TÜNE

Jimi
Rock n’ Hendrix
Roll: How a fleeting musician
impacted the music
Is it world forever

really New
dead? Age
The “intense domination” Rock
of pop & rap music in the Modern
industry imitations of
revolutionary
music
Dead or Alive?
A revolutionary type of music birthed in the 60’s was finally put to
rest somewhere in the 90’s, but why? Here’s some insight on that topic.

R ock and roll music is dead.

That has been the persistent
sentiment at certain periods and
this world. And honestly? It’s a
good thing.
It was a mishmash of all of these
musical genres and it further
economized the concept of a band.
from even those who live by it, Sure, there were quartets and other,
like Gene Simmons (“Rock is The Slow (and Constant) small-sized bands playing, but
finally dead.“) and Trent Reznor Death of Rock and Roll it was only after the mainstream
(“I think rock bands are generally explosion of rock did a band
out of fashion . . .”). But the genre
The death of rock and roll didn’t
that has compelled kids to disobey
happen overnight, or over the
the parents, question any form of
period of a few months or years.
authority and find profound joy in
In fact, look up the term “rock
the trashing or burning of a guitar,
and roll is dead” on Google, and
has been on a steady decline in
you’re going to see think pieces
terms of sales and listenership
and opinion articles from the 2000s
since the late-2000s. And it hasn’t
and even some digitized newspaper
really seen any resurgence over the
articles from the mid-90s.
past decade or so.
Hell, I bet you a brand new
Which isn’t to say there aren’t any
Stratocaster that you’re going to
fans.
find a “rock and roll is dead” article
somewhere in every single decade
Of course, the old guards of rock
that rock has existed since Chuck
and roll are still here, with their
Berry first blew everyone away by
waist-length hair and flying V
playing two-note lead line of jump
guitars. We still celebrate how
blues on his electric guitar.
Woodstock changed the world.
Skate punks are always going to
Much like any artistic movement,
listen to NOFX and Pennywise
rock and roll was born as a
while kick-flipping across a
response to the movement before
parking lot. And the emo kids are
it: rhythm and blues. In this regard,
still going to tear up every time
rock music can be seen as an
they hear the G note.
evolution of its predecessor: rock
borrowed –and was/is heavily
But rock and roll is dead. It’s
influenced by – blues licks, jazz
dead, it’s been buried, there are no
lines, even traditional Christian
memorials to it, but it is gone from
Gospel vocal styling.
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consist of a drummer, a bassist, a
rhythm guitar, a lead guitar, and a
vocalist (who may or may not be
playing one of those instruments
already).
But as pioneers like good ol’
Chuck Berry, Roy Brown, and
Sister Rosetta Tharpe (to name a
few) were perfecting the rock and
roll sound, it was already being
opposed. Early music critics were
confounded by the style’s fast-
paced and frenetic rhythm, and
mainstream radio stations didn’t
like the sexual undertones of the
term “rock and roll” (it used to be a
euphemism for sex, derived from
the rocking and rolling of a ship).
It also didn’t help that most of
the pioneers of rock and roll were
black; conservative America, who
was then-predominantly white
and lovin’ it – Jim Crow Laws
didn’t really end until 1965, a full
decade and some change after
the first rock and roll records. It
wasn’t until white people started
doing it, namely Bill Haley and
Elvis Presley, did rock and roll
achieve mainstream attention and
appreciation.
And even then, rock music was
still seen as an edgy, dangerous
soundtrack to an equally edgy
and dangerous lifestyle. Although
there were some safe-for-radio and
safe-for-white-people rock music
that they’d swing to in mom and
pop’s soda fountain, most of rock
music – at least, the good, top-
shelf shit, to be honest – was still
underground, something you could
only find in African-American
clubs and bootleg joints.
When the ’60s and ’70s rolled
around, it was associated with the
hippie movement, thanks to big
names like Bob Dylan, Crosby
Stills Nash and Young, Buffalo
Springfield, and, of course, The
Beatles (post-“White” Album).
Perhaps the more insidious reason
behind the idea that rock is dead
comes from Dylan. In a rare
interview with former Rolling
Stone editor Robert Love, Dylan
casually drops a realistic analysis to
the question “is rock dead”: racial
integration. It wasn’t just that rock
represented a “dangerous lifestyle”
to the buttoned-up suburbia of
white America. The rise of rock
music threatened to galvanize the
Civil Rights Movement in the
’60s. And the fix was commercial
segragation by the establishment;
soul was “black” and British
invasion was “white.”
You can thank the corruption of the
payola scandal that brought rock
and roll down; Dylan adds that
there had to be “some elitist power
that had to get rid of all these
guys,” referring to Chuck Berry
and Little Richard as these guys,
among others.
Good rock music, both then and
now, is fast, loud and had heartfelt,
artistically styled lyrics, which
made it the perfect accompaniment
to the counter-culture.
Even as disco, new wave and the
modernization of pop music, in
general, invaded the airwaves,
rock music constantly loomed in
the shadows. An underappreciated
outcast in a band tee scoffing at
how real musicians don’t need a
synthesizer to sound good.
It wasn’t a small movement by any
means: by the mid-’80s, rock music
was a firmly established genre with
millions of fans both in the country
and around the world. But it wasn’t
until the early-and-mid ’90s did
rock music stopped being the weird
kid in the back of the class into the
most popular guy in school.
5

