| What
do you think John Lennon would be doing if he were still alive?
What about Jimi? Or Janis? I admit that I wonder about them
along with some of the other rock icons that are gone. Their
stars shined so brightly, but how would time have treated them
if they'd lived?
 Lennon's
last album, Double
Fantasy, was a lackluster performer on the charts before
his death. Certainly, there were some very good songs on it
(Starting Over and Watching the Wheels come to mind), but
no one was really paying much attention to him after his five
year lay-off. New Wave was finally gaining a toehold in the
mainstream and MTV was on the horizon. After his murder, the
album took off and a couple of songs went to #1. Would John
have felt life as a rock star was worth the effort had his
new album been only a middling success? Would he have disappeared
into fatherhood again? What did John have left to say? Maybe
he would have taken George Harrison's path of recording rarely
and not caring much about success. Or, would he have felt
the need to compete with Paul and churn out music that was
occasionally brilliant but often a shadow of what was?
 Jimi
Hendrix was a huge success early in his career. Are
You Experienced was a critical and commercial success,
but much of his later work, though critically aclaimed, just
didn't reach the masses on the same level. Would Jimi have
faded away or would he be playing some bizarre blend of blues,
rock, and jazz and influencing a completely new generation
of guitarists?
 Janis'
star was rising with the release of Pearl.
She'd finally found a great band to back her and was confident
enough in her vision and voice to straddle rock, blues, and
even country infleunces effectively. Who knows where she would
have led a generation of female rockers? Somehow, I imagine
Janis fronting a modest blues/rock band and taking residence
in New Orleans where she could play in a small club and feed
on the energy of a packed house.
Of course,
all of this is my own dreaming and lionizing of artists who
I have immense respect for. But sometimes I wonder if their
deaths caused their stars to shine a little longer than if
they'd lived. Time
can be cruel.
Case in
point... What happens to the stars that hang around, keep
making music, and don't get noticed anymore? Crosby, Stills,
and Nash were just about the biggest thing in the music biz
in the late 60s and early 70s. Over the years, the boys released
various group and solo albums. Some were just OK and others
were amazingly high quality. But now it doesn't matter what
they put out now because radio has no room for them. There
isn't a format they fit, so the new music doesn't get played
and the CDs get lost.Jackson Browne, Joni Mitchell, Roger
McGuinn, and a host of others could tell the same tale.
Recently,
on a St Louis clasic rock station, they let the public vote
whether new music from "classic rock" artists should
be included in the playlist. In a landslide, the vote affirmed
that the same tired songs should get played sd infinitum.
What does that say about us?
How did
the music biz end up being only a business? When did the radio
programmers start controlling what we hear? I'm hopeful with
satellite radio, podcasts, and other niche music broadcasts,
we can get back to supporting the art and forget about the
damned demographic research. God, how I despise American Idol
and everything it stands for!
Note:
Of course, Imagine is about everything other than what I wrote
about this time, but somehow it is oddly appropriate too.
I suppose I could have used Starting Over too. Here's hoping
John floats a blue feather down from the ceiling to tell me
it's OK...
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