golden era of American rock belonged to the losers, bands that in many ways completely stood against the all-American ideal, the kind of groups whose bloody minded iconoclasm inspired others to pick up guitars and have a go themselves. But the Velvet Underground aren?t even mentioned once in this three-hour analysis of the history of American rock that finds room for Styx, Reo Speedwagon, Poison and Ratt.
The series is fascinating yet ruthlessly narrow minded in excluding artists who don?t fit with its theories. And we?re not just talking about obscure cult bands. There is no space either in Born To Be Wild for REM, Metallica or the Red Hot Chilli Peppers, counter-culture bands with enough widespread popular appeal to suggest alternative versions of this tale of revolution, consolidation, excess and decline.
There is, though, one American star too big for the film makers to ignore, who consistently undermines their tidy narrative: Bruce Springsteen. When the Seventies is deemed to be indulgent and escapist, Springsteen made Born To Run and Darkness On The Edge of Town, bittersweet epics of blue collar life. In the Eighties, whilst idealism was apparently obscured by clouds of hairspray, Springsteen made The River, Nebraska, Born In The USA and Tunnel Of Love.
Springsteen springs from the same rebellious counter-culture that gave birth to American rock in the Sixties. He revels in stars and stripes iconography but focuses on the nation?s failings. As leading US music critic David Fricke notes, even Born In The USA is ?not patriotic, it?s about a broken system.? With a new album, High Hopes, out this next week, Springsteen has spent over four decades as a rock and roll thorn in the side of the American dream and yet he is the fifth biggest selling US ?rock? artist of all time (after Elvis Presley, the Eagles, Billy Joel and Aerosmith).
A charismatic live performer without compare, backed by the phenomenal E Street Band, Springsteen would certainly top my list of the greatest American rock stars. For me, his creative longevity outweighs the claims of Jimi Hendrix, perhaps the most supernaturally gifted rocker all time, and The Doors, who attempted to use rock?s power like a spiritual battering ram to (as their Aldous Huxley influenced name suggests) break through the doors of perception. Hendrix and Doors frontman Jim Morrison were brilliant outsiders, laid low too soon by hedonistic indulgence. Had they lived, they would surely have been appalled by what followed in their wake.
Lamenting the contemporary music scene, Vince Neil of Motley Crue dismissively proclaims ?there?s no rock stars any more?, apparently upset by an absence of big hair and spandex trousers. Tom Petty is more convincing when he says, ?I think the last seismic eruption in rock was the Nirvana period. Right after that, rock slips from the music of the day into the background. Hip hop is in the foreground now. Young people identify with that music and rightfully so.?
Yet if you want to find thrilling American rock, it?s not difficult. Artists such as Jack White (in all his incarnations), the Queens Of The Stone Age, The Foo Fighters, Green Day, The Strokes, The Killers and Kings Of Leon gleefully plunder the best of rock?s past, whilst American-Canadian ensemble Arcade Fire push boldly forward into rock?s future. Compared to much of what has come before, perhaps we should be glad the so called golden age is over.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/rockandpopmusic/10558364/The-greatest-American-rock-band-of-all-time-Surely-not-Guns-N-Roses.html
Author