“I’m Not Out of Touch, It’s
the Kids Who are Wrong!”
Even before the age of the portable
CD player, rock music was already
popular, particularly with the
youth as a subculture of anti-
establishment and being angsty
toward your parents. However, it
wasn’t until the birth of Grunge,
when bands like Nirvana,
Smashing Pumpkins, and of
course, Pearl Jam, that rock music
turned from a niche market into
mainstream success that appealed
to almost every demographic –
beyond the flannel-shirt wearing
population.
Punk also saw its mainstream debut
around this time, despite being
around since at least the mid-’70s.
Of all the genres of rock, punk was
the most averse to the spotlight,
its very existence predicated on
shunning the mainstream. But
go mainstream it did, pop-punk
became a blessing to the youth
culture: here was this sound that
was just angsty enough to get kids
to listen to it, but safe enough that
their parents won’t mind. Neat!
There were plenty of things
that pushed rock music into the
forefront of pop culture, not the
least of which is the ’90s being the
zenith of American consumerism.
Sure, the ’40s and the early ’70s
were considered as the golden age
of Capitalism, but it was in the ’90s
when they turned that shit into a
science.
6
This was the decade when case for digital music and rock,
corporations focused on the youth: with the former becoming a hostile
sure, they were a demographic on environment for that grungy kid
the radar, but it wasn’t until the that once had his 15 minutes of
’90s when corporations realized fame.
just how much money kids can
bring in. Soon enough, radio Arguably, one of the hallmarks
and TV ads were inundated with of rock music is the “dirtiness”
images of everything youth culture: of its sound: imperfections in the
neon graffiti, caps worn to the side, recording quality that gave rock
and of course, metal guitar licks. music grit and soul, and what made
it so popular in live performances.
Think back to every Kool-Aid Digital production, on the other
and Nerf gun commercials of hand, is all about perfection: clean
your youth, and you’ll hear those beats and notes, with that dirty
generic metal riffs that boomer quality being added artificially to
corporation heads added in for the mimic the raw audio of days-gone-
young ones to enjoy. by.
It was also in the ’90s when the
original rock pioneers started
dying off, and the time when rock
musicians themselves started
calling rock and roll a dead genre.
They certainly weren’t the first
and they wouldn’t be the last.
It was an important time in the
critique of rock music that insiders
turned a critical eye toward the
commercialization of their counter-
culture and heard the death dirge in
every TV commercial’s guitar riff.
Video Killed the Radio
Star, Digital Production
Killed Rock
First uttered by the Buggles in
1978, echoed more famously by
The Presidents of the United States
in 1997. Video didn’t exactly kill
the radio star, it just provided
another platform for the artist to
grow in. Sadly, this wasn’t the
In my opinion, rock music’s last,
real revolution was the mid-2000s,
when pop-punk and emo music
surged forward as rock and roll’s
last breath before retreating into
the shadows. A final attempt at
relevance which, to its credit, it
was able to achieve for a brief
period. But then the digital age
went into full swing, and by the
early 2010s, rock music gradually
retreated into the dark.

But is Rock and Roll

Actually Dead?
I, for one, don’t think so.

Sure, it’s kind of annoying to see

Imagine Dragons topping the rock
charts when A7X or Foo Fighters
is still raging against the dying of
the light. But does it mean that new
innovations or new sounds won’t
ever come from the hallowed halls
of rock music? Of course not.

Someone, somewhere, at some

point in time, will pick up his dad
or granddad’s old telecaster and
figure out a new way to transform
their feelings into face-melting riffs
that would mesmerize. And when
that happens, we’ll be ready.

