Hey, quick question: who was the first Rock artiste you remember liking who was your age or younger? It occurred to me the other day that kids who cut their baby Rock teeth in the ’70s might have had an unusually high proportion of favorite artists who were much older than they were — as compared to, say, those who were in their teens in the mid- to late-’60s. If you were a 17-year-old Stones fan in 1966, for example, Mick Jagger would have been just 6 years older than you. For me, being a 17-year-old Stones fan in 1981 made me 21 years younger than Sir Mick. By the time I got to college, and became a huge Jam fan, Paul Weller was 6 years older than me. Same for d boon. I suspect I turned this corner by the time I was 25 or so. But who would my artist contemporary have been? I’m having a hard time figuring this out. Nowadays, of course, they’re all much younger and stupider than me.
I look forward to your responses.
HVB
Hasn’t this always been the case prior to reaching the age of 25 or so? Even most of the earliest rock ‘n rollers were young adults by the time they were the new leaders of the youth movement. Chuck Berry, like Bill Haley, was already past 25.
I liked bands in the ’80s. The first wave of underground bands I liked, bands such as Big Dipper and the Meat Puppets, were around my age, give or take a couple of years. It would have been early ’90s artists I liked that were first significantly younger than me: Blur, Beck, Apples in Stereo, Teenage Fanclub (although one guy is only 2 years younger than me)… That didn’t seem so strange.
Today, I probably would have trouble fully embracing an artist in his or her early 20s. There must be some new artists I like, but they usually do sound like “kids” when I really listen to what they’re doing. Not that that’s a bad thing, but shit, I’m old.
I dunno, Mod. When you were 17, how old were the bands you liked the most? I’m willing to bet (assuming you were slavishly devoted to the kind of music that would eventually go on to be known as “classic rock”) your musical heroes were in their 30s. The generation that preceded us didn’t have that age gap. I bet the Meat Puppet dudes were six or seven years older than you, so you were closing the gap — but there was still a gap.
Maybe my point is that the rock appreciating generation that preceded us didn’t have such an age gap between them and their favorite artists. And don’t try to hide behind the “but Chuck Berry was 20 years older than Mick Jagger” thing. Chuck Berry was washed up in 1965, relative to the acts that stole his shit. The kidz didn’t care the way you and I cared about the Who in the late 70s.
HVB, there were simply more older artists who’d accumulated since rock ‘n roll was launched in the mid-’50s, so of course I would have grown up loving more musicians already in their 30s and 40s than someone who grew up only a decade after rock’s birth.
The Meat Puppets dudes are 3 and 4 years older than me. I looked it up already. I looked up the ages of the people from the early ’90s, too. I answered your question.
Again, I think you need to consider the fact that one of the reasons the rock appreciating generation that preceded us didn’t have such an age gap is because such an age gap hadn’t had time to develop. The Who was washed up in the late ’70s, as much as Chuck Berry was in 1965. I don’t get your point re: efforts to “hide.”
I have answered your questions and then some. I demand that you consider the merits of my answers and retract your retort!
Mod said: “The Who was washed up in the late ’70s, as much as Chuck Berry was in 1965.”
I say: categorically UNTRUE! … I think. (Where’s Links Linkerson when you need him, to quote chapter and verse about sales numbers?) I’d be willing to bet that the Who (or Stones, or Wings, or the Dead, or James Brown, or…) made far more in the late 70s than Chuck Berry did in the mid-60s. Hell, he might have even been in jail then. (Not that that’s relevant to this argument.)
I demand you retract your demand for me to retract my excellent challenge to your faulty logic!
HVB
I was usually late to the party with newer bands, and I’ve always been sort of oblivious about age (maybe willfully so because growing up I was always by far the youngest in my class) so this issue wasn’t on my radar. At some point, probably in my late 30’s, it started to hit me: wait, that guy in Buffalo Tom was younger than me?
Mariah and Queen Latifa were born the same year I was. Snoop, Tupac, Ricky Martin are one year younger than I am, Billy Joe Armstrong and Eminem are over 40. They are the “old” people that they pepper the award shows with.
The ONLY band I am into that are younger than I am are THE KILLERS (Is Jack White older than me?, then there are two)
In 1965, Chuck Berry was out of jail & actually had a couple of hits that equalled his prior work, “No Paticular Place To Go” & “Promised Land”, the latter covered by Elvis.
In my case I think that the 1st group w/people around my own age that I liked has got to be the Undertones. They looked like they could have been in the same high school as me, especially considering that I live in the Boston area.
Sounds like someone’s forgetting about “My Ding A Ling”
Elvis Costello is about six months younger than I am, so he’s the one I think of as my contemporary. I remember thinking that Bob Mould and I were contemporaries, but then I looked up his birth date and was shocked to discover he was about seven years younger than me. The difference was that he was only 19 when he started Husker Du. Prince is about five years younger than me, and after I discovered that I just assumed that I was older than the artists I was listening to.
I’m not talking about money, man, but artistic value. I beg of you to retract Kenny Jones’ stint in the band from my memory!
Yes, the Undertones were the closest in age to us born while JFK was President of punk bands we might have gotten into in 1978-79. I think they were born in the late ’50s.
Let the record reflect that Chuck Berry was released from jail on October 18, 1963; my inaugural birthday and his 36th.
I remember a point when the possibility of a band I liked being my age or even a little younger became more likely. I think it was when I was listening to Rilo Kiley around 2003. But, by and large, I don’t think I notice this much. I do think it’s a lot more possible for people in their early 40s and older to do good and great work these days then it was in the days when Double Fantasy was considered a landmark in mature rock and roll. So i’m still likely to have favorite artists, like Neko Case, who are still a little older than me. But then there are newer bands I like — Date Palms and William Tyler — I have no idea how old they are.
I got more rattled when I realized that most baseball players and many famous actors are younger than me now. Even “older” guys in the majors these days — Roy Halladay and Cliff Lee are both a few months younger than me, and that is kinda terrifying.
When I saw the Replacements in college Tommy Stinson was 16, so I felt old early in life.
Wait until your generation’s Jamie Moyer is finally forced to retire. That hit me like a ton of bricks!
I’m a teacher, so naturally I hate young people.
Funoka beat me to it. Mine would be Tommy Stinson. Five months younger than me, but a million times more rock star.
I’d have to say The Runaways. They were all older than me, but just by three or four years. The Buzzcocks were only six or seven years older than me. Tony DeFranco was only a year or two older than me, but I thought The DeFranco family sucked, and my brother played their hit record ten times a day.
I’m only thirteen, so I don’t have any of these.