7
8
JI
MI 9
Hendrix:
Life, Death
When thinking about music artists and the legacy that they have left on the
overall industry, there will be many that will immediately spring to mind.
However, on many of the lists that
may be made, Jimi Hendrix’s name
will be one of the most popular,
as the American guitarist is
considered an icon and a trailblazer
within music.
It would be wrong, though, to
suggest that it was only music
in which Hendrix had an impact
on, as his name carries plenty of
weight in a number of different
ways. For example, the rockstar
was a hugely popular figure
outside of the music industry, with
a number of companies having
used his name as a way of selling
merchandise, whilst there have
been online slots developers that
have also taken inspiration from
what he achieved and have used his
name as titles for their games, such
as NetEnt’s Jimi Hendrix slot that
can be found at online casinos.
However, there is no denying the
fact that it was his musical ability
and his guitar-playing skills that
caught the imagination of many,
which is impressive considering
the artist was self-taught and still
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managed to have expert precision
and speed, whilst also being able to
sing, dance and play all at the same
time.
Jimi Hendrix changed
rock music
It could be argued that one of Jimi
Hendrix’s biggest influences on
the way music has been through
history is that he changed the
whole look that the music category
previously had, thus making
significant improvements to the
genre.
For instance, the Seattle-born artist
is credited as being the man to
have changed and improved the
way in which the guitar is played,
therefore completely shaking up
the original picture that many
would have associated with rock at
the time.
Another way in which he is
credited with bringing change and
influencing how rock music started
to be portrayed was by playing
the lead whilst also singing the
song at the same time. At the point
when he was performing, it was
traditional that a rock band would
consist of at least two people, with
one focused on playing the guitar
and the other focused on the vocals.
Hendrix changed this and by doing
so, he arguably changed rock for
the better as a number of other
musicians saw what he was doing
and decided that they would try
and replicate it, thus changing the
overall image rock music had.
Jimi Hendrix’s
performances were
unique
One word that could be used to
expertly describe Jimi Hendrix is
‘unique’. The rocker did so much
differently to what everyone else in
rock music was doing at the same
time as him, that there was simply
no individual like him.
One of the major differences that
made him incredibly unique was
in the way in which he played his
guitar and the style that was used.
He arguably brought the electric
guitar to the forefront of the genre,
as he would continually use it to
make the loud and sharp sounds
that he was able to produce whilst
playing the instrument.
He also decided that he would
not follow the traditional basics
of guitar playing, such as using
specific chords like the C Major
Chord that many guitarists before
him had been using. Instead,
Hendrix decided to use others to
make himself different, whilst
also using a wah-wah pedal on
a continuous basis; something
others did not do, thus making him
unique.
Guitar playing made him
change everything
However, the most unique thing
about the rocker would have to
be the way he actually played the
guitar. A left-handed player, he
would play with a right-handed
guitar. This meant that the strings
would be upside down to him,
however he found a way to be
innovative and make things work
for him. He would remove the
strings that had been originally
placed on the guitar, as well as the
guide, before restringing them in a
way that nobody had seen before.
Indeed, this also gave him the
famous ability of being able to play
the guitar with his teeth whilst it
was behind his back.
This is the true majesty of Hendrix,
the wide-reaching impact he
had. He pushed contemporary
psychedelia to another level but
also contributed to the development
of hard rock, heavy metal, funk,
post-punk, grunge and hip-hop.
When you let that sink in, it is
nothing short of remarkable.
Hendrix has respect from nearly
every corner of the musical world,
and apart from The Beatles, he is
the only person to claim such a
feat. Even his contemporary, ‘The
Voice of a Generation’, Bob Dylan,
was blown away by Hendrix’s
classic take on his 1967 song ‘All
Along the Watchtower’.
You may be mistaken in thinking
that Jimi Hendrix was just a
master of all things hard-rocking.
He also donned the acoustic at
points, and using the electric, he
gave us some of rock’s best toned
down moments such as ‘Little
Wing’, ‘The Wind Cries Mary’
and ‘Axis: Bold as Love’. He also
brilliantly carried his records into
the live setting. The 1967 Monterey
Pop Festival and Woodstock ’69
appearances are just two of his
most iconic performances that are
etched forever into pop culture
history. Need we mention the guitar
burning at the former?
Aptly called ‘Mr. Phenomenon’
by the Record Mirror, Hendrix
was just that. His contributions
to music have been critical, and
when you compare his influence to
the Beatles’, and remind yourself
that he was one man, and that
they were four, it is also a stark
reminder of his genius. In terms
of his pioneering effects, John
Frusciante of the Red Hot Chili
Peppers claimed that Hendrix was
the progenitor of groundbreaking
electronic acts such as Aphex
Twin and Squarepusher and stated
that “they continue the work Jimi
Hendrix started, but not on the
guitar.”
Where better to conclude than with
a quote from the late Kevin Ayers?
He remembered the first time he
witnessed Hendrix perform in
London, November 1967. Clapton,
Lennon, McCartney, Beck,
Townshend, Jones and Jagger
were all in attendance. Hendrix
swiftly blew the contemporary
heavyweights out the water. They
knew they had just been usurped,
and would never truly recover.
Ayers recalled: “All the stars
were there, and I heard serious
comments, you know ‘shit’,
‘Jesus’, ‘damn’ and other words
worse than that.”
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